ghosts are good company

last night i made a mix cd based on seattle - songs about seattle, not by people in seattle. it’s a little obvious, a little lewd, and a little amusing. do any of you want a copy? maybe we could do a mix cd swap? if you’re interested, leave a comment and we can exchange addresses or whatever by email.

here’s the cover image (shrinkified):

the image is from the pi. a “composite photograph” from 1986. ’shop!

the tracklist, in case anyone’s interested:

The Long Winters - Prom Night At Hater High
Craig Chaquico & Russ Freeman - Seattle Child
Brazen Abbot - Restless in Seattle
Abigail Anderson - Seattle
Bob Rivers - West Seattle Girls
Sir Mix-a-Lot - Posse On Broadway
The Postal Service - This Place Is A Prison
Anti-Flag - Seattle Was A Riot
The Business - Holiday in Seattle
Kimya Dawson - I Will Never Forget
Connie Smith - Seattle
Steve Vai - The Boy From Seattle
Bill Cosby - Seattle

in a different direction, fish with no name is no more. apparently i fail at having a fish. the building i’ve been working in has amaaazing fish in the lobby, but i won’t be working here after tomorrow. i wonder if they’d mind me coming in to see the fish anyway. :D

my alarm is set for six hours and forty-two minutes from now. i have a job (for a week), which is a pretty awesome thing because it means, mostly, five hundred plus more dollars than i had before.

unfortunately, i am already spending some of that money in my head… i’m wanting to buy roller derby pads, probably from sin city skates. expensive, but important.

jorb is good for structure. i’ve been better at getting getting things done just knowing that it’s coming - making things ready for the next day, sure, but also cleaning the house. it’s crazy, how important it can be to have something to work toward.

that said, though, my sleep schedule still isn’t working. i trained for two hours today and then came home and accidentally napped for five hours. i just downloaded an alarm clock for my computer, so hopefully that will help, but still - obnoxious.

saturday: my mum has a hair appointment at nine downtown. at eleven downtown there is a tranny picnic (until two, i think). at one, a tiny we know is being baptized. at five-thirty, there’s a tranny meeting. of course saturday is the day we decided to go to the padres game…

sunday: knitting. it was fun this week, i went with my aunt. i was afraid they’d make fun of my garter stitch scarf, but they really liked it. nobody could advise me on fulling, but someone taught me how to do an i-cord. and then i taught some other people. there were six new people there, including my aunt and i - and maybe twenty people there total. crazy! we left three hours after it started and they were still knitting like mad.

…this is how it works
you’re young until you’re not
you love until you don’t
you try until you can’t
you laugh until you cry
you cry until you laugh
and everyone must breathe
until their dying breath

no, this is how it works
you peer inside yourself
you take the things you like
and try to love the things you took
and then you take that love you made
and stick it into some
someone else’s heart
pumping someone else’s blood
and walking arm in arm
you hope it don’t get harmed
but even if it does
you’ll just do it all again…

i’ve certainly heard of regina spektor, i’m pretty sure she’s fairly popular among a certain crowd, but perhaps the first time i’ve heard her music was the other day.

my mother mentioned at some point radio sophie, and i was charmed by the idea because one of my favorite people is named sophie, and i would love it if she had a radio station because it would play delightful music. the actual radio sophie isn’t actually so delightful and it’s owned by cbs, but it still has perhaps the best playlist of all of the corporate radio in san diego. which maybe is saying something.

anyway, i first heard regina spektor’s “on the radio” on the radio, on my way home from somewhere - oh! bowling, i think. my mother’s work goes bowling every so often, and i was invited to bowl with them. i bowl badly. i warned them when i was invited that i would bowl about eighty, and indeed i averaged seventy-nine.

anyhow, on the radio was “on the radio” and it made me cry. you can listen to it here, at least for a little while. i think it was a minor hit a while ago? i like it the most of any of her music that i’ve heard.

i have a new friend who is a fish. he doesn’t have a name yet, but he is a pink betta fish with light blue and silvergray coloring. he is pretty lovely, and he lives in the kitchen.

tomorrow is knitting at the whistle stop. i need a new project, though, because i finished my current one at the trans discussion group i went to tonight. it’s a long and skinny garter snake, i mean scarf, out of some lion brand landscapes i picked up when my ex worked at jo-ann - in summer fields (mine is a bit looser gauge, i did it on fifteens), which is a color scheme that i love sooo much. for no apparent reason… but it makes me excessively happy. i am thinking of doing this with it, but i am not completely sure if i want to - i’m afraid that it will get thicker, and i don’t want that. i really just can’t decide if it’s nice or horrible. i *do* want tassels, so i need to figure out whether or not fulling is go. any thoughts, knitters? suggested needles are thirteens, so it’s not like there’s giant holes. i might take it with me to the stitch and bitch and ask them.

so, that’s why i don’t talk about knitting. also because i never know what to knit. i want to do fun things, but i’m horrible at remembering patterns. i made a… thing… today that was an experiment in how stranded colorwork will felt (i wasn’t very surprised that the cuff, or whatever it will be, got twice as wide around after i felted it and then snipped the carried-over yarn. i’ll felt it again and see how it turns out. i want to make this eventually, and it would be super fun to do some kind of symbol (piiiiirate bag?) on the middle panel.

i have so much yarn, especially considering how little i knit. and so many needles!

i’ll suffer you through discussions of these things in the future.

my aunt is a graphic designer. her personal site is here (in case you need something designed all fancypants), and she also works for a company whose catalog she produces every quarter.

this time, they’re doing some special stuff and on a rush, which wasn’t planned when their proofreaders booked a trip to london. left without proofreaders, the company asked friends and family to help…
and loved the work that i did.

which means that i have a reference for my job hunting (this part? amazingly wonderful.), and potentially proofing work with them in the future. hooray!

i just wanted to be helpful. it’s nice to be recognized for the helping.

my favorite music blog alerted me to the fact that there’s a new rilo kiley album. i like them, i’ve liked them ever since i stumbled across them five or so years ago, so i am always glad to hear new things from them. i think. t-sides talks about how variable the album is, and i agree. i was hearing a lot of mainstream pop in some places, and hints of k.d. lang in others. what is that?! it worries me. at the same time, though, maybe i like where this is going. i’m afraid of change, though - which is why “breakin’ up” is, unsurprisingly, what i’ve decided is my favorite track on this album (the song is kindly linked here). i’m somewhat a twit and texted cubbie two lines from it today - i bet you can guess which ones.

i think that the image here is an appropriate example of how rilo kiley has changed since their last album. jenny lewis seems to be really frustrated with a lot of things going on in her world, and she’s handling it differently than she used to. it feels a bit like she’s a little girl who is a friend of mine, who is suddenly trying to dress up in clothes that she still doesn’t fill out. i’m not sure why their more depressing work was something that worked for me, but this sudden hypersexuality isn’t. maybe i just need to listen to the album a few more times.

they’re playing here in october, and i’m not sure (especially considering all the other shows i want to go to in october) if i want to go see it. i think my heart is walling itself up and i’m afraid to be let down.