For the last several weeks, while we wait to close on the house, we’ve been snuggled up in an extend stay hotel. While this sounds super romantic and before you picture us like Eloise or even, $deity forbid, Suite Life of Zack and Cody, hotel living is not as gorgeous as one may expect or sounds. For example, we have a kitchenette which gives us a full-sized fridge and dishwasher, but no oven and a two burner flat top stove. The only dishware and cutlery we have is a two piece setting with a few extra plates. One pot. One food strainer. The sink is not large enough to do hand washing so we tend to run the dishwasher half-empty. And of course, the one cabinet in entire place holds all the dishware and the one pot. There is no room to house food or added cookery items, even though there is no cabinetry above the kitchen/stove/dishwasher area. Incredibly poor planning.
We were planning on bringing with us our non-perishable foodstuffs and cookery but there is no storage in the kitchen, or really anywhere in the suite. Those items are now in storage! A single, 10 hanger wide armoire and two medium 3-drawer dressers for our clothes and personal effects. Even for two people who donated bags and bags of stuff to Salvation Army before the move and only took enough to last a few weeks, it’s a little beyond tight. There is no additional storage space for personal items, bathing items or even shoes anywhere else in the suite.
I’m still seething with another example of why hotel living sucks with an example from tonight when I had a laundry war going on with Anonymous. This extend stay hotel is frequented by pilots, flight attendants and traveling business people and to make it more attractive, they have laundry facilities on every floor which is awesome. What is NOT so awesome is incidents like tonight when someone in the mistaken guise of being kind, pulled our laundry out of the washer and threw it all in the dryer and turned the dryer on high heat AND took over the washer, when I had a bag dirty laundry still sitting on top of the washer.
Now, I’m irritated as with living in a complex for the last several years, I\’ve gotten in the habit of setting timers to move laundry from washer->dryer (wash is 30 minutes, dryers are 1 hour) every time we did laundry so not to trap all the machines. Since hotel used same washer/dryer brand as the complex, I set my timer on my iPhone for 30 minutes appropriately only to find that at 33 minutes after I had thrown the laundry into the wash, someone had thrown the laundry into the dryer. The irritant comes in because half the load were items that were NOT TO BE TUMBLED DRIED.
I yank open the dryer door, pull out all the not-to-be dried stuff, throw in my fabric sheet and continue with the drying. Once I get back to our hotel room, I set my timer for 45 minutes to see if I can finish the rest of our laundry since Anonymous has taken over the washer. At 40 minutes, I waltz down to the laundry area to discover that someone had pulled our laundry out of the dryer and thrown it on top of the dryer, put their stuff from washer into the dryer and filled up the washer with another load. The load in the dryer was in there for some unspecified time as the dryer was stopped but the clothes were hot to the touch. They probably assumed since our (now few) items left in the dryer were already dry, so what was the big problem with taking a few extra minutes from our load?
I stomp back to our suite, wanting to wage war against the assholes who fuck with my laundry while Justin is rolling his eyes at my melodrama and my angry fist shaking. Reporting it to the management is fine, I GUESS, but it doesn’t really solve the issue because I have NO idea who it was, so I didn’t go running to management with my tales of woe. I was thinking of pulling some bullshit passive aggressive move (such as pulling their laundry from the washer, putting it on top of the washer and letting the washer continue on) but decided that I couldn’t be that much of a dick. 2011 is should not begin with war waging over stupid laundry, but hey, I have a theory that the more shitty NYE/NY day is, the better my year.
Thus, here is why hotel living is not the bee’s knees and why I can’t wait to get the fuck out of here.
So I didn’t plan on turning this entry into some sort of rage against laundry anonymous because this entry was to be more of a short, hey these are my resolutions for the year, as inspired by Kate, and instead I paint a picture of me skulking about hotel hallways waiting to pounce unsuspectingly on Laundry Anonymous. I think of myself more of a “I’ll get you my pretty!” kind of person. With that, my resolutions and continuances will come tomorrow.
x0x0x,
Lisa
1. Drats. The realtor pulled all the interior images of the home and no, we did not buy the house at $115K.2
2. Then I got sucked into updating walkscore.om with information about our new neighborhood that was missing, which in fact raised our walk score. Woo!
