Reading Aloud

Being an adult without young children in my life, I sometimes forget the joys of reading aloud.  I was recently reminded how satisfying it is, and now I'm looking forward to doing more of it, both reading and listening.  I'll admit that I have more trouble following the twists and turns of a plot when I'm hearing it read aloud to me than when I'm looking at the pages myself, but there's a special comfort in relaxing and allowing myself to sink into the story that a well-loved voice is bringing to life.  My mom and dad read to me a lot when I was little, so the whole experience reminds me of happy times.  It's especially pleasant right before bed to read aloud and be read to.  Gets the brain ready for good dreams.

Look, Ma, new pants!

This Wednesday evening, after months of wearing increasingly frayed and tired-looking pants to work, I finally bought a couple new pairs.  Actually, the situation was that I had some good fall/winter work pants, but when warmer weather arrived, I found my lighter-weight and lighter-colored pants were all showing their wear.  Recruiting my housemate (he volunteered), I went to a store likely to have cheap but durable khakis.  I was successful in my search, and am wearing one of the pairs of pants I bought as I type this very post.  They're quite comfy.  I'm not always a big fan of clothes shopping, but in the right mood, I do enjoy trying on different outfits, striking poses in the dressing room as I imagine myself strutting down the street in a jaunty pair of linen pants or slouching on the couch in a relaxed pair of jeans.  On Wednesday I think I fell into the pitfall of judging everything more positively because the shirt I wore to the store was a favorite of mine, and everything looked better in combination with it.  No matter.  Those mint-green cargo shorts will come in handy sometime, I'm sure!

Ikea

The first time I went to an Ikea home furnishings store, I was filled with wonderment.  I don't remember when that was, exactly, but it's been many years now that Ikea has been in my life.  In one sense they're just more big box stores, full of hundreds of thousands of square feet of stuff, most of which I don't need.  But in another sense they're so much more.  Besides the Swedish sensibilities, the economical prices, and the interesting designs, the element that makes the stores special for me and so many others are the little rooms they set up with their furniture and accessories.  Wandering the vast sales floors, you can poke your head into countless "rooms," each one uniquely arranged and decorated.  You can look at one kitchen after another, and if you're with a friend, you can compare your tastes in sofas, color schemes, lamps, and so on.  They also have "houses" of varying sizes, all the way from maybe 1200 square feet to under 300 square feet, and I always marvel at how much of a complete living space you can create in such a small amount of room by using bunk beds, nested tables, stacked microwave-oven combinations, and multipurpose furniture.  Being at Ikea gives you the chance to imagine yourself in all kinds of different lifestyles.  It's like a playground for grown-ups, and I relish every chance I get to visit.

Little Kids (Hunting Easter Eggs)

More from the Easter chronicles with the LDF-family.  Here's an overly hasty scribble depicting cute little kids on an Easter egg hunt.  We saw this one little girl who was almost lost in her voluminously fluffy pink dress, sitting in the grass, not quite sure what all the fuss was about.  A slightly older girl approached her, holding out an egg and communicating via the special means that babies have to talk to each other.  Finally she flopped down on the grass almost atop the pink dress girl and everyone happily snapped photos.  I love the way little kids will just do their own thing, regardless of what the grown-ups are encouraging.  "Go!  Get those eggs!  You can do it!  Go fast!" shout the parents, and the kids amiably toddle along, enjoying the cool grass between their toes, observing insects in flight and the angle of the sunlight through the trees.  They may find Easter eggs and they may not, and they couldn't care a whit either way, except that the world is a big, bright, beautiful place full of endless wonder, and they're happy to be in it.  I'm with the kids.

Road Food

This weekend my LDF and I hit the road to visit her family for Easter weekend.  It wasn't too long a trip as these things go, but by the time we were traveling, we realized we would need a snack to see us through lunchtime.  We stopped and got biscuits at a drive-through.  For some reason there was a noisome odor lingering near the biscuit place, but I think it was mere coincidence because the biscuits were delicious.  We could tell they were going to be good when we saw the grease stains on the brown paper bag.  The best road food is the kind of stuff that you would never eat on a daily basis, but it's perfect for traveling.  Maybe it's an ancestral urge in our cells to stock up fat reserves for the journey ahead.  Maybe traveling makes us long somewhere deep down for home and stability, and eating comfort food is a way to achieve that.  Maybe going to foreign surroundings pulls us away from a sense of our mortality, and the feeling of our arteries clogging is a reassuring reminder.  Maybe the heavy food is ballast that literally helps ground us during the uncertainty of physical transition.

