Continual State of Becoming

Having a little time on my hands today, I decided to make some iced tea and fresh lemonade. Knowing that not everyone likes lemon in their iced tea (crazy), I like to make them separate. So I made the usual black tea, nice a strong (if people think it's too strong they are free to add some water to it). And then I started squeezing lemons when I realized that I had a bunch of oranges in the fridge too. So I squeezed some of those and added them to the lemon juice. Then I remember that I had some canned pineapples in the cupboard, so I added a little of that juice to the mixture. And when all was said and done I had a nice refreshing citrusy concoction. It tastes really good. Kinda reminds me of a juice I used to drink when I was a kid. I'm not sure how it mixes with the iced tea, but it does taste really good in a tall glass with a lot of ice cubes. Recipe (for those interested... note- I squeeze the fruits by hand, so it tends to get messy and may not make as much jui...

Purple flowers The backyard The deck The monster hosta My orchid My hibiscus

With the semester over, I'm finding myself with some free time. Not too much... I'm still working, and I start classes again in two weeks... but until that time, I'm going to enjoy doing all the things I couldn't do in the past 3 months but would think about whenever I was stuck in my office writing papers. For starters, there's a lot of housework to be done. Matt and I started rearranging the house after the piano was sold and gone, but there are still areas in the house that need fixing up. For one, my new office has turned into a catch all, so at some point I'm gonna have to suck it up and clean that room. I got some book son Feng Shui to help with ideas of how to arrange things, which has been really helpful. It at least gives me an approach to design. And after using it in the living room (which I think has turned out great) I'm excited to see what I can do in my office. Though with all the junk in there right now it's all a little overwhelmi...

Here's something I came across at work the other day. I think this is one of the more interesting sculptures I've seen. It's located at the Seattle Airport (part of a public art project). I tried to find up close pictures of some of it, but haven't seen any on the internet that were as good as the ones in the brochure I got. The sculpture is of a bird landing on the water. The bird is made up of small little bird sculptures hung on cables, then the reflection of the bird is made up of small fish sculptures. At the very bottom (which you cant really see) are little sculptures that have something to do with the Seattle area or airports. Some of pretty much what you would expect (coffee mugs) but some are really clever, like a suitcase with the clothes spilling out of it, and the way the clothes are falling, they spell the word "lost" (as in a lost suitcase... see the airport connection?) Anyway, I'm not sure if the sites I found do it justice, but in ...

It's over. The semester is finished. And not a moment too soon. I just emailed my last paper to my teacher, so I officially have no work left. For some reason, this semester just wiped me out. I dont understand how that's possible, especially since I didn't have any instruments to practice (which was always my undergrad excuse). I have my theories... my job (plus commute time), the # of papers I had to write (I think it was 5 total, with about 55-60 pages overall-- I'd much rather take tests though), and lack of sleep (due to staying up late writing papers and waking up early to go to work). But I made it through alive, and I'm pretty sure my grades will reflect my awesomeness (I already know 2 of them, I just have to wait on the last one before I can feel completely assured that I did as well as I hoped this semester). But now my brain in mush. I dont know how long it will take before it recovers... hopefully less than two weeks though because that's wh...

Lately my new favorite band to listen to (just new to me, seeing as how they’ve been around since the mid90s) is Wilco . Matt started listening to them a few months ago, and instantly knew they were good, but it always takes me a while to warm up to new music, though once a do, watch out, because it’s all I’ll listen to. Wilco is a great band, the kind of group I would love to be a part of if I were a “band” kind of musician (despite my new attempts at bass playing, I don’t except to ever really fit in to that kind of environment). But the songwriter/lead singer Jeff Tweedy writes some amazingly interesting (and good) songs as well as the kind of voice i love hearing. I tried to describe the band to my sister a last week and I think it went something along the lines of (depending on the song) a mix between John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Radiohead, Beck, and the Rolling Stones. Who wouldn’t like that kind of combination? They have a new album that came out yesterday (Sky Blue Sky) and I r...

The other day I went to the library to pick up a book that was on hold and to also do a little browsing. I found a book on container gardening. On the cover of the book is a little bubble with the words "All New Edition" in it. All I could think about when I saw that was: Should I consider that an official edition statement if I were cataloging the book. I mean it does say something about the edition, but doesn't really seem like one of the standard edition statements (like 2nd Ed. or 4th Ed.). Would I put that in the 250 field for MARC, or is that really something that would be better as a quoted note in the 5XX area? hmm... I wonder... let me check the CIP to see what they did, oh wait, there's no CIP in the book... great that means I'm actually going to have to look it up in WorldCat or LC's catalog (since i can't view the MARC record in the public library's OPAC. Turns out, the Library of Congress does this . The 250 field says "1st...

So these past few weeks have been fairly intense. Somehow I managed to finish 3 papers that were due within 10 days of each other. I wrote over 40 pages by the time it was all over (not including scores, appendixes, a CD, and lots of bibliographies). So this weekend I made sure that I had nothing to do with writing (cleaning, gardening, dinner with family, movies, tv, napping, reading for FUN-- it was great). Unfortunately, my music paper was only a rough draft so at some point I still have to edit and turn in a final copy, and I have a final exam on thursday, so I'm not entirely done with the semester, but for the most part, I've made it through the stressful week (it probably didnt help that I actually worked more than usual last week too, to help out with absences while some of the librarians were at a conference.) I'm almost finished, it's so close that it's starting to get tempting to blow off the few things I have left, but I know myself well enough to kn...

So here I am working on paper #3 for this week (which explains my lack of blog postings lately, or even my lack of interacting with anyone or anything that isn't school related)... I'm listening to iTunes, just letting it play down the list, not really paying attention... until the Beatles song "love is all you need" came on. I've heard this song MANY times (especially after performing it at church last summer) and despite how simple the song sounds, there's quite a bit going on. For instance, the verses (for the most part) do not follow a standard 4 beats or even 3 beats per measure pattern, instead it alternates (4 then 3 then 4 then 3 etc) which makes counting fun. And despite all the times I've listened to it, I noticed something new today. At the end of the song there are two trumpets that come in and play the opening measures to a Bach Invention (I cant remember what number it is because I'm not good with numbers, but it's one of the sta...