2012

There were 20 posts published in 2012 (this is page 3 of 3).

town meeting day

breakfast on a sunny day

Sort of dumbly excited about Town Meeting day. I spaced the date last year and had work plans by the time I remembered what the date was. For someone of my political bent, the only sort of democracy I really like is direct democracy and town meeting is IT. This year has been lively in town. The town manager was removed from his position amidst a lot of rumors that can’t be confirmed or denied because everyone can’t legally disclose what happened. That same town manager (who maybe is an okay person but I didn’t like him much as a town manager) is running for selectboard which is sort of crazy. There’s a schism in town between the no-new-or-higher-taxes crowd who I consider more conservative and the “Our town is awesome let’s keep it that way” crowd which I’m more aligned with. I even became the “social media manager” of the Randolph We Love page on facebook which is about as far as I go in getting politically involved outside of my library activism. As a renter I don’t even pay taxes in this town directly, but I’d be happy to chip in a bit more to keep the library functioning as well as it does and keep the opera house open. This is a great little town.

So I’m at home the night before the meeting making cookies for the “meet the town” social hour before the meeting begins at 10 am. There are a few places online to follow the statewide happenings including VPRs page of updates and a site they link to TMDVT which is a simple tagged content aggregator. I have the day off of work and a hot dog party to go to in the evening so tomorrow will be a big day which I’m sure will be in interestingly marked contrast to SXSW which is coming up at the end of the week in Austin Texas.

your sixth favorite slippers

So my house in Topsham is officially for sale meaning there was an ad in the paper and everything. Of course, like writing the book this “for sale” process will take forever so I’m not getting all antsy but if you know someone who wants to buy a barn and some acreage nearly in the Northeast Kingdom, please let me or my excellent realtor know. I went up to the house this week because there was some concern that none of the keys worked. I got to break in to my own house which was exciting and then be further amazed that the place wasn’t as much of a mess as the Giant Disaster Area that it’s become in my mind. Winter’s tough all around, but I was certain I’d go there and see that a family of rabid racoons had taken up residence and eaten all the books and attracted bears and hill people and I’d have to evict a wandering band of hippies and meth addicts before I could make my way in through the barn. But really it was just a somewhat empty looking and cold little house that has looked better but also looked worse. I’ll be excited to sell it.

The combination of getting rid of that house and working with Kate to make plans for my dad’s house [current plan “stay the course” future plans may vary] has meant that I’m doing some more deaccessioning of my things and offloading ambient stuff generally. At the point at which you live in a house with, say, five wireless routers and you’re only using one of them, you should maybe let a few of them go. I’m all for having backups of things, but I can’t imagine a situation where I’d need to have a fourth backup router, or a third iPhone or, as the title mentions a sixth pair of slippers. And as much as I like to play the “I love you all in different ways” game with my things, I am just not going to get around to wearing my eleventh favorite t-shirt, ever. And the second favorite “dress in case I go to Burning Man again”? probably not necessary for my future happiness. Don’t get me wrong, I keep pretty much every piece of mail I’ve ever gotten [digital and acoustic] and make a distinction between unique personal possessions and mass-produced plastic-and-metal.

Of course extrapolated out there is some thinking to be done about your ninth favorite relatives and your seventh favorite vacation spot and your tenth best friend. Of course the joy of friends is that you could invite your ten best friends to some event, but I’d have a tough time wearing my eleven favorite t-shirts, though I’m sure a younger me would love to try.

grey skies and happiness

some tater tots that I made with bacon and cheese

So this weekend I had some friends down to my dad’s place to watch the Superbowl. I have always been ambivalent about sports but I am very much pro-socializing, especially in wintertime, even if wintertime is a little mild like this one is. Growing up as a somewhat alternakid, I didn’t do the normal sports stuff and going to an alternacollege just continued this trend, though I was on the volleyball team briefly which was positively jockish for Hampshire.

Anyhow, I decided to have some people over and then was like “Oh shit am I hosting a Superbowl party?” One of the things that is great about being an adult person is that all of your friends bring stuff to parties and if one or two of them doesn’t for some odd reason everyone else has brought enough to cover them. So Jim and I did some shopping and cooking because once in a blue moon I find that sort of thing really fun. I whipped up some turkey bacon tater tots [with cheddar cheese] along with some sausages, some nilla wafer and peanut butter sandwiches, and some really good oatmeal coconut chocolate chip cookies. We also had the usual assortment of chips and dips and sodas and juices. Andrea and Corey came with vegetables of various stripes. A guy I’d known only by his MetaFilter nickname [slap happy] arrived with beers and my friend Brian showed up with soft pretzels which turned out to be just the thing the whole event was missing.

And I guess we watched the game on a big tv and ate tasty food and hung out in a warm room in a cold state during a mild winter in a house that is only partly mine. And it was a good time.

Everything else has been steady state. The doctor said “It’s fine, keep waiting.” The car is still working. Work is going well. I’m still reading books at night. And the big news, if there can be said to be any big news, is that I can sort of plinka plinka out something that sounds familiar on the ukulele now. An action that resulted from a combination of going to a few lessons and actually practicing in-between them. I’ve always liked You Are My Sunshine, so I don’t care if it’s simple. It makes me happy when skies are grey, and except for a brief stint with the recorder in third grade, I’ve never really been able to do anything with musical instruments, so this is good news.

