Saturday, January 19, 2002

Listening to "Melekalikimaka" is cracking me up... oh no... I don't have "Kona Coast"! This is the first time I've ever regretted not owning the M.I.U. Album. (Oh well.)

Posted at 10:39 PM by Laura W. Petix.

Sawing is going well. Snow still falling very lightly. There are some beautiful drifts on the rhodies and other bushes. Strangely, nothing on the dogwood. Not much on the road, but maybe three or more inches standing up on the deck rails. It looks so clean and sharp on the roofs across the street, all angular white planes.

Posted at 10:30 PM by Laura W. Petix.

Table-sawing 12-foot 2x4s is somewhat tiring for the shoulders and (non-existent) back muscles. Still snowing.

Posted at 6:07 PM by Laura W. Petix.

Hey, it's snowing!! (Very, very slightly.) I didn't know it was supposed to snow today!

Posted at 2:45 PM by Laura W. Petix.

Friday, January 18, 2002

"All I know is that I'm thrilled by your kiss / I don't know any more than this
Po' boy, pickin' up sticks / Build you a house out of mortar and bricks"

This article, on the other hand, is not amusing. I don't even know what to think. Well, I know one thing, but I probably shouldn't say it. All right, this is my brain, so I'll say it anyway: all I know is that Levon will blame Robbie. It's all sad.

Posted at 10:44 PM by Laura W. Petix.

But was it a bologna sandwich? That was an amusing article. I liked this quote [edit: because it's so goofy!]:

Robertson hooked [Elliott] Landy on whole-wheat bread. "When I went up to see the Band, Robbie was eating a sandwich. He said, 'This is whole-wheat bread, you know this is much better for you than white bread.''"

Posted at 10:18 PM by Laura W. Petix.

Listening to Love And Theft. Can't believe how much I love it. Feels like September, and feels like now. I wish I had a tree house. Not to live in all the time, but, you know, maybe as a vacation home or something...

Posted at 5:22 PM by Laura W. Petix.

"Go down Old Hannah..." There's a pretty nice sunset going on right now. And my Beagle's back to only letting me listen to SOAR (when it lets me listen to anything).

Posted at 4:46 PM by Laura W. Petix.

Just reading Matthew's newly relocated blog. Yes, exactly: when's it going to snow for real? Not in Portland, but here. Last year there were so many beautiful, heavy snowstorms (perhaps too many for most people's taste), but we haven't had any yet this year. None that have counted. We need at least one big one... deep and drifty and lasting, that buries my Beagle so you can't tell whether it's a car or just a round mound of snow. (It better not come when I'm in Hawaii!)

Posted at 3:46 PM by Laura W. Petix.

I like Richard's renderings of "You Don't Know Me" a lot better than Ray Charles'. Ray is good (not as good as Richard), but those background singers are very annoying. I don't think I'll listen to any more of this CD. Anyway, I'm very, very tired. I should go to bed. Don't feel too good. Sewed on all the buttons. [Edit: "I'll be as strong as a mountain / Or weak as a willow tree / Any way you want me / Well, that's how I will be." Need to get more of that.]

Posted at 2:51 AM by Laura W. Petix.

[Edit: Listening to this.] I like the way Elvis sings.

Posted at 2:07 AM by Laura W. Petix.

Thursday, January 17, 2002

So, The X-Files is ending in May.

I'm right-handed, but I always do certain things with my left hand. Like brush my teeth, for example. And hold the telephone (I'm left-eared). Other things too, but I can't think of what they are. And, of course, I wear my watch on my right wrist, the way lefties usually do. It just feels right on the right wrist, and wrong on the left. But the subliminal reason is probably that I've always secretly thought lefties are cooler.

Posted at 10:17 PM by Laura W. Petix.

Ow!! :-( I just re-injured my thumb taking wet laundry out of the washing machine. How and when do thumbs ever get better? Now it's all stiff and hurty again. I don't feel too good. And I'm in the middle of doing stuff. Aagh.

Posted at 5:52 PM by Laura W. Petix.

Almost all these Sun songs completely remind me of Hawks-era Levon!

Posted at 5:33 PM by Laura W. Petix.

Perfect timing. Thank you.

Stopped at the traffic light on the way to Fabric Place, I was staring so much at this huge weeping willow that I almost got a honking. Anyway, great news! Fabric Place sells mini-tomatoes! And the colors in the window look good.

Posted at 4:46 PM by Laura W. Petix.

What happened to the snow? I was awakened this morning (around nine o'clock?) by the sound of a snowplow, so, half asleep, I opened my chaise blind, top-down, and looked out at beautiful whiteness everywhere and thick flakes falling past my window. I went back to sleep figuring I'd be all snowed in. But when I got up, there was nothing, no evidence that it had ever snowed at all. I might have figured it was all a dream, but Dean moved my Beagle out of the driveway for the benefit of the snowplow. Everything's disappeared.