Or maybe it's just downright tasty.

Packing a Suitcase

Packing a suitcase can be very satisfying when you know just what you want to take and everything fits in neatly.  Unfortunately, that's almost never the case.  I tend to get myself all worked up when packing for a trip because I'm always starting later than I should have, usually when I've got three other things I'd rather be doing, or things that I need to get done ASAP.  Agitated as I am, I then grow even more indecisive than usual, agonizing over which shirts to bring or how many extra pairs of socks constitute reasonable backup, and how many are unnecessary weight.  I usually find that I've forgotten to wash a garment that would be the perfect thing to bring, or have forgotten to buy something I'll need, like dental floss.  Typically I'll try for a while to pack, lay out piles of stuff, then take a break to play guitar, eat ice cream, watch TV, or go bother my housemates.  Then it's back to packing.  Eventually it always gets done, but by that time I'm utterly exhausted and unable to properly get excited about the traveling I'm about to do.  It's really too bad, but all the frustration and anxiety goes away the next day as soon as I'm on the road, boarding the plane, or lifting anchor for new adventures!

Yoga Balls

A little bonus post tonight (or a catch-up post, whichever you prefer--I like the bonus) on yoga balls!  They're big and (being made of rubber and inflated with air) bouncy.  They're roll-y and squishy.  They support your weight and let your muscles relax, your spine decompress, and your ribcage expand.  They're also a lot of fun.  I think that I'm going to get one to bring to work and use it instead of a chair at my desk.  That is, if I give up on my standing-desk endeavor or want a break.

The Power of Performance

Tonight I saw class presentations for a college oral history class.  They weren't your average "stand at a podium reading a paper" kind of presentations; they were oral history performances.  "How do you perform an oral history?"  you may be thinking.  Or you may be thinking, "why is this guy using so many quotation marks in this post?" Or you may be thinking about the really good sandwich you're going to have in a minute.  But assuming you're thinking about oral histories, the "how" of performance turned out to be very straightforward.  Many of the students held papers printed with excerpts from transcripts of interviews they had conducted.  They introduced their speaker and then read the excerpts.  But it's selling them short to say that they read the excerpts when they really performed them.  There was a big difference, which lay in the students assuming the personas of their speakers.  They had minimal costumes if any, maybe a baseball cap or glasses or a scarf.  And they were just sitting down, so there wasn't a lot of action on the stage.  But these students really committed to inhabiting the voices and gestures of the speakers they were channeling onstage, and the combination of the students' commitment with the speakers' insights and experiences was powerful.  Some of the people the students had interviewed were present, and they were moved to witness the students performing their words.  The evening got me thinking about history, about talking and listening, and most of all about the power of performance.  I experienced the strength of passionate and full commitment to the act of communication, and it was very inspiring.

Standing Desk

This Sunday in the New York Times, I read an article about how sitting is going to kill us all.  Well, kill us sooner.  The article said that studies had shown earlier mortality and increased risk of heart disease and other health problems among people who spend much of their days sitting down.  Even those who "balance it out" by exercising vigorously when they're not sitting are not safe from the deleterious effects of their bottom-bound hours.  Since I spend most of my days at work sitting and then come home and sit some more, and tend not to exercise vigorously, the article got me worried.  I had long felt that sitting down all day in front of a computer was no good for people.  I typically end the day feeling at least a little stiff and hunched-over, and sometimes have a headache from too much slouching and staring.  So I decided to be proactive.  I quickly rearranged my desk at work, moving the monitor higher and grabbing a few spare laptop stands to stack atop each other thus raising the height of my keyboard.  Then I stood up to work.  It's not perfect, but I noticed an immediate improvement in my awareness of things outside of my computer screen.  I also noticed more energy and confidence.  That was yesterday.  Today, day two of the standing desk experiment, I more noticed that my back, feet, and knees were tired, and that every chance I seized to sit down was a blessed relief from standing.  On the plus side, when lunch rolled around, my food tasted better than it had in a long time, I think because of my increased appetite.  And I ended the day with fewer stiff muscles and no headache, so it's still a net improvement over sitting.  Also, I got to startle and amuse my coworkers to no end, which is worth something.  I'm going to give it another go tomorrow, maybe with more comfortable shoes, and see how it goes!

