Crunch, crunch, yum

Somehow this past week has flown, like a frightened pigeon, and I'm looking finals in the teeth. Thanksgiving... err sorry, Fall break, is just a joke that the Institution plays on us poor students; for some reason they give us a week off, and then we have time only for seven breaths before finals are knocking us flat. Luckily, I only have five tests to take in the next two weeks.

Did I just say luckily??? Yes, as they say, I'm laughing just to keep from crying.

It's time to sing the blues...

Mariachis and Turkeys

This year Thanksgiving has fallen on the 22nd of November, which for me is like Pulaski Day falling on Easter Sunday, which by the way I have no idea if that is possible, but whatever. Maybe not that drastic, I suppose, but in truth I'm grumpy because T-day is on the same day as la Dia de Santa Cecilia, who happens to be MY patron saint, well and all those musicians out there, and I would rather be out singing and dancing to random mariachi music than stuck in a house with my pa and this overbearing girlfriend. She asked me how to save her perpetually dry birds from dessication this year, and then does not listen to my advice, which is really Alton Brown's advice.

You do not diss the food god.

I mean everyone stuffs their bird in this country, which is probably the stupidest thing to do, all that extra mass means it takes forever for the insides to get up to safe temperature, and by that time the breast meat is overcooked and dry!!!!! It is sensible, it seems to me, that you do not stuff yer bird with bread stuffing, but maybe with onions and garlic like the French or leave it open, or cut it open and flay it out, ala AB. If you want gross sloppy bread stuffing, I don't know, cover the whole casserole with fatback or something!

Okay, that's not really important, I'm not a chef, or even a great cook, these days I make mostly odd vegetarian food, I live in a vegetarian coop house, whats important is the fact that I will be missing the mariachi band playing at my church, if there even are going to be any. Last year they didn't have any, which makes me grumpy. My church is a big mix of Anglo, Hispanic, and Filipino catholics, so we get some really fun holidays, like Simbangabi, which I cant spell, or Marianitas, along with yer normal holidays...

I should explain myself, I could have easily become one of those post catholics that like to call themselves 'recovered' and in fact I don't often go to mass, maybe I could be called, not a 'Sunday catholic', but a 'holiday catholic'. I have re-embraced this religion of my raising more because my girlfriend hates it, and it is comfortable like an old boot, than because I feel the need for some religiosity, some theism, in my life. It is odd, I suppose because being bisexual I'm not particularly loved by my Church, in the bigger sense, although my church, my community, and my family welcomes me, with all my perceived flaws, including my piercings and my tattoos, never mind the fact that I love a woman. I think it is ironic, and I snicker to myself, but I do feel an affection for the ritual, for the words, for the people, for the holidays, no matter how I am viewed.

Now that I ruminate more, I wonder if I can even be viewed anymore as being catholic, my own personal religious beliefs have morphed, alack the Power Rangers strike again, to include a lot of different religious tenets, and although the core of my belief is still catholic, I would probably be termed agnostic. I do not like that term, it seems so wishy-washy, neither believing nor disbelieving in a god. Buddha tells us to follow our own lamp, to seek our own truth, that does not mean to be perpetually unable to answer the simple question, 'do you believe?'

Chris Carter eat your hear out.

I seem to talk about religion here quite often, I am sorry, it is only when I sit down to write that I realize I have many thoughts about the whole affair, and things I want to say. I don't often talk about it with other people, because who wants to talk about religion these days when religion is the basis for so much strife, and misconception? So I sit on my thoughts, and only verbalize them here, where I hope the only negative results are just flames and denigration, if anyone even deigns to read what I write.

So now I depart with both Paul's message in his first letter to the Thessalonians, 5:17 Betet unablässig, orad sin cesar, pray unceasingly, and the Bab, who urges us to make every action a prayer.

Banjo Tunes

At one point in my musical career I made a sortof New Years Resolution to learn one new tune a week, which is a substantial amount of tunes I thought, to learn. So, then, by the next Silvester I would have a substantial increase in the number of tunes under my musical belt, because, well, I don't really know that many. As you are probably guessing by this point in my narrative, that particular resolution, as most of that ilk are wont, did not last very long at all. Well I think I did learn something like seven songs that year, but that is nothing like the 50-ish I had planned.

Why am I talking about this? Because in the past month I have renewed this resolution, not for the first time mind you, like a smoking habit that is hard to kick, this is a tune-learning habit that is hard to continue... and this past month, I learned two new songs and reworked, which is almost like relearning, an oldie.

Three songs is five weeks! I almost have escape velocity:P

Now all I have to do is to keep them in my head, which is sorta kinda tricky, one of those songs I learned this past month, I learned... probably five years ago... which makes my total kinda wimpy, sigh.

Maybe if I learn some more song that I previously learned a long time ago and forgot, they will kinda make a whole couple of songs, and I can truly claim that I learned 8/3 songs.

