Mood Music for 2010

For a couple years I was in the habit of exchanging yearly soundtracks with a close friend. They acted as a score to our lives, but it was also often an exercise in cartharsis.  But for the past two years, my life has been less emotionally tumultuous, and because of my living, working, and transportation arrangements, I have had less time for music, and therefore have missed a few soundtracks. This year was similar, but I refused to skip another year, so I threw something together. It's hard because I spent most of the year listening to a few albums over and over. As a result, there isn't much variety, so I kept it short.

Here is the track listing for 2010; I call it 12 Songs for 12 Months:

1. "Twilight Galaxy" - Metric
2. "Knotty Pine" - Dirty Projectors Featuring David Byrne
3. "Big Red Machine" - Justin Vernon & Aaron Dessner
4. "Tightrope" - Yeasayer
5. "Gentle Hour" - Yo La Tengo
6. "Changes" - Stars
7. "I Died So I Could Haunt You" - Stars
8. "Psychic City (Classixx Remix)" - Yacht
9. "Hysteric" - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
10. "Robots" - Flight of the Conchords
11. "Walking Down the Hill" - Travis
12. "King's Highway" - Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers

I thought about posting videos instead of a list but nearly none of these songs have official videos and anyway, even with only 12 songs this post would be too long for anyone to slog through if I embedded videos for all of them. However, I will mail a copy to anyone who wants one, just email me at mistymichael15@gmail.com.

Mood Music for the Holidays

So my friend NJA wrote a post dedicated to Hanukkah related videos earlier this month (and even though Hanukkah is over I would recommend checking it out!) and yesterday my friend Rachel posted about her favorite holiday music, so I thought I would follow the trend. Some of mine are pretty cheesy, probably because I grew up listening to "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer" every year at my grandmother's house.

"Nutcracker Suite"

I will listen to pretty much any version of the Nutcracker Suite. This one, though not traditional, is very upbeat and festive.

"The Chipmunk Song"

Let's be real. I was a kid during the run of the second Chipmunks television show, so I ate up all their stuff. I particularly liked Theodore because he was just plain nice.

"Carol of the Bells"

A little more traditional here. I particularly like the more traditional versions of this one, which is why I picked this video instead of say, that of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra.

"Little Saint Nick"

I had this on cassette and loved it.

"Let It Snow"

As an adult, my love for the, uh . . . classier Christmas songs has grown.

"Little Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth"

It's not necessarily that this is a favorite, but how could I leave out this video? It's also kind of fun to check out the Will Ferrell & John C. Reilly parody.

And just for fun, "Hallelujah Chorus" performed by a flash mob . . .

Haircut!

So, back in April I decided to let my hair grow for donation. It was already pretty long, I just needed a few extra inches so my stylist would have something to work with. After some research, I decided on Locks of Love. They specifically state on their website that they accept layered hair, which was definitely important. Anyway, after seven months, my hair was ready for me to make the cut.

Before

I was really looking forward to the change. However, after I made my appointment, I began to realize that I'll miss having long hair. Most of the time it's a hassle, but I'd been getting compliments on it recently and I've had long hair for most of my life, with the exception of a couple years right after high school. I was surprised I felt ambivalent, but I didn't change my mind. And I'm glad I didn't, because I think this is a really good cause. My only regret is that I couldn't do more (well, not without getting a pixie-cut), because the 10 inches I cut off will only make a chin-length wig if used at the crown. But hey, that's the length of my hair now and it looks pretty cute if I do say so myself!

After

Please forgive the mirror shots; Matt was out of town this weekend when I got it cut (yes, my guy left a long-haired lady and came back to a stranger with a bob). Anyway, I haven't had a chance to go to the post office and mail my hair, but they hard part is over. And it was easy!

October

How did a whole month fly by without any posts? I have been keeping busy in other ways, some productive, some not so much. The month started with me finishing The Color Purple for Banned Books Week. You can check out my Goodreads review here. The rest of the month was dedicated to various activities including losing/recovering my camera, beer drinking, cake making, apple crisp baking, zoo visits, vaccinations, a position change at work, and reading the entire archive of my most recent addiction, Questionable Content. Here's some more stuff I that helped me pass the month:

• New Belgium Brewing's Tour de Fat, with a bicycle parade, music, cabaret acts, beer, and plenty of silliness.

Fun with a fun-house style mirror.

• Olive picking and curing. This was fun for me because we picked our olives at this hokey place where my mom worked when I was in middle school, and where she recently started working again. We hit some bumps in the curing process, but overall it was a lot of fun.

Ripe for the picking!

Rinsing the lye solution from the olives.

• Making my Halloween costume. My friend is having a robot party so I am going as Vicky from the Eighties TV show Small Wonder. It's an obscure reference but I'm hoping someone recognizes it. I got the bright idea to sew the costume myself even though my only completed project to date is a set of kitschy, imprecisely sewn curtains for the kitchen. Additionally, I don't own a real sewing machine, instead, I have a $30 piece of plastic that I purchased at a drug store when I decided to teach myself to sew last summer. So yeah. it's been interesting.

