Happy (belated) Thanksgiving! Though it was hard for me to celebrate without my family, Thanksgiving still rocked like a thing that rocks. I went to Jack's aunt and uncle's house with four other friends (including the illustrious Prophet) for Thanksgiving dinner. After about four hours of food and fun my stomach hurt from a) the enormous quantity of food I had consumed and b) laughing really hard. Then we drove off, singing along with the radio all the way, to stop and visit at another house with a big family, a fire in the fireplace and apple pie. Good times. Then, on Friday I saw the worst movie I have ever seen. Seriously, if you were considering seeing Alexander, save your money and your time and avoid it like the plague. It was purely awful. A monstrosity of a movie. Historical inaccuracy, a confused plot-line, laughably bad dialogue and weak acting (not to mention Colin Farrell's shockingly bad dye-job) all conspired to make a movie so bad that I had no qualms about walking out well before it was over. Instead of sitting it out I went walked over to Vons with two of the friends I was there with and bought bread, cheese and grapes. We snacked in the movie theater parking lot while ridiculing the movie. Saturday was probably one of the best days this semester. We had a dinner party at Jack's house that was a very good time. I spent all morning grocery shopping for it with the other two girls, and, being the strange person that I am, I was thrilled to have a reason to do some hardcore gorcery shopping. I haven't had a good reason to do that since mid-August, so it was a nice opportunity. We went to three different grocery stores to get all the ingredients we needed (shrimps, scallions, butter, baby spinach, portabella mushrooms, tomatoes, chevre, about five loaves of really nice bread, fizzy grapefruit juice and Ame) and then went to Jack's house and cooked barefoot in the kitchen, while singing along to cds. The food turned out awesome (spinach salad with melted chevre, sliced portabella mushrooms sauteed in balsamic vinegar and butter, and tomatoes, shrimp cooked in butter, garlic, lemon juice, cayenne pepper, salt and sliced scallions, lots of bread for dipping in the sauce, apple pie and ice cream) thanks to the incredible recipes of one of the Canadian friends and it was enjoyed by candlelight with much laughter... And silence, when everyone was eating like there would be no tomorrow. There were sweet dreams vanilla cigarettes for after dinner, too, and they taste even more like candy than clove cigarettes do. Anyway, after dinner we watched Vanilla Sky (which, by the way, has one of the best soundtracks of any movie I've ever seen) and then headed back to campus for a much-needed rest. Good company and good food go so well together.

Songs to Cook By:

Love and Happiness -- Al Green
Under Pressure -- Queen
Sweet Baby James -- James Taylor
Born to Run -- Bruce Springsteen
Thunder Road -- Bruce Springsteen
Man on the Moon -- REM
Love is the Drug -- Roxy Music
Philosophy -- Ben Folds Five
Sultans of Swing -- Dire Straits
Weather -- Built to Spill
Six Different Ways -- The Cure

The leaves are crimson and canary on the trees and across the ground. I am reminded of home. Yesterday, in the late afternoon, the weather was just about perfect: brilliantly sunny, with the air mild and smelling sweetly of decaying leaves. (Next to cut grass, the smell of dead leaves is one of the most beautiful and soothing smells ever. It takes me back.) I wanted to stretch out in a patch of sunlight on the green green--irrigation works miracles--grass and sleep the day away.

Music for a Fall Afternoon

The Blower's Daughter -- Damien Rice
A Love Supreme -- Coltrane
She's A Jar -- Wilco
Unravel -- Bjork
Blue -- Lucinda Williams
The Revelator -- Gillian Welch
Weather -- Built to Spill
Pink Bullets -- The Shins
Lion's Mane -- Iron and Wine
Free -- Cat Power

We (the aforementioned Chamber Ensemble) played Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik in the hall of one of the classroom buildings this morning. The acoustics are crazy (re: good)& it sounded out-of-this-world beautiful. The sound was so full, it was like we had twice the number of instruments there. Went out to see Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (or whatever it's called) last night & it was, of course, horrible. Silly plot, crappy dialogue (ever other word was "shag"), etc. But it was mildly entertaining. Interesting use of "I Believe in a Thing Called Love".

We finally got our seminar paper assigned this morning. Why, yes, I am looking forward to writing another sucktastic paper. Actually, I'm not (I know pride is a sin, but I still can't stand being bad at things). However, I am awaiting Thanksgiving Break & Christmas Break (I wish I could be back in NE, playing Suzy Homemaker & cooking this. Sadly, that's not an option.) with bated breath. And really, I can't believe how quickly this semester is flying by. I can't believe that it's already almost the middle of November. (Only slightly more than a month to go until that joyous time of nervous break-downs & much chaos, known as finals week to the uninitiated. I like to call it Hell Week.) I seem to remember first semester last year dragging a lot more. I also remember it as being easier than this. Funny. When contemplating the passage of time, I usually slip into practicing one of my favorite past times: wondering what the crap I'm going to do with myself after (if if if) I graduate from this lovely bastion of higher learning. Travel? Get a job? Make like Ridley & do both? Be barefoot & pregnant? (Yeah, I know, I know. But technically, it is still an option.) Fail to find some way to support myself & end up homeless, pan-handling for spare change & living by myself in a cardboard box on the mean streets of some big city? Now, I am--sometimes--rational, & I know that I should just do as the Good Book says: Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient unto the day is its own troubles. -- Matt 6:34, but, while that's a very comforting text, it's still kind of hard for me to put into practice. But I'm working on it. Which is why I'm going to stop advertising my neuroses now. ::segue:: So, playing music with other people is indubitably one of the coolest things ever. I recently started playing in a Chamber Ensemble (It's me plus five other violins, two cellos, & two violas. I think we're going to add some wind intstruments in the future, but I'm not positive.) & the rehearsels, which are two hours & change, seem to last no more than the blink of an eye. We're working on some Mozart, Stamitz, & Telemann. & I'm loving it, it's such a high. Music (whether you're playing it, or listening to it) makes life worthwhile. Anyway, it's just about bedtime, so I'm going to get going.

I know this post was sort of half-assed, but at least it wasn't just a bunch of links. Right?

the fine art of compromise

(The band) The Postal Service has come to an agreement with the real U.S. Postal concerning their name. Compromising is nice, but playing at USPS conferences? That's just sad. (Though, I'll admit, it's also kind of funny.)

(dull) musings

-So, Bush rocked the vote. Again. Insofar as I am happy that Kerry isn't President, I'm happy. What I'm whacking at here is that there's plenty of room for improvement. C'est la vie, right?
-God bless the U. S. Postal Service. Snail-mail is vastly underrated. There is very little that's as exciting (and, yes, it's possible that my life-right-now is just exceptionally boring) as getting mail that isn't bills and/or junkmail: I got three letters over the past week and a half (two from friends, one from family) and they were exactly what I needed. Unconditional lovin', hells yeah. (Do you believe in unconditional love?) Plus, their lives are so different from mine now, I love hearing about the wild and crazy things they're up to. It gives me perspective. And there's something about a hand-written letter: for one, you know that a certain amount of time and effort had to be put into to it.
-requiescat in pacem
-Predestination stresses me out. (Then again, so do a lot of things.) How does it work?! I don't understand it at all, and it doesn't mesh so well with my conception of salvation and grace. I'm pretty sure that it would be a good idea for me to read St. Augustin's On the Predestination of the Saints again, but I'm not positive that doing so will completely clear up by confusion.
-uh, can I get an amen? Believe it or not, several days ago I was discussing with someone how cool it is to be a monk. I would be a monk, too. Well, maybe--let me put it this way: I would rather be a monk than a nun. And I'm sure all this makes me sound quite screwed up, so I'll stop now.
borrowing from talitha again, I really liked this:

From the noise of Scare-fires rest ye free,
From Murders Benedicite.
From all mischances, they may fright
Your pleasing slumbers in the night:
Mercie secure ye all, and keep
The Goblins from ye, while ye sleep.
-Robert Herrick

-& I need to go now, because I haven't really done any homework tonight. My concentration decided to abandon me immediately after dinner, when I thought I would get a nice early start on my heap of reading for tomorrow. So much for the early start.

Note: I know I've been doing a lot of links-as-posts of late, and I intend to remedy that some time in the near future. But not now. (It's not that I don't have anything to say, I just don't have the patience to figure out how I want to/should articulate things.)

Good critics are good listeners, and the problem with rockism is that it gets in the way of listening. If you're waiting for some song that conjures up soul or honesty or grit or rebellion, you might miss out on Ciara's ecstatic electro-pop, or Alan Jackson's sly country ballads, or Lloyd Banks's felonious purr.

--Kelefa Sanneh (for the N Y Times) on "Rockism". An interesting exploration of musical snobbery.

The Wilco Book gets a review on pitchfork.

Tom Wolfe on the election, college, and the "sexual carnival" that is our society.