Braces & Sunshine

I had a scary, scary, SCARY trip to the dentist a few weeks ago. It was a shady dentist who is probably just a front for the Polish mafia. I should've walked right out the door after I walked in to the filthy office reeking of cigarette smoke and decorated with 1970s brown stuff (dog, carpet, wallpaper, ceiling), but I didn't. And I regret it. But today I went to a REAL dentist and it was heavenly (who knew you could use such an adjective for a dentist?) AND he took out my bottom retainer! That sucker has been lining up my bottom six teeth for 15 years now, and it feels so WEIRD to not have it, but I also like it and am excited to floss. (!)

And as for the sunshine bit in that title, well, there isn't any here in Cleveland. Just cold rain. Icky, cold rain. And I don't have a car. Boo. I am wet and cold. And this feeling is only magnified after being in Austin for four days where it is sunny and gorgeous. The trail, Central Mark-up, friends, boyfriend and...sunshine at Austin City Limits music festival. Just a lovely, non-Cleveland weekend full of yummy, yuppie, Austiny stuff. I even hit up the library and Napoleon (the one and only!) checked out a "Library Use Only" book to me for a week! But now I am where the sun don't shine, and it's almost as icky as the real place where the sun don't shine. Poor Cleveland. Good city, bad rep, not Austin.

Grown up

I don't usually feel very grown up. I just feel like an old kid. Like I'm still 12 or 17 or so. Even though I have a job, pay bills, blah blah, I just feel like a kid. But I just started feeling slightly more grown up, and even so, I still feel like a kid who's trying too hard. I met the Cleveland West Road Runners for a run on Saturday morning down at the GORGEOUS Rocky River Reservation. (Towering pines, enormous sycamores, ferns, deer...there are over 30 miles of trails in the Reservation and they are gorgeous!) After a nice eight mile run, I joined them for breakfast at a nearby coffee shop. Lawyers, engineers, teachers, salespeople, accountants, chemists, technicians...these are not ethnomusicologists or anthropologists or Latin Americanists. It's a first for me to be surrounded by so many normal people. (No offense to my delightfully abnormal cohorts whom I love dearly!) And it made me feel so grown-up! I know, I'm a dork who's about to turn 30, but whatever! I'm no grown-up! And I like grad school because I can feign perpetual youth and intellectual bravado. But the real world is kinda neat too, sometimes. I still want grad school back, and I still want to teach at a university, but for the time being, I think I'm having fun growing up.

Run the Trail

No, silly! Not the campaign trail! The running trail. At Rocky River Nature Center in the Rocky River Reservation. I went for my first trail run last night with my new running partner, Matt, who has taken me for runs all over Cleveland and has been very encouraging. He picked me up from work and drove us both far west to the reservation. We met up with the Cleveland West Road Runners and hit the trail running. Ha! (I know, I know. I'm lame!) I've never done this before, and I half expected to break a leg or ankle or arm or head, but no! I was triumphant over the treacherous paths! And actually, they weren't that treacherous, but they were beautiful. It was me, Matt, Heidi (a hardcore trail runner), Glen, and Jim. I'm definitely the youngest! But it was just a blast - almost 8 miles of gorgeous trees and creeks and hills. There was one hill in particular that was pretty traumatizing - it was basically vertical! And of course I had to surge up it in order to prove myself (only Matt and I actually ran up the whole thing) and I nearly lost a lung and I gained two giant lumps in my quads - huge muscle knots. But it was SO worth it! After the exhilarating run in 65 degree weather, we went to the Great Lakes Brewing Company for beer and pizza and I got to meet a bunch of the other CWRR crew. It felt just great - hanging out with people that have generally just one thing in common: running. They were sweet and funny and easy to get along with. None of them will be my new best friend, none of them will come to my house for dinner, but a beer after a long trail run will happen regularly. I just love it. It made me feel welcome and healthy and happy. Cleveland has been a struggle for me, and this alleved some of my pain! I can't wait WAIT for the next run!

Cho

Ahh, Margaret Cho. How eloquent you are. And I commend thee, Sister.

Evil Palin

There's a reason why people label Sarah Palin as "scary" and "crazy." Read all about it here. Her penchant for favoritism, ignorance, and even book-banning (who bans books in 2008???) is appalling. There is good reason to be scared of her and what she might do should she enter office.

