Pictures Worth Approximately 960 Words Each

Hello, readers! Here are some pictures that show what I've been thinking about and doing for the past couple of weeks.

 This is my band, The NRIs (linked at left), playing the Black Cat. I was hopped up on cold medicine and looking forward to the single bottle of Dos Equis that I allowed myself at the end of the night. (Thanks Jess for the photo!)

I didn't take this photo, but if I had, I would have gotten to talk
 to them. I would have asked so many weird questions.

Yes, this is a photo from Wil Wheaton's Flickr. Yes, it's Wil as Fawkes and Felicia as Codex, from The Guild, season 4, which is supposed to come out in time for ComicCon. Yes, I do know when that is. These people inspire me to make things.

I took this photo of Theresa at The Red and the Black before a Machines on Vacation show. It looks so awesome because I used a "retro camera" app for my Droid Eris, the lighting was perfect, and the bar is a throwback to a French Quarter bordello.

Illustration by Michael Byers, Washington Post Magazine

I participated in the 3rd annual Washington Post Hunt, solving puzzles downtown with my good-looking, dirty-minded, married or almost-married rock star friends. We solved the three easy ones right away...then overthought a bit on the super easy one. We were opposed to the execution of the football one (as many other people were, judging by the boos Dave Barry received). And we were a bit flummoxed by the endgame anagram...but all in all, it was a fair showing. We'll rock this thing next year, now that we know what's what. This is only worth about 900 words, but it is an illustration.

Thanks Peter for the photo! Clicking will take you to his Flickr.

And here's some orange and black. These photos are out of order chronologically, but again...high-functioning ADD, here. This is how my mind is processing all these things right now.










That's it for now! I have some more blog topics on the backburner, including a rant about dressing up to drink, a flash fiction contest, and an opportunity for guest bloggers. Stay tuned!

My 99th Post

My 99th post will, as usual, not fit into any of the categories I've previously used on this blog. I have written almost a hundred posts and I still have no idea what I want this blog to be about. But, unlike me-at-this-blog's-genesis, I am okay with that. It turns out that I pull myself in so many different directions. This blog goes a million ways because I go a million ways. It's like I have ultra-high-functioning ADD. See Figure 1 for a true picture of what this is like.

Figure 1.

Actual photo of me
(with straight hair!) being
distracted by someone else's cake

I like to cook and eat. I like to drink cocktails, beer, wine, tea, and water. I like to play music.  I like to write, and I like to learn new things.^1 I like gaming and doodling. I like gadgets and thinking about tech policy. The list goes on and on. I am jealous of people who can sum themselves up in pithy observations like, "I like making complex desserts" or "I'm really into crocheting naughty things."

What the heck, Blogger? No footnote functionality?^2

Okay! Anyway. I really wanted this post to mostly be about books that my friends either have published or will be publishing soon. No lie. I know a lot of smart, funny, fabulous people who have written books. This morning, I finished reading my friend Adam's book, "Surviving Your Stupid, Stupid Decision to Go to Grad School" (linked at right on my Goodreads widget).

Adam is one of the funniest people in the world. He's also got a Ph.D. in molecular biology. He works on malaria research. And when he's not in the lab, he's out on the road, doing standup. Really funny standup. So he took the two things he knows best (graduate school and funny) and combined them into a book, which you should immediately acquire and read.

I'm cheating a bit on this next book, because it won't be released until early August. However, I was able to put it in my Goodreads widget anyway...it's "The Great Typo Hunt: Two Friends Changing the World, One Correction at a Time" by my friend Jeff and his friend Ben. Jeff and Ben run a fabulous band of renegade copyeditors known as TEAL (the Typo Eradication Advancement League). This acronym conveniently allowed them to choose a pleasant color scheme for their blog. I will be purchasing this book as soon as it comes out. Anyone who laughed at Allie Brosh's alot will surely appreciate it. (Also, you should apologize! It has feelings, and I care about this alot!)

And that about wraps it up for books. In case you haven't noticed from my multiple tweets about it, my band The NRIs is having an EP release show in May at the Black Cat. On the mainstage. The show is going to be huge, and if you're in the DC-metro area, I hope you come. Info is here.

Photo actually taken as soon
as I had the CDs in my hands

CLICK HERE TO HEAR A FREE TRACK FROM THE ROCKIN' EP YOU SEE IN THE PHOTO.

