A Tome Wrapped in Plastic

     It's the literary event of the year, and I just had to be a part of it.  Of course, before I knew it was such a big deal, and I didn't think it was, well, a big deal.  The Autobiography of Mark Twain was released a few weeks ago, apparently to a much higher demand than was anticipated.  The story was that book stores couldn't keep it on the shelves, Amazon.com was sold out, and the printers couldn't keep up.  Well, this must be good, and I wanted to be a part of it. 
     In a seemingly unrelated series of events, I decided to turn left instead of right out the Metro station on my way home.  My brain was getting mushy from all the *not-reading* I had been doing, so I wanted to make a trip to Kramerbooks.  I wasn't really looking for a book, but being around them often helps feed my soul.  I stumbled across the Portable Jack London reader, Eating the Dinosaur, and also decided to pick up a magazine for my morning commute.  I had spent at least an hour getting bumped and pardoned, so it was time to leave.  There was a moment when I thought "I wonder if they have the Mark Twain Autobiography," but then considered the fact that huge booksellers were out, and I didn't want to appear to be uninformed. 
     I trudged by way to the line and just before handing the cashier my credit card I looked up and saw it: a tome wrapped in plastic.  Something came over me, and for a brief moment I was that person who casually reads thousand page autobiographies.  "Oh, you do have the Mark Twain Autobiography!  Great."  There was another gentleman behind the counter who was also unaware of their existence.   The lovely cashier (bookseller?) informed him they just came in, and indeed, there was a stack of them "over there" on the floor.  He was probably tripping over them.  The gentleman pulled a copy off the shelf and set it on the counter. 
     "So, this too?" the cashier asked.
     I certainly couldn't say no now, after I made such a to-do about it.  Clearly, it was the one thing I had been looking for all of my life.  "Yes, please, that one too."  I closed my eyes and handed over my credit card, knowing that tomes wrapped in plastic are generally not cheap.  It's a good thing I like cheap food. or in this case, perhaps no food at all.  At least my soul will be full. 

     Also, I'd like to note, this autobiography is only Volume One.  There are two more volumes in the works.  From the grave.  The anticipation is palpable. 

Public Transportation

     When the Metro stops, the automated lady voice says "Stand back, to allow customers to exit.  When boarding, please move to the center of the car."  However, from the way people behave, you'd think she yelled "GO! GO! GO!  MOVE IT! MOVE IT! THERE'S NO TIME!"
     Riding the Metro is exhausting and exasperating.  So much so, I don't really have much more to say about it.  I would like to listen to sweet Christmas music, and maybe some Temper Trap.   

Christmas Songs: A List

One of the things I like about Christmas is the music.  But not all of the music.  Some of the music is awful, and then combine it with hearing it over and over, it's bloody-ear inducingly horrible.  Wikipedia provided a list of traditional Christmas songs, and popular Christmas songs.  I provide that list with my opinion of each song.

• Angels We Have Heard on High - I like the middle part.  "Gloooooooooria." 
• Away in a Manger - Too little substance.  I hate the line "I love you Lord Jesus."  You just met the kid, how can you love him already?
• Bring a Torch, Jeanette, Isabella - Uuuuuuh.  I don't think this is real.
• Coventry Carol - Or this one.
• Deck the Halls - Fun and merriment, with two syllables!
• Ding Dong Merrily on High - Nope.
• The First Noël - The meter is off, so that's irritating, and it's pretty repetitive.   I will allow for one to two listens.
• Gabriel's Message - Fake.
• Go Tell It on the Mountain - Jewel does a fun rendition of this song.  I like it.
• God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen - Fun to sing along to.  The Barenaked Ladies with Sarah McLachlan have an awesome version of this.  I'll listen to it at any time of the year.
• Good King Wenceslas - Only good in Love Actually when Hugh Grant's character sings it to the little girl at the door and his butler/attendant person comes in with the bass.
• Hark! The Herald Angels Sing - I do like it.  I like saying "Hark!" 
• Here We Come A-Wassailing - American's shouldn't say things like A-Wassailing.  This is probably a Canadian song.  I don't like it. 
• The Holly and the Ivy - Made up.
• I Saw Three Ships - The Barenaked Ladies version is great.  Otherwise, I miss the point of it.  I don't read the Bible, but I don't think there were ships.  I think there were shepherds, and they walked.  Perhaps this is an alternate telling, about a different Jesus.  I don't really follow any of it.  Perhaps I should listen to the words more closely. 
• I Wonder as I Wander - Blech.  Me thinks you should pay attention while you wander, so you don't get lost. 
• In Dulci Jubilo - They're making this up, right?
• In the Bleak Midwinter - Probably depressing, but I've never heard it.
• It Came upon the Midnight Clear - Not awful.
• Joy to the World - This one is fun to sing with lots of people.  I approve.
• Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming - No.
• O Come All Ye Faithful - Yes, I like this one.  I think we sang it when I was a kid.  I have fond memories of it. 
• O Come, O Come, Emmanuel - I probably get this one mixed up with the other O Come song.  You just need one.  Stay where you are, Emmanuel. 
• O Holy Night - It's a nice melody, a pretty decent tune.  A little slow though.  It's not going on a holiday mix for parties, that's for sure. 
• O Little Town of Bethlehem - Too slow.  But I can remember the words, and they're not awful words, so it's ok. 
• Once in Royal David's City - Canadian.  It must be. 
• Silent Night - I used to love it, and now I think it's only ok.  It is nice when sung by a choir with the "peace, peace" chorus under it.
• Sussex Carol - Huh?
• The Twelve Days of Christmas - I love it when I don't have to listen to all twelve verses.  The John Denver and the Muppets version is the B-Est version of this song. 
• We Three Kings of Orient Are - Don't end a sentence in a preposition, son, at.
• We Wish You a Merry Christmas - Whereas it is incredibly repetitive, it's also easy to remember when you've had too much nog, and short enough to get over.
• Wexford Carol - It this related to Sussex Carol?
• What Child Is This - I think you know what child that is.  Sheesh.
• While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks - Nope.  Probably not really about Christmas.

• The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire) – I like the song, but I think by now, we can stop using the parentheticals in the title.  If you don't know it's called "The Christmas Song" then you don't get to sing it. 
• Santa Claus Is Coming to Town – and he's a stalker.  It's creepy. 
• Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas – Yes.  It's sweet.  I like it.
• Winter Wonderland– As a kid who grew up with wintery Christmases, I like this song.
• White Christmas – For the same reason I like Winter Wonderland.  Maybe I think they're the same song.  
• Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! – I concur, please let it snow. 
• Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer – I'm over this song.  But do you recall the most famous reindeer of all?  Yes, of course! Because he's the most famous.  It's the other eight shit-for-brains reindeer we don't remember. 
• Jingle Bell Rock – It's fun and jaunty, and I love to sing along.  Woo!
• I'll Be Home for Christmas – It starts off sweet, but then it turns out he probably won't be home.  If only in his dreams.  Well, eff you buddy, keep that part to yourself!
• The Little Drummer Boy – I used to love this one, but the more it's on, the more I'm bothered by the drums. 
• Sleigh Ride – Yep.  I would go on a Sleigh Ride with these people. 
• It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year – Jingle-belling? Mistle-Toeing?  No.
• Silver Bells – Too slow for me. 
• Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree – I love this one if for no other reason that the awesome scene in Home Alone. 
• Feliz Navidad – In spanish, or not in spanish, but not both.  It's insulting.   
• Blue Christmas – De-Press-Ing.  
• Frosty the Snowman – The Frost story just doesn't work for me.
• A Holly Jolly Christmas – I think a cup of cheer is probably rum or brandy, and I can support that.   
• I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus – So first the kid thinks his mommy is a whore, then he finds out it's just that his underdeveloped mind was too dumb to realize Santa was fake.  A Merry Christmas indeed. 
• Here Comes Santa Claus (Right Down Santa Claus Lane) – I don't think there is a Santa Claus Lane.  And I really really hate how they mix God and Santa in this one.  Gifts for all God's Children?  No.  Wrong.  Santa was not present at the birth of Jesus.  It's like saying Captain Spok was on the Death Star. 
• It's Beginning To Look a Lot Like Christmas – Maybe in 1932.
• (There's No Place Like) Home for the Holidays – Because home is awful, and at the holidays, the awful is magnified?  Sure.  But otherwise, I'd rather be anywhere else than home for the holidays. 
• Carol of the Bells – Yes, my favorite Christmas song of all time.  Sung by a choir, it is awesome.  Home Alone did a great version of this song.
• Santa Baby – Seriously?  I could really do without this song. 
• Wonderful Christmastime – I get that Paul McCartney is a genius, but I don't care for this song.  Christmastime?  As one word?  I don't get it. 

A few were left out from Wikipedia, presumably because they weren't popular enough.  I love "Baby, It's Cold Outside" even though it's not strictly Christmas.  Of course the one performed by Zooey Deschanel in Elf is great, but also, the band Over The Rhine knocks it out of the park.  Also, I want to mention "All I Want for Christmas Is You" by Vince Vance and the Valiants.  It is not the song by Mariah Carey.  Check it out.  A much better version of that Mariah Carey song is performed by Olivia Olson, from the Love Actually soundtrack.  And I love the Home Alone soundtrack as a whole.  That is a great collection of holiday music.

Simple Tasks Made Difficult

     In an effort to control the wild temperature variations in my apartment, I decided to look into some good old fashioned window insulation.  You know- the plastic film that you use a blow dryer on to create some sort of hermetic seal.   I did a little research and figured it would be a good, easy, cheap solution.
     Six hours later I had wrinkled plastic covering half my windows.  The package made it look so simple, but the universe made it so difficult.
     Error #1:  My math skills.  I measured my windows and they are each 6 feet high.  A few of them are 3 feet wide, a few of them are narrower.  There are 5 windows total.  According to the box, each plastic sheet was 62" by 34".  Apparently I didn't know the difference between 62" and 72".  Yes, as you can see, a 62" plastic sheet is not long enough to cover a 6' window.  Luckily, I had gotten the box for 9 windows, so I would have extra.  This is possibly to only thing I did right.
     In order to fix this problem, I "pieced" the plastic together, using half on the top, putting more tape down, and then doing the bottom half.  It worked better in theory than in execution.
     Error #2:  Bookcases in front of the windows.  The windows in the living room are shaped like those in a bay window, but with no bay-window seat.  In front of the two narrower windows are book cases approximately 3 feet tall packed full of books.  Very heavy books.  I've tried to move these book cases before and it can't really be done.  You have to take all of the books off and then move the book cases.  It takes a long time.  I decided instead to work around the bookcases.  This was painful.
     Error #3:  The sun goes down at 3pm.  Well, it's actually around 5, and starts getting dark around 4:30.  I really wanted to have all of this done before sun set so I didn't have to deal with finding plugs for lamps and hair dryers.  I failed.
     Error #4:  Cords on hairdryers are not 7 feet long.  It had not occurred to me until the moment I was standing at the window, hair dryer in hand, not even close to the top of the window.  Of course hair dryers don't have cords that are 7 feet long!  Why would they?  Well, for this.  Clearly I needed an extension cord, but that was easier said than done.  I'm pretty sure all my true extension cords were in storage.  I had surge protectors in my room that would have to suffice.  This involved unplugging my clocks and lamps, and disheveling my bed to get to it.
     Error #5: Tape is sticky, and I'm impatient.  The instructions state to wait 15 minutes after you apply the tape to put up the plastic.  Well, that's fine the first time around, but eventually, the sun starts going down and muscles start to hurt, so you just put tape up and apply plastic. And then, of course, the  tape doesn't stick.  Except that it sticks to you, and to the plastic, but not the wall, where it needs to be.  You end up with a ball of tape and plastic at the corner of the window and you hope you just melt the plastic to the window to create a seal.  (This does not work.)
     Error #6:  Two hands are better than one, four hands are better than two.  There's a decent amount of trial and error involved when figuring out just how to stick the plastic to the tape and then smooth it out and stick it to the other sides of the tape.  I imagine that if I were doing this with someone else, we would have attached, pulled down, and reattached the first one using a healthy amount of respectful debate.  Instead, if it stuck, it stayed.  Hence all the wrinkles.
     Error #7:  I have no step stool, nor am I 7 feet tall.  There was a lot of standing on chairs, tables, and windowsills.  It's actually amazing I didn't break anything.

