Non Sequiturville

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Originally uploaded by freyjawaru.

part one: pink sheets.

you know, maybe I shouldn’t move back to New York. I’m not saying I’m likely to end up like this guy, but I did hang out at the Indonesian Consulate on the Upper East Side quite a bit when I lived there (owing to gamelan rehearsals, complete with blonde, white, suburban housewives who spoke fluent Javanese).

Given the fact that I was about five blocks away when that chick got bricked in 1999 (while on my lunch hour–I worked about seven blocks away on Madison and 35th), and that a woman was knifed walking out of the subway stop I always used at a time when I usually walked out of it, it’s all a little too close for comfort. But then, NYC is sometimes just that way–I can’t think of another place where I would run into my 6th-grade teacher from Boulder, Colorado on the one time I would take the D train to the Bronx to see a Yankees game, nor where I would find myself living a block away from my Head Resident from college and about five blocks away from the respective homes of about seven a capella singers, nor where I would just run into Yoko Ono while shopping for used classical CDs.

Happy birthday, Johann Chrysostom Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

It would be pretty damn cool to be in Salzburg right now. I happened to be there on the anniversary year of his *death* in 1991. Which was awfully weird. They were selling Mozart chocolates absolutely everywhere. And I do have to say that Austrian Mozart chocolates are much, much better than the ones you can find here. My personal faves happen to be the true Kugeln, or balls. Balls that are perfectly round and covered with gold foil. Although, perhaps one can find those in the US now. I’m amazed at how much cool stuff is finally becoming available more frequently. Like Ritter Sport bars and gummi peaches and macademia nuts.

I’m a tad annoyed because my class decided we will be reading Wicked. Although I suppose it’s better than having to reread Life of Pi. Ah, well–such is the nature of “book club” books, I suppose.

I’m also fiendishly jealous of everyone who’s going to the Mozart party tomorrow night. Sigh. At times like this I wish I was in the musicology department. J and C, you’re probably chuckling as you read this. Because I’m sure you’re going. And so you should feel sorry for me. But that’s OK–because I’m going to my friend’s gig, so maybe it will get my mind off the numbing agony of not going.

If I were going to a Mozart party, naturally I would want to go dressed as Cherubino.

So my friend is celebrating her anniversary with her boyfriend this weekend. She said she needed to get out of Urbana, so of course, she and her boyfriend are going to stay in a hotel in Champaign for the night.

I asked her, “Um, haven’t you guys heard of Sybaris?”

Seriously. If *I* wanted a romantic getaway, I’d be all over having my own water slide in my room.

Here is Sybaris’s Web site.

Since my love life has pretty much continually sucked and/or been nonexistent my entire life, it has been suggested to me that I perhaps set up some feng shui around the relationship area in my home. I am pleased to try this–it can’t hurt, plus I have found that Eastern beliefs in energy flow and stagnant problem-areas actually work, at least in terms of acupuncture. I think feng shui follows some of the same principles–perhaps that part of my life has just been dormant or stagnant and needs to be revitalized. It goes to show that the last two men with whom I’ve been in love have unhealthy relationships that they’re obviously already in and are leading lives that are themselves stagnant, possibly owing to their inability to get out of said relationships.

I have a Feng Shui book for Dummies. I need to find a cheap bamboo flute. I also need to find some kind of cheap indoor fountain. The book says something about essential oils and fragrance and how important it is to have quality essential oils or smells around your environment, not that cheap Glade crap (since it’s synthetic anyway). It got me thinking–what about dog feng shui? Dogs absolutely love the most horrendous smells–if a dog finds a rotting fish for example, he must roll in it so he can keep smelling JUST LIKE IT. So would a dog need an Essence of Dead Baby Bunny or something in his home?

P1000940
Originally uploaded by freyjawaru.

This is a shrine. Please be quiet. Thank you.

Well, it looks like the possibility of moving back to Chicago is looking slimmer and slimmer. This is owing, of course, to the Chicago Public Library, which will not even allow me to start the application process until I have a degree in hand. Seeing as I happen to be a grownup, it looks then like I won’t be working for them, since I need to eat and therefore need to have a job lined up to start on May 16.

Luckily for me I made the effort to go to the ALA conference in San Antonio and I turn out to be a rather competitive candidate. I had two interviews with NYPL, one with Queens, one with Boston, and one with Philadelphia. I hope that the screening interviews lead to more promising returns. I think I’d be quite happy and challenged working for any one of them. So it looks as though signs are pointing to my moving back East, which probably is the best thing for me anyway. I think I’m a bit out of my element in the midwest.