I'm going to have to think a lot about what I want my 100th post to be like. It will have to be some kind of reinvention of this blog, because that's what my posts always are. Or maybe I'll go back through the archives and find one of my cool short-shorts, and write something like it. Or continue it. Or maybe I'll have a contest. Or I'll do a collaborative story or something. Well, in any case, I won't take too long deciding, because I am trying to keep this blogging thing up. Life always tries to intervene, but I hope to be able to fend it off more successfully in the future.

---

1. The Internets cleared up the Colbert portion of the bear question for me (thanks, Margaret!), but as far as I'm concerned, the rest of it is still open for interpretation.
2. It took me 99 posts to figure out that there's no built-in footnote functionality for Blogger. I suddenly understand why "traditional journalists" are all "up in arms" about "the blogosphere."

Must be something in the air...

...I'm looking for agents again!

I don't think I'm ready to send anything out right now, as I have been thinking about more revisions. I also recently sent a copy of my novel to my friend in Uganda. If she sends any comments back to me, they will improve everything so dramatically that it's not worth querying again at the moment. I've also been toying with the idea of putting this novel (or parts of it) up on this blog. So, I'm going to put a few pages after the jump. Let me know what you think.

In other news, my band Machines on Vacation had a successful show last week. My friend Reed Sandridge, of the awesome personal philanthropy project Year of Giving, attended the show and took some excellent videos of our set. Thanks, Reed! One of the videos is also after the jump, because it doesn't appear to want to work on the main page.

All right, Internet. I have a question.

This is probably going to make me hideously unpopular with the Internet, but I have to know. WHAT IS THE DEAL WITH BEARS? And while I'm at it, I might as well ask what the deal is with SHARKS and DOLPHINS, too.

As you can see from my Goodreads widget at right, I read eeeee eee eeee! by Tao Lin. I haven't read too many other books this year, mostly because I'm afraid they'll ALSO be about bears, dolphins, and sharks. As you can guess from my intermittent posting, I am the sort of person who is only vaguely aware of things that happen on late-night television. If something particularly awesome is on late-night, I try to find it on the intertubes the next day. Although I know that Stephen Colbert has it out for bears, I can't for the life of me figure out why. And don't say that it's because they're vicious mauling machines/culturally relevant/begging for it. That's just ridiculous.

Who started all this hubbub about bears, and WHY?

Okay. Now that I've gotten that off my chest, I wanted to tell you that my band Machines on Vacation is playing a show tonight at the Velvet Lounge in DC. As always, we're DC's premier string quartet rock band. Give us a listen, then come out to the show! We have some new music since the last time you saw us. Here's the poster I made for our show:

The EP

I'm listening to the first master of the NRIs' first EP, titled 8:42AM. It's almost perfect now, and we're getting ready to get a bunch of copies printed, and to get the songs up on iTunes and everything. It's the first time I've been involved in something like this, and frankly, I'm really excited.

Growing up listening to my dad play the guitar, I always had this vague idea that I wanted to be in a band--sing in a band, really, because I didn't think there would be too many band opportunities for me as a violinist. It's one of those things I would fantasize about sometimes, in the shower, or after that first season of American Idol (when it was good), or if I'd just heard a song that I really liked. It's a popular fantasy. I could say something grad-schoolish about celebrity culture and all that, but I think this is more of a human nature thing. People like to be recognized. They like to know that their sphere of influence extends beyond themselves and their immediate families.

I have a fairly clear memory of sitting in front of Saturday Night Live one winter when I was supposed to be researching my junior paper on Hamlet, watching some sketch where the players left it all on the stage. I was sitting there under my laptop and books, thinking, "How did I miss my opportunity? Why am I hidden behind this computer, making these inane and mostly unoriginal observations about Hamlet and its interpreters, when I could be on a stage somewhere, putting it all out there? Where did I go wrong?"

Of course, that particular thought was imbued with all the histrionics of a frustrated student whose idea of foresight was seeing the end of the semester. At 20 it felt like the best part of my life was rapidly drawing to a close. My next stop, as far as I could tell at that point: administrative work and the "secretary spread" that came with it. It always feels like doors are closing, and okay, sure, I'm too old to be on American Idol now (not that I would want to be). But those doors have a tendency to close so loudly that they drown out the subtle appearance of new doors.

I got back into music in graduate school, and then when I moved to the DC-metro area, I eventually found some musicians to know and love. I waited for my new doors. They appeared. At the end of last year, I tried the knobs.

I've performed at the Velvet Lounge and Iota since then, two venues where I'd always gone as a spectator. Usually when I play in a string quartet, we're background music, but I performed in my very first featured string quartet at Silver Spring Stage. I've got a show coming up with the Machines on Vacation at The Red and the Black (Valentine's Day, opening for Barton Carroll). And the NRIs are going to try to do up this EP release party right: big venue (maybe), writeup in the Post, press release, everything.