Posted at 1:41 PM by Laura W. Petix.

What's the best part? 1) Bob's gum chomping, 2) that grin after he says, "I know it" (I laugh out loud every time I watch that), 3) Johnny at the end. Bob at the end? Johnny at the beginning? The way Bob is just so... so... so.... God, what a pair. [Edit: The way Bob says "I know it" in this recording always makes me think of Jett Rink.]

Posted at 3:01 AM by Laura W. Petix.

You're the best, Matthew. I still can't believe this "One Too Many Mornings" video.

Posted at 2:52 AM by Laura W. Petix.

Wednesday, January 16, 2002

Oh my God. This Redwood Hill Farm plain goat milk yogurt is like eating goat cheese with a spoon. How on earth can it only have 130 calories??? And WHY did I only buy one container????!!!! *whimper* It is so good. I may even have to update my favourite foods list. This is the first time I'd ever seen it at Oats, and it'd better not be the last.

P.S. Doing more rigging. (Or bodging, as they say on Junkyard Wars.) Made a grey jacket-ish thing by shortening a formerly too big knit collarless buttoning shirt, adding some elastic in the bottom hem, and skinny-ing the sleeves at an angle so they're tight around the wrists. I'm probably going to put on different buttons also. Then I'll use it as an entirely wreckable and salt water-able jacket to throw on at the beach if it's windy.

Posted at 11:07 PM by Laura W. Petix.

Meyer lemons. Wow. It's true. When I tried the first slice, I thought, "Hm, yeah... it's a lemon... well?" but then I started craving more, more, more. I ate all the rest of it straight, like orange slices (except for the one piece I gave to Dean). Why did I only buy two? Will they still have them the next time I visit Oats?

Meyer lemons, wonderful Starbucks cappuccino, 40-foot waves, smoky rambol cheese, two birthday packages, and my Beagle's CD of choice was, astonishingly, Stoked!! It never plays Stoked!! Sometimes I think "Catch A Wave" is the Beach Boys' most perfect song.

Posted at 8:04 PM by Laura W. Petix.

Oh wow. Oh man. Oh God. Help. Just put on "I Wanna Pick You Up." This is too, too wonderfully visceral.
I was playing the wrong stuff last night. (Why don't I have a Love You shirt? Is there a Love You shirt?)

Posted at 1:47 AM by Laura W. Petix.

Hm, okay, I'm getting into it this time.
[Edit: Oh... "Airplane"... now I'm smiling. Geez, I feel all tugged around inside. Wow.]

Posted at 1:31 AM by Laura W. Petix.

Tuesday, January 15, 2002

So far, I have one nice 1-1/4 inch long pin scratch, and two little 1/8 inch pin scratches. Oh wait a second, I think one of those is actually a papercut from my Hawaii book. Just doing some shortening and stuff. Haven't wrecked anything yet. My long-sleeved SMiLE t-shirt now fits, and I think I'm going to bring it to Hawaii. It's so cool, but I've never worn it. I've been reading my Hawaii book a bunch more (obviously, and getting papercuts)... it sounds like quite a scary place.

Posted at 10:45 PM by Laura W. Petix.

Just as I thought. Those ornamental London Planetrees near the Westfarms Mall have single, not paired, buttonballs. And I'm positive the ones in the Melilli Plaza parking lot do, too. That thing about the distinguishing factor between London Planetrees and Sycamores being that LPTs have paired buttonballs is a lie. Maybe paired ones are commonly planted in some places, but not around here.

I put my remaining armadillo from Big W in water today (it's another apple blossom, and very eager), and cut off the non-shrivelled stalk from the papillo. It looks very cool in a skinny vase on my table, and all its flowers are still good. The papillo ended up having nine flowers (which, at one point, were all around simultaneously)--four on the first stalk, and five on the second. I still haven't gotten my car CD-changer fixed, and the only thing it lets me play lately is SOAR. Which, as CDs to be stuck with go, is pretty darned perfect. With SOAR for the car and DIAD for inside, do I even need any other CDs? (Well...)

Posted at 5:53 PM by Laura W. Petix.

Ahh! I can't take the youngness of the voices. It's irritating; Brian sounds like fingernails on a blackboard. (Of course, I also once had the experience of finding Richard's voice intolerably young sounding (on "Across the Great Divide"), immediately after listening to Love And Theft too much. That was weird.) I'm going to have to turn this off, though. I can't stand it tonight. Does this happen to other people? [Edit at 5:31 AM, in bed: No wonder I couldn't take it. I am unbelievably in the mood for "Drifting In A Daze."]

