Top Fives

Tell me, please, your top 5 albums.  Now here’s the qualifications.

1. You don’t skip songs, usually, and 2. no matter how many years pass you love the album and 3. sometimes it just plays and plays in your car or in your office and it captures something- some time in your life and 4. It’s not that the artist is your favorite artist – it’s the album – the whole concept and lastly 5. don’t put too much time into it – just say what comes to mind. 

Here’s mine (off the top of my head):

Ray Lamontagne: Trouble

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Counting Crows: August and Everything After

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Paul Simon: Graceland

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

John Mayer: Heavier Things

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Iron and Wine:  Our Endless Numbered Days

Mom’s Old Book

Dove that Ventured Outside

(My dear friend Stephanie, who lives now in Sierra Leone, has this posted on her blog site and I loved it the first time I read it and I love it today. It reminds me of so many things and Rilke just wows me.  Read Letters to a Young Poet if you want more of him.)

Dove the Ventured Outside

(To Erika, for the festival of praise)

Dove that ventured outside,     flying far from the dovecote:
housed and protected again,     one with the day, the night,
knows what serenity is,     for she has felt her wings
pass through all distance and fear     in the course of her wanderings.

The doves that remained at home,     never exposed to loss,
innocent and secure,     cannot know tenderness;
only the won-back heart     can ever be satisfied: free,
through all it has given up,     to rejoice in its mastery.

Being arches itself     over the vast abyss.
Ah the ball that we dared,     that we hurled into infinite space,
doesn’t it fill our hands     differently with its return:
heavier by the weight     of where it has been.

Apparently Pam thinks all cowboys are rednecks.

Me: Are you going to wear something cowboyish to my party?

Pam: I thought it was a Southern Party.

Me:  (long pause, sideward glance) Do you not know where cowboys are from? Not sure what they are?

Pam:  I thought you meant Southern like peach cobbler and that lady on the food network.

Me:  What lady?

Pam:  Google Southern Lady Food Network.

Me:  (Head on desk laughing)

Pam:  I didn’t think you were having a Redneck party. 

Five hours latter Pam yells Paula Dean!

Pam wants this party:

And not this party:

Mimi says…

Happy boring Monday, Kimmy.  *Yawn*

Letter to Pam

Pam,

Later on today I need to clean my office – meaning wiping down the desks and vacuuming.  If you help me I will not make fun of you for ONE entire day. Interested?

-Hillary

Attacked

While I was on the phone at work another staff member attached a throw pillow to my sweatshirt.  

Felicity

A friend lent me Felicity.  I can’t even begin to explain how much I love that show.  I watched 6 episodes last night and I was 18 again.  It made me wish I would have done something different with my education.  I think that a lot.  I didn’t have any good academic advisers and I got terrible, disinterested advice about what classes to take and what I should do.  I wish I would have taken art history classes, fashion, photography, film and more writing and lit classes and done some acting.  I did one acting class and the professor (Monica Ganas) cried when i did my monologue and I actually thought a few times – I really like this!  I think I would have loved acting.  In High School too the Drama teacher approached me and asked me to be a ballerina in a play.  I didn’t do it and I still regret that.  I don’t feel like I took big enough risks.  I was too scared.  But I suppose in some ways I followed my heart – did what made me happy then.  I wanted to help people and study God and that’s what I did.  Anyways, the show just got me nostalgic for that seminal time in my life –  although nothing in the world would make me relive those years again  – all the emotions and confusion and everything feeling so HUGE – like the world might end tomorrow.  But if I could go back – I’d do it all different.  I’d go to New York or study in London.  I’d get into debt for a really compelling education rather than the safe one I did get.  Oh and I’d travel.  Forget working at camps – I’d have used those summers to live in Italy and backpack around South America.  I would have made myself learn Spanish.  Although, here’s what I am completely confident about – I wouldn’t, under any circumstances, want to give up the friends I met in college – in my college.  I know I would have met other beautiful people – but I want MY beautiful people because everything I love about my life now revolves around knowing them.  So, in that regard, I wouldn’t, really couldn’t, change a thing.  

But oh Ben and Noel and Felicity.  They’re giving me a much needed world to escape back into and I love them endlessly.  I wonder what Felicity’s life would have ended up being like if she had married Noel instead?  Ben probably became an alcoholic and cheated on her with someone he met in recovery.  Just kidding!  And not true!  But I totally understand the Ben Pull- it’s Ben and I would have chosen Ben too because, you know, it’s Ben.  If you haven’t seen the show, sorry I ruined it and you should see it anyways because it’s so sweet and wonderful.  And I don’t understand how the three main characters of this show didn’t go on to be big blockbuster stars.  It’s Ben!

And how totally annoiying is it how much they all say, “Hey…” 

Anyways, to the photos…

 

just kidding, Mimi hates Felicity.  Such a snob.

Love your Wrists

I sprained my wrist over the weekend.  It was very undramatic.  I couldn’t get a window open and all the pulling and tugging and straining ended badly for me.  So, without thinking too much about it I followed basic first aide training –  R.I.C.E. -  Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevate.  And today – it doesn’t really hurt anymore.  So, I now feel more confident in my First Aide certification and if any of you out there need me to come and administer first aide, I’m all over it.  Didyou know that a sprained wrist is one of the most common injuries?  I learned this fact the other day when I thought I had carpal tunnel – the nurse actually helped me figure out it was a sprained wrist -  so showy with that degree of hers.  All to say, be nice to your wrists.

Transfer

I was sitting on hold today and it reminded me of an old job I had where I had to transfer calls.  Once the Dean of the School called and asked to be transfered to a Director in our department.  There was some tricky deal with transfering where you had to make sure a person wasn’t on hold before you sent it.  So I did the transfer and then a good twenty to twenty-five minutes later my phone rings again.  I pick it up and say the opening Hello and it’s the Dean and he tells me in a bothered tone that he has been sitting on hold for the whole time listening to classical music.  I apologized dramatically and transferred him successfully. 

But here’s the thing – who waits on hold for thirty minutes – when your office is downstairs from the place you’re trying to reach?  It’s not like he had called the DMV or Social Security.  I blame him.  Laziness. 

While trying to find a good image for this post I came across this blog – Funny!  http://www.waitingonhold.blogspot.com/