Tag: TheExHusband
Giving Thanks
I’m going to warn you that I’ve been hitting the bottle while TheHusband and I have been prepping our dinner tomorrow. My husband would also like you to know that the more I drink1, the more affectionate I get. Now on this topic, I think it’s a load of bollocks since I’m a pretty affectionate person by nature but he claims I’m more lovey dovey the more I drink. And of course he has examples, which only the annoyingly sober can do in times of pointless arguments like this one.
But I digress.
The last 12 months have been amazing in so many ways by the sheer amount of life crap we’ve crammed into such a short amount of time. This ranges from getting married, to finishing my second master on to our honeymoon, the travels I’ve done on top of that, the people I’ve met and all the other things I’ve accomplished.
I feel like I’ve been extraordinarily lucky not only for having an amazing pookie bear by my side (aka TheHusband), but for the sheer amount of genuine concern, help, outreach, friendship, love and support I’ve received in all avenues of my life, from the job hunt to the building of my Etsy store and everything in between. TheHusband always jokingly kids that, compared to him, I have too much faith in the kindness of the human population but if anything, the sheer amount of people who have reached out in so many ways to me this year- how can I not? I’ve been extremely humbled by how gracious and kind everyone has been to me, to us, in everything.
While I always make it a point to thank people individually when I’ve received something from them, sometimes I know it is more appreciated when the kindness is remembered later on. I would just like to say thank you, again, to everyone for not only enriching my life but for making me a much better person for it. Your kindness has been accepted with much humility and gratefulness. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.
1. I’m currently at 2 bottles of Guinness and I’m feeling ALRIGHT MAN!
To: Enlighten – Allergies are not for the win edition
Recently it’s been discovered I have what is politely termed as “adult onset allergies,”1 which decided today to go into full force, which means any work I planned on doing today has gotten pushed aside in the “itcy/watery eyes, headachey feeling shoot me WHINE” makes it difficult to concentrate for tasks for too long. HOWEVER! I wanted to get get some updates about posts-in-drafts that were to have been published about some upcoming projects I’m working on.
In no particular order:
- Alice and I have decided to learn a new (dead) language, specifically Anglo-Saxon (Olde English) 2. Details forthcoming (post is currently in draft status), but we’ll be updating Dead Language Society and I’ll be x-posting my entries here.
- Kristin and I have a poster accepted to Michigan Library Association annual conference, taking place in November 2010. Our poster presentation is, Critical Error: The need for Michigan libraries to represent themselves online and it’s the beginnings of a (predicted to be) long-term research project. We’re pretty excited about this and will be posting a lot of our stuff (findings, research interests, etc) over at our joint blog, Librarianation. I will more than likely be x-posting library stuff between the two blogs.
- The next installment of So, You Want to be a Librarian/Archivist? is also in draft status, with the subject matter of being proactive within the field of librarianship/archives. I’ve gotten prods from various people around the internets that I need to keep this series going.
Other updates:
Job hunt: Still unemployed and still interviewing but nothing concrete as of yet. To keep ourselves sane, we house hunt via Zillow in areas that I’m interviewing in as well as areas we’re interested in moving to. I’ve been collecting the links of the homes in these areas we’re interested in on my Delicious feed.
Walk, Don’t Run: Justin and I have been power walking nearly every day our neighborhood for the last two weeks, with the idea that next week we’ll start a “couch to 5k” like program next week. I’m not keen on this idea for numerous reasons, mainly that running feels more invasive to my arthritis than walking. I’m told this is bullarky, but I can only report what my bones feel. Our diet is going more or less okay, but we’re always looking to improve it. And last, but not least, Wednesday the Pug has had her bi-weekly bath. That is ALWAYS important to include.
1. Not sure what I’m allergic TO yet, but it was pointed out to me all of my health issues seemingly came into being after recently getting married.
2. Yes, Olde English is purposely misspelled.
To: Travel – Honeymoon, Part I: Paris (May 12-16, 2010)
“Foreign’s where they gabble at you in heathen lingo and eat foreign muck and worship, you know, objects.” – Granny Weatherwax, from Witches Abroad
One of the projects this summer was to finally get our honeymoon pictures online, which began to prove itself to be a daunting task as we had nearly 1000 images taken over our 2.5 week honeymoon. Justin and I shifted between being the paparazzi which explains why you’ll find shots of beautiful architecture (him) mixed with trash found on the street (me).
We arrived in Paris on the morning of the 12th and left the afternoon of the 16th, which gave a scant few days to get the gist of the city. We were totally okay with this as I had been to Paris before so our goal was to eat, drink and museum hop rather then float around the tourist traps.1 I wrote a summary of our time in Paris while on the Thayls train to Brussels, but what has kept with us is not so much as seeing the great pieces of art and architecture, but the beginnings of a dear friendship with Jon and Alice, who came from UK for their own mini-break to visit us in Paris. So much so, Alice2 and I have already started plotting a take-over of Dublin next fall, which hopefully Justin and I will get to do.
I’ve spent the last few days sorting, cleaning up and organizing the photos up into Flickr and are organized below by general collection, city and by tag of interest. Justin, Alice and Jon all pop in and out of photos, with my promises to Justin that I would only upload photos including him if absolutely necessary. This is why you’ll tend to see the back of my husband or as an accessory to the photo rather than the focal point.
Flickr Collection: Over the Pond Trips (all trips)
Flickr Collection: Over the Pond Trips: Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam (Honeymoon) (all)
Flickr Collection: Over the Pond Trips: Paris […]: Paris – May 12-16 (all)
Flickr Collection: Over the Pond Trips: Paris […]: Paris – May 12-16: Eiffel Tower
Flickr Collection: Over the Pond Trips: Paris […]: Paris – May 12-16: Louvre3
Flickr Collection: Over the Pond Trips: Paris […]: Paris – May 12-16: Arc de Triomphe
1. We “did” the Eiffel, Arc de Triomphe and such, but we cruised by and took pictures rather than shell out tens of Euros and hours of our time queuing to get INTO the sites. And oh yeah, French National Guard with machine guns patrolling the sites also turned us off from hanging about longer than necessary.
2. I have a HUGE girl crush on Alice, who is not only a geek but she’s also beyond creative. I love her jewelry, Snapdragon Beads, and totally pimp her out when I can because she does just simply amazing work.
3. Anyone who has museum hopped with me knows that as an art history student, I’ll cut a bish if I see someone taking photos in a museum with their flash on. Thus, all interior shots of the Louvre were taken with the flash off and the color and tone corrected in post processing via Photoshop.
To: Consume: Craft THIS!, Martha
Last night I was busy making farls and finishing up a hat I was knitting, all while whilst wearing an apron.
The prior night, it was me prancing around the kitchen making homemade granola and hummus. While wearing an apron. And nearly every night it has been the same image: Me in the kitchen brewing up some witchy potion while wearing an apron.
I’ll let that image settle for a bit because if you know me and the above image seems fucking ridiculous to you because Lisa without coffee, cigarettes, and some processed food living in the fridge, you would typically be correct. I’ve run into the bathroom numerous times in the last few days to make sure my ears didn’t suddenly sprout pearl earrings and my tattoos were still in place. My hair was still twisted up in Lisa-poofs and my piercings were all present. I am slowly turning into Martha Stewart’s bastard punk rock daughter.
But to be fair, this isn’t a new development – it’s been going on for quite some time.
In the fall of 2006, I was having problems with digesting food – meaning that regardless of what I was eating, hardly anything was coming back out (to put it politely). For example, I was physically ill in the sense that eating pizza really heavy on the sauce meant I was up later in the night throwing up or having rot gut. If the pizza was light sauce, I had terrible heart burn. I used to have a cast iron stomach! Why was this happening? In the late summer of 2006, after numerous days of no bowel movement, I took myself over to the ER to find out what the hell was going on. They couldn’t find anything wrong with me, gave me a extra strong laxative and recommended a local nutritionist who diagnosed that I had some sensitivity to nearly 100 different types of food.
In the last four years, I’ve alternated between being really good and being really bad with my food. That whole discussion is worthy of several blog posts in themselves, but it’s been awful for the last few months after we came back from our honeymoon. Not only have I been randomly sick (again) but the weight is not coming off, rather, it’s packing back on. Justin was also gaining weight and feeling overall of crap. Deserts from Pronto! and Astoria tastes FANTASTIC going down, but later? Not so much. In fact, most restaurant/processed food gives me issues in some form or another, not always immediate it eventually does happen. Based upon Justin’s prior experience when he was training for half-marathons and my food issues, we decided to implement the following as of last week:
- No sugar (including raw, brown, white, and fake sugars). Honey/Stevia/Agave/etc are allowed.