Posted at 2:36 AM by Laura W. Petix.

What Tree Is It? What a great site. But I still can't figure out why the bark on those planted sycamores in parking lots, etc., is golden instead of white. I was wondering if they were actually London Planetrees (a cross between the American Sycamore and the Oriental Sycamore) rather than native American Sycamores. They probably are, but the distinction between the two seems to be the arrangement of the buttonballs, not the bark colour. Maybe the bark colours just vary a lot, and the strains used as ornamentals are more golden? I like this article, too: "The Persian King Xerxes (519-465 B.C.) found this tree 'so beautiful that he presented it with golden ornaments and assigned it a personal bodyguard. He had a gold medal engraved with the image of this tree, which he wore ever after as an amulet.'" Hm, wait, this site about Planetrees mentions that, "The spread is not as great, bark is duller (but still showy) and fruit hang in pairs." Wait, wait, and this other site has a comparison between the two. That's definitely got to be it. Ooh, neat, neat, this is a good article, too. [Edit: I think they are "Liberty" London Planetrees.]

Posted at 2:07 AM by Laura W. Petix.

Oh man. This carambola I got at the Glastonbury S&S is incredible. I wish I'd bought more than two.

I want to make a CD-R for my trip to Hawaii. Probably mostly Beach Boys songs. The choosing process will be strange, I think, after all this time, because, although I'm still devoted to them, I haven't listened to the BB very much since my Band obsession. I want to finish everything except for graphics, and then, when I return, design the inserts using photos from Hawaii. This is the best carambola I've ever had in my life.

Posted at 12:28 AM by Laura W. Petix.

Monday, January 14, 2002

Every muscle in my body hurts today. Not sure why; it's like I did something very, very strenuous yesterday. (Smiling too hard??)

I got a set of four glass garlic ornaments really cheap on remainder at Smith & Hawken. :-) Very Uncle Gustav-ish. I'd been wanting one since fall, but they were too expensive, and I didn't want to get the set with other vegetables. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with four, though... probably just one garlic ornament is enough to keep vampires away from your tree, right? (I'd love to send one to Sarah, but I don't know her address.)

Posted at 11:24 PM by Laura W. Petix.

After we visited MY TREE, we still had half an hour before our dinner reservation, so I suggested that we drive up and down the sycamore-lined road in Simsbury (I observed with delight that one of its little shopping areas was named "Simsmore." Ha!) It was wonderful--I counted a total of twenty huge sycamores along the sides. My favourite was one near the end closer to MY TREE... it had a million little delicate end twigs all pointing straight up, reaching for the sky.

MY TREE itself was magnificent, its giant spreading branches bare, all the twisting wiggly ends visible, intricate and exquisite, like roots. And full of buttonballs. Dean found the first two fallen buttonballs for me, in the snow, and for the first time ever I was able to see one up close, to touch one. I now have seven. One (in the photo below) is even still attached to a twig, part of MY TREE! And one is tiny--about a quarter inch across, like a real button. (In the olden days, they used buttonballs as buttons; that's why they're called that.) I also found a fallen branch (!!!!!), which I brought home, too. It has three additional buttonballs still on it! It's very slender, and a little over four feet long, with lots of beautiful beautiful little intact twigly divisions, with buds on them. It's gorgeous. It doesn't have the special flaky white camouflage bark, though; they have to be bigger before they develop that. I leaned it up against the wall in my room, balanced on the wheely file beside my chaise. The shadows!! I was so tired last night, all worn out with tree-joy. Oh, and it didn't snow--not where I was, at least. It did snow in other parts of Connecticut, including my former hometown. It was classic Laura's birthday weather, though--windy and bitterly cold, the ground covered in white; visiting MY TREE was so marvellously bracing, when we got back in the car, I felt as if I'd just come in from ice skating. My hands were freezing, but I'm glad I wasn't wearing gloves--I had to be able to touch it. Here's another picture from yesterday, holding the branch (you can't see the buttonballs very well because of the background) in front of MY TREE.

Posted at 10:30 PM by Laura W. Petix.

Sunday, January 13, 2002

Posted at 8:30 PM by Laura W. Petix.

Well, today is my birthday. I was born on January 13th, 1972, so I am 30 years old. (I tried to write out the number, but it looked far too unreal!) If you are someone who enjoys reading my blog, whether I know you or not, I'd love to receive a "Happy Birthday" e-postcard or e-mail. (My favourite postcard site is Just-So Literary Postcards, but there are lots. You can even send a postcard anonymously.) I'm having a good birthday so far. No disasters, yet.

Posted at 1:28 AM by Laura W. Petix.