Weekend task

Looking for apartments around Chicago.

O Canada (?)

So, I think that there might be a band with this name ("Canada"). But I haven't found it on the web. Last night, I was driving around, feeling a little stressed, and I turned to a local Ann Arbor, MI radio station. A bunch of guys on guitars were playing music, and it was oddly stress-relieving. "That was music from Canada" the announcer said when they were finished. But I don't know if that actually was the name of group. Maybe it was some band from Windsor or something. Its kind of a special experience when you hear music that has that effect on you.

Not that it has anything to do with Canada except for those Canadian ice skaters, but I decided that Sasha Cohen must engage in special meditation/visualization practices, and she probably has special esoteric treatments done on her spine, in order to make her so flexible. I imagined her as a kind of secretive spiritual searcher. Was she really practicing triple axels up in those Italian mountains? Sure, all her website says about her is that in her free time, she's mostly into fashion and going "shopping." Perhaps it is a cover up for her real mission...

TV watching initiates cultural breakthrough

I've been seeing a lot of the cute Canadian figure skating couple on USA. I've also been watching some of the coverage of the Olympics on the Canadian TV channel.

Click here to see a map of Canada.

Despite the fact that I have lived for much of my life within a relatively short driving distance of another country (in the states of Washington, New York, and Michigan) I still do not remember, ever, even once in school, looking at a map of Canada like the one in the link. I mean, with all the provinces in different colors and set apart. I've see that sort of map of the U.S. at least a hundred times of course. Canada was always sort of a dull brown mass hovering over 48 shades of pinks blues yellows etcetra.

I mean I'm not saying that they never showed it. I moved around and was absent a lot. Maybe I just missed those days!

So anyways, as a result of watching the Olympics, I decided to finally find a political map of Canada online and look at it just as I've been looking at maps of the United States my whole life.

And there it is! All by itself in pastel colors. Uncanny...

Hey America

Is Idaho kind of like the Vermont of the the West?

I've never been to Idaho but it seems like it might be...

A mi me gusta Olympics pairs figure skating.

Stolen Ohio

My friend works for this website...

www.petchannel.com

I believe this may be a sample of the sort of news he retrieves...

Stolen Ohio Returns Home to Massachusetts

Girls Gone Mild

On my Chicago trip I discovered that my friend's roommate and her brother had come up with an idea for a satirical revision of "Girls Gone Wild." The video would be called "Girls Gone Mild" and it would feature attractive women in very non-revealing clothing doing seductive things such as reading in the library, knitting, etcetra. I thought it was pretty funny and orginial. However, lo and behold, I see that someone else on the internet already came up with a similar idea....

http://www.anti-drama.com/girlsgonemild.htm

Very cute.

By the way, after I clicked on the photos, I couldn't believe they were in college! Some of them look like they're about 14 years old to me. Ah, the lovely process of feeling oneself ever so s-l-o-w-l-y m-a-t-u-r-i-n-g.... (hah)

Today

I paid bills and wrote a letter about water conservation of the Great Lakes and called the insurance company about my car accident and ate pizza for lunch and now I'm eating pizza AGAIN.

Stained glass windows are cool.

I should pick up the clarinet again one of these days.

"Home"

Here's an apt description:

"I love home. I consider it a vastly superior place to any other. At the same time, I have moved, on average, once every 9 months over the past 34 years. I am also an immigrant, and before I was an immigrant I was migratory. I am quick to accept a place as home. A motel room, after five minutes, is home. Home means relief and privacy to me. I often think about the places I have lived, and the places people I know have lived; I never quite understand why we don’t all still live there. But I’ve been happy everywhere. Each state I have lived in has engaged and stimulated me. Emigration is like dying and being born again: everything is a bonus though sometimes not quite real."

Taken from an interview with M. Byrne at http://www.chicagopostmodernpoetry.com/mairead.htm

The El

Yesterday, I visited Chicago for the first time. Well, I went once when I was 12, actually, and I've been in the airport a few times. I walked past the Sears Tower, the art institute and the El.

When it came rumbling by, all the cars on the street below started honking. This happened because the train's vibrations set off the car alarms. Oh, the mighty El.

;-P

trip. book.

Just got back from a road trip. North Carolina, Virginia and New York. Also drove through: New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan.

I've been watching Charlie Rose. I think I might want to read a book called American Vertigo.

10+ happy things

1. A beautiful old white cat with squinty eyes and a nice purr...
2. music you like
3.languages to learn more about, (such as French German and Latin)
4.lakes and seas and such places
5.mystical revelations
6.you're not a prisioner of the past
7.pastels
8.Spanish
9.craftstores
10. bookstores

11.friends
12. beer and wine
13. waterfalls
14. books
15. ladies
16. gentlemen
17. applause
18. blankets to hide underneath of
19. New York
20. Seattle
21. California
22. New Mexico
23. Okay, Virginia and D.C. and North Carolina
24. Interesting histories yet to be uncovered
25. Driving in the car with good music down a long stretch of highway.

new year's jottings

New Year.
New interests:

Using the new juicer I got for Christmas :-)
Hildegard von Bingen
Learning Latin and German.
Brushing up on French and Spanish.
And...possibly...to my surprise...
Embroidery

this is just another one of those songs

that gets stuck in my head from time to time...mucho Maryland references. I didn't actually live in Maryland, in fact at times I had a well known "fear of Maryland" (which many Northern Virginians have, as in, "hey, that place/party/show/park sounds cool...aw, but its in Maryland, thats too far." Even though Maryland is only like, 10 minutes away when the traffic is good. But I kinda got over it when I was making trips back and forth between Virginia and New York when I was in school. Blue Skies Over Dundalk

Right now,

no matter what else is going on around the world...

the geese are migrating....

I might almost have a new (used) car!

Picture this in sapphire blue.

road trip to the midwest song

WELL I WENT BACK TO OHIO
BUT MY FAMILY WAS GONE
I STOOD ON THE BACK PORCH
THERE WAS NOBODY HOME
I WAS STUNNED AND AMAZED
MY CHILDHOOD MEMORIES
SLOWLY SWIRLED PAST
LIKE THE WIND THROUGH THE TREES
A, O, OH WAY TO GO OHIO


I WENT BACK TO OHIO
BUT MY PRETTY COUNTRYSIDE
HAD BEEN PAVED DOWN THE MIDDLE
BY A GOVERNMENT THAT HAD NO PRIDE
THE FARMS OF OHIO
HAD BEEN REPLACED BY SHOPPING MALLS
AND MUZAK FILLED THE AIR
FROM SENECA TO CUYAHOGA FALLS
SAID, A, O, OH WAY TO GO OHIO

The Pretenders My City Was Gone

Almanac

This is the Hidden Pond Nature Center Almanac

Did you know...

1% of Switzerland speaks a language that is a combination of Latin and Italian.

getting creative with food

brown rice
+
tomato soup
+
oregano
+
a spoonful of yogurt

tastes like pizza.