Sleeping In

Ah, to awaken without urgency, free of any call to rise and meet the day save at one's own pace!  Such is the stuff weekends are made of, or at least should be made of.  With the wispy ghosts of nighttime dreams slipping through the golden glimmers of daydreams, the sleeper wakes and is at peace.  To those who say that sleeping late is a waste of the day, I reply that jumping with unneeded precipitousness from bed is a waste of the most relaxing moments of the week.  Let the sleeper lie a little longer, and let him enter the day rejuvenated and replenished.

Tornadoes

On Saturday I was very sleepy, but that's not what stands out about the day; what stands out is tornadoes.  For lunch, my lady-duck-friend and I went to a Mexican restaurant.  On the way in, we dodged raindrops from an afternoon downpour, but thought nothing more of it.  Just a little while later, when we'd gotten back to my place, my dad called telling us to turn on the news.  Only then did we see the tornado-ridden storm speeding eastward through North Carolina.  The storm passed by where we were without much incident, but meteorologists started talking about a tornado headed straight through the area where my LDF's apartment is.  Her dog was at home as the twister approached, but we didn't have enough time to get there before it hit, so we sat on the couch, watching and waiting and keeping our fingers crossed.  As soon as the storm had moved farther east my LDF jumped in the car and drove home, where she found to both of our great relief that her apartment was still standing and her wonder dog was none the worse for wear.  With that weight off my mind, I promptly lay down for a nap.

Porch Time

Friday afternoon found me and my housemate sitting on our porch shooting the breeze.  The weather was perfect: not too cool, not too hot, and sunny but not blindingly so.  It was the first time in rather a while that neither one of us was rushing off somewhere or preoccupied by an urgent task.  We were able to just relax and let the conversation flow, interrupted only by squirrel acrobatics in the trees overhead.  I'll probably post a paean to porches another time--because I think they're great--but for now I'm just happy thinking of an excellent conversation outside, lingering while day turned gently to dusk and our minds meandered through pleasant fields of thought.

Standup Comedy

On Thursday I went to a local comedy club to support my friend, who was competing to be North Carolina's Funniest Comic.  This was the first round of the competition, and I was pleased to cheer on multiple comedy friends--folks whom I had seen perform several times while giving standup comedy a try myself this past fall.  I decided that for the moment I prefer strapping on a guitar and singing melancholy songs for an audience rather than being funny for them, but I may give comedy another try in the future.  Having tried it, I can say that it is a lot harder than it would seem.  And my friend does it very well.  By audience vote on Thursday he happily advanced to the next round of competition, and I look forward to cheering him on again!

Taxes

A little more catching up here, as I have again gotten behind in my daily posting regimen.  I blame this activity for Wednesday's derailment this past week: doing my income taxes.  I don't actually mind filling out my tax forms and doing the calculations; it's pretty straightforward.  The part I mind is the way that there is always, always some little piece that I don't quite understand, about which the instructions remain frustratingly vague.  So I spend way too much time looking for answers online, agonizing, and trying different things before settling on what I think is the most correct option.  This year I e-filed for the first time, and the free program I was using did not explain exactly how it was calculating each step of my taxes.  So I got almost all the way through before finding that there was something I thought was incorrect, at which point I was unable to fix it without doing the whole thing over on the IRS's free fillable forms.  I did this, but then the state taxes were similarly frustrating, and I ended up just mailing the traditional paper forms for those.  Seriously, Congress/Department of Revenue, there has got to be a better way to do this.

