Closer to Free

Well 2008, it looks like your time is up. I will always love you for being the year that brought us Morgan but it seems that there are a whole bunch of folks looking forward to watching you slip away tonight.

This is my very favorite "see you later stupid year" song.



I will be back to real blogging next week. Until then, have a safe and happy New Year. 2009 is going to be just fine.

itinerary

My schedule these days goes something like this:

wake up late
lay in bed and think about warm i am
get up
talk to my mom
shower
talk to my mom
drive somewhere for lunch with someone awesome
goof around
eat dinner with a collection of people that are awesome
sit around and talk
go to bed late

Throw in some presents, a haircut, and some What Not to Wear and that's been my vacation. So. Awesome.

Tonight I was catching up on neglected email and this was the message from SteepandCheap sometime this week

The worst part about the downturn in the economy is that everyone is blaming it for anything that goes wrong. I suppose that if you're among the 7% of the workforce that's unemployed, then you'd disagree that the blame game is the worst part, but I suspect that it makes things even less bearable. I've heard "economic downturn" prefaced by bad news so many times that I'm pretty sure people would blame the economy if the building was on fire. The really crazy thing is that it's not that the economy is completely going downhill--it's that it's just not growing rapidly enough. I've listened to the NPR stories and, although I'm no economist, I think I can safely say that I have no idea what's going on. The only thing worse than people blaming the economy for all their problems are those people who try to tell you that it's your responsibility to go out and spend a lot of money. If I was to jump in and blame the economic downturn for just one thing, I would say that it's made me want to sleep more and be lazy--or maybe I'm thinking of winter.

So I'm just letting you all know that my lack of posting this week is totally because of the economic downturn.

stop

I am still tallying the results of the contest but I've been signifigantly distracted.

Lost in Translation*

*See yesterday's post for below to make sense.

A little known fact is that Replikate was almost called "just like honey" . This song had got yearning guitars, radical lyrics, and while I know it won't be everyone's cup of tea, it always makes me want to go out and get good and kissed.

Give it a listen and then go to Dainon's blog to hear his nomination.



May the best song win!

Duel

So I had so much fun with the "My Song is Better Then Your Song" post last week that I challenged my music guru friend Dainon to an audio duel of our very own. We have both picked a song and will post it on our blogs. Listen to mine, hop over to his and then leave your vote in one of the comment sections. And who knows, maybe you can be the next challenger!

We'll be posting after midnight Mountain Standard Time. That's right, the time zone we will both be in tomorrow (look at me blogging not packing! Woot!).

Vote!

Holding all the Fines

I had a pretty ridiculously fun weekend.

Through a series of random events, Brenda and I ended up at the Vince Gill/Amy Grant Christmas Concert and got into the Meet and Greet afterwards. Before you completely dismiss my musical tastes, there are two voices that said Christmas in our house growing up and they belonged to Nat King Cole and Amy Grant. So when free tickets dropped in my lap, my 12 year old self couldn't WAIT to hear "Tennessee Christmas" by someone other then my little sister and me. We had a great time and ended up singing along to every Christmas song in my iPod on the way home. Every Christmas song and Beyonce's "Single Ladies."

I went to see Black Nativity with Seth, Matt, Brian and Brian's adorable mom. I'm telling you, nothing gets you in the Christmas spirit like a full Gospel Choir singing "Go Tell It On The Mountain" and asking if you BELIEVE in Jesus. It was fantastic.

I danced my head off at the ward Christmas Gala. I was kind of eye rolly about going because sometimes nothing makes my life feel like a bigger failure then dances in the Church gym at 32 years old. But the combination of getting all dressed up (which i love!) , a fun group of people deciding to suck it up and go and the DJ agreeing to the one two punch of "Livin' on a Prayer" and "Don't Stop Believing" meant I ended up having a stellar time.





The highlight though was finally getting to see Bon Iver live. I've raved about this guy before but now having heard pretty much the whole album in person it's going to be years before I can shut up about him. The story goes that a couple of years ago, Justin Vernon had just broken up with his lady, split with his band and gotten pretty sick. So he headed up to his Dad's hunting cabin in nowhere Wisconsin to try to pull himself back together.

He ended up writing an album up there all by his little self and it's become one of my all time favorites. I heard him for the first time the weekend I moved to Boston and so it has felt like a soundtrack to my year here. I was super excited about the show but completely unprepared for how emotional it would make me. About 10 seconds into the first song it was like a dam broke inside me and I started to cry. A guy holed up in a cabin writing about his broken heart is definitely a first world kind of sob story but there is no doubt about the pain he was feeling when he wrote this record. But it's also leaves you feeling surprisingly peaceful. I sat in the dark and closed my eyes and let the music work out some of the knots I've let myself get into this year. Vernon himself was really friendly and charming and seemed genuinely humbled by the amount of attention he's gotten from this record. The audience was so well behaved that on the really quiet songs I almost couldn't hear anyone breathing. It was a really lovely concert experience and definitely a highlight of what was a pretty outstanding weekend.

Here's a new song he played last night called Blood Bank. It cuts off kind of weird at the end but I love these lyrics

then the snow started falling
we were stuck out in your car
you were rubbing both my hands
chewing on a candybar

saying it was just like a present
to be showing up right here
as the moon waned to crescent
we started to kiss

Blood Bank

And then this is the MP3version of the "Skinny Love" video I've posted before. Listen carefully to the part where he hits these lyrics

I told you to be patient
I told you to be fine
I told you to be balanced
I told you to be kind
Now all your love is wasted?
Then who the hell was I?

because if the way he sings that last line doesn't break your heart just a little bit then I don't know if you even have one
Skinny Love

Oh music, I love you so much.