Performing scares the hell out of me. I breezed through my Machines show--maybe it was because I knew half the audience, but it was probably because the lights bouncing off my glasses rendered me completely unable to see any further in front of me than where Ethan was sitting. At Iota, I had a moment of complete and utter panic ("WHAT AM I DOING???"), from the jaws of which I managed to snatch a decent performance. But what's the point of living if you never do anything that scares you?

I really appreciate all the support thus far, you guys. Why write--why make music--why make anything if nobody else can enjoy it? I wish I could promise that our EP show won't be snowed out like our last one was, but for now, please plan on coming. It will be so much fun.

a fragment and some musings

"It's not like everyone else is having more fun than you. I mean, everyone else is probably having just as much fun as you, but there are different time zones, you know, so it's like, you're already passed out when people in California are just starting their freakin' nightcaps or are already holding some chick's hair back in the ladies' room, you know? But it's ok because when you've already had your McMuffin or some shit and you feel better, they're just waking up with cotton shoved in their ears and that film in their mouths, especially if they drank milk drinks, like Bailey's milkshakes, I love those, but that's not the point. The point is that nobody parties all the time. And you are an idiot if you think your life is boring because you don't. You dig?" As soon as she finished talking, she snapped her gum and started to pull on the ends of her hair, a habit that belied her wisdom.

___

I've been making a lot of music recently. My husband is assistant directing Ariel Dorfman's Death and the Maiden at Silver Spring Stage. As a special opening night thing, I'll be playing the first two movements of the Schubert quartet with my friends Theresa, Kellie, and Kate. I know the quartet is used to great (negative) emotional effect in the play, but it's still my very favorite piece of music in the world.

I think I like Schubert because he was squarely between periods (Classical and Romantic) and just happened to be working at a time when he had this solid Classical framework to innovate around and all this nascent Romanticism going on around him. That's a bit technical, but the upshot is that this quartet tells one of the greatest stories (ill-fated lovers--you know it's a great story because it's always retold) and really conveys the romance of youth, the passion of maturity, and the finality of death. It's amazing.

There are lots of rehearsals on my calendar, in addition to a random recording session that Kate recruited me for on Tuesday. There are going to be some extremely talented local musicians at this session. I'm terrified, of course, but at the same time I'm excited about it. I'm a musician because I love it, but I have to work pretty hard at it. That's not a bad thing, as I've been discovering recently. It's good to pour my creative energy into things that are somewhat immediately gratifying, such as performing music.

In other news, I'm trying to get 8-9 hours of sleep per night. Have you noticed that my blogging has been more frequent? The sleeping is why I'm coherent again. Hooray!

Readers: are you seeing results from your New Year's Resolutions?

I'm procrastinating on today's wordcount

So I'm gonna make this short. I just wanted to call your attention to some links on the right hand side of my blog. I added links for the music I'm working on right now...the bands and orchestra that challenge me musically and thus (somehow) make my writing all the richer for it.

Also, if you're in the DC-metro area, the Sinfonietta is having a concert tonight. It's my first time playing first violin, and we're doing some killer 11th-position stuff. It's gonna be SWEET. See the link at right (NEW!) for more details.

Waving Goodbye

All right...we're closer to having a band name now!

Anyway, have a listen to this one and let me know what you think!

Waving Goodbye

If anyone knows how to get a player embedded in a Blogger blog, let me know!

Things have been suitably busy around here. Pat's play opened this weekend. He's doing The Laramie Project at Rockville Little Theater. The direction is wonderful, the cast is quite talented, and the story is beautifully told and completely raw with emotion. The information can be found here, if you'll be in the neighborhood next weekend: http://www.rlt-online.org

My rabble-rouser of a husband decided to let the good folks at the Westboro Baptist Church (I refuse to link to them) know that he's doing the play, especially because there was an equality march this weekend that they were coming to protest. But as far as I know, they didn't show up at the theater, and nobody had to tell anybody to eat a bag of dicks. I'm sorry, was that crass? It's hard for me to find love for people whose primary message is that God hates certain people (you can guess which ones, based on context, if you haven't seen these clowns before). It doesn't even make sense. I'm no religious scholar, to be sure, but why would an omniscient and omnipotent being create something that he/she hated? The thing about this world is that even the ugly things have something beautiful about them. Even the Westboro Baptists think that their hate is somehow helping people go to heaven. That's completely asinine, of course, but the thought is there, right? QED, God loves everyone.