Team Chili and the Frito Pie

In an earlier post I mentioned a chili-making scheme that my coworker and I hatched.  Today it came to glorious fruition.  The idea was that we needed to make Frito pies for an event and [here I feel it incumbent on me to explain the Frito pie: our boss who grew up in Texas told us of the snack, which she said was served at high school football games and the like--it consists of a small bag of Fritos corn chips slit open with chili poured inside, topped with diced onions and cheese] the typical way is to use canned chili.  Well, my coworker and I were dismayed by that idea, and we proposed to make the chili ourselves instead.  Dubbing ourselves Team Chili, we donned aprons this morning and chopped onions and browned ground beef on the stove.  We poured these items with chili spices into Crock Pots along with canned beans and tomatoes.  All day long, one end of the office was filled with the aroma of chili as the Crock Pots did their slow-cooking magic.  Then tonight we were able to share our creations (one pot of beef chili and one of vegetarian).  Having never tried a Frito pie before, I discovered they're quite tasty.  And the novelty of eating out of a tiny bag of chips using a spoon is quite satisfying.

Some of you may have noticed that my drawings have become less intricate of late.  It's partly because I've been tired out and trying to finish them quickly, but partly because I've been using a thicker pen.  It's not better or worse, but the thicker tip does have a noticeable effect on how I draw.  Sometimes it feels freeing not to need to add as much detail and other times it feels stifling not to be able to.  I would have liked more detail in this picture, for instance, but that's a key part of this blog--embracing imperfection and moving along.  Now to bed with fond memories of Frito pies still in my head . . .

(Late-Night) Milkshake Runs

Throughout my college years, a recurring treat was the late-night milkshake run.  It was never clear who exactly had suggested we drive to Cook Out to get milkshakes in the wee small hours, because the idea spontaneously arose in all of our minds at once.  We would pile into someone's car, pump some tunes as we rolled down the road, and often discuss the relative merits of different flavors of milkshake.  The stuff memories are made of.  So you can imagine my joy when a friend and I happened to be driving late this past Saturday night and we looked at each other and asked, "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"  Yup, it was Cook Out time.  Cook Out is a drive-through chain around here that has fast food and is open late at night.  The important thing about Cook Out is that they have so many flavors of milkshakes, and they're all really good.  If you're in the mood for a strawberry cheesecake shake, they can do that.  If you'd prefer a simple banana fudge (my all-time favorite and standby), they can do that, too.  This particular Cook Out run was somewhat vexing, but I'll hasten to say that even a vexing Cook Out run is still pretty great.  It was vexing because I did not get the shake I had ordered.  I asked for a plain chocolate one, and was handed one that was chocolate but with a bit of a coffee flavor and odd, crunchy candy-like bits in it.  My friend and I spent the better portion of the ride home passing the mystery shake back and forth attempting to decipher its flavor (possibly chocolate Heath bar crunch).  Although it was not what I had asked for, the entertainment value of trying to solve the mystery more than alleviated any disappointment.  And thus came to pass another excellent milkshake run.

Sharing Books

Once when I was in high school, a friend of a friend gave me a dog-eared, softcover copy of Jack Kerouac's On the Road.  She had gotten it from a friend, and after reading it wanted to pass it along from one reader to the next.  On the first page she'd written "Kerouac knows his stuff! Let's all go one day!! Enjoy it, then pass it on!! [and then she'd signed her name]"  The last two exclamation points were turned into the eyes of a smiley face with its tongue out.  I'm only a little sorry to say that I never did pass the book along.  I read it and loved it with all the fibers of my being.  And I kept it.  From my parents' house to various rooms in college to life afterward, I have always made sure it stands on my bookshelf.  This particular book notwithstanding, I love sharing books with friends, and I have embraced the joy of not caring much whether they make their way back to me afterward.  As long as a book is in the hands of someone who loves it or at least is curiously reading it, I'm satisfied.  (Honestly, though, there are a few like the aforementioned which I would care to get back and keep.)  I believe someone once told me that books should never be lent, only given.  Perhaps that's right.  I read, too, that Studs Terkel (I think it was he) would not like for books he loaned out to be returned without the borrowers' marginalia inscribed within.  He felt that properly reading a book was to have a conversation with the author, and enjoyed seeing his friends' conversations on the pages of his books.  So if you haven't recently, consider giving a book you love to someone you love, and don't worry too much about getting it back.  There are many more on their way to you.

Trivia Night

Doing my best to catch up a bit on missed posts, here's one for last Thursday, when I went to a trivia night at a coffee shop in Raleigh.  I was a relative newcomer, joining friends on their established team.  The topic was poetry, and the competition turned out to be a lot of fun.  Although I by no means carried the team, I was pleasantly surprised to find out how much knowledge about poetry and poets was almost on the tip of my tongue.  The experience got me excited about reading more poetry and learning more about it.  Our team won three out of four rounds (thank you, thank you . . .), and the prizes for each round were used books of our choice.  I got some pretty neat stuff that I might not otherwise have picked out to read.  The book prizes made sense because the trivia night was sponsored by some portion of the Wake County public library system.  Or at least librarians in their off hours.  Sadly, it was the last such event they are hosting, and I guess we'll have to get our trivia fix elsewhere from now on (I'm already hatching plans for pan-state trivial conquest . . . .).  At the end of the night we were the winners, and we took home a $25 gift card to a bar/restaurant in addition to our stacks of books.  It was a satisfying evening, and a great impetus to sweep out the cobwebs from the less-visited nooks and alleyways of my mind.

Trying to Catch Up

Today I've felt a bit like this fellow (who you'll note has borrowed a chapeau from his friend the milliner--such is my explanation for tiredly mixing up the two when I was drawing): late for a very important date!  Or at least running to catch up.  I was working on my taxes earlier and realized that they would be more complex than I'd hoped.  After frustration followed by procrastination, it got late in the evening and I had not made much headway.  I decided to stop for tonight (not early enough, it appears!) and finish up tomorrow.  I'm not feeling too stressed about that, because I'll have time to do them tomorrow evening, but taxes and other exigencies have been keeping me from my duck blog.  I'm sorry to my faithful readers to have let so many days go by without posting.  I'm going to do my best to stay with it, but I've got a hectic month or two coming up, and there will probably be more lapses.  Thanks in advance for sticking with me and this blog.  I hope you are already at the tea party enjoying crumpets with lemon curd, and I will look forward to seeing you shortly!

Really Good Food

Good food is special.  Maybe there are places where all food is good food--nourishing and satisfying and prepared with care and attention--but I expect they're few and far between.  Here in the U.S. all too few of our meals fit into this category.  We're always on the go, always trying to save a few minutes here and there so we can cram more into our days.  But in so doing, we end up feeding ourselves poorly.  We consume processed foods that are quick to eat and that fill our stomachs, but that fail to deliver balanced nutrition or satisfy our senses.  We almost forget what a really good meal tastes like, what it feels like.  But when we do eat one, the difference is stark.  The flavors jump out with clarity and simple potency.  The multiple facets of our hunger, physical and mental, are satisfied, filled, relieved.  Our bodies feel energized rather than bloated, light rather than sluggish, alert rather than lethargic.  I had a really good meal tonight when the place where I work held a benefit dinner.  A barbeque pit master from South Carolina prepared a whole pig, cooking it all day long until the meat was extremely tender and juicy yet not greasy or heavy.  Local chefs prepared sides: pinto beans, cornbread, collard greens, pickled vegetables, and coleslaw, each traditional yet vibrant and with a fresh twist.  There was rich yet fluffy pound cake, the best banana pudding I have ever tasted, peanut bar cookies, and multiple kinds of wine and beer.  It was a really good meal not because of the selection of dishes, but because of the quality of the ingredients, the imagination with which they were combined, and the care with which they were prepared.  After eating I felt sated in all regards, not just full in stomach, but full of life.

