RIP Alex Chilton

You probably heard that Alex Chilton died yesterday.



I learned about Alex Chilton backward, through other bands who loved Big Star, especially the Posies. Once I started paying attention, I realized how many of Alex's songs I already knew, some through covers. "Thirteen" is probably one of the prettiest songs ever recorded, and I loved it when Elliott Smith covered it because it sounds like something he could have written himself.



I won't pretend to be the biggest Big Star superfan, or anything, but they're important. The Posies did several Big Star covers when they'd play live, and as you probably know, Ken and Jon played with the band when they'd reunite. Because I wasn't alive yet when the Box Tops were around, and I was so little when Big Star was recording albums, the Posies are really mixed into my understanding of Big Star as a band.

When a musician I love dies, I always feel selfish for mostly mourning for the songs I'll never get to hear. But you might know what that's like. I probably felt that most keenly for Elliott and for Kurt Cobain, but Alex Chilton ranks pretty high up there, too. Maybe because I'm getting older it seems like this happens more and more often now and that I should start getting used to it. But it still feels like there's something missing in the world when an artist dies.

Like a lot of people, I went home and listened to Big Star. And Cheap Trick. And R.E.M. And the Posies. And a bunch of other bands that were influenced by Alex Chilton and his bands. It made me feel better somehow, which is something. And I love that Chilton was memorialized for Congress.

doppelsonger

So, appropos of nothing, do you think Fleet Foxes' "Tiger Mountain Peasant Song" sounds like it could have been recorded by America? It has such a 70s sister golden hair vibe to it, in my opinion.

Just checking.

random

To try to get back into updating, I decided to totally copy Jess and do a ten things post. Well, we'll see how many things I end up with.

1. I went to prom. It was a fundraiser for the local dance studio's performing troupe, and it was pretty fun. Some girlfriends and I took advantage of the opportunity to get dressed up, drink champagne, and dance our asses off. As you can see, we mostly stuck to regular, cute dresses and left the 80s period costumes to others.


2. The weather has been really cold, work has been crazy busy, and I've had a cold, so I've been slacking on exercise. This means that every time I do go to yoga class, my muscles ache a ton afterward. In a good way. Then I think I should go every day to get in better shape, but days go by before I do. Lather, rinse, repeat.

3. On Valentine's Day/Chinese New Year, my friend Nina had a really awesome brunch. We ate quiche and drank mimosas and coffee, and it was totally fun. Then I had to bail out a little early to pick up Rick and drive down to Denver to the conference we presented at. We talked about finding a Chinese restaurant for dinner, but then lamed out and just got food downtown where we were staying. The elk burger was good but not great, so I had minor regrets. The conference went well, though.

4. The Olympics are wearing me out. Part of the problem is that I like all the winter sports and therefore will watch any and all of it, even the dorky athlete profiles and pandering interviews. The winter games has more value added elements than summer. By that I mean crazy Russian ice dancing costumes (faces painted all over, ropes, and random bits of tulle!) and hot Norwegian curlers in plaid pants.

5. For the first time ever, I did the Poker Run out at Centennial. It was a long slog though snow, dodging five hundred drunk people on skis, snowshoes, and various other modes of transport. Here I am with Nina and Kerry, excited to get started.

As you can see, the "shuttles" that took us up the mountain were totally offical and safe.

After the event, we hiked up to our friend Laura's mom's place outside of town, where we spent the night. It was gorgeous.


After a hearty breakfast and some coffee in my gnome jammies...

...we hiked back out and went back to real life.


And...I'm out.

dance dance dance

photo by Jurvetson (flickr)

Last week Pilobolus Dance Theater came to campus. I had beard of them, but hadn't seen them live before. I had a vague notion of them as a modern dance company, but they actually don't use established dance vocabularies--at least not that I could recognize. The program said they use a lot of improvisation in their choreography, which made sense based on what I saw. I particularly liked the way they partner dance, supporting one another's weight in really unusual and beautiful ways. Less interesting to me were the extended sequences on the floor. I like seeing people dance, and it's kind of boring to watch them writhe on the floor, although I was impressed that one of the most floor-centric pieces incorporated music by Primus.

I found their YouTube channel, but they don't allow embedding. I think that's lame, personally, but what are you going to do? For an idea of some of what I saw, check out Lanterna Magica. The other pieces I saw weren't there. I always wish photos were allowed at dance performances because some of the poses the dancers strike would make amazing stills. Luckily, I found some creative commons licensed stuff on flickr.

