February 2012
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“It is not easy to find pigeons these days. Most of the ones you know about in...”
– How to Make a Pigeon Cry by MFK Fisher
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Mental prompt
If I could do anything, if I didn’t have to worry about money, if I didn’t have to worry about time, if I didn’t have to worry about success, what would I do? Hmmm….
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All this logic and making sense and doing things differently and seeing things from a different perspective and uncomfortableness…it feels like I’m losing something in all of this. Or am I growing and is it good?
I want to get out and travel this year. Some how. There’s nothing at all to stop me, really, but myself.
January 2012
21 posts
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For me, anxiety and paranoia have always been a two-for-one deal. Whereas depression mopes in alone.
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“It was as if the company’s (Chrysler’s) real customers were the stockholders not the people who bought the cars.” — The Reckoning, David Halberstam
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Uh-oh. I think today might shatter into a crescendo of anxieties…
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“When Dostoevsky met Dickens in 1862 — a meeting that is hard to imagine —...”
– Verlyn Klinkenborg, “The Whirling Sound of Planet Dickens” (via fwriction)
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Little things
No longer in a rental car.
Scored a huge bag of dog food for free.
Gifted a cute little vacuum cleaner that fits in my tiny room.
Pretty good. And the weekend’s not over yet.
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Dear Chevy,
The terrible designing of your HHR continues to boggle my mind. Not only did I have to google how to open the door to the gas tank, now I had to google how to shut off the rear windshield wiper. I don’t even know how I turned it on!
Minor irritations, though. I’m not going to let you ruin what is starting out to be a very promising year. I’m just going to enjoy the...
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Dear 2012,
Just 10 days in and already I think I’m in love with you.
xoxo,
Me
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Car:1, Me:0
So the rental company gives me a Chevy HHR. Everything’s going fine until the low fuel indicator goes off and I pull into a gas station to refuel. I look down to where the gas cap door release pull is located on most cars. Nothing. I scanned all the buttons on the dash. Nothing that appears to be related to the gas cap door. I get out of the car and look under the floor mat. I walk over to...
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Book Review*: A Dog's Purpose
I loved this book. I loved the dog who narrated the story. Anyone who has ever loved a dog would love this book. In fact, I have an urge to buy it for every person I know who has ever loved a dog, even the people I don’t know that well. Because this book is just that good. I. Loved. This. Book. That is all.
*More accurately, this is a book rave.
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Danica McKellar is publishing a geometry book? Awesome! I don’t care if it’s for 12-year-olds and full of Seventeen Magazine-esque quizzes. I will buy it and brush up.
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Book Review: The Devil in the White City
—Warning: This review may contain spoilers—
Oh, what to say about this book. The premise sounds appealing: At the turn of 19th century, a cast of creative, powerful, determined men (and some women) set out to establish Chicago as a premier destination by building the largest and most extravagant world’s fair, later dubbed “the White City.” Among these men are D.H....
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New Year
The start of 2012…
tastes like a bowl of warm ozoni
looks like a quilt-in-progress on my mother’s sewing machine
sounds like my brother and father playing with the dog
smells like brownies being baked for the family brunch
feels like an overcast day in hilo
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December 2011
52 posts
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Although I love the ease and convenience of my Kindle, I am secretly delighted when Amazon doesn’t have a book I want in Kindle format. It lets me justify buying a real book. Pages. There’s nothing like the feel of actual pages passing through my fingers.
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So, The Devil in the White City. This is going to be kind of awkward, but in the interest of honesty I have to tell you I was thinking (hoping?) you’d be something more along the lines of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. I mean you’re OK and all, it’s just…well, maybe we would’ve hit it off better if I hadn’t spent time with Midnight first. I know...
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My mother has been weeping for more than eight hours at this point. I look at her and I can almost physically feel the pain of her depression, her brutal self-pity. When it’s like this, I’m a balloon tied to an anchor. And the more she cries, the worse it gets because when she feels this bad even trying to feel better seems like a distant and unreachable horizon.
I also want to grab...
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Ugh. I need to learn to leave well enough alone.
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I left The Reckoning at home because it was too much of a tome to bring on the plane and now I’m reading The Devil in the White City. It’s OK. But seriously, Amazon? Get David Halberstam’s stuff in Kindle format already.
In all seriousness, I’m glad to be home for the holidays this year. My family enjoys harassing each other. All in good fun, of course.
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I don’t get football. At all. And you know what? When the camera pans to the crowd I get even more turned off.
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Book Review: Steve Jobs
Do the ends justify the means? Is your iPad worth the tears, bullying, and abuse Steve Jobs piled upon his friends and colleagues to get it done? If he hadn’t, would we ever have had anything that matches the iPhone?
I finished reading Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson today and I am torn. Anyone who’s been paying attention knows by now that Steve Jobs was a total prick, a...
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You know how some people have 1,000+ facebook friends? I’m that way with books. If I could “friend” all the books I love, then I’d finally be popular. I’m much more comfortable around books than I am around people. Which is why this Christmas Day was near to perfect for me. I just ate, drank, and read. Hilo brings that out in me. I come here full of ambitious plans to...
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The bad: My dad had trouble breathing last night and had to go to the emergency room. They said it might be some kind of virus.
The good: He seems fine now.
The bad: But he’s decided to skip out on his friend’s Christmas dinner and will be home harassing my dog and possibly irritating me.
Conclusion: I am an idiot for repeatedly scheduling 10-day trips home. I can usually stand a...
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Fact: The rain sounds prettiest in Hilo. I think it’s the metal roof on my parents’ house. And the gutter next to my bedroom window. And the bickering birds harmonizing in the background.
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“If you remember me, then I don’t care if everyone else forgets.”
– Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore (via bookmania)
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“Be aware, don’t get bent out of shape over every little thing, and...”
– My dad
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The cute ones are always jerks
My brother was so excited to show me what he’d bought with the JetPens gift certificate I’d given him for his birthday. He was enthusiastically explaining which pen had the best grip, versus which one wrote the best versus which one looked the classiest. He even brought out a notepad and urged me to write something with each of the pens so I could decide which one I preferred.
In the...
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Bad: Chance’s kennel doesn’t fit in my rental car.
Good: At least I figured this out now, four hours before I have to transport him. And I have a solution. I’ll just have to take the kennel in two pieces and put it together when I get to our destination.
Conclusion: OK, there’s no need for me to feel as irritated as I feel right now.