Bleah

I'm coming down with a cold.

I think.

Anyway, I'm miserable and tired and achy, and blind-stupid by 8 PM. Bleah.

And that's pretty much all I have to say.

I want to feel better.

Words and Music

On my refrigerator I have a ceramic magnet that says "Poetry is music in words." An old boyfriend gave that to me, years and years ago, long before I started to write seriously. Even then I loved language, loved it as much as I loved music (which was one of our main points of contact.)

To this day, lyrics matter to me. It's not just how the melody sounds, it's how the words sound that generally make me love a song. Generally: I can like a song that has lyrics that clunk, but I won't love it. For example, U2's "Window in the Sky" has a line that makes me wince every time I hear it. I rather like the first half: "But love left a window in the skies", but the second half is amateurish: "To love I rhapsodize." To me, it's absolutely clear that that second half was written basically to rhyme 'in the skies' with 'rhapsodize.' It probably wouldn't bother me quite so much if it were 'Of love I rhapsodize', but as it stands, it clanks.

One of the reasons I'm loving the Shins so much is the music in the lyrics. One particular bit from "Red Rabbits" make me sigh happily every time I hear it: "I still owe you for the hole in the floor / And the ghost in the hall". Why? The repeating long 'o' sound, in 'owe', 'hole' and 'ghost' and the way (as sung) the vowel sound in 'floor' and 'hall' are so alike. Years ago, I saw a documentary on the Celtic music scene in eastern Canada and in it, Mary Jane Lamond talked about how, in Gaelic, rhymes are based on vowel sounds, not on word endings (as in English). Since then, I've been much more aware of vowel sounds echoing each other.

This is such a part of music enjoyment for me that it always brings me up short when I realize not everyone is the same way. My sister, for example. For her, it's all about the music; if she listens to lyrics, she doesn't remember them. I'll ask her opinion of a song by quoting lyrics, and she'll just look at me, blankly, before reminding me that she doesn't remember songs that way.

So which camp are you in? Do you remember songs by their lyrics? Or is it only the music itself that matters?

Earworms

My friend Larry asked me a couple of weeks ago if I'd seen The Shins on Saturday Night Live. Since I never stay up past 11 unless I'm in bed reading something so fabulous I can't stop, the answer was no.

I can't remember the exact word he used to describe them--I think it was "different", in a 'not quite sure what to make of it' tone of voice--but it was enough for me to hunt down and download (legally, in case you were wondering) Wincing the Night Away.

The first listen didn't wow me, mainly because it wasn't where my ears had been hanging out lately. (Which was with Ron Sexsmith, Mary Jane Lamond, Patty Griffin, Kim Taylor--not quite Shin-like.) But then the music got its hooks into me and it hasn't let go.

I hear it when it's not playing. (I'm pretty sure 'Australia' is what's playing now.)

All the time.

This didn't used to happen to me. I didn't used to hear music when it wasn't playing. But now I do. I can even switch tracks--it's Mary Jane Lamond now. (Not sure of the track's title--they're all in Gaelic and I don't know it well enough to remember which title goes with what song.)

This is strange and puzzling and kind of cool.

Slacker

I haven't been to the gym all week long. All week long, at 6:00 AM when I need to head out, the feels-like temperature has been right around 0°F (-17.8°C).

Um, that's a little bit cold for me.

I suppose I could go at night--yeah, it's still cold, but I'm not fresh from a toasty bed. I've been up. I've braved the brutal air already. Plus, at 6:30 PM, it's not quite as brutal.

The problem with going at night is that the gym is more crowded, and the odds are pretty good I won't be able to get at the machines I need. That's why I started going early in the morning--so I could work out, instead of standing around because every single possibility for that part of my body (back, chest, biceps, triceps, legs) was being used.

If this were the first time I'd taken a week off, I might be freaking out a little bit. (Because that's what I do when I don't stay on the straight-and-narrow: I freak out a little bit.) But it isn't, so I'm good.

And it was nice to slack, if only for a little bit.

Reading mememe

This came courtesy of Lady Tess:

Contemporary, Historical, or Paranormal? Pretty much in that order.

Hardback or Trade Paperback or Mass Market Paperback? The bulk of what I own is mass market paperback--lighter, cheaper, easier to store. Very few books/writers pass the "hard cover/paperback test".

Heyer or Austen? Heyer, only because I've been reading her since my teens. Many of my favorite, sigh-worthy moments in books are in Heyer books.

