I absolutely hate the word “blog”

And the award goes to…

http://www.animatedknots.com/

No, this isn’t a tribute to Mick and the Stones.  Grant and I are painting basically everything we own black.

Okay, not EVERYTHING, but we bought a gorgeous dining room set that’s black, and we’re trying to tie in a bunch of other furniture of various bleh shades and make it all match and look good together, and we decided painting it all black was the solution.  Added bonus, it’ll match the cat.

So before we run out and buy a bunch of painting supplies, I thought I’d shout out here and see if anyone already has stuff like brushes, blue tape, drop cloths, etc. they’ve been hanging on to from the last time they painted something, just WAITING for folks like us to take it off their hands?

…You know where to find me.

Today I came across the word “blaugrana” in my linguistic travels.

What does it mean, you ask?  “Related or pertaining to the Futbol Club of Barcelona”.  There’s a fucking valid DICTIONARY for their equivalent of “Seahawkian”.  I MISS SPAIN SOMETIMES.

Yeah, it’s weird.  In the past few months I’ve gone to more cool independent-like indie music shows than I have in ages, and yet lately I’m rocking out to corporate-sponsored rock on Pandora.  But seriously, this one channel is so great - it’s for Scion, which is already INCREDIBLY clichéd and cheesy since I frickin’ HAVE a Scion, I know, but it’s actually really enjoyable.  I don’t love all the funk and blues, but the hip-hop and rap they play is incredibly melodic and fun and cool, and it’s great background music while I do somewhat mindless data tasks.  It’s sort of weird because the station doesn’t allow you to customize it, but that sort of makes it better for me background-wise because I don’t switch windows to give it feedback every other song like I usually have to.  Plus you barely need it - it’s seriously so much fun to listen to.  I’m bouncing in my seat here rocking out, and I can’t help but feel like people who walk by my open office door are laughing at me, and I don’t even care because it’s that good.  Check out the link in my sidebar if you want to listen.

Man, so working with data sets that are as massive as the ones I now deal with, you can’t help but occasionally actually read something in them instead of just analyzing them for their given purpose.  Like the other day, in a block of randomly compiled sentences, I came across one that translated to “because of a sack full of bears”.  That cracked me up, as I could not picture any context whatsoever in which it could possibly make any sense.*

And just now, I’ve discovered what is quite possibly a fascinating new etymological-childhood-cartoon connection.  You know the main villain in The Smurfs, Gargamel?  The mean old man who wore the white boxers with red hearts on them that were so often accidentally displayed, and who liked to kill/torture/capture/somehow mistreat Smurfs?  And whose cat was named Azrael, which struck me as similar to the demon Azazel wheh I watched that Denzel Washington movie Fallen?**  Well anyway, I think I may have found the linguistic origin for Gargamel.  Voilà.  Sounds very similar to the Catalan word for “throat”.  Maybe that explains his weird voice?  I don’t claim to understand the symbolism, I just continue with the mission that Hanna-Barbara and Microsoft have given me.

* But Grant kindly pointed out that it could have been a sack full of Gummy Bears.  Entirely true; I had not thought of that.  This is what boyfriends are for, FYI.

** Yeah, apparently I’ve been seeking out Smurf-linguistic connections for a while now.  That movie came out while I was in high school.

Yep, it’s awesome. I have a Catalan flag displayed proudly in my office. The work itself is interesting, even the semi-boring administrative-type stuff, because it all has to do with CATALAN at the end of the day. I also get to speak a zillion languages with my surrounding coworkers, also a blast.

And I learn so, so much all the time. I’m using Windows Vista and Office 2007 and even though it’s a real bitch to learn them both from scratch while I’m in the midst of learning all this other stuff, I’m really really glad to be getting a handle on them early on.

And you know what stands out about Vista, more than anything else? It makes your PC look like a Mac.  In a good way, of course, but it still cracks me up.

I have this great new coworker Katy, she’s a lot of fun. Turns out we have similar taste in clothes, music, etc. and she really brings a fun energy to the office, all my coworkers and I think she’s just a ton of fun and we all get along with her well. So today a few of us were out to lunch together, and I insisted on driving so I could show off my still relatively new car to Katy, and you know what she had to say about my car? She said it looked like “Bart Simpson’s shoe”. WTF?

But then I Google Imaged it….