     Error #8:  Trimming the plastic did not happen.  It was late, I was tired, I was in pain.  So I just put the blinds back up and left the excess plastic on the windows.  I started to trim it on one window, and it because obvious that it was going to take a level of precision, determination, and caring that I did not have.  It looks a little trashy, but it was a risk I already knew I was taking with the whole premise of the endeavor.  

I really hope that the plastic on my windows helps, and at the very least, doesn't hurt.  It wasn't a huge financial investment- the whole kit was $20, but it was an emotionally trying time for me.

I Like My Hat

    I have an awesome winter hat that I purchased a few years ago.  It's brown knit with fleece on the inside and ear flaps with braided *things* hanging down.  It is both cute and functional.  It was a little chilly this morning when I left the house, so I decided to wear my hat.  The risk of hat hair doesn't bother me.
     As I arrived to work, I was removing my hat and a coworker was standing outside the door, just about to go in.  The conversation went like this:
  
    Co Worker: You're wearing your swiss little girl hat?
    Me: I guess.  I like the ear flaps, they keep my ears warm.
    Co Worker: It's not even winter.

Since this was a walk and talk I kept going towards my desk as he peeled off to his.  I should mention he was actively laughing at the hat.   I reviewed the conversation in my head.  At what point did it being officially winter become a prerequisite for keeping ears warm?  Maybe I have a medical condition.  Also, I wasn't emphatic about my ears being cold.  However, I would rather just wear the hat and ensure they're warm than pretend to be a hero by not wearing a hat because it's not winter yet.   It's not a badge of honor to deal with unusually cold mornings by simply not accepting them. This speaks to Wednesday's post about my consternation over the weather.  It's all a guessing game, but I choose to guess on the side of just taking my hat places.  I'd rather look foolish for wearing a hat when it's not quite cold enough than looking like a fool for getting frostbite on my ears. 
   My hat is awesome.  I'm going to continue to wear it, whether or not it is in fact winter. 

The Blank Page Is Intimidating

     Even in blogger, the blinking cursor and blank white space taunt me.  Often what works for me is to just get started, regardless of what it is.  Just get a few lines typed out, and when the page isn't blank, it isn't so scary anymore.  This is why I don't let people read my outlines, or worse yet, the journal entries that lead up to the idea for the outlines.  They are riddled with ridiculous non sequiturs, sentence fragments, and lists of foods I want to eat.
     And now that that's out of the way, I can talk about what I really wanted to talk about!  It's a little personal, and writing it out makes me feel a little vulnerable, but I'm going for it anyway.  I finished writing the first draft of my pilot.  I acknowledge it's only the first draft, and there is work still to be done, but writing "END OF SHOW" at the end felt good.  And then I drift off the place of fantasy and dreams and I think someday, and someday soon, this'll get picked up.  Why wouldn't it?  This script is meant to be realized on television, and I am meant to be its show runner.   There may be a few obstacles, but they are insignificant.   Most of them can be solved my moving.  I let myself steep in that fantasy land for a while because if I believe in it, it has a greater chance of coming true.
     Yesterday, my package from Amazon arrived- Parks and Recreation Season 2, Modern Family Season 1, 30 Rock Season 4, and the 30 Rock Soundtrack (Collector's Edition).  Happy Chanukah to me!   I tore open that box with the fervor of a five year old.  I read the 30 Rock Soundtrack liner notes book from cover to cover and immediately put it in my computer.  I watched the special features for both Modern Family and Parks&Rec, including the Season Three sneak peek.

