April 29, 2006 at 7:12 pm (jobs)
I hope you had a mahvelous wedding. I’m sure it was the Korean social event of the year, and I’m sorry to have missed it.
But, I did get a job out of missing the weddin’! So, many congrats, and you’ll have to come visit me in the music library in Philadelphia!
April 29, 2006 at 6:59 pm (novelty)
April 25, 2006 at 1:55 pm (health, jobs, music, performance, talking shop)
OK. I haven’t been feeling as inspired as usual these days.
Right now, I feel drained and exhausted after a not necessarily harrowing but definitely stressful weekend full of rehearsals with the Pacifica Quartet. Yes, I have been acquainted with them since I worked for their recording label in Chicago for two years before I started grad school. Since I was singing a solo, that didn’t make me any less nervous. Plus they are hotter than hot, musically and physically speaking and it’s intimidating to perform with them, even though they’re quite nice. But everyone wound up OK in spite of the conductor deciding at the LAST MINUTE that we were all going to STAND for over an hour and not get to sit down. At least he didn’t change up the tempos, as he is sometimes prone to do.
I am leaving to go to Philadelphia tomorrow for my interview. I ran into the prof who suggested I cough up the money for the ticket in the first place, and she told me I’d better negotiate salary if they offer, which I was planning not to do since they are a city and have a graduated pay scale. They offered already to Sebethis, which gives me hope. Then I will be involved in family reuning and possible excessive stress owing to planning, since my brother and his girlfriend will be coming to Reading, PA from DC, and my cousin will be coming from NY. We will all be visiting the other cousin who lives outside of Reading.
In the meantime, I have to do my indexing final homework, which will be quite time-consuming, and write/finish my independent study from LAST semester. This was all delayed last week because I proofread a book that had to be done in a week. Ah, well. I need the money.
Anyway, if I’m as lucky as Sebethis, I will know by the end of the week if I have a job offer and then maybe I can stop having a nervous breakdown.
Tonight I have to go to Balkan, which seriously annoys me, since I had to waste three hours of my life last week hearing them go on about plans for next year, which obviously won’t involve me. Then I need to bring my fierce Siamese fighting fish to Old Tasty, who is ever so kind and wonderful to look after them and who seems to have a new blog!
April 23, 2006 at 1:41 pm (inadequately endowed, noise, politics, thoughts about urbana-champaign, vehicles, why I hate noise)
Well, I actually don’t have the answer to that. Champaign County in Illinois is the single loudest place I have ever lived in my life, and I think it’s perhaps because it just doesn’t have the funds to keep its noise under control and to enforce its own laws. I also think that there’s a much higher population (owing to the university) of men between 18 and say, 25. That’s the biggest demographic of people who buy excessively loud car stereos and of people who like to soup up their cars to make them louder.
There’s a very loud motorcycle culture here, too, and I find the vast majority of the biker guys to be Harley enthusiasts. Almost without exception, the loud motorcyclists I’ve encountered have been white men in their 50s and 60s. I’ve encountered a few motorcycles here and there that emit normal sound levels for a motorcycle and I don’t have problems with them. They also happen to wear helmets, I’ve noticed, unlike the Harley guys. The Harley guys also seem to greatly enjoy all riding around together, which to me kind of defeats the whole “lone rider” or “tough guy” concept, but maybe they’re going through midlife crises.
In any case, for a long time, I’ve been hearing extremely loud motors that I always assumed were motorcyles. Sometimes they are. But often, it turns out, they’re not–there is a phenomenon sweeping the area, apparently, of turning brand-new trucks or cars into noise machines.
I looked into this a bit and found this site, called Digital Recordings, that explains how and why these vehicles are souped up. There’s also some info about boom cars, although that can be found almost anywhere on the Web.
I have a personal vendetta against anyone who tries to affect that many people with his noise. I know the problem is only going to get worse before it gets better, but considering how much exponentially more noisy it is now in Champaign County than it was two years ago when I moved here (and I’ve become more TOLERANT believe it or not), I think that time may be nigh. Someday soon, I won’t be the only one complaining and the only one on a mission to stop it.
April 21, 2006 at 9:12 am (politics, the nation)
I love The Nation, and I love Coca-Cola. 
Guess I need to give up my elixir.
April 16, 2006 at 6:16 pm (holidays)
I think that this has been the most unexciting Easter I’ve had in ages. After having a church gig, I don’t necessarily feel like doing anything, especially since I’ve got the “Christianity is dumb” bug. My friend, who was raised agnostic basically, told me I was being irreverent toward Jesus by not celebrating. Hello. Everything in our culture is about the pagan holiday that predates Christ by…well, a lot. The eggs, the bunnies, the chickies–all symbols of fertility and spring. Duh.
The coolest Easter tradition to me is the Swedish one. They make a tree called a påskris. It’s a bunch of branches with buds. Then the “tree” is decorated with little ornaments that are supposed to look like little witches. They also put colored feathers on the branches, gathered to look like palms (which I suppose dovetails into the whole Palm Sunday deal). There are also blown, decorated eggs on the trees.
Easter in Sweden is sort of like Halloween here. Little girls dress up as witches, and the children go from door to door to get candy. Witches, according to legend, would make a ride to meet the devil and ride their brooms in the week before Easter. People were very superstitious and hid brooms and anything witches could use in the week before Easter.
So, God Påsk, I guess!
April 14, 2006 at 1:45 pm (TV, flix)
I was completely and totally obsessed with the 1982 version of The Scarlet Pimpernel when I was growing up. I was intrigued when it first aired on TV (it was made for TV) and I was seven, and then my parents recorded it for me when I was twelve. I watched it over and over and over. It was always hard to find a VHS copy of it because it was made for TV and they weren’t making many videotapes of things like that at the time. Now it’s out on DVD and I was sure to buy it as soon as it was available.