I'd recommend going to see Pilobolus, even if you aren't as crazy into dance as I am. It's kind of a spectacle that anybody can enjoy. There were tons of kids at the show, and during one piece called Walkelyn (which I didn't really care for), all you could hear were the full belly laughs of children. how much better than that can you get?

straight outta the PNW: 12 Days of Twin Peaks Christmas

*k3, k2 tog, repeat from *

This weekend, I dug into my various knitting bags and sorted out what I have. I finished a couple of hats that for some reason were partially done and abandoned and knitted another hat from the ground up. There was no salvaging a handwarmer that had a few mistakes and then had fallen off the DPNs, so I frogged it. It was only about 2.5 inches of ribbing, so I don't feel too bad about it.

So, if my calculations are correct and there are no more stashes of work somewhere, I only have one project going on now, and it's one I've been dawdling on. It's baby alpaca, and super soft and wonderful, but tiny. I'm more into worsted or bulky weight yarns because I like the way they feel in my hands. And I'm kind of impatient--shocking, I know.

All of this knitting has been fun, but I fear it's kind of an excuse for me not to be cleaning up the house and getting packed for my trip on Monday. I'm the worst packing procrastinator for no apparent reason. The last time I flew somewhere, I literally took ten minutes and threw random clothes in a bag right before I left for the airport, and just dealt with the odd matches later.

So if you're in Seattle next week and you see a woman wearing yoga pants, a sparkly tank top and a down vest, well it's probably me. Say hello.

music box

On a cold, cold night like this, I figure some music will warm us all up a bit, so here's one of my rare mp3 posts.

Music is my real first love, I think. We all have a soundtrack to our lives and certain songs bring back crystal-clear memories of specific times and places. Sometimes it's unexpected, like when I heard Great White's "Wasted Rock Ranger," and suddenly flashed back to the summer of 1989 in Birch Bay, listening to the tape over and over again with Jamie, trying to decipher the lyrics. I'm not sure what the fascination was, to be honest, but we were in a rock phase that year for sure. We even went to our first big concert that year: Def Leppard!

Def Leppard-Pour Some Sugar On Me

Other songs and artists are always associated with certain people. SJ's music is Dub Narcotic Soundsystem, 50 Cent, Cake, and Justin Timberlake. Sorry, friend, but it's true. This stuff reminds me of driving around in the Jetta, hooch from a paper sack, storming out, grad school in general, writing papers, and cutting up 15 lbs of cheese.

Dub Narcotic Soundsystem-Monkey Hips and Rice
Jay-Z-99 Problems

I will always associate Ken Stringfellow's first full-length solo album and Cat Power's Covers Record with an ex-boyfriend. I gave him the former and he gave me the latter, and I don't know if we ever listened to anything else when we were together.

Ken Stringfellow-Reveal Love
Cat Power-Sea of Love

Other songs are wonderful because they remind me of home. Some are named for Seattle personalities, others make local references that make me smile, and all are from artists I love for one reason or another. This little selection reminds me of different periods of my life: high school, the U-District years, the Capitol Hill Years, and lastly, the late 90s when I went back to finish college.

Flop-Julie Francavilla
Ondine-Yesterday
Heather Duby-You Loved Me
United State of Electronica-Emerald City

in dreams

One of my goals is to improve my sleeping habits, and tonight aside, I've been doing better. I need to get to bed earlier so I feel better in the mornings, and the last couple of weeks have shown me it works pretty well.

A possible side effect of this move is that I've been remembering my dreams lately, which is sort of unusal for me. I've never been one to have vivid dreams regularly, and I kind of like not knowing what's going on in my brain while I'm snoozing. But for a while now, my dreams have been technicolor fantasies, complete with so much detail I feel like I actually lived them. It's a complete sensory experience, but I won't be sad if they go away soon.

mysteries of life

I have all sorts of questions lately. Well, if I'm being honest, this is not a new phenomenon. Probably every hour or so I have a WTF moment, and it could be that I have more stress and less sleep in my life than is ideal.

Why do so many people comma splice all over the place? How hard is it to seperate independent clauses with a semicolon, coordinating conjunction, or even better, just stick in a period and make two perfectly nice sentences? This is one of my grammar peeves and I can't overlook it.

Relatedly, is there a comma shortage? I keep seeing egregious displays of comma neglect. Granted, I can go overboard sometimes, and I do acknowledge a very small number of cases where a technically correct sentence might be more elegant if a comma was omitted, but in many cases, commas are essential to meaning.

Why do the coffee shops on campus offer up stir sticks that are far shorter than the coffee cups? I can't reach the sugar crystals that settle to the bottom of my cup without literally sticking my fingers into the coffee. My solution is to pour the coffee about a third of the way up, throw in sugar and milk and stir, then top up with more coffee. This is far more fussing than is ideal.

this just in

Laramie has Indian food! Well, we've had it for about a month now. I've been to the lunch buffet twice and dinner twice, and I'm happy to admit they passed the paneer masala test. It's my favorite dish of all time, and Passage to India does a nice job. It's no Chutney's or Taste of India, and I didn't like the chai, but it's good and a welcome addition to this town.

buffet lunch from my first visit

Also, they're open on Sunday!