[not] the snot slideshow

Not a lot to say here because it’s mostly “I hear squeaky noises when I blow my nose and it makes my eye hurt a little.” I am sorry that some of this is a little gross. I have spared you the Snot Slideshow. You are welcome. Part of healing from this sinus surgery is blowing out the chunks of leftover stuff, scabs and mucus, that are in your sinuses. I seem to be having trouble with this for whatever reason. So, after spending probably too long thinking “Should I call the doc back or just Try Harder?” I decided to make a phone call and I have an appointment to have my nose peeked at tomorrow. I get along well with most authority figures, even most policemen, but for whatever reason I am not great with the gauntlet of people whose job it is to keep you from pestering the doctor. Not that I don’t understand why the doctor needs to not be pestered, but I have a difficult time with the “These are my bona fides!” discussion convincing them that I have very sincerely done all the things that they suggested [sinus rinsing, vaseline, hot showers, staying hydrated, taking all the medicines] and it’s not doing the trick.

I know this tendency too. When someone’s explaining something they did to their computer, something that really should not be possible, and the two options are user error or something really broken, I find it easier to blame the user. Uncharitable perhaps, but true in my experience. However this has different ramifications with tech than with health, at least that’s what I tell myself.

Anyhow, my car was also weirdly broken last week–the transmission cable snapped, how weird is that?–and so I was home typing and reading and listening to music and rinsing my nose and there’s not that much to tell. Resolutions are going well. Car is now fixed, a cheaper and faster repair than I was expecting. The night before last a few of us headed out to go aurora hunting and that was a lot of fun. We saw a pink shimmer on the horizon, in the direction where there isn’t usually a town and were pretty sure that was it and hustled back to the warmth of the car. It’s been beastly cold out in a sort of “stay inside” way the past week or so. I made some ice candle holders. For some reason that’s more fun to do when it’s -10° outside than just doing it at home in the freezer. This photo is one of them. I’m teaching a class called How to use iPhoto and needed to start the class off with some pictures that weren’t the Snot Slideshow. So far okay.

resolved

jessmayn and jim go hiking in the snow

Spent some time hanging out with the usual neighbor friends talking about resolutions. While in the past I’ve made more specific resolutions (2009, a while ago), lately the things I resolve are sort of short term things to keep doing better and not so much big changes. January is a terrible time for big changes. I find that my resolve is at an all-time low. But I’m home a lot. I have big stretches of time. My friends are around. So there are some pieces in place, pieces you can make things out of.

My resolutions are to try to finish more books, to take care of my health, to keep writing letters and postcards, to be creative and to nurture relationships with family and friends. To go outside more. To cook my own meals more. To help people solve problems. To not make anyone’s problems worse. I have one “don’t” type of resolution and it’s to not let fear keep me from doing stuff that I otherwise enjoy. Some of these ideas are hand-wavey and some are pretty targeted and specific. This past weekend Jim came up and we attacked the various little eddies of mess in my small apartment; took down some shelving that was not working, tossed out the old shoes I never wear that were too ratty to donate (I have trash phobia from growing up in the seventies and sometimes feel I’d rather store broken shit than put it in a landfill), got stuff out to the redemption center and cleaned and swept places that haven’t been cleaned and swept in longer than I’d like to mention.

That night we went out to dinner with local friends (on me, yay for getting paid in gift certificates to local restaurants) which involved driving over a snowy mountain together in the dark, had a great meal and then headed back to Randolph to eat gingerbread and listen to a CD together. Rachel had never heard Mitch Hedberg before and so we hung out at Forrest and Kelly’s and listened to a comedy album straight through, just sitting and laughing together in a warm, comfy room. And I’m no mind reader but I got the feeling that everyone there, in some way or another, was thinking some variation of “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is” and my resolution, more of a story than a sentence, is: more of this.

to-dos

The To Read pile - 1/1/12

So yesterday was the first and since I’d felt like I’d been totally social all week I had a don’t-leave-the-house day and just cleaned up all the silted-in crap that had been lingering on the “one of these days…” lists. So I got the vacuum out, and framed and hung some photos that had been sitting around, and piled all the “to read” books into one big pile, and cleaned the yik off of the dish drainer, and mailed off some overdue notes and papers and stuff, and put away some stuff that really should go away. It was great. I even got the rowing machine out and flailed around on it a bit. I was also able to blow my nose finally according to doctor’s orders. Gross but fascinating!

I woke up today in a house that didn’t seem like a project. It’s easy to blame the short grey days and prednisone and holiday eating for feeling sluggish and unmotivated, but that doesn’t really help with the actual getting up and getting stuff done part. Internet people have taught me that “fake it until you make it” tends to work for things like this, so I got up and got dressed as if I actually had stuff to do and sure enough, got stuff done.

The exercise thing is more of a small part of my life now than it was back when I was swimming at least a few miles a week. I had another shoulder problem this year which was probably brought on by NOT swimming as much (I think it corrects for some of my over-mousing). That, combined with the nose stuff and bereavement/travel stuff made it a pokey year, exercise-wise. That said, it looks like I didn’t even do an end-of-the-year exercise post last year. My goal this year is to do a few miles of something every week, and I’m happy that I have four pleasant choices of ways to do that.

Am also focusing on Albatross List tasks including things like Sell My House and Get Stuff from Indiana [formerly Seattle] and both are proceeding but if you have help/suggestions, I’m all ears. Thanks. And happy new year.