Schmoozing

When I was a kid, I was really shy.  Painfully shy at times.  I'm not sure what happened between then and now, but somewhere along the line I found I really enjoy schmoozing with people.  I love hearing their names and learning about who they are and what they do.  I was an alumnus representative at an event my college held tonight for interested/admitted students from the area, and I had a blast talking with the students and their parents.  It wasn't just schmoozing for the sake of schmoozing--I think people are endlessly fascinating, and it's useful and gratifying to learn their unique stories.  Everyone tells her or his story differently, so even if the basic arc is one I have heard many times before, I learn something new with each telling.  At the best of times, my interest in the person I'm talking to completely overtakes any concern for how she or he is perceiving me, and I'm able to relax into the interaction and the communication.  As far as I can see it, that's where the divine dwells, in moments of pure curiosity and exchange, unimpeded by ego.  Of course, they're brief, and my ego gets in the way all the time, but every so often I'll come close to that divine spark, and it leaves me feeling energized and hopeful and full of joy.

Harebrained Schemes

Meaning no offense to the noble hare, I want to talk about crazy, wild, improbable schemes, and how much fun they can be.  Who knows what these two ducks are about to make with their five thousand pounds of wool felt, inflatable palm tree, disco ball, grandfather clock, steel girder, twine, ping-pong balls, croquet mallet, and old bicycle parts?  But you just know it's going to be something impressive.  My harebrained scheme of the day was concocted with my coworker and involved planning to cook large quantities of chili in crock pots.  The part that made it feel like a scheme was our carefully written-up "Chili Worksheet" and the official chili project folder we created to file the worksheet in.  Pretty much anything can turn into a harebrained scheme if you have the necessary expansive mindset and willingness to be silly.  In such cases, I am more than happy to put in extra work for no discernible outcome other than the sublime conflation of the serious and the absurd.  The resulting confusion often leads to childlike laughter, and that on its own is more than worth the effort.

Scones

In spite of the gnawing uncertainty about whether it's pronounced "s-koh-ns" or "sk-ah-ns" (I say, using my entirely made-up phonetic system), I love these tasty, doughy, teatime treats.  I like them plain, spread with butter, with lemon curd, with jam, and/or with fruit or chocolate baked in.  I like them with black tea, herbal tea, coffee, or milk.  I like them at breakfast time, elevenses, lunchtime, teatime, dinner time, or for a late-night snack.  I like them large or small.  But I especially like them homemade and fresh.  I am fortunate enough to have a housemate who bakes excellent scones from scratch.  He's got it down to an art.  Sometimes they will be plain, sometimes they'll have crystallized ginger, berries, or chocolate baked in.  He makes them in large rounds which he scores to mark out six or eight wedges.  When the scones are baked, you can easily break off a wedge (or two or three) to enjoy with the beverage of your choice.  And of course, they're best hot out of the oven, when the chocolate bits are all gooey.  Delicious!

Windy Days

On Saturday, I went to the N.C. State University arboretum with my lady-duck-friend and my parents, which was the first time they had all met.  An exceptionally strong wind buffeted us as we tried to read the markers in front of noteworthy plants.  At one point I was surprised by a gust so strong that it almost moved me backward.  I found I really enjoyed the wind, though.  It was refreshing and cleansing, so long as my sunglasses kept specks and leaves (and the odd flying squirrel) out of my eyes.  The walk was entirely pleasant.  And the occasion, of a sort which can be stressful for all parties, felt quite calm and congenial, as I hoped it would.

Downtown Art Walk

I'm catching up today on the posts from Friday and Saturday, as well as the one for Sunday.  Friday evening I had the pleasure of attending a few galleries during the First Friday art walk in downtown Raleigh.  It's hardly ideal conditions for perusing the art on display what with the crowds of people; it is however excellent conditions for snagging free sangria and hors d'oeuvres, which you'd better believe I did!

Playing the Local 506

I've fallen a bit behind again after a late night, but what a night!  My friend and I played a short set (about five songs) for a benefit concert at the venerable Local 506 in Chapel Hill.  We were one of seven or eight acts, and we performed next to last, when the audience was both smaller and more liquored up.  But they were perfectly well behaved, and it went quite well as far as I could tell.  It was really hard to know how we sounded to the audience because the monitors on the stage were kinda funky and we are not experienced with microphones and all.  But all that aside, it was a dream come true to play for an audience at a club I had grown up hearing about and in which I'd seen bands I love perform.  I don't think I'm cut out to be a professional musician who makes his living by performing, but it's something  I greatly enjoy and want to do more of.  And this was an excellent beginning.