School Blues

I moved in this past week, I moved in to my new home in Urpaign, and started school on Wednesday. I am not certain whether I am excited by this new semester or not. All I know is that, oh my god, everyone around me is sooooo incredibly young, so incredibly sophomoric, and I want them all to shut their little traps. I mean the professor only listens to your nonsense because she is paid to do it. Okay this is me with cramps, loosing what little patience I have left.

But on the other hand I do have one really exciting class. Out of four, sigh. I might become excited by two more of them, but currently not so much at all. Well I suppose I will survive.

Anyway, no crazy anecdotal stories to keep you all entertained, I lack the energy. Sorry.

Paperwork Revelations

So I'm going back to University, and I haven't done my paperwork. How usual is that? This is my normal reaction, I suppose to most things, delay and delay until its either too late or I have to hand in this crazy piece of dren. Here I am, starting to get that clench in my belly that says to me, hey dude you better do yer thing or yer not gonna get what you want, and what do I do?

Write a post about it.

Cuse this is me, not doing paperwork.

The realization hit me last night, after I saw my grandmum in hospital, shes doing good by the way, thanks for asking, and after I went out to a bar in Gurnee of all godforsaken places, and stayed up way to late, and got home at a time most normal human beings would not be uncomfortable being awake, but at a time when I would normally be abed for 4 hours... sigh the consequences of my job, and ... err my realization. Just hit me when I digress okay?

I realized after an incredibly long day, that I haven't done my paperwork, no lets be honest, I know I haven't done it, and it drags on my at least every 137 mins for at LEAST a few seconds, so no I hadn't forgotten... but I realized that no I haven't done it, and I probably will not do it today or tomorrow, or the next day, maybe next week, when I have more time. Ha, that is the ticket, when I have more time. Now this is the rub, I do have time in the day, here and there, a wasted 15 min, or maybe an hour spent dallying... when I could put pen to paper, or finger to keyboard. I'm a lazy bum, and I know it, oh no I'm not about to change, cuse I like my bum-itude. No, again I digress, this is not my point.

My true, actual realization is this, I don't panic. I un-panic. There are people out there who are amazing under pressure, you put them in high stress and they ... bam... produce. I don't have that button, that gear... crunch time rolls around and I take a nap, read a book, I say, hey there is always tomorrow. I might get a clenched feeling in my gut, but that's just indigestion, right?

You might say, if you were a discerning person, that this quaint little quirk is a character flaw... and wow, I think you would be right. Now can I fix it?

The Klingons say, "Why wait for tomorrow what you can do today?"... or maybe with better grammar, but I like it that way so :P~~~~~~~ but my point, rather blunt now with all this talking... If I wanna be such a Klingon, why the eff not live up to the rap?

Lent and Shopping

We are smack dab in the middle of Lent, that wonderful season of giving things up, as in "I'm giving up blank for Lent." It used to be that there was no question what you gave up for this season, it was a given that everyone would fast for these 40 days. Which meant something like no food until the first star of the evening, a la Judaism, or one meal a day, in the Buddhist way. Then came Vatican II and everything changed, Catholicism became easy, and the only required days of fasting, I think, but don't quote me, were Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, although eating meat on Fridays was also a no-no. So now good Catholics give up something, and in my family that usually meant something food related, e.g. chocolate, meat, eating between meals... etc.

It seems to me, now that I think about it, other religions, spiritual practices have a similar idea. Fasting to incite clarity of mind, clarity of purpose. Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Native American Animism... those are the ones of which I can think, off the top of my head. There are probably more.

Now, I am not a good Catholic, being mostly lapsed in any practical sense, but I try every year to give something up, sometimes it is food in the traditional sense of fasting, or semi-traditional of avoiding chocolate, or sometimes else altogether. Like TV, or shopping. This year, I am giving up shopping, or maybe I should say 'limiting my shopping to necessary things,' because, well, I will have to spend money on some things.

Lent, boiled down, is a period of simplicity, of simplifying, of contemplation, a time for reduction of wants and desires, and a time to clean house, physically and mentally. Sure, I could enumerate my sins, and mortify my flesh in an attempt at atonement, or walk into the desert with only a camel-hair shirt, but in truth all I need to do is think. Think, every time that I want to buy something frivolous or extravagant, to myself, "I do not need that. I can be happy, and self-fulfilled without a new pair of pants."

Coffeeeeeie

Is coffee really my friend? It lifts me up when I'm down, which is most definitely a good friendlike characteristic. It jolts me awake when I'm tired, which is I suppose a good friend would do, but most likely would not, I hope, while I was still alive, actually use those electrical zapping paddles you always see in ER. In fact coffee leaves me in a perpetual state of fight or flight. Hrm the adrenaline rush of caffeine is really in fact like being constantly confronted by a big snarling hellbeast. I can feel my heart doing double time in my chest cavity.

Wooie.

Okay a mark on each side.

But look it comes in such nice yummy flavors, in fact to my mind everything but pickles compliments the taste of a good cup of joe. Which then only draws each of us more deeply into its evil clutches. Yes evil clutches. Okay I think I have come to a conclusion.

