The reddest lipstick in the world...

I just found my new favorite website of the moment.

The Library of Congress has posted this rather hefty collection of original color photos from the 1930's and 40's on Flickr. First of all, I think it's brilliant that the LOC post photos using Flickr (it's a Flickr subscription like $25 a year? What an incredibly brilliant use of tax-payer money. I'm not kidding. This is great!).

Second, I really had no idea that color photography existed in the 30's and 40's. Probably because I never really thought about it. But for me, there's something insane and surreal and delightful about seeing these people and places in color. They seem much more real, but because it's unfamiliar, they also seem staged in a way that the black and white photos don't.

One way or another, this photo collection mesmerizes me. There are about 1,600 on the site and most of them are farms and buildings, which can get a little old. However, when you stumble on one with people in in it, or one from your own stomping grounds (like this one, taken at the Delta County Fair--or the one on the right, from Natchitoches, La.), they're really incredible.

If nothing else, check out the last few pages, which feature a lot of pictures of women factory workers fuselages and other indescribable aircraft parts.

The only downside is having to ignore the multitude of idiotic tags from comedic American whippersnappers. Maybe I'm just more elderly and humorless than I had assumed--but I can do without the comments from the peanut gallery, thank you.

Clicking on any of these three pictures will take you to their original sites. Or you can click here and go to the first page of the Flickr album.

If you see one that you really like (or really hate, I guess) let me know. I'm curious.

Here comes the sun...

This snow tyrannosaurus has nothing to do with the following post. RARRRRRRR.

So I'm getting the distinct impression that this weekend might be pretty good (since I got off early today AND I got a witty postcard from Erin McQ--lucky...) but maybe not as good as last weekend.

Last weekend started with Friday being the first time in sixth months that I was allowed to wear a t-shirt on a weekday. I also got to sleep in and come to work late since I had to go to one of the firms in the evening. On the walk to work in the morning I found a $20 bill on the ground, which made it possible for Tim and I to see Horton Hears a Who after he took us out to dinner for the first time in FOR-EV-ER. (P.S. Being poor sucks.)

On Saturday, we went to see the Harlem Globetrotters at the Verizon Center. One of them is a Centenary Graduate!! Why didn't I know that? I think Centenary should definitely advertise that there's a Gent on the Trotters' team. I mean, Bill Cosby and Pope JPII are honorary Globetrotters, which basically means that the Pope went to Centenary, in my opinion.

After the game (The Trotter's beat the Washington Generals, as you might expect), Tim and I walked to the National Mall, got an oreo shake and then ended up going to see "Cosmic Collisions" at the Einstein Planetarium (in the Air and Space Museum). It was such a beautiful, sunny day that the good mood even carried over into the rainy, muggy Sunday.

I'm so glad Tim is fun. Schwooooo.

I doubt this weekend will be quite so active, mostly because Tim has two huge papers due next week. I'll keep attacking that pile of literature. I've read three more books since the last time I posted and I hope to write about them this weekend. All I want to do is lay in a hammock, drinking lemonaid and reading, all weekend. But since I have no hammock I'll probably just sit in my chair with a book in my lap and fall asleep (which inevitably happens from 4:00 to 6:00 ever Saturday and Sunday).

On another note, I'm not certain about anything (surprise, surprise) but I'm thinking about applying for Graduate school in English Literature. Maybe. Or Gender Studies. Maybe. Or Forestry. Who the hell knows? Maybe I should just try surviving the GRE first. I just can't decide what to do. I've wanted to get a PhD in English for so long that I don't really know what happened to knock me off that track or even if I want to get back on it. Though, for about 18 years of my life I wanted to be an artist so there's no accounting for my "plans."

So it ain't all bad.

There has been one really thrilling part of being a college graduate (besides getting to share an apartment with Tim, which I really cannot get enough of). I have had the BEST time picking out my own books over the past few months.

Don't get me wrong. Working in the bookstore was always a challenge for me because Centenary's professors (or most professors, really), in general, have great taste in books. It's part of the turf of being a professor, I believe. So the bookstore was a mixed blessing because I always ended up coming home with at least four books that weren't on my required reading list--it didn't hurt (or help?) that I had a ten percent discount and my pick of the best used copies of everything.

