We Live With Disappointments...

...By celebrating the possibilities to come.

I'm staying between a hotel in another town & my boyfriend's house & a rental car. Am feeling a bit untethered.

Leave a grounding message, please.

p.s. I am sitting at Jason's desk, using his internet cord and he's on the other side on his laptop. He just poured me tea out of a measuring glass. If the cat were here, it would be perfect. Please, someone tell me what this job is and how I get it.

Y'all!

Look where I am staying in Dallas:




Before you get any crazy ideas that my non-profit pimps out all our business trips, let me first explain that 1. I am sharing a room with a co-worker, and 2. somehow this ocassionally happens due to the miracle of Priceline.

Nevertheless, I am bringing an extra bag to abscond with all the Kiehl's. That's right. All your hand lotion is belong to MEEEE.

Get More Music, For Less

I've recently become an iTunes connoisseur of cheap music compilations, and I would like to share them with you. If you use iTunes, you can search for these titles. If you know of any not listed here, I would appreciate you sharing them with me. In my experience, the good music on these albums are well worth the price you pay for the rest (which may or may not be your cup of tea, and any way you'll learn something new). I think of it as money I would put in a jukebox to hear a song once, except you get to keep it. Enjoy.

1. Indoor Picnic Music volumes 1 (16 songs) and 2 (17 songs): $3.99 each
Highlights include...
Volume 1:
Josh Krouse - It Looks Like Love
Jars of Clay - Dead Man Carry Me
Griffin House - The Guy That Says Goodbye To You
Volume 2:
Erin McKeown - Sing You Sinners
maybe others? (no stand outs, but altogether solid)

2. Penny Candy (15 songs) $3.99
The Weepies - World Spins Madly On
[Two repeats from Indoor Picnic Music, rest solid]

3. Credential Recordings Sampler, 10 songs, $0.99
Edison Glass, Future of Forestry, Turn Off the Stars, Dizmas, Lost Ocean

4. Catch Up With... Domino Recording Co., 15 songs, $3.99
Psapp - Hi
Caribou - Dundas, Ontario

5. ReDirection: A Polyvinyl Sampler, 19 songs $5.94
Rainer Maria, Matt Pond PA, Hey Mercedes, AM/FM, Braid, Pele

6. Mile: A Hush Compilation, 50 songs (yes! 50!), $9.99
The Decemberists, Jeff London, Graves, Blanket Music, & lots others

And some people seem to like...
7. Attic Jam, 19 songs, $9.99
The Kooks, Death Cab, Pete Townshend, The Flaming Lips, Rachel Fuller, Martha Wainwright

8. This is What Music Should Sound Like, 12 songs, $5.99
Really? Says who?

But I say NO DEAL.

Weird enough to shell out 10 bucks?
9. The Unaccompanied Voice: An A Capella Compilation, 24 songs, $9.99
Jandek, Modest Mouse, Nikki McClure (really?), Pedro the Lion, Songs: Ohia
Given my background, I should totally be digging this. But, I dunno.

Wantsssss it. But, esssspensive.
10. Old Enough To Know Better (15 years of Merge Records), 61 songs, $35.99
Magnetic Fields, Richard Buckner, Spoon, Camera Obscura, ...And You Will Know Us By the Train of Our Dead, The Buzzocks, Polvo, Neutral Milk Hotel, Crooked Fingers, The Essex Green

Last but not least,
10. FREE on iTunes
Check the front page regularly for three free song downloads a week. Can't argue for the price.

Yours in music downloading,
Mary

Cat Pictures

Lordy, I take a lot of cat pictures.

I had to make an entire flickr photo set of them.

But look!
How cute is she!


Some people have certain opinions about people who take lots of pictures of their cat(s). To those people, I say, whatevs.

Stuck At Work

I think I might blog everyday this week.

We had some afternoon showers and the roads leading out of my building are all floody. Luckily I can see this shizz from my window now before I get in my car and stuck behind some pissed-off rush hour drivers.