September: farmville, only real.

At the end of September, I went to a consumer issues conference centering on food production and safety. It included tours of local facilities. First up was Grant Family Farms, a local organic farm. This is where we get our CSA. Check out these carrots.



In addition to veggie shares, like the one I split with Rick, GFF does fruit, egg, meat, and flower shares. These flowers were in the cooler, all ready to be sent out for shareholders. I love all the gladioli!



We spent most of our time at the processing and packing facility, but we also go to see the livestock. They had pigs, chickens, ponies, sheep, and these cute goats. The goats resisted most of my efforts to photograph or otherwise interact with them. The sheep were not so shy. They'd been in a huge flock a ways away, but spotted me stalking them to take a photo and nearly charged me. Those suckers are aggressive and big talkers. Baaa!



These eggs were being cleaned by hand and packed into cartons for sale.



The next day, we toured the university student farm and the university meat lab. The student farm is really small, but they manage to produce quite a bit of food. During summer, I try to buy their stuff at the farmer's market, but sometimes they sell out before I make it down. There wasn't much still growing, but it was interesting to see how they work, and the student volunteers were really great tourguides.

One thing they do year round is compost. These bins are full of finished compost that's ready for use. I need to remember to start collecting compostable scraps, because they let anybody drop stuff off there. I don't garden, so I haven't bothered, but I'd like to reduce my garbage even more than I am through recycling and buying less packaging.



Tools in the corner of the hoop house.



There were lots of things still growing in the hoophouse: tomatoes, tomatillos, swiss chard, edible nasturiums, salad, etc. I liked the perspective from the far end of the house; another group is touring at the other end.



My favorite tour was last. The meat lab was fascinating, and seeing it convinced me to sign up to buy meat from the college of agriculture. Their facility is amazingly clean and efficient. If you've read Fast Food Nation or the recent New York Times article about ground beef, you might have been turned off from eating meat, but not me. Living closer to the production of my food has made me appreciate and feel more comfortable with local, humane meat production, including hunting.

One of the Animal Science professors toured us through the facility, and we spent a lot of time on the slaughter floor learning about the process of killing and butchering cattle, sheep, and pigs. They use these animals as teaching tools, and I checked the course catalog to see what kinds of classes they offer. It's interesting to see titles like Carcass Fabrication, Livestock Slaughter, Meat Processing, and Livestock Judging. Here, our guide is showing us the cooler where meat is hanging and aging.



Students were processing meat while we were there. In another room, other students were preparing ribs to go into the smoker for the Ag Day barbeque the next day. They keep everything pristine in the meat lab. There are separate rooms for butchering and food preperation, and even separate walk-in fridges for raw and cooked meats.



You know, I geek out on any kind of tour, especially food production. I can't count the number of times I've toured breweries or candy factories. But the farm and meat tours were more interesting to me, maybe because they're local and I feel personally connected to it. It makes me think back to high school, where we had a working farm I never even saw. I wasn't in any of the agriculture classes, and wasn't interested. But I bet the kids raising animals back then are a lot like the students I meet at the university now, and I'm kind of sad I totally overlooked it. Back then, I didn't have a clue you could compete in meat judging competitions or how much work that is.

personas

Leslie posted a link to personas on her FB page, and I tried it. It's interesting, but you can't capture the prettiness of it all, and I didn't see a way to save the result--I grabbed a screenshot of it. I wish it was bigger, but I didn't want to try to save it as a TIFF. Interesting.

favorites

I'm always surprised when other flickr users "favorite" my photos, especially when they're kind of real-deal talented photographers. I'm a semi-obsessive photographer, but I use a five year old point-and-shoot digital camera that I love mostly because it's tiny and I can carry it with me always, and I know basically nothing about composition, lighting, or any of the fancy settings that are technically possible. I just aim the camera in the general direction of pretty/weird/interesting stuff and hit the button. So it's a happy surprise when something turns out well and when it doesn't, I just delete.

Anyway, here are some of my pictures that people have added to their favorites.

discomfit

Often, a word comes to me at the most appropriate time. Today, I was feeling discomfited, and thought to myself, "hey, why don't we use discomfit more often." And then I felt better.

three wishes

1. I wish Laramie had a coffee shop that doesn't suck. Coal Creek's coffee is decent, and so is the atmosphere, but the service is incompetent. My odds of actually having them remember to make my order after taking my money should be better than 1-in-4.

2. I wish there was a way to get a hold of some nice pants without leaving town. There's no way around the fact I can't turn a pair of chinos, three pairs of jeans, and some yoga pants into a work wardrobe. Shopping must be done, whether I want to or not.