Coffee is evil. It maligns to ease us into dependency at our mother's knee; she who sips that sweet black cuppa is only another loss to that subtle addiction, and how can it be false if the pap you suckle says it is not? Coffee might not have a conscious but its malevolent PRE-conscious tempts us with startling flavor contrasts, and exciting flutterings in our breasts. It moves the blood in all the false ways of well spoken rabble-rousers. It moves us like sex, like chocolate, like the forbidden fruit... it is danger contained in a convenient cardboard cup

I myself have never had much of a need for the java, being an insanely cheerful morning person, but the very mention of that bracing brew has me panting, slavering in a Pavlovian response. The sound of the grinder chewing through beans is beyond comforting, it brings to mind memories of my childhood, of lazy mornings when my mother, my father were softer, when life was simpler.

I love coffee.

I hate coffee. In fact I hate coffee so much that I am drinking a cuppa as we speak, or type, whatever. Maybe this is the only reason I am writing this morning, err afternoon, because it moves me to eloquence? Or at least attempts at such.

Uncle Dan is nobody's uncle

I am now the newest sales person at what I can only call an urban camping outfitter. A chicago fixture, Uncle Dan's is the store you hit up when you want to go skiing in June in the Alps, or don't know what to wear on your cruise to the Artic Circle. No joke, I had a woman in once who wanted to know what to wear to Antartica. So anyway we sell everything from The North Face to Patagonia, to Icebreaker and I love it, which is something I never thought I would enjoy. I mean me selling clothing? yesh. Well it does fund my own buying of clothing then, because I cant help but want half the stuff I sell. Sigh.

The funniest thing tho, is not that I am selling NorthFace fleeces to rich children of richer SUV driving soccer moms, nono the funniest thing is I work with highschool students. Well and really old people in their late 30s, the ones that are permanent, as in full time tennured profesors. I dont have a clue how to get along with any of them, because half of them are sooooooooooooooo young, and the other half are soooooooooooooo staid. I feel alternately old and strange, and young and crazy, and as a result I usually just force all this hyperness out into cleaning. I think their floors are well swept for the first time in years.

News!

I have some exciting bits of news. Some is really new, some is moderately new, but nothing is old!

I am going back to University in the fall, a thing which has all my in town friends blithely refraining from comment, mostly because I have yet to tell them, and nextly, or less mostly, or rather lessly because I hardly ever talk to any of them, let alone see them. They are not concerned.

Yeah.

But my family is pretty exstatic. My father is bending over backwards to help, which is a total change from the first time I went to University, when my mother paid for everything... actually its not, my father managed to swindle my mother out a huge chunck of money in divorce settlement, so its my mother again paying for school. Yikes. I had not thought of that. Anyway, my sisters are pretty cool with it, the one who fiddles is wanting to set up some sort of communal, shared co-op-ey farm thing in Iowa and wants me to join her, using all my plant knowledge (much of which I still have to gain mind you) and is down with me getting more classes under my belt, and a degree, to look official, before she hires me.

Hah.

And then we have the news about this girl over whom Im giggly, cute, and possesive. Otherwise know as my girlfriend. We have just about everything in common, well except for the daughter and the rats; I have neither. And the freakishness of that is so mind boggling, that it boggles the mind. I'll say something random, "Banjo's are soo hot," and she'll say, "Yeah! you wanna listen to this Irish-Bluegrass-Rock band that I know with this geeky banjo player who's really cool?" I made her listen to fiddle music while we sat there and crocheted, and she nodded her head and tapped her toes along with it. She knows all the words to all the songs from Songcatcher, the movie being not terribly worthwhile, but the sound track... oh baby. We like the same food, everything, we listen to similar music, almost everything, she plays board games, I play card games... gah I could keep enumerating things, and totally go bonkers and pass out from typing fatigue. We can keep it simple and say I like her alot.

Woot.

Then there's the bad news. I have no job, therefore am quite poor, and mostly lacking in the funds with which to travel to see my gorgeous girlfriend, who does live in Cham-bana, while I reside in Chitown. And its looks to me like I will not be jobbed until April, which gives me some time to get ahead in the few classes Im taking at Community College, but still!

Sigh.

Nothing much else, unless you count the fact I got in touch with my banjo teacher again after 2 years...

Library Thing

This amazing thingamagigy called librarything has now sucked my brains out. I spent the past couple of days cataloguing all the books I own, or rather all the books I own that I can find. I think I have tons more, I swear I have tons more.

Okay so maybe I did not actually enter most of my text books, cuse they are in my closet, and are reallly big, and obnoxious, but soon, and very soon you will be able to see those as well, cuse Im possessed. Or obsessesesed. But Im getting a crazy kick out of seeing what everyone else has, and looking at tag clouds (something odd which you will not understand unless you are a genious, a librarything user, or someone who stalks librarything users) and unsugesting, and errr... okay I admit it, I sound insane.

Well. duh.

Go check it out, go check out my library. http://www.librarything.com/catalog/bugsyjones

Oh and look at my sidebar, its a cool widget where you can see some random books in my stash.