Well, it’s been an interesting day. I had not two, but THREE legs to San Antonio from Champaign! Luckily, I only have to make two legs on the way back.

So it’s been all airplane flights, all day. Of course, that totally beat getting my ass to Chicago by 7 AM for flights that each had a four- to five-hour layover on the way to San Antonio. That would have involved getting the shuttle (which runs every three hours from Champaign and takes four hours to get to Chicago) at around midnight. And would have cost the same.

I like to sit in the window seat in general. I suppose the general population is probably pretty evenly divided between aisle and window preferences. When I fly Delta, I make sure to log in and confirm my flight(s) about a week beforehand so I can try to get window seats. Today, when I boarded at Cincinnati for Atlanta, I found a woman sitting in my seat.

This particular woman was quite nasty looking. Remember that poor woman who was mauled by the weird mastiff-type dogs in San Francisco five years ago? The lawyers who owned those dogs looked like (and happened to be) supreme assholes. She looked just like Marjorie Knoller. But was a lot heavier.

In any case, I told her that I thought she was probably in my seat. She responded: “Oh, you want to sit in the window seat?” No, I wanted to sit in the middle. I told her that I’d ensured a window seat awhile back and yes, I did intend to sit in it. She threw a miniature tantrum—sighed, huffed and puffed, and slammed things around in order to vacate the seat for me. She happened to have been assigned to the middle seat and no one sat in the aisle seat. But she stayed in the middle seat anyway and almost leaned over me to continually gaze out the window. Good grief. I think she was trying to make me feel sorry for her and give up my seat to her. Finally, she gave up and moved to the aisle seat and wrung her hands the entire trip.

My little secret: I might have been nice enough to let her sit in the window seat, had she perhaps pressed my hand and earnestly said, “You know, I am really nervous on airplanes and I need to see out the window,” or, “I’m clinically insane and go ballistic on aircrafts when I can’t see outside” or something to that effect.

But no. She thought that if she just SAT in my seat that I would be too pacifistic to insist on sitting there myself. Ha!

Anyway, in a more important vein….

There is this really fascinating “column” in The Nation this week called “Girls against Boys?” Katha Pollitt discusses how the projected demographics for people attending college in the next few years will be 60% female/40% male. She says: “So of course the big question is, Who will all those educated women marry? . . . . If the ladies end up cuddling with their diplomas, they have only themselves—and those misguided ‘advocates for women’—to blame. Take that, you hyper-educated spinster, you.”

So, hmmm. I wonder how much my east-coast education is hurting my dating game in C-U?

Since I’m going there tomorrow, I can’t seem to get this song outta my head:

Deep within my heart lies a melody,
A song of old San Antone,
Where in dreams I live with a memory,
Beneath the stars all alone.

It was there I found beside the Alamo,
Enchantment strange as the blue up above
A moon-lit pass that only she would know,
Still hears my broken song of love.

Moon in all your splendor, know only my heart,
Call back my Rose, Rose of San Antone.
Lips so sweet and tender, like petals falling apart
Speak once again of my love, my own.

Broken song, empty words I know,
Still live in my heart all alone
For that moon-lit pass by the Alamo,
And Rose, my Rose of San Antone.

I spent money on two things I really didn’t need to spend money on today.

One was a petticoat. I have a skirt from Anthropologie that would look SO much better if it stuck out more.

And that petticoat site is SO MUCH FUN. I would have adored it when I was little. I adore it now!

The other was a second copy of the 14th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style. Or maybe my copy is the 13th edition. I don’t know. I shoved it in a box and have absolutely no idea which one it is and it’s stored away so it was easier to order it used on Amazon. Supposedly the new edition isn’t as good for indexing and that’s what prompted me to buy it (for class). Of course, I’ve needed it a gazillion times since I started grad school (duh) and always wind up using one in the library instead.

At this moment, I am sitting in my LEEP class, trying to pay attention. GROAAAAN. I think I’ve just logged way too many hours in class already this week. Eight solid hours yesterday. This class will make it four today. And that doesn’t include the other five hours of class I have this week. Of course it doesn’t help that the course I’m pseudo-listening to is Indexing and Abstracting. Mahler is SO much more interesting.