Anyway, since moving I miss the bookstore horribly, and I've replaced it with something worse--which is to say, a Borders Rewards card and a full-time job with a salary. I've developed another "problem" to go along with my "t-shirt problem" and my "pen problem" and my "cd problem" and my "wii problem" and my "food-in-general problem." Did I forget to mention my meatball problem?

For better or worse, this is the stack of books I've amassed to read. Piled up like this, they actually look less intimidating to me than they should, especially considering that I'm spending more money now "per semester" on books than I was in college.

And even though I feel like I blaze through them, this ---> is the pile of books that I've read since I graduated! Not nearly as towering as I'd hoped, but still beautiful if for no other reason than that I read every single one of these by my own free will. (Also, I think it's shorter than I thought because between the two members of this household we have subscriptions to--in no particular order--Rollingstone, Foreign Affairs, The Sun, Domino, Time, Ready Made, Smithsonian, and Lucky magazines--as well as The Washington Post. [In my defense, Lucky and Domino were free {God, I'm a horrible environmentalist}].)

All through college I complained that I never had enough time for art, for just futzing around, listening to music... And I STILL don't futz around nearly enough, mostly because I want to rip through that stack of books like an angry bull with a speed addiction and its reading glasses on.

As a psychological trick to make me feel less guilty about that, I think I'm going to start writing short book reviews on the Blog. And more recipes too. If you want to read them (the books OR the reviews), awesome. If not, you can just look at the covers. Whatev. For now, these books are the highlight of that second pile.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
by Jonathan Safran Foer.
I had the luxury of reading this book in one sitting, from the Dublin airport all the way back to the states. Even if you don't have that kind of time on your hands, this is almost certainly one of those marathon books that will leave you mesmerized and glued to your chair. The words "post-9-11" trigger my gag reflex a little bit, but this book's characters are engaged with tragedy in a timeless, sensitive, glittering, and wholly original way. If this book had a face, it would have a wan smile and a self-reserved, defiant twinkle behind it's long eyelashes. Just FYI--I'm betting that none of my book reviews will tell you the slightest bit of what a book is actually about--that's largely because I (a) don't like to know what books are about before I read them and (b) can't remember what they're about as much as how they make me feel. So that's that.

Eiger Dreams
by Jon Krakauer
If you're a fan of Krakauer's other books (which are all incredibly gripping as well as enlightening), it's good to know that these are short stories before you dive in, hoping for another novel-length work. Krakauer primarily writes short pieces for magazines and other publications and these are some of his best from before 1990. If you're even remotely interested in mountaineering, rock climbing, or people doing utterly insane things for fun and self-flagellation, you'll enjoy this. Compared to his other books, it's simply not as engrossing, but as a stand alone, the stories offer a particularly great read for people who have short attention spans and need a lot of excitement. (nb: this book talks about Boulder, where I was born, and about pilots in Petersburg, Alaska, where my best friend (whose father was a pilot) was born--so I found it exciting just for that.)

Fight Club
by Chuck Palahniuk
This book is disgusting and delicious like a giant, violent, molten chocolate cake. It is decadent in the true sense of the word. I waited six long years to read this book and finally read it in one long sitting. Be careful. You might chip a tooth.



His Dark Materials trilogy
The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass
by Philip Pullman
It's true, I never would have picked this up if the movie hadn't come out. I don't follow the children's fantasy scene very closely, if you know what I mean. But it was on sale and I had read somewhere that Pullman's series had a more positive treatment not only of women but of the whole good-versus-evil thing than the Chronicles of Narnia. I LOVED the Chronicles, but I really don't dig the black and white, cut and dry, good and evil thing so I carried this 929-page brick around with me for a month. The verdict? It was incredible. It was both more violent and more gentle than I expected it to be, somehow. I'm glad I read it. If children's fantasy doesn't make you cringe, I highly recommend these books.

Ja.

I'm OK, sort of...

I think I've scared just about everybody who knows me, who has ever met me, who is related to anyone who knows me, who knows someone who has ever met me at a party/family barbeque/crawfish boil. Basically, if you and I are related by six degrees or less, you probably heard that I had a "serious" illness and was getting blood tests to see what was wrong with me. I also haven't told anyone except Tim about the results because I truly hate talking about it. I feel absolutely disgusting and I feel absolutely disgusting trying to describe my symptoms. As it turns out, using the most vague and euphemistic terms only prompts people to pry further. I know it's because they care, but the last thing you need when your insides are grossing out is to be grossed out by every social conversation you have.