Title says it all. But you know, it’s merited this year. 2006 treated me very well, and I must say I think I bear at least some of the responsibility for it. The story begins several years ago, when my old pal from college Allison first moved to Japan to teach English (this was shortly after the new year in 2004). She had sent me a package that included a daruma, which is a sort of Japanese wishing doll with two blank circles for eyes - you’re meant to color in one eye when you make the wish, and the second eye when your wish comes true. At the time I was unemployed after having quit a truly horrible, unethical, unstable, and stressful position working for a very bad employer, and I was doing some odd and unpleasant jobs and rather desperately seeking something that didn’t involve getting off at 1:15 AM as a Macy’s (then Bon-Macy’s) holiday hire at minimum wage with no benefits or future job security. So I fervently wished on my new daruma, coloring in one eye, and about a month later I landed my job at the law firm where I worked for the next two-and-a-half years. I kept that colored-in daruma on my desk at work for the duration of my employment, as a reminder that no matter how stressful or frustrating the job was at times, it was EXACTLY what I had asked my little daruma for at the time I wished for it: stable in a long-term way with real benefits, totally ethical, a resume-booster, and in no way about to cause any sexual harrassment-type tension like my old hellish employer.

The law firm job eventually drove me crazy, and I went on to search for bigger and better things. I asked Allison, half-jokingly, to send me another daruma so I could begin a new career search, and she did me one better and sent me a three-pack of brightly painted little darumas, each a different primary color. Well, for some reason the first thing that popped into my head was the toast that I had learned from my bosses in Mexico City (another former horrible job): “Salud, Dinero y Amor” (’Health, Money and Love’). These seemed like three pretty reasonable pillars of happiness, and I named my little darumas after these fundamentals, and even wrote their names down with a Sharpie. This was sometime in the end of 2005/beginning of 2006, I think.

Just a couple months ago, I was doing some random tidying around my room and I started dusting off my little Japanese wishing dolls perched up on their shelf overlooking my room. And I started thinking about them and reflecting on what I’d wished for in the first place, and I realized that it was, in fact, time to color in their other eyes, because my wishes had come true for me again - this time it was less obvious, a much subtler, slower, more creeping transition than the first time around. But nevertheless, my wishes had all come true.

Little “Salud” came first, and with him I realized that even though I may not have exactly lost half my body weight or run twelve marathons, I did in fact finish my first-ever triathlon in September 2006. Given that I never was an athlete of any kind, and that I struggled with major self-esteem issues and emotional roadblocks when it came to any kind of physical activity, especially things I wasn’t particularly comfortable with from the get-go, this was a really big deal for me - I finished the whole triathlon without stopping, proved to myself that I am capable of training long-term for something, and that I am capable of tackling really daunting events like swimming and biking that I’m totally frightened by on first glance. I was so proud of myself after my event, and even though it definitely could’ve gone better, I feel like I deserved to color in that little eye to represent what was a huge personal victory for me, even if that became clearer in hindsight than it was in the moment.

And my second little daruma eye, “Dinero”. Not only did I shift from my law firm job, which had gone from a good thing to something I desperately needed to move on from, into a job that in many ways has been a great step for me, but I started to pursue an even more important goal, which was to start doing some freelance writing. Even though this hasn’t exactly been the Pulitzer-winning novel I had kiddie dreams of creating, getting my foot through the door when I’d assumed my whole life until recently that I didn’t have the talent or credentials to do anything of the kind was a big, big deal for me, and a reminder that confidence alone gives you the license to pursue pretty much anything you set your mind to. I colored in that little eye with pride.

And aaah, “Amor”. Probably the most important daruma to me; the thickest pillar in the structure that upholds my cheesy little metaphor for happiness. Yeah, this one definitely mattered the most, and yet it’s in many ways the hardest one to actually chase after. Sure, you can sign up with Match.com and whatnot, but it’s a lot easier to take specific, concrete, easily-controlled steps towards eating better or exercising more or applying for jobs, but paving the way for love is a bit more ethereal and intangible. But regardless, I think it’s possible; it’s about letting go of past hurts and figuring out what self-destructive behaviors you’ve dabbled in over the years, and breaking away from them. And all that introspective nuisance finally paid off. :) I colored in that eye right on the spot, and there’s been a big grin on my face ever since.