So, here I stay.

An update on my car situation--the car is expected to be ready in Dallas on March 31. This weekend, I heard from the selection folks re: my upcoming "tour" (this is what we call the trips people make to go do in-person interviews). I had requested to stay in Houston, but unfortunately there are no interviews in Houston that particular week. My options, as presented to me for the week preceding March 31, were: 1. Dallas; 2. Ohio. I quickly called back and told them "DALLAS, DALLAS! Please don't send me to Ohio" and now we cross our fingers that the timing will work out perfectly.

The best part? I get to see my beau two weekends in a row without having to drive back and forth between them. Super sweet.

Unless I drown their rental car first.

I have a sort of crazy appointment tomorrow on which I will remain mum. Here is me being mum. Mum is the word.

And, I'm not going to say anything about that, either.
Or that.

This is productive, right?

Are You Smarter Than... The Lottery?

The Washington Post just covered the sermon I've been singing for days, blasting Fox's new game show "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader" as the ultimate demise of television game shows, as begun by "Millionaire" not so long ago, and supported by that stupid briefcase game.

Paul Fahri asks, "Have TV quiz-show questions become dumber, and have the shows' rules grown wimpier, as producers pander to ever-lower audience expectations and the viewing public's general intellectual flabbiness?"

What. Yes, I watched it. YES, I knew most of the answers...

The thing is, and I think the Washington Post hits on this, the thing IS... historically game shows are about speed as well as intellect. Jeopardy whips through questions like penny candy. "Are you smarter than..." covered four questions in 40 minutes. That's an average of 10 minutes per question! By the time you hit that mark, you are well outside of the "game show" genre and into the "reality television" genre.

In the reality television game show, we don't really care if he knows the answer. Those type of questions don't require skill; at a certain point, they just require luck. It's like the lotto. Sure, we want him to win. But we're more interested in watching him writhe around trying to figure out what to do than finding out the answer to the question. (Does anyone ever remember the winning lotto ticket number? Nope, but we might remember who won.)

On the other hand, I'll occasionally remark to a friend, "Hey I heard this question on Jeopardy and I thought of you..." but I certainly wouldn't remember who was playing at the time. The reason I would think of one specific person would be due to the specificity of the question: a question about Les Mis, and my friend Heather who loves the story, for example. Reality television game shows would not generally showcase questions to that degree of detail, because there'd be no "oh oooooh oh it's on the tip of my tongue..." suspense involved.

It's interesting, right?
I mean, I'll take Jeopardy, but it's interesting.

Wizard Academy

Her name is Dulcinea, her kingdom, Toboso, which is in La Mancha, her condition must be that of princess, at the very least, for she is my queen and lady, and her beauty is supernatural, for in it one finds the reality of all the impossible.

Hey Austin folks, did you all know about this Wizard Academy place?
Did you know about the FREE wedding pavilion?

I imagine that when it rains, it pours, but when it's a beautiful day outside--like, wow.



Besides, it's hard to argue with FREE!

Bumper Cars

Look what happened to my car!



I was taking my bags out to my car early Monday morning at J's house (this is my monthly "get up at 5am and drive four hours back to Houston" ritual) only to discover that someone had plowed into my street-parked car during the night.

Nothing ruins a goodbye between two people in love like, "Holy SH-T! Look what your crazy-ass drunk/high/acid-tripping neighbors did to my BAYBEEE! Move to Houston IMMEDIATELY!" Except I didn't say that. But I thought it.

At the rental car center, the attendent asked me what happened to my car. I told him. "So, is it totalled?" he asked. "I don't think so," I answered, "and we're not using that word."

"What kind of car was it?" He then asked.

Look buddy, I hear your past tense and I do not. appreciate. it.

Here is where I would normally delve into "it could have been worse..." but I'm not going to today. (Do you hear that, potential business schools? Do you hear my ability to grasp the complexity of a situation?) My CAR! My poor, adorable, battered car!