I didn't mean this to become a mini-treatise on religion, but it's a big theme in the play, and I've seen it twice, now. Yes, I do go to Pat's plays more than once. I'm a good wife. I've gotten a lot of mileage out of the story about Pat's doing Antigone in college. I went a lot, even though it was during finals. Between finals and seeing Antigone over and over again, I just about wanted to off myself. So...uhh...The Laramie Project. Yeah.

Anyway, I apologize if you've gotten this blog post emailed to you a number of times before it was filled with content. I kept trying to get the embedded player to work, which it didn't.

Hope you enjoy your Columbus Day!

Aughhh

I had a really bad day at work on Friday. I know it's not the best idea to discuss specifics and such on a blog, so I won't. I tried to write about it in generalities, but that didn't work, either. Suffice it to say, I did nothing wrong, but I keep replaying everything in my head to figure out how I could have done it better. Any solution I can come up with clearly falls into the category of "not my job." Now, I really just don't want to go to work tomorrow, as I'm dreading facing this ridiculous bullshit all over again. But other people are counting on me to be there, so I'm gonna put on my big girl suit and haul arse out of bed tomorrow morning like everyone else.

Maybe someday I'll hit it big--sell my book (and the next one) and then write full time. I bet it'd only take me 6 months to finish a book, instead of a year! At least I'm seeing the light at the end of this one. I can't believe NaNoWriMo is coming up again. I signed up, and I've heard tell that there may be a little writing group starting up for November.

The book I'll be writing is the first in a four-book series. That's a bit ambitious, I know, but all (except the last one) can stand alone. I don't want to spoil it (for me or anyone else!), but I can at least tell you the tag line: "Love, war, and cupcakes at the end of the world."

My October is already looking crammed...not only do I have to finish the edits on this book, but I have to get my query letter ready to go and send it out. Then I have to start seriously planning the next book. I have the generalities down, but I need a little more of a plot outline before I'll feel comfortable writing in November.

I'll also be practicing extra hard this month for next month's concert. I survived the last rehearsal for the sole reason that my ear is not terrible. We had to play this ridiculously high passage by ourselves, and I actually did it (maybe not as confidently as I might have liked, but hey) and didn't make a fool of myself. By our next rehearsal (in two weeks), I intend to know all that music cold.

So...do you have any advice for navigating office situations that seem more like "The Office" or "Office Space" than they should? Or, conversely, can you distract me with your tales of excellent projects on your horizons?

Get Your Earbuds Ready to Groove

So I may have alluded to the fact that I've been playing with a band recently. Well. We don't have a name yet, but we're close, I think. In the meantime, I can tell you who's in it:

Ethan -- the mastermind...vox/guitars/computers
Amanda -- the cellist...she works with Ethan's wife
Ashley -- the violist with the mostest...she's the one who knew Ethan and got us involved
Theresa -- the violist who is playing violin and rockin' it
Me -- violin

As for the super exciting part of this post, here it is:

Part of our demo...let me show you it!

Side of Life

This one is called "Side of Life." Ethan wrote it. The strings you hear were recorded last night. Enjoy!

Beethoven Festival Was Beethoven-y

The Washington Sinfonietta's Beethoven festival concert has come and gone. It was good! It was a relief, really...that last movement of the symphony was HARD. I mean, it's not technically that difficult...until you play it as fast as the conductor wants it. My arm still sort of feels like it's going to fall off!

There were mixed feelings among my friends about the piano concerto. They really got into the bombast and showy fun of the Egmont overture, and it's hard to argue with a Beethoven symphony: they don't call these things "classical music" for nothing. The concerto, however, bucked expectations. The listeners said that they thought they knew where it was going, and all of the sudden, it veered off into something else. The change, they thought, was not altogether welcome. I found that it had a lot of repetition, but not necessarily productive repetition.

Afterward, we tried to hit up Palette, the restaurant attached to the Madison hotel, for some food and drink. Palette, unfortunately, was closed. However, they sat us in the lobby/lounge area of the Madison and served us from Palette's bar menu. The fried oysters were revelatory (sorry, no photos, but they weren't much to look at anyway), and they also had a mixed plate of small sandwiches (burgers, duck with provolone, and crab salad) and sweet potato fries that were all delightful.

The highlight may have been the cocktail I had, the Park Avenue:

This was a mix of bourbon, vermouth, and bitters, up with a cherry (but could also be served on the rocks). I'm usually a fan of sweeter cocktails, but I think I am learning to appreciate a well-made bourbon or whiskey drink.