- As little gluten as possible.
- No foods listing HFC as an ingredient.
- No pasta, no store bought bread.
- Little to no meat.
- Heavy on fruits, nuts, whole grains, veggies, cheeses.
- If I want to eat something, I have to find a lisa-happy version. Bread, for instance, has been replaced with Spelt farls which I can tolerate amazingly well.
I’ve been taking photos all week of the food we’ve been eating and uploading them to Flickr. And nearly every single thing we’ve had to eat this week has been made from scratch, with fresh goods (organic if available) with my own little hands. While what we’re eating is pretty simple, it’s amazing how much of our appetites have dropped since we’re not eating (as much) crap as we used to. We’ve also started doing mat Pilates every morning for 30 minutes into our daily routine. While we don’t think of this as weight loss or diet gimmick, but as a 180 lifestyle change, we’re still keeping track of our weight, making adjustments as needed.
The first week weigh-in, I lost 7.5lbs while Justin lost nearly 3. Where as it was pretty common for me to have some kind of “issue,” ranging in varying degrees of bloating/nausea/heartburn, this is the first week in a long time I haven’t had that. And I’m not terribly concerned about the huge weight loss either, because it’ll adjust itself in the next week or two.
It’s not so awful to be Martha Stewart’s punk rock daughter – as long as the only pearl necklaces are the ones given to me by my husband1, I’ll think I’ll be just fine.
1. I don’t have to explain this one to you, do I?
The Lisa Chronicles: What’s in a name?
When I started keeping an online journal in 1998, the main reason I started chronicling my entire life online was for me to remember it. I have no memory of my childhood and most of my tween years up until the age of 13 and there are even spots of time in my 20s that are vacant.1 If personal recollections, photographs, handwritten letters and other realia were so incredibly fragile, were my words digitally constructed that much stronger? Could I not access them at anytime and any point with no fear of deprecation?2 Wasn’t this the whole point of the internets? Justin and I bicker about this topic quite a bit because while he understands as to WHY I’m so obsessed with keeping my digital life in order, he still thinks it’s an invasion of privacy. But for someone, himself, who can easily recall his life at any stage with minute detail, I can see his point. But for me, I don’t have that option. I became obsessed with chronicling my life because I wanted my imprint to last forever. And this is why my online journal was called, “The Lisa Chronicles.”
I kept the name for nearly a decade, regardless of which domain it was hosted on, but in 2006 (in several more entries to come, you ‘ll see how 2006 proved to be a pretty pivotal year), I registered a new domain with a different idea: shesgotplans.net. I wanted to go beyond just writing chronicles of my life/snarky commentary, I wanted to have an all-in-one place place to showcase everything I was/will be into: Books, movies, music, food, opinion, pop culture, photography, librarianship and archives (and everything in between). I had gone from having my own domain for keeping my online journal, to LiveJournal and was feeling the pull of having my own site again where I could do the above. The name of the domain was culled from an episode of “Grey’s Anatomy,”3 when Meridith exclaims about Finn, her mens of the moment, “And Finn! He’s got plans!” I wanted shesgotplans.net to not only be entertaining, but also to keep track of anything new or fun or interesting that I was obsessing about at the moment. Food? I would want millions of pictures of food and recipes. Photography? Here’s what I learned and why I liked these tips. Writing? Here is a new short story/poem/ I wrote and you can have it for free. Music? Here is the latest CD I’ve been digging and why you should dig it or why it fucking sucks.
That was the general idea. My writing, when I started in 1998, went from dozens of posts of month to one or two (if that) and then to nothing for months at a time by 2006-07. I started and stopped writing. A lot. When I started my MLIS in the fall of 2008, I saw it as a perfect way to reboot my writing while I worked on this degree. I wrote a lot of posts about librarianship, archives and anything remotely related. And while in the last several months, since graduation, I’ve been writing more personal then professional, the number one reason why people come here is for the “So, You Want To Be A Librarian/Archivist?” series.
