Something's happening here
Topic: Whatever
What it is ain't exactly clear
My comments don't work I've been told
And dates are wrong on some posts that are old

And we gotta stop, hey, this is dumb
Parodies of songs should be more fun ...

Sorry - I was trying to find a creative way to write about some minor technical difficulties, and well, that ain't it. I'm trying to figure out whether these glitches are caused by something I've done (in which case, they're likely to multiply as I attempt to fix them) or whether this is something I need to take up with Tripod. If you've noticed any problems, please e-mail me: surfacing(at)mail.com.

Blog hopping
Topic: Reading

So, in keeping with what seems to be a theme this week about the ups and down of blogging, I thought it might be helpful to me to make note of what I enjoy about some long-standing blogroll residents, and highlight some new ones. There's been sort of a path in my discovery of these blogs (with a few byways) that looks a little something like this: An eye-catching error in a blog summary in the Age led me to Moment to Moment, which is a regular read because Kate writes thoughtfully, with humility and humor, and takes lovely photos, to boot. I think this bit of goofiness led me to Ampersand Duck, from whom I have snitched several quizzes and who should've been in the blogroll long ago, but I just never found time to do the update during the semester. The Duck has an engaging way of writing about daily events that I enjoy and envy. Moment to Moment also led me to Barista, who has an incisive eye for oddities and absurdities. I admire the way he weaves together images, quotes, and his own thoughts into thought-provoking posts. Barista led me to Searchblog, which is becoming one of my must-reads. W is a fellow introvert, has a career and wardrobe that I can only dream of, and writes piercingly, elegantly, and humanely about her process of recovering from depression. There is so much in her blog that I relate to, that I fear, and that I am ultimately touched by. Reading your way forward through her archives is both harrowing and rewarding. Searchblog led me to Outer Life, which I find stretches my boundaries a bit, because there's much in his blog I don't relate to, but I find that the combination of his self-examination and careful, thorough observation of others makes for fascinating and entertaining posts, and his writing style is delightfully smooth. And, entirely off this 'path' of sorts, but no less worthy of mention, a friend of mine has started her own blog, Views from the Easel, in which she plans to post her artwork, discuss the process of creating art, and provide information about art galleries and events in the Washington, D.C. area.

So what has all this perusal of others' blogs led me to decide about my own? I realized that I really enjoy reading about other people's lives, and I'm going to try to write about mine in more depth. Not to say that the oddments, irate political commentary, and quizzes will disappear, but I think I want to try out a focus on a "personal essay" approach for awhile. This may be a bit challenging, because I'm usually cautious about self-revelation. Even more so than usual in this medium, since I'm going to be looking for jobs next year, and while I've attempted to at least not make it easy to link this blog to the 'real world' me through Google, it is possible that a very thorough potential employer could find it and learn more about me than I would usually care to have them know. So we'll see how this goes.

Good things from Mike Doughty
Topic: Reading
No, there will be no further ravings (at this time) about the wonders of Haughty Melodic (although for those of you keeping score at home: "Your Misfortune" is currently just edging out "American Car" in the favorite song position, I prefer the Smofe + Smang version of "Sunkeneyed Girl", but I've fallen in love with the harmonies in "Madeleine and Nine" on Haughty Melodic). Instead, I would like to highlight the goodness that is Mike's blog, which:

• always features Mike's photographs, which are usually interesting, often entertaining, and occasionally amazing.
• pointed me to Melody Gardot, a Philadelphia singer-songwriter whose EP I long to own, if only so I can stop burning up my limited bandwidth listening to the songs that are available online.
• Pithily summed up my feelings toward Rent, with which I have long had a conflicted relationship, thusly: 'And yet. I was totally moved by the music and the movie. I spent much of it on the verge of tears. The arrangements were so corny, but those big soaring notes sucked my heart out through my nose.'

Good times. Thanks to my recent, heroic efforts at procrastination, my current process of thinking through what I'd like to do with this blog, and my desire to share the blogs that are the fruits of that procrastination and the inspiration for the re-thinking, you, my small but devoted audience, have several more posts like this to look forward to in coming weeks. Complain now or forever hold your peace. Oh, and don't be surprised if the looks of things around here change. I've got that 'need to rearrange the furniture' feeling, but as that would be totally unproductive in my wee little flat, that urge is likely to get channelled into fussing with new formats and colors here. Bear with me, and don't be afraid to scream if something hurts your retinas.

Did something today!
Topic: Quotidiana

Not only did I do some desperately needed housecleaning, I actully had a social engagement. I went with Mama Bear to her niece's dance recital.