I recently asked my boyfriend to bring me back a daruma from his trip to Japan, and he brought me two - a traditional-looking red one, much bigger and more ambitious-looking than my old trio, and another soft pink plush one. It somehow feels too recent to go posting on my blog about their assigned significance, but it occurs to me as I write this cheesy rehash of 2006 that it’s time, in fact, to color in the eye on one of those as well. In the end, I don’t really think it’s the magical, childlike phenomenon of wishing on a doll that got me what I asked for, but rather, my own determination and focus and efforts. The doll just serves as a reminder. But yeah, it’s been a good year, and I can tell this one is going to be even better. That’s the best part. Viva 2007!

Seriously, I’ve been possessed this year. Normally I’m not a huge Yuletide decorator, etc. I’ll maybe buy some lights, but I’m usually too lazy to get a wreath or tree, and even the lights will be strung up haphazardly or, as this year, balanced delicately on the trim around the window so that even the slightest gust will bring them crashing down, invariably causing one broken bulb to black out a string of ten in a row, which is far too many to try and bother fixing, so they’ll just stay that way. Honestly, when I was a kid my mom and I stopped having a tree the year I started high school when we had moved into a fairly small (700 sq. ft.) apartment. We had this ficus plant in the corner, and one year my mom put lights on it and a couple ornaments, which was kinda funny and cute. But then we just left the lights on, and we would just plug them in every December. Mmm mmm festive.

But this year, oh, this year, something changed. I’m not sure what it is - maybe some maternal kiddie-craft precursor to my biological clock now that I’m one year older and more of my friends are having kids, maybe I just have more free time on my hands, or I’m happier and more inclined to express my creative spirit, or more broke after buying my new car, or whatever, but this year I’ve been possessed by the Ghost of Christmas Crafts. Not only did I decide to a) undertake a huge crafty art project as one of my boyfriend’s presents, and b) get a bunch of digital pictures printed up all nice to work on framey-crafty projects and photo-cards and such, but this year, I c) actually MADE MY OWN WRAPPING PAPER. Yep, that takes the cake.

It was surprisingly easy and fun, too. I cut out the bottoms of a bunch of brown paper grocery bags (plus a couple of those sexy white Metropolitan Market ones), flattened them out, and used a sponge I had cut into two shapes (one star and one tree) and dipped the spongie-shapies into leftover paint from craft projects that had occurred years before, in college, when someone else forced me to actually bother buying art supplies, and sponged the designs (red star, green tree) all over the paper, and used my roommate’s hemp twine to tie it up. Kinda outdoorsy, natural-y, granola-looking - and damn cheap, let me tell ya. I don’t have *quite* enough to do all my presents, but given that every time I purchased a gift I asked them to wrap it in-store if possible, I think it should just do it, minus one box.

And lastly, credit where it’s due: thanks to my college pall Allison, I have the perfect plan in place for said remaining box. See, back at Bryn Mawr she taught me many things - how to appreciate sushi (THANKS), how to fold an origami box (forgot, sorry), and how to get free wrapping paper. Every time you purchase a book at Barnes and Noble (or any other bookstore, but B&N is a sure thing for this), you tell them it’s a gift, but that you’d like to write an inscription, so instead of giftwrapping could they please just give you a sheet of wrapping paper? You do this whether or not the book is actually a gift, and then bingo, you always have wrapping paper when you need it! So crafty. Pure genius.

So between my crafty-craftiness and Allison’s other type of crafty-craftiness, Christmas should be a cinch this year. Yahoo for easy and cheap! Eventually maybe I’ll upload some pictures of said homemade wrapping paper, but in all honesty I’ll probably forget, haha. Merry Everything to all!

So last night, I had a stellar evening - Jen and I slowly and crankily made our way through icky Eastside traffic (how do you guys HANDLE that commute?!) to go meet my favorite jewelry designer in person!!! I’ve been in love with her pieces and trying to track her down for over a year, and I finally succeeded, got to meet her and her rep and chat a ton, and bought so much stuff that I got a freebie item worth $40 thrown in from the venue’s gift shop. Go figure! Anyway, now I’m all decked out in gorgeous swirly viney silver, I feel like an elven princess or something, and I’m quite a bit poorer bank-account-wise but richer spirit-wise. A very fruitful night, overall!