WORK!

Today, I worked. It wasn't a career move, and heck, it wasn't even really a job, but it was legal over-the-counter somewhat dignified work. Theoretically, I'm going to get paid for it. So, if I keep this up on a regular basis, I might even be like a real actual person sometime soon.

And then I'll go back to grad school...yeah...

Here are some additions to my list of things I would buy if I had money. I didn't just think of them, but I forgot to include them on my previous list:

8. Ali Farka Toure CD. "Radio Mali" or "Talking Timbuktu." Not both.

9. Gym bag.

10. Gym membership! maybe. probably entry fees for Bay to Breakers and maybe Gay Games 2006. But no centipede races! (this year)

11. Probably I'd get an estimate on getting my tuba fixed and look into new gig bags that are more protective.

For the record, I think I would have heard of Norah Jones without Starbucks. For one thing, I rarely enter such an establishment so it's not like that's the way I heard her. Secondly, I think her Starbucksization followed her commercial and critical successes, so she would have been in the public eye even if that place didn't decide to make her into their wallpaper. Thirdly, I had kind of blown her off until I heard S or J (or both?) playing her stuff, and they're the ones who really clued me in and I'm sure they didn't pick it up from some McDonald's of coffee.

And stuff.

- posted by k @ 9:28 PM

 
In the News:

1. Nature is cool: Octopuses have been observed apparently trying to sneak away by walking on two arms while pretending to be a bunch of algae.

2. There is hope for humanity yet: Left-Right Coalition Rises to Oppose USA Patriot Act Provisions

Oh yeah, I meant to blog about my fitness goals and competitive centipede races. Yeah, I'll do that later. :-p
- posted by k @ 5:13 PM

 
Okay, anyway. . .

So I started that post the other day and then I had to go and now I don't really remember if I had more to say along those same lines. Thanks much to everyone who has encouraged me to update my blog, especially my sisters because they are the coolest people I know!

One thing I was going to say along the lines of a progress was that I have accomplished two goals on my long-term list of things to do: I have been CPR certified and I have taken the GRE. I'll have to re-certify in a year and I might possibly retake the GRE, but still, it's nice to cross things off that list. Another one on there is to see the Rocky Horror Picture Show in the theater with audience participation at the Parkway.

Oh, I have an Oakland Public Library card now. That's a good thing and I think it was on my longish term list of things to do.

One thing on that list I have not yet accomplished is finding a job. Hey, I'm trying. Someone said that to be a writer you have to be rejected 100 times or something like that. How many times do you have to be rejected to be employed? 42? Is the answer blowing in the wind?

Well, how many do we have? How many licks to get to the center?
If you just count from my great return to the Bay Area in the fall, and not from the summer, then....
1. UCSF MAC Job #1. Dream Job.
2. UCSF MAC Job #2. Not a dream job, but still good.
3. UCSF Neurology job. [pending...don't know yet one way or the other]
4. PLoS job. [pending...just sent my stuff in today]

Hmm. It sure seemed like there were more rejections. I'll have to remember and post them later.

Then there are the temp agencies that never called me back and the positions I wasn't quite qualified for. One piece of good news (not the only one, but the most concrete) is the substitute instructional aide gig at the school in Marin.

There are leads, still. One day when I thought my leads had dried up, I had 3 on my plate the next day. One was the Marin thing.

Well, here's a cheerier topic, and a favorite of unemployed people everywhere: Things I will buy when I have a job:
1. A bike
2. File drawers?
3. Maybe a new tea kettle
4. Possibly a new bookshelf
5. Stuff to throw a party with
6. Like mini muffin pans! mmm, maybe silicone non-stick mini muffin pans...oooo
7. Brian Wilson's "Smile" (though I should borrow JF's first to see if I like it). One of the two good CSNY "best of" CDS. A They Might Be Giants CD.

...to be continued...
- posted by k @ 11:03 PM

 
Progress/Report

Hi all. Here we are right between the Spring Equinox and Easter. Time to celebrate growth and change and all that good stuff.

Firstly, here's my poem for Spring (hey, I think it should be capitalized):

III: I
Come, Spring, reckless lover of the earth, make the forest's heart pant for utterance!
Come in gusts of disquiet where the flowers break open and jostle the new leaves!
Burst, like a rebellion of light, through the night's vigil, through the lake's dark dumbness, through the dungeon under the dust, proclaiming freedom to the shackled seeds!
Like the laughter of lightning, like the shout of a storm, break into the midst of the noisy town; free stifled word and unconscious effort, reinforce our flagging fight, conquer death!

-Rabindranath Tagore, from The Fugitive and Other Poems

I know it's the same one I used a couple of years ago, but I really like it, and re-reading it today I'm finding things in it I didn't see before. Actually, I'm leafing through these poems and really enjoying them today. Sometimes they seem too weird and Whitmanish (I like Whitman too, don't get me wrong) but with the rain outside and a cup of tea, they're just about right. Like this one, which is not seasonal, but I'm just really digging it:

III: VII
How often, great Earth, have I felt my being yearn to flow over you, sharing in the happiness of each green blade that raises its signal banner in answer to the beckoning of the blue sky!
I feel as if I had belonged to you ages before I was born. That is why, in the days when the autumn light shimmers on the mellowing ears of rice, I seem to remember a past when my mind was everywhere, and even to hear voices as of playfellows echoing from the remote and deeply veiled past.
When, in the evening, the cattle return to their folds, raising dust from the meadow paths, as the moon rises higher than the smoke ascending from the village huts, I feel sad as for some great separation that happened in the first morning of existence.

-Tagore again (duh).

I mean, clearly this is some sort of maybe Transcendentalist/Weltgeist/I don't-even-know thingy, which I have never felt particularly able to relate to, [although I can often appreciate it aesthetically (e.g. Thanatopsis, etc)]. And yet, somehow I know exactly what he means. wtf? I mean, don't you have days or moments when you just want to raise your signal banner in answer to the beckoning of the blue sky, and you know all the grasses and flowers and trees are doing it and it's the right thing to do? Maybe Suryanamaskar or some other yoga thing is a way to do that. hmm...

But I still don't believe any of that requires any sort of belief in the supernatural.
- posted by k @ 10:11 AM