Um. Perhaps I'd better quickly recap the relationships, as its been awhile since I've talked about any of The Good Doctors' family: The Good Doctors are friends of mine - I met them when Mrs. Dr. taught for a year at my college on a Fulbright exchange. They adopted me when I moved to Melbourne. Mama Bear is their daughter, and the aforementioned dancing niece, Gracious, is The Good Doctors' oldest son's child. Re-reading that, I don't know if it clarified anything at all, but I'm going to move along as if it did.

The show opened with two numbers from Chicago performed by teenagers, which, no. Teenagers do not have the edge to pull off Chicago. Or, if there are any who do, they wouldn't be caught dead doing musical theater. Not to trash teenagers doing musical theater, but I was there to see small children in costume trying very hard to remember their steps and keep time to the music.

Fortunately, the curtain lifted on the third number to reveal grinning little girls in pastel dresses fidgeting and shushing each other in the wings. I haven't had a flashback to my own dance recital days in many, many years, but suddenly I remembered the nervous energy generated by dozens of kids milling around backstage, the excited peering around curtains looking for my family in the audience, the unfamiliar stickiness of hairspray and makeup, the frisson of excitement associated with the grown-up feeling of wearing makeup, the unsettling itch that is peculiar to nylon and polyester recital costumes, and the petty discomforts of their scratchy tulle and/or sequin trims.

The girls in pastel were maybe all of four, and the choreography of their number was as much crowd control as anything, and they were adorable. Particularly the one on the end nearest where I was sitting, who was one of the littlest, and who had a very solemn round face with a look of quiet concentration. Others around her were grinning at the audience, or looking into the wings to follow their teachers, but she had her gaze fixed in the distance, and didn't miss a step. Myself, I was a wing-looker. I was never sure I wasn't going to forget something, and I dreaded the thought of messing up the steps.

Gracious's group was on soon after and they were also precious. Gracious has an enormous ear-to-ear smile that's a real attention-getter, and she was eating up the attention from the audience. The kids were adorable, and they were clearly having fun with their routine, so I felt a bit grinchy hating the choreography as much as I did. Call me cranky and old-fashioned, but I just don't think five and six-year-olds need to be doing shimmies or hip shakes. But that's an issue with the teachers' choices, not the kids, and the kids were clearly having a blast.

I had that problem through most of the rest of the recital - there was a lot of costuming and choreography that I just didn't find age appropriate. But every time I'd start to feel irritated about it, they'd trot out the teeny-tinies to shuffle through a number that threatened to explode with cuteness. People should be reported for gross exploitation of adorableness. And there was the one time they mixed it up by throwing in a set of ten-to-twelve year olds who were impressively tight in their tap number set to, I kid you not, a disco version of 'Chim Chim Cher-ee' (you know, the chimney sweep song from Mary Poppins). Surreal.

Gracious was bubbling over with energy when we met with her after the show, and she's a fairly high-energy kid to start with. She was quite happy with being the center of attention. I sense that there's a little performer in the works, and I wish her parents much luck. A large part of the proof that my parents' love for their children is unconditional lies in the fact that, from the time I started dance lessons at about age 4 until my sister's senior musical in high school, our parents invested approximately 20 years of their lives in recitals, pageants, choir performances, and school plays and musicals in which their five children had parts ranging from miniscule to fairly significant, and did it all with a smile and a big 'well done!' at the end. Twenty years of ferrying children to classes, practices, rehearsals. Twenty years of sitting in folding chairs in gymnasiums and auditorium seats of highly dubious comfort. Twenty years of enthusiastic applause. Its unquestionably a labor of love.

Edited because I had a glance through my archives, and it should be 'Mama Bear', not 'Mama Tiger'. Bad blogger, forgetting my own nicknames for people.

And so it begins
Topic: Illustrated
I look forward to my evening walks becoming more entertaining as these spring up around the neighborhood like electrified holiday mushrooms:

Nothing says "Christmas" like a house that generates more light than the streetlamps.

What I do when I don't have deadlines
Topic: Whatever
Nothing.

And it is glorious.

Granted, I would've liked to have gone shopping yesterday, but first there were bouts of driving rain, and then it was hot and muggy, so only mall shopping would've been suitable, and I was in no mood for the mall.

So instead I did nothing. I sat around reading, catching up on e-mail, and chatting on IM and the phone with various people. Enjoying the utter absence of guilt, the total lack of nagging 'I really should be doing something else' thoughts, the quiet relief of having gotten everything out of the way. I liked it so much, I'm doing it again today. And I just might do it again tomorrow.

Thankfully
Topic: Whatever
Thankfully, I handed in my last essay yesterday.

Thankfully, I have patient friends who were tolerant of my sleep-deprived fussing about how bad said essay was.

Thankfully, the semester is now officially over for me, and I will not be doing any more fussing over essays for months.

Thankfully, Dee convinced her mom to help her make Thanksgiving dinner last night, despite the heat. It was goooooooooood.