Pittsburgh and bugs

The bug part first. I never get sick. Ok, I rarely get sick. But last week I was struggling - sore throat, dizzy, headachy, achy...it was icky. I slept for twelve hours on Friday night and for those of you who know me, you must know that I'm an 8-hour-a-night girl. Nothing more, nothing less. But DAMN did I need that sleep! So now I think it's on its way out, and I'm just dripping lotsa snot. Ick. I know. Sorry!

















The Pittsburgh part is the more fun part. On Saturday afternoon, my friend Marcia picked me up and we drove to Pittsburgh to see Emily Pinkerton's CD release concert. Pittsburgh is gorgeous. Just stunning! The architecture and the bridges and the mountains and the river. I loved it. Emily played spectacularly - her new songs are gorgeous, and her musicianship is enviable. She played in a neat little venue called Your Inner Vagabond. Normally I avoid the hippie hangouts, but this space was pretty neat. It was covered in pillows and couches and Persian rugs with a sizeable corner stage and great sound. The atmosphere was warm and fuzzy and we had a great time. Then we slept in (late!) at Em's that night and had breakfast yesterday morning followed by a much-needed trip to Ikea. I got home and hit the sack because the bug plagues me still.

May Sarah Palin Kindly Stick Her Eye Out.

This is my curse. Please. PLEASE.

This NYTimes writer nailed it on the head here.

Oh, the glory!

Well, I'm not a sports fan. Although I can watch swimming or running all the time, and I can get excited about soccer during World Cup or when I'm in Spain or Peru, I generally hate organized sports. They bore me. And furthermore, it pisses me off how much money they make. Boo. BUT...I was raised by a Buckeye. A proud Ohio State University Buckeye who has been loyal since he started going to school there in 1962, finally finishing with an industrial design degree in 1968, I think. I've grown up going to Buckeye games, wearing scarlet and grey, cheering for The Best Damn Band In The Land, the all-brass marching band that spells out a human script Ohio, the best sousaphone player dotting the "i." I go to these games with my dad to spend time with him, doing what he loves to do: watch the Buckeyes play their homoerotic sport, tackling each other in nylon tights, slapping asses, bring the bread, it's a circus, we love gladiators. :) But I really do have fun. The sun burning my face, the popcorn and all its buttery margeriney glory crunching underfoot - it's just FUN. And so yesterday I drove down to Columbus to tailgate at 9am with my Dad and his friends - cute old people with biting senses of humor and lots of iced tea. Then we wandered around, watching the thousands (109,000) people dressed in scarlet and grey awaiting the game where the Buckeyes would slaughter the Ohio University Bobcats. Our noses bled, all the way back near the top, my neck matches my red shirts now, thanks to Mr. Sun, and I stood up with the rest of 'em when that one guy went running from one end of the field to the other, dodging the slower, fatter guys as he darted to the red-painted grass at, they tell me, the "endzone." Why is this so poetic, you wonder? Apparently football brings it out. Even though I hate it, if I'm at a Buckeyes game with my Dad, I love it. It almost makes me cry.

Roommates and Rockstars

Actually, this post has little to do with rockstars, except for yours truly, but I liked the illiteration. speaking of the roommate part of it, I really like living with Cory. We respect each others' space, but we still have dinner together and she came with me to work on Friday to see my "action office" and to meet my co-workers. Oh, and we toured the museum together too. It's funny because for someone who works at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, I rarely actually spend time in the museum. I walk out from our basement offices and am often surprised: people! Beatles stuff! Hustle and bustle! We had lots of fun, and then she went to her office (just two blocks from the Rock Hall) and I went to mine.

But of equal importance was my visit to Austin this weekend. It was just great. I spent lots of time with my brother (which rarely happens) and with Nik, Karla, Genevieve, Colin, and Dan and Laura who were evacuated from New Orleans. Karla and I ran the Nike Human Race together; it was the hardest race I have ever done - 97 degrees, sunny, 90% humidity, and 6 miles of HILLS. But Karla and I finished 2000 out of 12,000! Not too bad. I met Nik's family - parents, sister, aunt, uncle, cousins at his grandmother's house for a lunch. They were all super sweet and easy to get along with (as long as I left politics at the doorstep). I went to Barton Springs, I trained my successor at the journal, I ate migas, I went canoing...it was a busy, nutty weekend, but a really good one. I'll be back for ACL, so that's exciting!

My advisor forwarded me a job posting at the University of Oregon. I could TOTALLY live in Oregon! But I need to finish the dissertation before anything else and work at this job for a while before I get ahead of myself. Boo.