I checked out the A&E Scarlet Pimpernel and it really wasn’t bad. I had seen all these weird personal reviews of it on Amazon and on Netflix. Lots of people were extremely partial to the 1982 movie.
The 1982 movie has Anthony Andrews, Jane Seymour, and Ian McKellen. The score is also quite good–the composer stuck to themes for each kind of scene and there is quite a bit of music that sounds like the period.
People complained in their reviews about Elizabeth McGovern in the A&E version, but I thought she did a nice job, and that she looked lovely. I liked the cast and the work that went into the newer one. However, it’s probably not as intriguing as the Anthony Andrews version.
This is from the 1982 movie, with Anthony Andrews in the foreground. Nice shot, eh?
This is another pic of Tony
This is what the A&E version was missing. The Pimpernel was supposed to be a master of disguise, and obviously the Anthony Andrews version did it well.
The costumes were fabulous in the 1982 version, too.
I suppose the biggest drawback to the 1982 movie is that it can get cheesy at times. Perhaps that is something that has improved in a lot of moviemaking in the past 20 years.
April 12, 2006 at 3:30 pm (food)
I am so excited I found this site! I Hate Cilantro
This was prompted by my hatred of cilantro since I first ate it–and the fact that the Thai Kitchen rice I made that is SUPPOSED to taste like lemongrass and ginger only tastes like cilantro. I hope everyone’s love affair with this…foul weed…ends soon. Groan. The pie chart on the site is particularly hilarious. I never thought about it before, but cilantro really does taste like doll hair.
April 12, 2006 at 9:20 am (doggies!, fierce fishies, thoughts about urbana-champaign)
Bhishma is apparently on a hunger strike. He still moves around and all, but he hasn’t eaten anything in almost a week. Weirdly, the crazy Betta Lady says that she once had a betta who lived for a couple of months on half a blood worm. Hmm. Anyway, he has had fin rot off and on for about two months and last week, I realized that the bottom of his head was turning white (another kind of fungus problem) so I had to start treating him for fungus again. So he is definitely sick, which might explain his eating problem. He tries to eat but then spits everything out. Maybe I need to try Frozen Sea Monkeys again (aka brine shrimp, which he didn’t like when he was healthy). Groan.
And then Shyam is completely freaking out. He’s very happy–he’s been building bubble nests and swimming around happily, but he runs away everytime I open his lid to feed him. He darts to the bottom of his tanks and hides under his plastic plant. I have to leave his pellets on the surface of the water and back away until he darts back out to eat the pellets. I have no idea what traumatized him so much and why he’s suddenly afraid of me. Freak. (He likes to sit on his plastic plant, too, and just hang out.)
I sincerely hope that wherever I move has the following things: a few decent restaurants, and a climate that serves up a few days that have winds of less than 15 mph. I have lived here for two calendar years and have yet to experience a non-windy day–and I grew up at the foot of the Rockies, which certainly saw strong winds but had a lot of calm days too–I occasionally had good hair days there, which I can’t say I’ve ever had here. Yes, I lived in Chicago. Yes, it’s called the Windy City. No, it’s not called the Windy City for its wind (it is called the Windy City owing to politics surrounding the World’s Fair in the 1890s). And yes, it is significantly more windy here than it is in Chicago. I often had good hair in Chicago. My hair kept its natural curl in Chicago, which it doesn’t do here. I really, really hate wind.
I also hope that wherever I move: I am not punished for living out in the middle of nowhere by getting my magazine subscriptions a week after everyone else in the country gets the same issues; that my Netflix rentals will actually only have a day or two turnaround and not a whole week (people I know in DC, New York, Colorado, California, and Washington get theirs within a day); and that films everyone else in the country are watching will actually be showing at the same time here and not a month or so later. And it would be nice to have a Limited Express *for women* (imagine that!) within a hundred miles. And maybe a J Crew. And maybe an affordable boutique.
Things I *do* like about here: I actually don’t mind it being flat. I don’t mind not being near mountains or a body of water. Hmm. That might be it. 
I’m sure I will think of other things later!
I am truly embarrassed to say that I want one of these. Isn’t it sad of me? They even come with outfits. Good grief.
April 11, 2006 at 1:41 pm (holidays, memories)
and, yes, I’ve already eaten a few boxes. :/
I have Peeps string lights (and will post a picture of them–they’re SO CUTE). My friend in college and I were obsessed with Peeps. I always knew when they had appeared on the shelves at stores, because I would suddenly hear her from across the house, squealing. She would always *play with her food.*
I remember one Easter when I was in college, I decided to hide Easter eggs for my friends in the courtyard of the music building. (I later used to do this annually at my job–it was hilarious to see 40-year-olds clawing each other’s eyes out for candy-filled eggs.) When my friend and I were hiding the eggs, we saw a couple of people dressed up like chickens walking by. There were full-on chicken costumes–i.e., you could never have recognized the people wearing the suits. They were like mascot outfits. They were apparently in the Art History lecture with a friend of mine, who said that they would only cluck to each other and wouldn’t talk normally. I guess they just occasionally donned their chicken costumes and hung around like that.
Here is the official Peeps Web site. It’s not as cool as it was about oh, six years ago, because they used to have disco Peep gif animation that made them look sparkly. They might have shoved that stuff off to some other part of the site, though.
Of course, we can’t forget the Milliken University Library Peeps, either!
Another fun thing: fourteen things to do if you’ve Missed the Rapture. Thanks to Pat’s blog.
And, completely unrelated to Lent or Easter, I am very happy to find that I actually still fit in my summer clothes, in spite of feeling like a gourd.