Thankfully, Dee paid attention when I said, "Please make lots of mashed potatoes." I've had my fix and I'm set until next year.

Thankfully, eating Thanksgiving dinner when it's 80 degrees out means that it doesn't feel like Thanksgiving so I don't get homesick.

Thankfully, the semester is over, and I have a possible lead on a cheap vacation in Tasmania. I'm ready to get away for a little while.

Thankfully, the semester is over!!

Taking deep breaths
Topic: Uni
The Dreadful Essay is out of my hands. I was in an epic snit about it early this afternoon, hating everything having to do with it, and life in general. And it's funny, but every time I go into uni in a particularly foul mood, I invariably cross paths with the same person: one of the guys on the editorial board of the journal (which, coincidentally, has just come back from the printers, and will have its official launch next week). This poor guy has seen me in pretty much every just-about-to-hit-meltdown state I have: bitterness, rage, giddiness, incoherence. I'm sure I don't even want to know what his impression of my general mental state must be. Fortunately, he's got a sense of humor, and a good sense for exactly how much to indulge my little drama fits, and he's just such a decent sort of person (the perfect stereotype of a Canadian, in that respect) that even a short chat with him prompts me to attempt to behave decently. He's made a number of other people's lives a little more pleasant simply because he's able to get me to mellow out a bit.

For instance, the people at this evening's year-end party for the gender studies program: I had meant to only stay for an hour or so, because I didn't think there would be many people there, and because I knew I needed to get started on my next essay. Four hours later, I finally pried myself away from the die-hard remnants of the group who wanted to move the party downtown. I hate being responsible. I need the practice, though. I must get better at persuading myself that yes, I do need to leave the group of lovely people I'm having a good time with, before the entire night and part of the next morning just ... disappears. Because disappearing mornings lead to lost weekends, and an accumulation of lost weekends tends to cause nasty levels of stress when due dates start creeping up. I don't think these were the lessons I was expecting to learn from postgrad study, but at least I'm learning something.

I've hit word count
Topic: Uni
. . . and a wall. I hate it when this happens. It's 8 p.m., I've reached the minimum length at which The Dreadful Essay (it has so earned those capital letters) can be handed in without undue fiddling with margins and typefaces to make it look sufficiently long, but my argument is weak, to say the least, and I can't figure out how to wrap it up. My brain has stopped: not only can it no longer find polysyllabic words with which to (hopefully) distract the reader from the fact that I am really, really stretching points in an effort to get this essay done on time, it is, effectively, doing the mental equivalent of ::finger to lips:: BBBBUHBBBBUHBBBBUBBBUHBBBBUHBB

Yep, I've lost it. It is at this point that I am always tempted to say 'To hell with it!' and just slap a conclusion on the sucker because, at this particular moment, I feel that 'it'll pass' is a sufficiently high aspiration.

The problem is, I always hit this point too early in the evening. It's 8 p.m. Even if I were to say 'to hell with it', I've still got at least four hours before I'm tired enough go to bed. Four long hours, in which guilt will build, until I break down, return to my computer, and attempt to fix the most egregious problems with the essay. Which, on certain similar and extremely unfortunately occasions in the past, has meant rewriting the thing from scratch. I'm not type A, I'm not a perfectionist, but I am a recovering Catholic school overachiever, and the combination of guilt and the threat of academic failure gets me every time.

I suppose it's time for a walk, followed by a strong pot of tea. I would just skip straight to the tea, but I've eaten at least a pound and a half of chocolate this week. I'm not even joking. PMS and essays are an unkind combination.

Up(all night)date: Now I'm over the maximum word count, and still don't have an introduction. (sigh) The good news is that my argument isn't as weak as I thought it was. I hadn't intended for this to be an all-night session, but I'm wound up, and the people downstairs are carrying on at a fairly ridiculous volume, considering that it's after 2 a.m. Ordinarily I'd be seeing several shades of red, but tonight, I don't mind the 'company', even if it is obnoxiously drunk and has appalling taste in music. I'd almost forgotten what the after-2:00 mellow mood feels like. Hopefully I'll get some sleep before the post-3:00 panic sets in.

Hit list
Topic: Odds and ends
Think Progress has uncovered the latest salvo in the battle for America's soul: a musical duo called The Right Brothers and their single "Bush Was Right". A right-wing advocacy group is trying to generate enough buzz about the group to get them on MTV, and I wish them luck. After all, I couldn't get enough of the brilliant musical stylings and deep lyrics of "We Didn't Start the Fire" the first time around, so regurgitating it at Blink 182 speeds with incisive commentary like "France, WRONG!" seems to me like an absolutely necessary addition to the pop music soundscape.

(found on TINO, which promised me laughter, but neglected to mention that it would be through tears and a distinct sensation of nausea)

"Zell Miller, RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT!"

(hee)
(sob)
(spew)