3. I wish I spent more time in the moment and less worrying about what's coming next.

Holy Hail

The photo above is from yesterday evening's big old storm. After getting knocked on the noggin by marble-sized hail as I skittered from my front door to my car, I drove on rivers of hailstones to the grocery store, then wisely tried to wait out the little bastards before going in to fetch my tortilla chips. This is my blurry documentary photography; the rain and hail were coming down way too hard to open the window. Freaky.

Completely unrelatedly, have you heard the NY band Holy Hail? They're pretty good--I discovered them on Hype Machine the other day. Listen to Minute Man (mp3). You can hear more on their MySpace.

Thinking about missing Bumbershoot again has me longing for more live music. It's too bad Denver's so far away and that most of the shows I'd like to see fall mid-week. A friend and I are pondering going to Monolith--the Saturday lineup looks most promising.

I did catch the Jalan Crossland Band set on campus the other day. I enjoyed it, and the students seemed really into it, singing along and getting really crazy during "Trailer Park Fire." I was too tired to stay for the headliners, Head for the Hills, so I'm officially old.

last weekend of summer, part 2

Sunday brought more hot weather, but also storms. I headed up to Vedauwoo with Chad in the afternoon for the last vertical dance performance. Right as we arrived, the storm broke and pounded freezing cold water down on us. We waited it out in the car before hiking up to the site, and consequently missed the first ten minutes or so of the performance. I wonder if I missed the best part, because I remember some much cooler moves from the show two summers ago.

You can't really see the dancers in the photo above, but I wanted to show the scale of the rock. It's impressive, to be sure, though you need a better vantage point than I had to really see everything. The first time I went, we got there early and staked out a much better spot.

After the show, we drove across the valley to Centennial and hung out at the Bear Tree in the back yard. There was live music, and we had some green chili pizza. It was a nice way to end the day before the semester started.

last weekend of summer

After the read-in we had in the library for freshman orientation, I headed to Denver with some friends. We had dinner at the Cheeky Monk, where I enjoyed mussels with bacon and blue cheese. So good. Then we saw the Avett Brothers at the Ogden. It was a good show, but sweltering in there. It reminded me of last summer's Old 97's show at the Wonder Ballroom in Portland. I was so sweaty that my jeans felt like they were shrinking as I wore them.

A taste:

is this turning into a food blog?

Tonight, I took a look in the cupboard and fridge and decided to make chili, which morphed into a chicken chili tortilla soup, based on what I had on hand. You guys, it's so good!

I spiced it with a ton of chili powder, basil, red pepper flakes, sea salt, and garlic powder. It has two cans of stewed tomatoes and a big can of kidney beans, chopped up chicken breasts, and some water. The contributions from the farm share are two white onions and corn. I like to add the tortillas to each serving individually, so they don't get too soggy and floppy, and I top it with a bit of shredded sharp cheddar cheese. This will keep me happy for a few days.

Last night, I baked up some muffins using that zucchini. There was just enough for a batch, and I added in raisins, dried cranberries, and chopped walnuts. I made both regular and mini muffins (I have an aversion to the jumbo muffins).



They're a good breakfast and are so tasty warmed up with butter!

confession

Forgive me blogger, for I have sinned. It's been more than two weeks since my last entry. In that time I've been busy and little of what I've been doing is blog-worthy. School is starting soon, and I'm involved with planning too many upcoming events. My workdays have been long and filled with dozens of small tasks, double checking the timelines for various projects so I'm on track, and being constantly interrupted by urgent email.

But I did start playing softball on a friends' coed team. I'm pretty much terrible, though I usually manage to hit the ball and get on base. They have me playing right field, aka the position least likely to see action, which is okay by me. I wish we had a batting cage in town, because I really need to practice. A friend pointed out that I don't know how to swing the bat without moving my whole body along with it, which is probably why I don't hit the ball very hard or far.

I haven't been at yoga much, mainly because I'm too tired to make the morning classes, and there's enough going on at work that it's hard to get away at noon or early evening. This needs to change, because I need the mental health break. It's worth it.

The vegetable bounty in my farm share seems to be improving. It never seems like that much food, but it's really hard to get through it in a week. Especially the greens. I'm a salad lover, but I'm at capacity. I've been loving the yellow squash and zucchini because it's so fast and easy to saute and eat with whatever protein I have on hand. I still have a pretty big zucchini from last week, so I think I'm going to shred it for bread or muffins. This week, I got a couple baby artichokes, some onions, beets, and sweet corn. The beets will get roasted and thrown in a salad with some grapefruit and a citrus vinaigrette. It's fun to try to figure out ways to use this stuff with whatever else I have laying around.