Hey, I got my first piece of fanmail about my little rules of thumb! I know they're kind of silly, but I miss having a full-blown sidebar full of random information, so you cannot begrudge me my silly little sidebar-ish helpful hints.
And I'm sorry to say, Corina, that I checked at Amazon and my book is out of print. However -- because this is exactly how big of a dork I am -- I know I bought this book twice all those years ago because I thought I lost it. If I find my other copy, it's all yours, just because you made me so happy by telling me you like them.
Ever since I found out about my Sting concert (which I am, of course, now having second thoughts about), I've been listening to Brand New Day nonstop.
I don't think I've gushed about this album quite enough, but it is fantastic. If you are any kind of a Sting fan and you haven't gotten this yet, you are missing out. It's very new and different for him, but he's so talented that he can't really get it wrong.
I just heard my favorite track, "Desert Rose," on the radio today, and of course it's all kind of changed around. I wish I had a friend in the record industry who could explain to me why this happens. I mean, I understand that songs can run too long, but still, sometimes they take out the best parts because they don't know what they're doing. The last two lines are my favorite, and they've been cut from the radio version:
Sweet desert rose... this memory of Eden haunts us all
This desert flower, this rare perfume is the sweet intoxication of the fall
Which is all the more reason you should go buy this album.
My other favorite song is called "Perfect Love Gone Wrong," and it's written from the point of view of a dog whose owner falls in love with a man who takes the dog's place in the owner's heart.
I can't tell you long I sat staring at the lyrics trying to figure out exactly what was going on in this song, until I realized: it's written from the point of view of a dog. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, even for Sting. (However, the dog does speak French, for some Sting-like reason.)
I had one other revelation with this album, and that is how crazy it is to feel like I'm doing something wrong when I don't want to listen to a particular song. I just don't like the third song, I haven't from the first time I heard it, and for some bizarre reason I feel guilty about skipping it every time I play this CD.
I still skip it, and my guilt is waning, but still, how crazy is that?
There are so many good things about my return to Kansas, but one of the things I'm most looking forward to is reconnecting with one of my friends from high school and college, a girl named Sally.
Sally and I knew each other in high school, but we ran in different circles. Occasionally they'd collide and we'd wind up at the same party or something, and she was always very nice and funny and cheerful. I can't really remember how it happened, but she was there the night before I moved to Washington just after we finished our junior year of high school, that horrible night where all my friends stood around me in a circle in the parking lot of the miniature golf place and I said goodbye to them, one by one, crying my eyes out.
When I came back to go to college at KU, she was in the same dorm I was, and over the course of the year, we got to be very close. She was dating a guy we had gone to high school with, who was at school in Pittsburgh, I of course was dating nobody, and we both had roommates that we were not getting along with, so we kind of bonded, Like me, she was just as happy sitting in one of our rooms watching movies as going out to some frat party, so we'd hang when everyone else was out getting trashed.
Sally played the viola (I'm pretty sure she still does), and played it well enough to get into the Berklee College of Music, a very prestigious music school in Boston. So she left, and I missed her, but we kind of fell out of touch.
She ended up coming back to Kansas after a year because the loan debt she was accumulating at Berklee proved to be too scary, but I don't think she came back to school right away, and we just never reconnected.
But she showed up at our ten-year reunion last summer, and she chatted with Elise and Tara and other friends we had in common, and we started e-mailing. Turns out she married that guy from high school, is currently getting her master's in audiology, and just bought a house in Kansas City.
I can already tell from our e-mails that we are going to have no problem getting to be good friends again, and this makes me happy. (It doesn't mean that you don't have to move back, though, Elise.)
In other news concerning my friends (which I'm sure you're all so interested in that you just can't tear your eyes from the screen), my friend Kay who just finished chef school in Chicago is moving back to her hometown outside St. Louis.
I don't think she was planning on this, but, see, her apartment building burned down. Not her apartment in particular, but a section of her building. She and her roommate were up talking and heard screams of "help me" that they just thought were random people on the street, until they smelled smoke.
They went outside in time to watch a guy have to jump because the flames were chasing him out the window and the fire fighters couldn't get to him fast enough.
Her apartment was fine, they were even allowed to go back in that night, but I think it kind of freaked her out, so she's moving home until she can decide where she wants to go.
Of course, I'm suggesting Kansas City, but that's just because I want everyone to live there. This is a standard conversation between Kay and me:
Me: "I think you need to move to Kansas City."
Kay: "Why?"
Me: "Because we all need to be there. You'll move there, and then Elise will move back..."
Kay (interrupting me): "And then we'll all get a house together!"
Kay is making fun of me, but I don't see what's so wrong with that idea, except that maybe the neighbors might be suspicious of five or six single thirty-year-old women living in the same house.
I guess it's because I've spent more time alone in the last three years than I probably realize, and I'm craving those lazy days where you just sit around together in ugly clothes and don't have to talk or do something or ask if you can get a drink. Where you're just lounging, all hung-over-like, until someone suggests that you go out for tacos or pancakes or something, and you do, in your t-shirt and sweatpants and dirty hair and no make-up.
Okay, so, I miss college. What else is new.
You can safely cut in front of a car you are passing when you can see both its headlights in your inside rearview mirror.
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