Amazon or Brick and Mortar? Brick and mortar, because you can't pick up the book, hold it and open it at random at Amazon.com. You can't wander amid all those books.

Barnes & Noble or Borders? Borders, because they carry Harlequin/Silhouette titles and B&N doesn't.

Woodiwiss or Lindsay? Neither.

First romance novel you ever remember reading? If you count gothic romances, one about a nurse in a house in turn-of-the-last century New York, written by (I think) Dorothy Daniels.

Alphabetize by author Alphabetize by title or random? Neither. I have a log, which tells me where everything is.

Keep, Throw Away or Sell? Depends on the book. If I'll read it again, keep it. If I won't, give it away.

Read with dustjacket or remove it? Remove it.

Sookie Stackhouse or Anita Blake? Neither.

Stop reading when tired or at chapter breaks? Depends on the day, the book, how tired. More often than not, at the chapter break.

It was a dark and stormy night or Once upon a time? Once upon a time.

Crusie or SEP? Crusie, though I enjoy SEP very much. Crusie, though...

Buy or Borrow? Both. New to me author: borrow, borrow, borrow. Something I might not get to right away (frex, The River King by Alice Hoffman), buy.

Tidy ending or Cliffhanger? Tidy ending. Not a huge fan of cliffhangers.

Morning reading, Afternoon reading or Nighttime reading? Anytime, all the time. I'm an addict. But absolutely, positively nighttime.

Series or standalone? No preference.

Favorite book of which nobody else has heard? The closest thing I can think of is In This House of Brede by Rumer Godden.

Waste

This is probably going to be short, a brief rant about something that annoyed me.

Actually, annoyed is probably too strong for what I'm feeling, a kind of mild, irked, disappointment.

On Saturdays I have lunch with my sister. Today we met a mutual friend at a restaurant that's usually reliable--not the one the three of us usually go to, but we were all a little weary of the usual, so we went to this other place.

Today's spot was serving brunch and I let myself be seduced by the Farmer's Omelette, which has peppers, mushrooms, sausage, and cheddar cheese, and is served open-faced. That's a pretty big caloric splurge, which is not a bad thing if you enjoy the food.

My hash browns were cold. My sister's pancakes were cold.

The waiter was intrusive when he was there...which wasn't nearly often enough.

The whole thing was not at all satisfying, so I feel like I spent too much for too little, wasting the calories. So I'm just a little annoyed.

Annoyance

I brought one of my flash drives to work today, so I could work on the mess-in-progress (mip) on my lunch hour. I often intend to work on the mip at work; most of the time, that's as far as it gets. But today...today I actually worked on it. Yay me. When I was done and I'd saved everything, I disconnected the drive and tossed it into my purse. Or at least I remembered doing it.

So imagine how irritated I was when I couldn't find it. I have a couple of pockets inside my purse--I think they're intended for cell phones but I use one for pens, my bus tickets and my work ID and the other for lipstick and lip gloss. The flash drive I used has a clip on the cap, like the one on a pen cap, so I usually clip the drive to the side of one of the pockets. Not today. I was in a hurry, my mind already somewhere else.

When I couldn't find the drive, all I could think was that I'd only imagined tossing the drive into my purse. I was about to do it, picturing it drop into my open purse, but then I got distracted and didn't actually toss it in. I've done that before: confused my imagined action with a real one. Apparently that had happened this time.

That, or I'd missed the purse's giant maw and the flash drive was sitting in the bottom of my desk drawer. I hadn't heard the plastic plink on the drawer's metal bottom because it had landed on the paper bag covering the bottom. Yeah, yeah, that might be it...and if that was the case, at least the drive wasn't sitting out in plain sight on my desktop, even if it out of reach until Monday

Still, in one last burst of hope and desperation, I decided to check my purse more thoroughly than before. I pulled the pens and ID and tickets and lipsticks and lip gloss out of the inside pocket, thinking maybe the flash drive had slipped to the bottom of one of them.

No go.

Next, I decided to empty the rest of my purse of all the things that seem necessary for daily life--two eyeglass cases, daily planner, mp3 player, a tube of hand lotion, the case holding my three fountain pens--just to make sure the flash wasn't hiding. Because they do that.

As this one did tonight. To my relief, I found the drive deep in a corner, trying to escape notice behind a fold of fabric and a small pill case full of Excedrin. I could have worked this weekend without the stuff I did today, but I didn't want to. And now I don't have to.