To kill the suspense, I'm fine. No virus, no bacterial infection, no third world parasite eating its way through my small intestine (that I know of). Which is great, except that you must then consider why I did get sick. Without a physical reason, one must turn to a host of psychological factors that cause, or at least amplify, a bodily illness as severe and unpleasant as I faced. Certainly, I have not adjusted to life here , whether it be the unchallenging 40-hour a week job, a miserable climate, a crowded big city, or being so far from friends and family. It's scary to think that my ball of stress, the ache in the pit of my stomach that I constantly feel, is so physically potent to knock me out of work for a week. In comparison, an Indian überbug that a doctor can treat sounds like a dream.

(This entire passage is written by Tim, and is--in his words--a "summary of the things that have been dictated to him over the past two weeks." I think his offer to write my blog entry came partly from the overwhelming number of people who have asked me to update, and partly because he understands my sincere and extreme desire not to talk about this sickness anymore. The long and short of it is, I have been ill for a number of weeks and all of it culminated in me becoming EXTREMELY sick for a few scary days. No, I won't tell you the details [as much as you know I usually LOVE to give all the bloody plot-twists]. No, I don't really feel better. No, I don't know what's wrong with me. I suspect it has a lot to do with all of the things that Tim so carefully tried to express in my voice in the passage above.

Thank you everyone who has been concerned. Honestly I think it's the fact that I have to tell everyone I love about these things over the phone, or through e-mail instead of face-to-face that's just making me a little crazy and heart sick. I can't wait to get out of this stupid city.)

I need a fix 'cause I'm goin' down...

<-- Me, a 17 year-old, pink-haired Rock 'n' Roller...

Listening to Ben Folds a loud as your thin apartment walls can take it. Candles. That clean-house smell... what could be better? Possibly only Chinese take-out. And that's highly do-able.

It's been a completely bizarre couple of days. Last Saturday I woke up at nine, made a pot of coffee (which I never do), made fresh juice (which I rarely do), turned on the stereo (which I used to do all the time), and put a chicken in the crock pot with potatoes, carrots and mushrooms (which I haven't done since I moved to DC). Tim woke up and thought I'd lost my mind (which he does pretty regularly). In reality, I kind of reclaimed that summer-feeling that I used to get at home in Crawford when I'd wake up like a mad, cake-baking fool, spend half the day laying on my picnic table in a bikini with sun-in in my hair, then listen to my 21-disc stereo on random and stare at my bedroom ceiling until dinner time.

I'm sick of the TV. I have it on so often that it's ruining my ability to use my senses and turning me into an apartment zombie. Instead of all that bullocks, I'm going back to 1998, when I had no cable and the 3 available local channels were so depressingly silly that we only turned the tube on when we rented a video from the library. Before we got cable Mom and I would listen to music, eat dinner at the table and play rummy until we got bored (or, occasionally, drunk. Don't judge, we both turned out alright). Anyway, I used to make art until my fingers were blue and I thought my brain would fall out. Every piece of clothing I bought before 2002 has a paint stain on it somewhere.

Ok, maybe it's because I didn't have a job then and my only real responsibility was to not fail high school or become a teenage casualty. Maybe it has nothing to do with the TV. But I know that when the TV is off, I feel better about my life. Like I might get paint in my hair again and stop being so fat and dull. God, wouldn't that be nice?

The whole week seems to reaffirm how bad I need sunlight and the Down-and-Dirty Process, also known as making something new. After that great Saturday (which ended with going out and getting to eat the perfect piece of cake at Brittany's house), Sunday was "meh?" and Monday was good because Jeremy and Mae came over to eat Tacos, play a little Jeopardy, and throw popcorn at the State of the Union.

Tuesday and Wednesday were essentially wretched. I had so much nothing to do at work that I scrubbed the entire kitchen clean from top to bottom and I don't think anyone noticed I wasn't at my desk for over 2 hours. The antibiotics from The Staph make my stomach hurt like I've been eating Tim's socks and so this 10-day stomach ache combined with a sense of utter boredom and wasted potential finally made me so sick and tired I had to go home. (I did get up and go to a Financial Planning Seminar, where I learned that I, in fact, should not sign up for a 401-K.)

