In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

We go back to Michigan next week. 

We leave Wednesday morning and arrive in the afternoon.  We’ll meet Jeremy’s dad and then drive up to the woods.  It will be weird.

Saturday the 9th is the celebration in honor of my dad.  It’ll be held in Port Huron at the hotel where I worked for 3 months in 1996 before walking out after realizing I’d rather be hung over at a family reunion than working as a hostess in the restaurant of the Thomas Edison Inn.  On 9th April I will essentially be at a family reunion.  But one where I’ll be giving a speech (not really a speech exactly, more of an extended anecdote filled toast).  Also I will probably not have toenails painted blue (although I think if I wanted I could still pull that off), and if I want a hang over I don’t have to drive to Canada to get one.  I will probably try not to have a hangover though.

And even though my nerves are starting to ratchet up, as they always do before I take a trip anywhere that involves more than a couple hours in an airplane (because they are unnatural and scary and I don’t like to think about the fact that I am in the air too much but I always do), I am looking forward to this trip.  It will be good to see friends and family and it will be good to celebrate my father’s life with them.

Hopefully, it will not snow while I’m there.  London has totally made me soft.

Everything’s Coming Up Carolyn!

1. I am now a permanent resident, thanks to Jeremy who braved the queues and surly Home Office staff at Lunar House in Croydon.
2. My accupuncture appointment got moved from 8pm to 7pm tomorrow
3. Swanky celebratory dinner tonight.
4. Someone complimented my new cardigan and told me it was a very good colour for me.  She was totally right, it is.
5. Also, right now, this very second, neither of my sacroiliac joints hurt.  This hasn’t happened for about 4 weeks now.
6. I got to pick 3 sets of numbers for the office lotto collection.  If we win, it’s totally because of me.

Childhood Obsessions

REM have a new album out.
I haven’t bought amything from them since Up, which is an okay album at best, despite the fact that they were my first favourite band and despite the fact that I still love a lot of their music.
I can still remember the exact moment I fell for this band. I was in the 7th grade, so proably about 12, doing my math homework at the kitchen table and I was hating every minute of it. So when my brother walked into the room I asked him if I could listen to one of his tapes. I didn’t care which one and I don’t honestly think I believed he would take pity on me and say yes (he was generally more interested in prolonging any suffering I happened to be experiencing) but say yes he did and he went into his room and brought me back a copy of Green.
And I was hooked. This isn’t even my favourite album of their’s anymore (tie between Life’s Rich Pageant and Automatic for the People, I think, this changes depending on mood) but it always holds a special spot in my heart.
REM were my gateway band. They started me on a road towards the independent music that would slowly begin to fill my collection, this despite the fact that Green was their first major label release.

But everything from Monster on has left me feeling sort of meh. I didn’t bother with their last album even though it got good reviews. I don’t know if that was more laziness or skepticism. Maybe both?
It’s not that I don’t think they can still make good music, I’m sure they can. I think it’s more that I wish I could hear them for the first time again, which isn’t really fair, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

ETA Oh but now this guy at the AV Club said it all better than me.  Whatever AV Club.

Radio Silence

So I haven’t posted in a while.  Lots of reasons.

1. Busy with work
2. Having troubles with the arthritis, which makes both sitting and standing hard work
3. Out and about a bit
4. Computer went a little goofy
5. Watching American Idol / hating Scotty McCreery (A LOT his smug face makes me angry)
6. Also just haven’t felt like it much

I’m still around though, I’ve had ideas.  You know, Ideas.  I just haven’t had the motivation.  I’m short on motivation lately, and what I’ve got has all gone towards trying to get appointments at the rheumatology clinic and getting a new acupuncture course set up.

I’ve done those things now though (and got a steroid shot to boot, you would not believe how productive I was yesterday) so hopefully I’ll get some more get up and go directly.

We’ve got a trip back to Michigan planned for mid-April.  That’s when my dad’s memorial party is taking place.  I’m looking forward to that and dreading it in equal measures if you want to know the truth (not that it matters if you want the truth seeing as I’ve already said it).  It’s going to be good to see family and friends but it will, obviously, still be very, very sad because he won’t be there cracking wise and drinking beers.  It’ll be more good than sad  when I get there, I’m sure, but still, the build up makes me melancholy.

My awesome cousin, Holly, is preparing a DVD with pictures of my dad over the years, she asked via her mother (my awesome aunt, Kris) for song recomendations the other day, which means I’ve had Willie Nelson stuck in my head ever since.  Mendocino County Line, to be specific.  Also Big Rock Candy Mountain for a little bit (the version from O Brother Where Art Thou?).

So, yeah, more soon.  Promise.  Things less aimless than this, in fact.  Discussion of important and/or funny things.  Or music.  I’m going to see Matt & Kim in a couple weeks, and if that doesn’t break the melancholy than nothing will.