That depresses the fuck out of me as I feel I’m much more than a snappy piece about going to library school, at least I used to be. No one reads me anymore because I’m provocative or interesting and that bothers the hell out of me. I feel I have grown way too conservative and soft in my old age. Gone were the days of owning domains like pronstar.org and bitchasshoes.org4, writing about sex, drugs and rock and roll. I’ve become so hypervigilant about what I was posting on what network5, with what content that saying the word “fuck” made me cringe. Me. Cringe at saying the word fuck!? What in Nigel’s name has happened to me? Don’t answer that. With all that is being said, I don’t want this to become some boring ass librarian page of dick tugging and circle jerking.6 But that is what is happening. The top keywords that drive traffic here is “So, you want to be a librarian?” and “Jobs that require MLIS.” I’ve taken back ownership of “The Lisa Chronicles” for the journal title, content will be be more what I envisioned and lots more updates are planned.
It feels good to be back.
1. I blame the memory loss to conscious forgetting and loads of alcohol. I married my husband because he remembers more of my 20s than I do.
2. Digital archivists will bicker on this point, but for the sake of the piece, it makes sense. 3. Don’t judge. This is where she goes back to McDreamy. Again.
4. .Exhbit A: pronstar.org and Exhibit B: bitchasshoe.org.
5. Numerous (okay, 2) people have emailed/FB’d/etc me to warn me to watch I say on Twitter/blog as possibly be detrimental to me obtaining a job. I understand and get that, I’m not incredibly stupid.
6. There is enough of clique in the library world that it drives me INSANE that this behavior is so easily accepted and even, in some cases, applauded.
Summer/Time
I’m currently ensconced in the wilds of Illinois, where Wednesday I’ll be heading off to my second interview with a local library system. I’m alternating between being nervous and depressed about this interview, not because I don’t want the job – I do, but rather because job hunting is exhausting and at times, incredibly depressing. But I think the depression is not so much about the looking for the job but rather how much my life will change once said job is obtained. It is not so much about what I’ll be doing as it will be where I’ll be doing it and how much coin will be slipped across my hand for my performance. Justin and I ran the figures on what I needed to stay solvent, independently, to fend off the U.S. student loan sharks1 and save a buck or two for retirement. 2 And then there is the probability if we want to have kids, buy a second home, or even a new car. It feels like everything I want takes money and I will never catch up.3
And if I’m not stressing about money, I stress a lot about time. I never seem to have it and when I do, I never seem to manage it properly. Which is odd since I managed it quite well juggling everything I did while in school. All the silly projects I had set up for the summer, I have not even touched. It feels when I have two seconds to myself, I’m prepping/heading off to go somewhere else or do something else. I always wonder how people can accomplish so much when they have the exact amount of time that I do. Time is not flexible
This is the first summer since I was a bonafied kid that I’ve had “off” – no work or school to contend with. But my time has been packed and while I can easily account for it all – job applications, job interviews, volunteer work, trips to professional conferences and such, it still doesn’t feel like I’ve accomplished anything this summer. Well, I haven’t accomplished I had set out to do: learning new programming languages, research projects, writing projects, knitting projects. Job applications are a two day process and when I have an interview or two a week lined up, even by phone, those interviews require prep work, which means more time set aside when I could have it allotted for something else. I’m not resentful I have to do these things, I’m more resentful that I’ve let so much spare time slip through my fingers.
This will also be the first fall in nearly a decade in which I will not be heading off to some institution of higher learning. Books will not be bought, notebooks will not be scribbled in and notes will not be taken. I will not be graded on my achievements, not in the usual way of a letter grade, but there is something sad about not having grades made instantly available at the end of the term. Now all is the piling of rejection notices and “We’ve not quite made a decision yet” emails. Summer, when I was a kid and had no real responsibilities to contend with, meant cookouts, overnight pajama parties with friends, long bike rides to hidden areas where I would pack a lunch and read for the day. Trips to the exotic lands of Canada or to a cabin up in the Thumb area4 with family. There were many, many days of going to the beach and getting brown like a raisin.
The seasons always have a certain smell to them, each one is completely distinctive from the others. Summer always smelled of fresh cut grass, meat roasting on the grill, and the smell of coconut from the tanning lotions. My skin and hair always smelled of the lake we lived by, and while I did not go swimming every day during the summer, I did so enough that the smell lingered for weeks. I always felt that my best moments, my adventures and my memories, are all romanticized from those days. Even in the summers when I was working or in class, there was still a sense of excitment about them even if they were not close duplicates to my childhood. Then it was more about the sense of getting time off to do some of these things, the freedom and de-stressing form work/school whereas this summer, it’s about the additional stress and in some cases, the derailing of freedom. We’ve made many plans this summer, only to have them curtailed by sudden changes in my schedule, whether that meant I was leaving for job interviews or by Justin’s schedule, with him being on call or there was a strike or two happening within his company.