Today is better though. Today is a good day. It's nothing major, but at work I've been getting the chance to do more and more design, more work on the marketing and PR side of things, which is as close to make a collage about drugs, sex, and Rock & Roll as I'm going to get in the legal staffing biz. And on top of it, my boss actually likes what I come up with. So there's a chance I'll get to do more.

And the TV will be off more and more often, and the stereo will be on.

Bleach! Bleach it all!

There's really no better way to start a three-day weekend than by taking your first trip to the E.R.

Don't get too excited--there was no real emergency. Guess who got a staph infection! Despite all odds, no, it isn't Tim. But because he's had them before, he rightfully insisted that I see a doctor ASAP and I took my first-ever trip to a hospital. I don't count the day I was born A) because I don't remember it and B) because technically I didn't check in... I only checked out--if you know what I mean.

Anyway, I'll spare you the details but three hours, some moderately painful prodding, and a couple of prescriptions later, I'm home and using this as an excuse to be utterly lazy and worthless. And I cannot believe I got a freaking staph infection. Even though hundreds of thousands of people get them all the time.... I feel pretty much contaminated and disgusting.

I guess I'm sharing all this because... well, if you're Saturday wasn't that great, at least you aren't contaminated and disgusting. Now go wash your hands.

In 2008, I will be voting for my Wii.

Kacie has the mighty power to make mountains move. Or at least to make me write on my blog.

I was loath to write while I was on vacation because somehow writing about it makes it feel a little too much like it's over. Well, sadly, now it really IS over. And my company vacation is over too. And I regret to say that I left my photo memory card in my Dad's computer so this is really the only the only photographic evidence I have that I've been alive for the past three weeks:
And it's not even a picture of me. It's a picture of a giant bird.

Really though, I have been alive. Wonderfully so. Going home was so rejuvenating and reaffirming--just smelling my cat after he's been playing in the snow (he smells like warm biscuits and healthy dirt) was enough to refuel my brain for at least a month.

At first being Home felt just awkward enough to make me worry. It seemed like I might have crossed some time threshold that made it impossible to ever go home again. It's a great cliché among philosophers and basement songwriters that you can never go home again--but it's not true. At least not entirely. It only took me day or so to remember the comfort of parents and pets and fresh air, of riding in a car and eating fast food and not being tired 24 hours a day.

Oddly, that "home" feeling became even more pronounced (though no more significant) when Tim and I crossed the Texas/Louisiana border--mostly because I hadn't realized just how much I missed it. I didn't pay much attention to this until I moved to DC, but when I was at Centenary, even though there were times when I was homesick, I don't think I ever once thought seriously "I have to leave--I quit." My friends and family can correct me if I'm remembering incorrectly. But there must be a part of me that loves Shreveport if I stayed and did so well for so long.

Maybe it sounds immodest, but I think I did pretty damn well there. I made the kind of friends that you can't remember ever NOT knowing and I felt comfortable in a way that weird, slightly manic, overly dramatic people like myself rarely feel.

I'm lucky though. I have always felt, and am guaranteed to always feel, the pain and frustration of not being able to be in two, three, or thirty places at once. I doubt that I'll ever get over it--I savor the tragedy of it a little too much. I read somewhere that as soon as you make a decision, all of the other, possible, unchosen futures are snuffed out like a candle. The thing is, all those little paths live on in my brain forever, which is probably as much of a curse as it is a blessing. Like a metaphysical bologna sandwich.

Mmmmmmmm.

So there is it. I haven't written anything about the company vacation or how I feel somewhat better about being back in DC. Tim starts his second semester of graduate school tomorrow and I'm sure that too will be out like a candle before we even know it. I know I've said it before but I have to say again that if I have to have a job where I'm not using my college education AT ALL, I couldn't have found a better company to work for. I got to watch my office-mate sing "Dancing Queen" at the top of his lungs because he bowled a 42 and was beaten by everyone else in the company and their spouses. That's both impressive and delightful, which is just about all you can ask from life.