Monthly Archives: July 2003

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Moving On Up?

As most of you know, Scott and I decided to opt out of renewing our lease for another year on our amazing apartment. With my job ending soon, I just can’t predict where I’ll be or whether I can even afford anything. Scott was sad, as was I, but we both agreed it was for the best. I flew Dave up here to help out with the move, and boy am I glad I did. All my stuff is now in storage and I’m in the process of cleaning. Or should I say, I’m in the process of procrastinating my cleaning. My computer is the last thing I am breaking down. It will join me at my sister’s where we will undoubtedly get in the way and cause much stress on the wonderful sister bond. Which means my nights on her couch will be dispersed amongst nights on other people’s couches as well as my other sister’s place. So if you every hear me say, “Hey, why don’t you have a party. I’ll come. Can I crash there if I drink too much?” It really means, “hey I’m looking for a place to crash, let’s drink as an excuse.”

On a side note, people have been hounding me to show my hair. These pics don’t really show how much darker it seemed. But the comparison of before after should show you that in two months, it’s been a drastic change…and I like it.

First the Hair Pics (note my long hair was actually a couple inches longer than this when it was first cut off, but this is the most recent picture I could find):

And now for the move pics: I love the one of Dave with the dog because we were getting so sick and tired of people coming by wanting to see the aparment when we were in the middle of utter chaos and, of course, I can’t say no to people so when this girl stopped by with her dog, I said she could come on in and look. She promptly handed her dog off to Dave who suddenly went from moving helper to dog watcher. And that is precisely what his face is expressing. The other pics are us being silly (not sure what was on my butt) and the last picture of me and Scott on our porch before the final “separation.” 🙂


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Jane’s Depiction

Aaron recently wrote about the new Jane’s Addiction album. Read his review and then read the following opinion I have concerning revivals.

I used to hold Perry Farrel in such high regard and watched “Gift” so many times the ribbon snapped on my video tape. (Video tape? eegads, we are old.) So I was excited to hear Aaron’s review and utterly disappointed that the album let us down. All I have to say is that I have always had a hard time with bands who put themselves on the cover in a cheesed out, “hey this us standing here looking sullen” kind of way. If you are going to be on the cover, follow the suit of Jane’s Addiction in the past and make it an artistic representation of yourself (i.e. sculpture, painting). Or just do what Depeche Mode/NIN/Tool did for years and don’t put yourself on there at all. Once some of my favorite bands put themselves on the cover, I knew they were going to start letting me down. Example:

This rule does not really apply to solo artists. Ani Difranco/Tori Amos/Ben Harper/Jimi Hendrix/Tracy Chapman/Neil Diamond are all cases in point. 🙂 You like my examples? I do. (If you bothered to browse to Ani’s page you’ll notice that her albums no longer have her on the cover and I think that her music has coincidentally gotten better.)

Now to add to this sad turn for the band, I WILL say that they’re website has a much better style. If you visit it, wait for the cheesy images of them to float away. What is left SHOULD have been their cover. While you’re at it, check out the album covers from their past that are must better.

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Accompanying Light Shows

Life is sort of crazy (general statement to say the least). For those who read my blog (which is frighteningly more people than I sometimes believe) you may remember my experience in Wisconsin where I met a man who was training hair stylists on coloring. I was lucky enough to be a hair model for him (because lord knows I would never be any other kind of model). So here I am in Iowa and who should call my cell, but LENNY!! The Master Colorist! He asks, “Katie! Where are you these days!” I answer, “Nowhere. I mean, Iowa.” He laughs, “So am I! Cedar Rapids! How far are you?” I answer, “Oh my god, only an hour from you.” And so my plans for my day off switch from me sitting around reading Harry Potter to me driving up to Cedar Rapids where, yes again, I get my hair done and enjoy a few great meals.

This time I had the courage to let him cut my hair even shorter and go darker. A lot of you won’t like it, but hey, it’s hair and I LIKE IT. (Lenny reminds me that my new hair cut requires that I learn to style it and I promise to do so even though we all know I’ll find some way to make it look like it always does. Damn the curse of being a Dellwo at heart.)

On my drive back down to Fairfield from Cedar Rapids at eleven o’clock at night, I listened to “Me Talk Pretty One Day” by David Sedaris and was reminded how much I love to drive. With either great music or an excellent book on tape/cd I could drive anywhere. To add to my enjoyment, out of the corner of my eye I kept seeing flashes. I would look to my right across the dark of the pastures and lone farmhouses and think “what was that?” Then five seconds later, another flash. Finally, on a straight stretch, I let myself look for a bit longer and sure enough, the sky was lit up by the most incredible lightning show I had ever seen. I pulled off on a gravel road and parked my car to watch for a bit. Imagine looking out into nothing, too dark to discern the fields of grass, barely able to make out that you are on a road at all, and then suddenly the entire sky is filled with lightning just like you used to draw as a child. Bright yellow jagged lines, maybe a few orange and pink, some behind clouds, turning the clouds into glowing pillows. It was truly beautiful. What really got me is the fact that here I am in the dry heat of an Iowa highway and just off in the distance someone is getting soaked. I always seem to be just along side of incredible storms. Only a few times have I been hit, but really I miss the worst of it by a hair. As if somehow I have been allowed to view, but not experience, nature at it’s worst. “Come closer Katie, see what nature can do, but keep your distance, you’re really just a visitor.”

When I arrived at my first library on this trip they said that the previous week they’d lost their electricity. I had just missed it. When I was working in New York some of my libraries couldn’t make it out of their town for FUT or Laptop because of the snow, but it was clear enough where I was. When I was in Kansas there were tornado warnings in every town around me, but my town was the only one in the clear. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had the occasional hailstorm where I’ve pulled off on the side of the road, but on the news later that night, my car was not one of the many whose windshields had crashed due to baseball size hail. I was snowed in at my skanky hotel in Cortland, New York, but I had a Denny’s attached that was still serving and it was the weekend so no worries about training.

When I was a little girl I always felt like nothing interesting ever happened to me, just to the people around me. As I grew older sometimes I would tell amazing stories about those people and I would be met with, “My God, you lead an interesting life,” to which I would respond, “Not really, these are things that happened to OTHER people, not me.” When I was on a plane with my younger cousin, Elena, she was really scared and I said, “Don’t worry, nothing really bad or interesting ever happens to me so you’re okay.” This seemed to allay her fears and we landed safely and uneventfully. Later that same trip when we were floating around in the Atlantic Ocean she said, “I used to be scared of sharks, but since you are out here with me I know I’m safe.” That made me giggle. (How horrible would it have been if I had been wrong.)

So I guess my drive last night along side of the incredible lightning storm made me appreciate for the first time what a sweet deal I have. I get to observe the most incredible and sometimes horrible experiences from a safe distance without ever having to feel the real burden of them. Some of you might be thinking, “what about that terrible car accident?” Well, let’s look at that. I’m alive and in perfect health again. How lucky can I be? If you ever saw the pictures of the car, you’d be shocked too.

The worst part about all this? Now that I’ve acknowledged it AND written it in my blog, I’ll be hit by an electrical storm tonight, my plane will crash, and my entire family will be devoured by sharks. Sorry about that.

Is it too late to knock on wood? knock…knock…knock?

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Better Late Than Never

I had an amazing fourth of July, but when I sat down to write about it I hit the wrong button and lost my entire entry.

To sum things up: Dave, John, and Michael came up from Oakland. We BBQ’d, we ate the leftovers, we ate more leftovers, we ate more…you get the picture. Then we went to Bellingham and said hello to our past. Michael was a great sport.

I’ve posted some pics. Too many to put here so I made them their own special page. 🙂

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Pheromones: Believe it or not

I finished my usual cover to cover reading of The New Yorker on the plane today so when I got to Cincinnati I wanted a new magazine. I picked up the Discover magazine and decided I really dig it. There was an article in it called “Physical Chemistry” where a scientist continues his studies to see if pheromones have any effect on how we react to each other. It was quite fascinating.

Compounds released in the urine or body odor of male mice, for example, can signal dominance and spark aggression between males and prompt reproductively dormant females to start cycling. The scent of a strange male mouse will cause pregnant females to abort their fetuses.

Isn’t that crazy? The other quote I like seems to hit closer to home though. When speaking of how pheromones of female silk moths attract males they say, “Attracts is perhaps too coy a word; [it] pretty much strips a male moth of free will.” Hmmm…that sounds like how it works for humans too.

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Kris! Kris! Kris! Altogether now! Yeah Kris!

Today Kris taught a class on CSS to about 15 of us at the Foundation. I have to say, for never having taught it before (besides one on one in random spurts) it went really well. I think people are going to ask for a repeat of the class as the word spreads that we are now all addicted to CSS. When that happens, he’s going to have it all smooth and stylin’.

Aside from the added tips and tricks he taught us, I thoroughly enjoyed watching him feverishly write on the white board. He is right handed, but writes as a left hander would. Then he leaves out letters or reverses them, not out of a dislexic panic, but more out of sheer enthusiasm. It made me feel oh so much better about my own white board/post-it board stylin’s of the past. Cheryl leaned over in class and whispered to me, “He must make you feel so much better.”

I have a tendency as well to leave letters out, giving the misconception that I am a terrible speller, which is just not so. I also have no rhyme or reason to my charts so I tend to draw lines and then write over them haphazardly. Ah, the beauty of displaying your terrible handwriting for a class. Now you know why I keep a blog. Writing in a book would be pointless as it would be illegible.