The Great Debate

I like the radio. There. I said it. I know music snobs loooove to hate on the radio and yeah there are lots of big conglomerates who own cookie cutter stations and radio tends to be about a hundred years slower then the blogs and blah blah blabidy blah.

Well I still like it and if you are patient, you can find good stations in pretty much every city. I especially enjoy a good morning show. Plenty of them are complete fests of suck but when you hit the right one it can make the drive to work so much more pleasant.

There is a station here in Boston that has such a morning show and every Thursday they do a segment called "My Song is Better Then Your Song". Two contestants each submit a song, any song, and then listeners vote. It's fun because even though it's an "alternative" station, they choose songs from all different genres and time periods. Today's contest was pretty good and I am as of yet undecided about the winner.

First up was a classic Joy Division song from the 80's that is so sad but so so awesome. I was pretty sure there was no way anyone could beat this song.



But then the reigning champion brought this. It's a Christmas song that I've heard a bazillion times by a bunch of different artist but never the original. Holy eff! Please can we have 60's girl groups back? This voice!


So I am still torn. What do you guys think?

Blurg

When I went in for that massage a couple of weeks ago, the therapist recommended that I come in 2-3 more times in the next few weeks if I really wanted to get rid of my knot. This weekend I went for my second treatment. I like to call it "treatment" because then it doesn't sound like I am some jerk getting weekly massages now. Because while it does feel soooo good, the whole reason I went in the first time was because the giant knot was causing practically the entire right side of my body to go on strike. I have always enjoyed massage but I'm becoming converted to it's medical legitimacy as well.

This week we started face up to try to open up my shoulders a little bit and get me to stop hunching forward all the time like I do when I am at the computer or driving or sitting on my couch making up things to worry about. So the therapist is sitting behind me, working my shoulders and my neck and then he holds my head up with one hand and lifts my back with the other hand to get to the knot. And then he starts kind of laughing and says, "seriously though, re-lax. I've got you, and it's only about three inches if you fall anyway." You know you have got a problem when you are PAYING someone to work the tension out of your body and you still can't seem to chill.

Fortunately that was early in the hour and I was able to concentrate on loosening up (I'm sure this means I need therapy) and I am feeling like we are making real progress. I've been draping myself over the stability ball every night before bed and I can feel an actual difference in the way I stand and sit. But I am a tense little person, and I worry way too much about things that really don't need to take up precious real estate in my brain-especially now that they are deciding to take over my whole body as well. So if anyone has brilliant ideas about how to let. it. go. well, I'm anxiously waiting ; )

Here's an old favorite on the subject. One loaded with memories of this city of mine the last go 'round no less...

Presents

My friend Dainon likes to send Christmas music out during the month of December. Since he has amazing taste and a knack for finding things I might not ever run across I really look forward to hearing what he finds.

This one is quite sweet.


*link fixed*

Art and Life

Tonight I'm watching TV with commercials which I rarely do in this TiVo world but I've been a sicky and haven't gotten very far from the couch all day.

An ad came on for some horrible looking movie where a recently divorced and may I say haggard looking but we are supposed to think h-a-w-t Heather Locklear goes on an island vacation and gets it on with a guy half her age thus getting her groove back or blah blah blah. The name of the movie was "Flirting with Forty" and this is exactly what went through my head.

"Heather Locklear is supposed to be 40 in this movie? And it's remarkable that a young hot guy falls for her? I'M TOTALLY GOING TO BE FORTY!!"

And then I heard Billy Crystal's voice in my ear "When?" so I answered "someday." and then had a real craving for a little When Harry Met Sally.

p.s. yeah, I know, I'm nowhere near 40. But welcome to the mysterious inner workings of the female brain.

Breakdown

A few weeks ago I was taking a shower like I often do at 10:30 on a Thursday night. I was reaching up to put conditioner in my hair and felt a pain in my shoulder that hurt so much I actually yelled. My roommate knocked on the door because um, I so rarely scream in the shower. I managed to get myself out and dressed but the evening ended with me in tears on the couch while Brenda tried to work on the knot in my back that I've been ignoring since it showed up this summer.

So I made an appointment at a place that specializes in real live clinical massage. It. Was. Fantastic. She spent the entire hour just working on my blasted knot. It was definitely one of those hurts so good massages where you kind of want to punch your therapist in the face though. And at one point she said, "I don't mean this critically but you certainly have a lot of tension in your neck." Yes lady, that's what happens when you tensed up when you were about eight and have never really learned to let it go. She told me that since I spend so much time at a desk or hunched over a computer, I should counter that with some time every day rolling around on my back on one of those big stability balls. And guess what? It feels pretty awesome.

I love bodies. I think they are so amazing. And for as much time as I spend this summer thinking about what I put into my body I sort of forgot about the other ways I need to take care of it. I guess my body decided to remind me by freaking out a little bit.

Early New Year's Resolution. More working out, less hunching. (I'm totally sitting up straight and tall while I write this people.)

Treat

Seriously, he's like kryptonite. I am so powerless.