Check it out, cats and kittens!

Cheap in every sense, but adorable!

• Apple picking with Rachel Elizabeth and her family in Julian. It was my first trip to Julian and I had a really good time. Matt and I stopped at Alpine Beer Company's new pub on the way home, and had some extremely tasty beer.

At Raven Hill Orchard

Aaaaaand I actually still need to hem my dress and make my pinafore for the party tomorrow night, so that's why you're getting this post instead of something more substantial. But next month I'll try to post more frequently/for real. Hope you've had as good of a month as I did!

Banned Books Week

Confession: I have actually never read Ulysses. Yes, I am a poser.

So, I recently (like, five minutes ago) discovered that this week is Banned Books Week! This is even more exciting than National Punctuation Day, which I missed celebrating on Friday. It is pretty astounding that people still try to get books banned. Books are an incredible source of knowledge, and I particularly love the way fiction can reveal so much about what it means to be human, in all its beautiful, terrible complexity. And the real shame is that the books that reveal the most are the ones that are the most honest, which also seems to land them on the banned and challenged book lists.

I try to understand that people who want to ban books are, in a twisted way, doing it because they care about children and young adults, but the whole idea is just disgusting and misguided, and sometimes even discriminatory. In general, the idea of restricting knowledge really gets my panties in a bunch, if you'll forgive the antiquated phrase. And when this happens, then I become somewhat irrational and unable to form coherent sentences. So I won't go on about it too much. Instead, I will focus on the positive, the freedom to read!

The American Library Association has compiled this list of the most challenged titles of 2009. While I am familiar with nearly all of the titles on the list, I haven't actually read a single one (no, not even Catcher in the Rye or The Color Purple, and not even Twilight). So this week, I am going to acknowledge Banned Books Week by going to the library and checking out one of the books on the list.

If the issue interests you, I recommend you do the same, or do one of the following:

• Check out BBW website for a list of events that may be happening in your area.
• If the books on the 2009 list don't tickle your fancy, here is another ALA list of banned/challenged books that also appear on somebody somewhere's list of the top 100 books of the 20th century. Of these, I can personally recommend The Great Gatsby, 1984, Of Mice and Men, Brave New World, Slaughterhouse Five, and Go Tell it on the Mountain, although I really need to get around to reading the others on that list as well.
• Pop over to maybe genius and read what she has to say about attempts to get the novel Speak banned.
• Read (or re-read) Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, which not only appears on the ALA's list of the top ten challenged books of 2008 (the first book is also on the 2007 list) but also features themes about knowledge and how it's accessibility is directly related to freedom. Also, the series happens to be a personal favorite of mine.
• Get a more global perspective through this list of books banned by governments according to wikipedia.
• Explore this totally sweet map featured on the BBW website:

View Book Bans and Challenges, 2007-2010 in a larger map

But most of all, celebrate your freedom to read!

Mood Music with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs

I've taken over the filing duties at work. Yep, that is exactly as thrilling as it sounds. However, it does allow me a little quality time with my iPod. It's a pretty huge task, and to keep me in a zone, I've been listening to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs latest, It's Blitz, which I'm only now discovering more than a year after it was released. The whole album is great, and while my favorite song is currently the slightly slower "Hysteric," the opening track, "Zero," does a great job of getting me pumped about putting files on shelves. Woo-hoo!

Karen O makes me want to buy hi-top sneakers and wear red lipstick everyday. Also, shopping cart shenanigans? Awesome.

Thank you . . .

Rachel

This is what friendship looks like, people.

Welcome to the second installment of my thank you series, in which I thank the people around me for increasing my life's awesomeness. This entry is dedicated to my dear friend Rachel. We started as coworkers at our university's on campus convenience store, where I "trained" her by pointing at the cash register and standing next to her while she used it on actual customers (there really was no better way at that job, it's not like we had a "practice" cash register we could use). After meeting, we bonded over our love for books, Buffy, and Batman, but our friendship has lasted because of her character. She's compassionate, intelligent, and she doesn't let gender roles define her as a person. Besides being an all around fun and reliable friend, I'd also like to thank Rachel for the following:

• Inspiring me to start a blog. Rachel's blog, Delete the Adjectives, is great. Her posts are thoughtful and honest. She also writes about herself as well as bringing attention to issues that matter to her, such as gay rights and animal welfare. For Blogathon 2009 she raised money for Best Friends Animal Society, which is a non-profit with a huge no-kill sanctuary for animals. It's a pretty special organization and given that Rachel loves dogs and would probably adopt every homeless dog she saw if she could, it was natural that she'd champion their cause.
• Not making me wear a heinous, $300 bridesmaid dress. 'Nuff said.
• Lengthy, winding conversations, in which we can chat about pretty much any topic. In fact, our guys deserve some thanks on this too, because we ladies tend monopolize the discussion when we all hang out.
• Playing video games with me even though I am terrible and can never win a racing game or play Guitar Hero without getting booed off stage.
• Introducing me to the kitty-cat dance, which produces a guaranteed smile even on the lousiest of days: