laughing til i cried... or crying til i laughed?

My office-mate was recently laid off because his full-time position was eliminated due to budget cuts. He was then immediately hired to fill the half-time temp position that they created to cover for the loss of his position. At this moment he is on the phone at his desk. Trying to sign up to receive his unemployment check.

curious

Ye who checked my blog from Libya: who are you?

as it turns out

No cookies were necessary.

WOOHOO!!!!

August 15 is The Day - the day I get to take on the privilege of paying rent for two different apartments simultaneously, since my current lease runs until September 1. But it will be worth it to get to move over the course of a couple weeks instead of one horrid day as usually happens. Volunteers will be welcome :) I will help you move in return. Many people can attest.

And thank goodness this got worked out today, because the rest of my workday was a bit of a three-ring circus. I can't say more than that without saying too much about my workplace on the internet. Let's just say, my approach of keeping my expectations low so as not to be disappointed is serving me well. Sadly, I think this is probably good advice for just about any workplace. For your sake I hope you disagree.

In entirely different news, because you totally needed to know this: I just made some kick-ass zucchini bread. And if you are going to be at the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival this weekend, come find me; I made it to share.

impatience

I found the (seemingly) perfect apartment yesterday. Looked at it over lunch hour and faxed in my rental application - complete with cover letter - about 15 minutes after returning to the office. They want someone for August 1, which really isn't that far away, though I hope they let me move in at the end of August without having to pay rent for the whole month, since I'll still be paying rent at my current house. But I would pay both if I had to. It's that great.

I hereby apologize for the fact that no matter what I'm doing or what we're talking about in the next few days (they can't take longer than a few days, can they? CAN THEY???), I will be somewhat distracted by the part of my brain simply repeating over and over "I really want that apartment, I can't wait to hear about that apartment." Really. I'm sorry. If you think you're annoyed by it...

Anyway, I'm considering taking the rental company fresh-baked cookies. Overkill?

excuses, excuses

First I went on vacation, and then I spent a week wallowing in self-pity about having to actually work for a living. And in the in-between times I was walking the dog and playing the bass and hiking and going to a fabulous local music festival and seeing an actual movie... in a theater and everything!

So, that's where I've been. Worry no more. I'm still here. Just distracted.

There's no way to adequately describe the wonderfulness of my vacation, so here are just some snippets from the past couple weeks.

There was the night of the staff concert that lasted forever and ever, after which most people stumbled out toward their dorm beds (or, just as likely, their very-late-night jam session of choice), and Jean Ritchie, living legend of traditional Appalachian ballad singing, no spring chicken herself, came into the theater lobby where I was working in the CD booth and sat down to sing shape note hymns with a very lucky few bystanders. That's my dear friend Meredith on the right, and my new friend Matt (also my neighbor - we live in the same town in southeastern Vermont so of course we had to go to western North Carolina to meet) on the left. Milt, the lovely music prof who taught my only-slightly-torturous-in-a-vacation-sort-of-way 9am music theory class, is the guy just over her left shoulder. And that's Jean's son peering down from above. There's a photo on someone else's camera of me sitting next to Matt, singing with Jean. Talk about once-in-a-lifetime magical moments.

There was also the utter hilarity of the entire week. I haven't laughed that hard, that often in a long time. Working in the CD booth was so fun that, I kid you not, I spent a lot of my free time there when I didn't have to be working. That's messed up. Not only did I get a whole lot of musical knowledge and some fabulous new friends out of it, but it also gave birth to - you heard it here first - a new band. We found ourselves singing a couple songs in harmony, and the good acoustics of the theater lobby can't take all the credit for how great we sounded together. Here are my two lovely new bandmates, and, of course, the leftover bourbon:

Of course, forming a new band with three people who live in North Carolina, Ohio and Vermont presents some logistical challenges, but we have strong faith in the power of technology, road trips to magical music festivals that A Certain Someone is going to be given absolutely no choice about going to, and the rest of that bourbon to make us utterly ready to take the show on the road. When we're all done with college and grad school and day jobs, that is. (I have a hunch I'll be ready to give up the day job before they're through with those other things.)

And speaking of music festivals, unassuming little Greenfield, Massachusetts has a very impressive thing going on, as I found out this past weekend. Apparently the Green River Festival has been happening for 22 years now, and growing every year. It's a great, chill, community-oriented festival that just happens to have people like Lucinda Williams and Mavis Staples and Los Straightjackets playing. I baked in the heat and humidity on Saturday and had a nasty dehydration headache by the time Lucinda Williams came on in the evening (and that's after 2 liters of water! that I totally just sweated out). But they did a good job on both musical entertainment (did I mention Cajun music? GOOD Cajun music!) and meteorological effects, especially since we only had to suffer a few minutes of rain to get this very intense rainbow.