I'm so excited for season three. I want a copy of the Ron Swanson Pyramid. I'll post it on my wall, and use to to become a perfect human.

      This actually took a little longer than I expected, but it was totally worth it. Laundry can always be put off another day.  I put on an episode of Arrested Development while getting ready for bed, and then to safely take me to dream land, I listened to, yes, the 30 Rock Soundtrack.
     I'm not necessarily a hard core dreamologist (I made that up, because I don't know what it would be called), but I do understand that dreams are formed from what is in one's subconscious.  Sometimes, the subconscious isn't as far down there as one might have thought.  I had the most wonderful dream where I met Tina Fey, somehow at her house, where she seemed to be expecting me to be there, yet I was not expecting her.  There was a multi-layered surprise that my friends (or apparently mutual friends?) had set up, and I ended up under dressed for attending the Oscars with Tina Fey, but we had become fast friends when I made her a cake.  I also tripped over her, but she was very gracious about it, assuming partial blame for being in the way, and asked to read my script.  About the time my head was going to explode in the dream, something woke me up.  I wanted so very badly to stay in that dream.  And again, I don't usually put a lot of credence in my dreams, but this one I want  to hold onto forever.  Maybe this time, this one means something.

Holy Crap, It's December

     I'm not a person who normally comments on the passing of time.  I abhor conversations about Daylight Savings Time and those that being with "Where has the time gone?"  I know where the time went- it went to the past.  My surprise at the coming of December is less about acknowledging the passing of time, and more about acclimating to my current climate.
     I'm not sure if this weather is typical, but I feel as though any sort of normality as far as weather patterns are concerned have been tossed out the window ever since we started recognizing global warming.  I've lived in various parts of the United States, and usually have a pretty easy time acclimating to the region.  Yet this time around, it's thrown me for a loop.  I've even lived in this climate before, yet somehow it was easier to adjust to before.  Also, to be clear, I do understand the difference between weather and climate.  A decent part of my consternation comes from the unpredictability of the weather juxtaposed to the climate. 
     It's December, so it should probably be cold.  Except I live in that pesky subtropical-humid region, so perhaps it won't be cold.  However, it could be, because it just might; there's almost no way to tell.  There probably won't be snow, except there was tons of it last year.  So there could be a lot this year.  Maybe giant snow storms take a year off.  I have no idea. 
     I miss the predictability of the pre-global warming subarctic climate of my youth.  It was December, it was Michigan, it was cold.  To further prove my point, I just received an e-note from my mother stating that it was snowing and there were several traffic accidents.  She blamed it on being December 1st.
     I'm not sure what it is this time around that has got me all in a tizzy about the weather.  It was monsoon season this morning; something I am not used to.  The wind was haling and the rain was pouring down.  In my head I thought "wind, rain, December.  I better put on a hat."  That hat was not needed.  It was still about 65 degrees outside and I was quite overdressed.  A boring weather conversation with a coworker revealed the fact that it was predicted to be 28 degrees tonight.  Where the hell do I live?  Venus?
     And another thing about December- there should be more Christmas spirit.  Full disclosure: I don't actually celebrate Christmas, but I like that others do.  Other than the brief Christmas Music listening stint, I have very little spirit.  I think if it were colder, I would have more.  Even though I am fully aware of the calendar, it still feels too soon.  Maybe by December 6th I can catch some.