download: Wish You Were A Girl
It's an Of Montreal cover by me and my sister, april. I just rediscovered the recording. This was going to be the secret track for dibs bleeds books, but in the rush to finish it, I forgot to include it.
The day we recorded the song, she also recorded the ukulele on Sugar Factory. It was really fun to do both, and I want to work with her more.
I've been biking to work each day for the past three weeks. It's very empowering to use your own body to get from one place to another. Whenever I don't bike for a while, I'm always surprised at how it feels the first day.
After arriving to my destination, I feel sort of high, and I see things differently - probably my body is in a state of shock from so much exertion. I'm glad I'm doing it now, sinc I'll probably have to stop for the winter.
This week there has been a lot of roadkill for some reason.
- 2 rats
- 2 pigeons
- 1 squirrel
- 1 skunk
I had never seen a skunk in the city before.
This past weekend, Liv and I have been cleaning out our apartment of anonymous stuff that we've accumulated over the years. Our place is a lot cleaner and neater already. We moved in together in April, and at that time we each got rid of a lot of stuff to make the move easier. It's alarming that we didn't do this good a job the first time around.
I've put more clothing in bags to give away - they'll probably mostly go to Housing Works, where Liv just started working last week. I now have one closet's worth of clothing. When I left my last apartment I had a footlocker and a trashbag of clothes for the thrift stores.
I've gone through all the notebooks I kept from college - I was determined to trash a lot of my notes. Most of the good stuff was from computer courses. I was convinced I could get rid of it because...
- my notations would be (are?) obsolete
- if my notations are not obsolete, they are surely available to me on the internet somewhere
I got rid of most of them. I did this by tearing the notes out of my notebook. Along with the notes, what I ended up with was a stack of mostly unused notebooks. I'm holding onto some of my old notes for now (which makes it less surprising that I've gone through this process before).
Getting rid of books I don't care terribly much for. Getting rid of all the odd cables that I don't need because I already have backups for the backups in case I lose them. Put out the plastic container/drawers that I've had for years. They took up much more space than the objects I kept inside of them. I have a bin of stuff that's usable and that I'll try to give away.
It's so much work to go over all these objects. And in the end, I'm left with... less objects. Which is what I want, but it leaves me feeling a bit empty (har har). I cannot describe the feeling, but I tried to express it to Daoud. He said he's cleaned out his stuff three times in the past year, and "I guess you do it so you don't have to think about it." I have piles of stuff, and each pile is a todo list I don't want to do. So I have less piles now.
And I'm past that stuff now, and I feel good about it all. But now I can't believe I have the luxury to get rid of stuff when so many people don't have enough.
Oh, the French! I don't know who made up the phrase the "french good-bye." I first learned of it from Sibsi, who ran into Sidewalk and said, "I really have to go, but I didn't want to do the French Goodbye." We exchanged goodbyes, and he promptly left.
I don't approve of not saying goodbye, but I think it's an important option - especially when involved with a community whose events can go on for over four hours, several evenings a week. If it's already difficult to find time alone, being polite with goodbyes can cost you more of that alone time.
I suppose one should not be offended, and not worry about offending with such a non-goodbye. Which means people are bound to be upset no matter what: "Ugh, I can't leave." "Why won't she leave? We need to go." "Wait, he left already?"
Wait. Is it leaving? BYE!!
I was going to remove the auto-generated "Successful Installation" entry, but I sort of like it there.This week is the summer anti-folk festival. Always a thrill. Last night I discovered a new favorite song writer, Charles Latham. Charles is moving from North Carolina, to the Sixth Borough of New York.
How fortunate. People here need to hear music like his. It's critical of troubles that many people have to deal with in others, and actively fend off in themselves. Or at least that *I* have to fend off. And the songs are really good.
Everyone, be nice.