Another thing I did on Saturday was see an apartment that I can but shouldn't decide to afford, where I could live alone and have space for all my stuff and all the guests and potlucks and houseplants (light! the apartment actually gets daylight! I'm not sure I remember what that's like) I could hope for. I was supposed to live this coming year with a sweet housemate in a sweet house while the house's owner moved temporarily to Mexico, but the latter fell through and I may give up on the former and just take the plunge into the living-alone scenario I've wanted to try since... well, since I first started living in apartments at all. Is this the time? I know I want it, but I've still needed to spend the last couple days asking everyone to convince me I'm not crazy.

Feel free to add your two cents on that question in the comments. Housing-related or not.

i [heart] big colorful explosions in the sky

I should not be blogging right now, no no. I should be finishing up packing for my Glorious Week Of Vacation and getting to bed. I need to be out the door around 6am to catch my flight to North Carolina. Sweet, sweet vacation. Sweet week of singing and fiddling and harmonizing and geeking out about music with lovely people in a really beautiful place. Have I mentioned how totally absurdly excited I am? It is past time for a week away.

But I just wanted to say one thing tonight: Despite all the things my country does that make me so angry and horrified and sad, and despite what it says about us that we celebrate our country by shooting off big explosions (fitting, no?), OHMYGOD fireworks are so cool. Fireworks in Wilmington, VT, no less. Wow.

So, I wanted to say that. And then I realized that I said pretty much the same thing last year. At least I'm consistent on a few things in life.

Now, to music camp! See you on the flip side~

striking terror

I started today with my boss making me want to cry.

But it's totally not what you might think (actually, I have the best boss in the world, hands down). See, she spent the last few days camping in Maine, and when she came back today she talked about listening to New Hampshire Public Radio on most of the car ride up before losing reception and switching over to AM talk radio, which is about all you can get in rural Maine.

She said NHPR had an interview with Seymour Hersch, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who's been writing lately about Bush's quiet-but-very-real preparations for attacking Iran. He talked about feeling that six months ago he never would have dreamed that we'd be where we are now, that preparations would have proceeded this far, that we'd be so ready. He never would have thought it would be so likely. But it is, he says, and there's going to continue to be a gradual, pseudo-reluctant buildup to it so that when it happens it seems like we had to do it. We'll start hearing that Israel is threatened, that they need to strike against Iran before they get attacked, but that they can't do it successfully without our support [because we have such a track record of success in these things, riiiiiight...]. Terri Gross was, apparently, in disbelief.

And then my boss switched over to AM talk radio and immediately heard the ABC news break reporting that - GUESS WHAT! - Israel needs to attack Iran, but they may not be successful without U.S. support! If we don't join them, Israeli and U.S. targets could be threatened!

[Insert vaguely threatening, slowly crescendo-ing music here.]

In a recent interview on Democracy Now, Hersch said: "I mean, this has been an issue for this president for three years. As you know, I've been writing in the New Yorker, you know, constantly about this stuff. And it doesn't go away. After three years, our submarines are there, they have the targets, our cruise missiles, our destroyers are there. The cruise missiles are loaded on 'em and all targeted. Our Air Force, the Navy in particular is going to have a big role -- not so much Navy, but Marines. Air Force and Navy, they have their target selection, they've gone through the practice. We have ground troops. One of the problems with hitting Iran, if you hit 'em big, is a lot of their anti-aircraft and anti-missile batteries are dug in underground so Marines or other units have to go in and basically blast them out. Before you bomb Iran, you have to take out their radar and their defensive systems. So you can't do it in any other way than a big package unless you want a lot of your planes shot down. And so, this has all been practice, it's been exercise. They've done it, they're ready to go. I can tell you that, no matter what Gates thinks, and no matter what Mullen thinks, if the president says "go" on January the 13th, 2009, a week before the inauguration, they will go. Because that's just the way the system is."

Here's his New Yorker article on the subject.

This isn't a joke. Apparently it doesn't matter how many of the military's top guys say we shouldn't do this. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the Secretary of Defense are both publicly saying it's a bad idea. Yet the Democrat-controlled Congress is letting it happen. Who approved that $400 million? Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. Way to lead the "opposition." Idiots.

We can't sit back and think we wouldn't be this stupid. WE ARE THIS STUPID. And I'm terrified. So I'm talking about it. Please talk about it. This is not just me being a tree-hugging liberal. We all know at least a little bit about the awful shape our military is in as a result of the war in Iraq. How in the world could we fight Iran - a country with far more organized and loyal armed forces than Iraq had - at the same time? More than half of our national budget is already going to "defense" spending. We're already in a recession that few people are really acknowledging. How could attacking Iran be anything but disastrous for the U.S.? And see, it seems like most people agree. Yet, we're sliding right toward it.

I'd like to say we can stop this, but the amazing thing is that this administration has really effectively obtained the power to do a whole lot of things in secret and pretty much do whatever it wants without oversight. As Hersch says, they've basically managed a total corruption of the democracy in which we like to think we live. So, um, I'm not actually sure we can stop it. But if we don't try, then we might as well stand on the street corner with "Bomb Iran" signs.

And gosh darn it, I was in such a good mood when I came into the office this morning.