We’ve tightened our belts, financially, since I have no income coming in. We’re not struggling, no, we’re fine but mini-breaks, cabin overnights or day long picnics all must be accounted for somehow. We’ve been trying to set something up before I get whisked away by a library system and I’m working fulltime, but until the strikes end, when we can call our time our own again, those plans will not be happening. Last summer we planned on driving up around the eastern coast of Michigan, going up as far north as Mackinac before heading diagonally home on I-75. We wanted to sleep in cabins, splash around in the beach, and go walking in the woods. Hunt through sleepy little towns, lounge about in hammocks, reading all day and eat fruit so fresh, our faces are bathed in their juices. We never went because we could never sort out my work/school schedule for the summer and then fall came, and everything went to hell.
In the wilds of Illinois, I would give anything right now for that weekend to happen. Just one more last summer hurrah before adulthood, and reality, sets in.
1. My car will finally be paid off soon, so student loan debt will be all that I have. Before you get all jealous, that debt is nearly $100K.
2. Solvent in that I should be supporting myself, in case Justin leaves me for an (even) older woman or young hussy, or dies by Pug strangulation or something. Since I’m seven years older than him, I should have money in the bank for retirement and since I do not, I have to be aggressive with the savings.
3.. You know, The Jones
4. Michigan is shaped like a mitten, so the “Thumb” is the thumb shaped area that is directly north of Detroit.
May the 4th Be With You: Lisa and Justin got married.
Lisa & Justin, 1998
Originally, I was going to write up some pithy (well, not really) blog post about how we got here and the decade long separation between the last time we dated and now and why we are getting married. The entry was going to post at the time we were due at to the courthouse, but yeah, didn’t happen. So, instead I’ll go with this: to the left is montage of images that were taken in 1998 with a Logitech B&W webcam from when we were living together in the Bay Are. The images are small enough that blowing them up pixelates them beyond recognition, so it was just easier to create the montage. My favorite image is the one on the lower right, that look he’s giving me — that he’s still giving me 12 years later. Then he would have waxed poetic about how much he loves me, now he’ll wax on that the look is from gas.
I remember when these pictures were taken, that the whole idea of publishing your life online was still a damned novelty and yet “The Lisa Chronicles” was launched that same summer the pictures were taken. A year after those pictures were taken, we would have broken up and it would be nearly a decade until before we would speak again. We are older & fatter now and I’m definitely more wiser – though according to many who know us claim we have not aged. We claim the sacrifice of virgins, but as this is Detroit, that is getting harder and harder to maintain. We got married for a plethora of reasons: love, legal status so that I can pull the plug if he is on life support, health insurance. People keep asking me if things have changed now that we’re legally hitched and the answer is: Not really, we’re still Lisa and Justin.
So on May 4th, next year and every year after, wherever you are: Raise a glass in salute to love lost and love regained, to the impossible and improbable and to Lisa and Justin getting married.
Honeymoon: Paris to Bruxelles
As I write this, we’re currently on Thalys train 9443, from Paris to Bruxelles, on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. This may be one of the few times I’ll get to properly update since none of the hotels we are staying in Bruxelles or Amsterdam have free Wifi. The lack of free Wifi floating around Paris was poor — apparently for many of the free Wifi sites in Paris, you have to pre-register and then login once you get to the location.
For my iPhone, we paid for international data roaming (up to 50Mb) on this trip but you so much as spit while in a another country, you’ve used up a mb so everything has been shut off – data and 3G. I’ve only used data in Paris to Foursquare my way across the city when I could. This is going to be a very quick update on what has been going on for the last week since I only have about an hour before we get to Bruxelles.
Foursquaring, tweeting and other general updating will be done at the barest of minimums for the next 1.5 weeks. Also, all images from our camera are in raw format and I don’t have proper graphic software on my netbook so those will be done when we get back (more or less). If you haven’t been following me on Twitter, here is what you’ve missed:
- Our flight was delayed due to unknown reasons from Montreal to Paris, which wasn’t so much the issue. The issue was that Delta never bothered to contact me via text or email about the plane delays and I only found out by happenstance when we purchased Wifi in Montreal to find out what the fuck was going on since NO ONE in Montreal, it seems, knew what the hell was going on. None of the desks manned in our concourse for Delta/AirFrance actually HAD people manning the desks. Our flight changed three times, which also included our seating. Now, part of the reason why we booked our trip (in fact the main reason) was that we were able to request and have confirmation for bulkhead and exit row seats on all three legs of our journey (Detroit->Montreal->Paris, Amsterdam->Detroit). I get that due to Ash Cloud shenanigans, flights are going to be screwy, but to change our flight, disregard our requests, not notify us, and then not have anyone available to talk to at the airport? Yeah, fuck you Delta/Air France. What burns, even more, is that when flights were settled and we were ready to board, our tickets that were printed at DTW suddenly were not working at YUL. Air France said it was due to the change over in flight information, we were in the registry and our tickets were reprinted.
- Due to the above all, Delta/Air France LOST OUR LUGGAGE!
- It arrived 2 days later, but beating one’s underwear and shirts in the sink and then spending the day wearing damp, vaguely dirty clothes for another run is bleh. Yes, first world problem, but dammit, it’s my fucking honeymoon!
- We met up with Jon and Alice (from #userfriendly/Twitter/etc) for the weekend and quite enjoyed the drinking, laughing, stumbling, and shopping that took place all over Paris. Since all of us were pretty much in agreement that it would be impossible to do EVERYTHING in such a short amount of time (and to be honest, you would need weeks to do everything in Paris), we just hung out and ate ourselves silly from one end of the city to the other. We also became the masters of the Paris metro.
- Justin and I actually did spend the entire day at the Louvre, which was not as bad as I would have thought it would have been. Seeing the Mona Lisa was fairly uninspiring (too many fucking people flashing their fucking cameras on the fucking masterpiece that was covered in fucking glass). We did not see the ENTIRE Louvre but we saw a good portion — I also got to knock three Caravaggio paintings of my list, so that was exciting (my lifetime goal is to see everyone of his paintings and I’ve knocked a considerable amount of them off the list since I went to Rome and now Paris). But as for the rest of the Louvre, you get oversaturated with the religious artifacts, the 975 different representations of Christo on a cross and sheer amount of boobage everywhere. Even Justin pointed out that after awhile, you get sick of looking at breasts.
- Alice turned us into the Le marche aux puces de Saint-Ouen (flea markets of St. Ouen) which was fan-fucking-tastic idea! This was such a brilliant idea and it was a shame we left it for the morning before we left because we could have spent the entire day there and still not have seen everything. I picked up a few trinkets for myself and for gifts while Alice picked up oodles and oodles of beads. We roamed through a good portion of the market and saw everything from used books, post cards to antique furniture and clothes to stall upon stall of Converse, hookahs and the every popular pashmina.
- My netbook cracked sometime between when we left our hotel in Paris and when we got on the train to Bruxelles and will have to be junked when we get back (which is also why updating is going to be very, very sporadic).
- In other good news (other than hanging out with Jon+Alice for the weekend), I had a job interview before I left for the trip (literally, the day before) and I have another job interview lined up when I get back from my trip, the first week of June. I’m getting the job interviews — I just need someone to FUCKING GIVE ME A JOB!
So, that’s a nutshell of what we’ve been doing (other than eating and drinking bad beer and hanging out at expat bars around Paris).
à bientôt!’
The Throbbing’s Wedding Mix
The Throbbing’s Wedding Mix [77Mb mp3]
I’m still working on the post from our wedding shenanigans, but wanted to put together a mix of songs that we would have played if we had a reception and the reason why I choose these songs. I did not change my name (too much paperwork, also rallying against TheMAN) but “The Throbbings” is a nod to Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies, in which there was a set of characters, Lord and Lady Throbbing. Throbbing has become our personal nom de plum and if we have sign up for anything together, it’s usually under the last name of Throbbing.
I used Audacity to mix the songs together and tried to blend the intros and outros as close as possible, but it’s not absolutely perfect. The track listing is as follows:
Home – Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros
Every couple has an “official” song, usually some Michael Buble remix or regurgitated Emo bullshit. We have Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros, a band we both gravitated to after hearing them on All Songs Considered. Lyrics can be found here and YouTube is here.
Idiot Wind – Bob Dylan
Granted, this is not a typical love song by a long shot but Idiot Wind is off of Justin’s favorite Dylan album, Blood on the Tracks. This album was one we listened to on repeat on one of our second first dates back in 2008 and it is also one of our favorite tracks.
Somethin’ Hot – Afghan Whigs
I do not think I could put together a wedding mix and not throw in some Greg Dulli. The album, 1965 came out when Justin and I were together the first time around (’98-’99) and I played it CONSTANTLY. This track, in particular, always gets me feeling a tad bit frisky. YouTube video is here.
No One Else But You – Louis Armstrong
We both have a love for early Jazz/New Orleans Jazz/Swing/Big Band – pretty much anything pre-Bop. This song is from a compilation of Armstrong tunes that were recorded between 1925-29, entitled Hot Fives & Sevens.
Single Ladies – Pomplamoose
I fell in love with this band once their viral video for Beyonce’s Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It) was making the rounds last fall. I started giggling when, during our wedding dinner, our friends Lauren and Eric kept commenting that Justin liked it so much, he put a ring on it – thus this song (and specifically this version) was included.
Cherry Bomb – The Runaways
I went out, begrudgingly, with Lindsay to see The Runaways this past week expecting that as history has shown, most bio-pics about bands tend to suck (more specifically, I was thinking this was going to suck because it has the Twilight goddess in it). But lo! It was actually pretty good and I had forgotten how much I loved early girl-punk (Lindsay hooked me up to keep on reminding me). Thus! This song got included because nothing says “true wuv” like overtly sexual suggestive songs. A video of the original Runaways singing it is found on YouTube (of course).
Ball and Chain – Social Distortion
Right, like how can I NOT include this song? Lyrics and YouTube video.
I Walk The Line – Johnny Cash
We’re both fans of the Man In Black, but, I was seriously contemplating including the Joaquin Phoenix version of this song on the mix instead of the Cash one because the first version of Cash I have is a terribly mixed live one. I found a studio quality version of Cash singing the song and removed Mr. Phoenix from the lineup. This is also one of our favorite songs. Here is 23 year old Cash singing this song on the Tex Ritter show in 1955.
Lover’s Day – TV On The Radio
Justin’s love of music that cannot be easily classified made me think that he would love TV on the Radio – and I was right. Well, he more or less would give them a strong “like” over love. Regardless, this is one of the first songs that we declared as ours and the one that reminds me the most of him. Since this was not a single, and there appears to be no video, only the lyrics are available.
Intergalactic – Beastie Boys
“Intergalactic,” the single off of Hello Nasty by the Beastie Boys, was released in the summer of 1998, right when Justin and I started dating the first time. According to him, I listened to Beastie Boys, Lords of Acid, Sarah Mclachlan and Afghan Whigs nonstop during that period. Since I was not, for the sake of the story, sober for most of that period, I’ll take his word. In 2009, Justin bequeathed me an art poster based off of “Intergalactic.” I knew based on the first few lines of the song, and the history behind it in regards to us, had to go into the mix. Video is available here.
God Only Knows – Beach Boys
In the world of pop and rock music, one of the definitive albums that is still seen as the holy grail of influence is the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds. Any kind of music critic, if apparently worth his or her salt, will name check this album in their review at least ONCE, regardless of the song/album/band/genre they are reviewing. Most of my die-hard music friends also name check this album and agreed that yes, one should at least have Pet Sounds in their repertoire. For Christmas 2008, I indeed received Pet Sounds as a present from Justin. “God Only Knows,” in stereo not analog, is included in the mix. Again, with the stupid still photos with musical background only available on YouTube or terribly edited live version, there is only lyrics, which are available here.
Love Will Tear Us Apart – Joy Division
I was torn about including this song, since it has many different memories associated with it but I totally wanted to reclaim it for my own again. I’ve always said if I ever got married, I’d want this played at my reception -so fuck the memories, here it is. BUT! As a bonus, Justin is the man who used LWTUA to satire it as Pug Will Tear Us Apart for Valentine’s Day – so obviously in ode to Wednesday, the song had to be included. While I know an official video exists, apparently on YouTube it\’s all about crappy cover bands, still images with the music in the background that take precedence on “official” shit. This version was recorded for the Peel Sessions and was edited with other material, so it’s slightly different than the studio. But I can dig it.