after the demise of my sufjan stevens cover band, i ceased to practice the piano and began to experiment with some new musical talents: voice and dance. therefore, i was ecstatic when sean invited me to join his boy band.
here is our first live karaoke performance:
(1) i've made $11 on istockphoto.com! only $89 more and i'll actually be able to cash out.
(2) i've evaluated 4,182 mp3s. only 75 more and i'll have rated my entire itunes library.
(3) i've exchanged 4+ emails about editing a client's novel. only 1+ more and i might have a deal.
(4) i've posted 192 blog entries. only 8 more and i'll have exhausted all of my ideas for the 17 point scale. okay that's probably not true, but at the moment it certainly feels that way. and since it's always best to be prepared, i've found you a replacement site; it's a blog about reading, writing, and annie dillard. in the most recent post, the blogger (beth) talks of church, polar bears (well, they're actually dillard's polar bears, not beth's), and the beautiful agony that is writing (or more particularly, the troubling realization that visits nearly every young writer, the sad epiphany that some greater, more renowned author has somehow stolen your paper mache idea and given it wings, the elegant, nuanced wings of a monarch butterfly or a hoatzin). just imagine the coolness of my parenthetical thought multiplied by some really big number (maybe a number like 70. isn't that the really huge, seemingly infinite number that Christ offered the apostles when they asked how many times they should forgive their brother? i may be recalling this wrong, but if not, does that mean that jews and romans were really bad at math? or should i stop forgiving him later this year?), and you'll have a rough sense of how great this blog is. but there is one problem. you'll have to pay spu a few thousand dollars before you can read it. yep, it's that good. officially, the money that you'd spend to read the blog is considered tuition for spu's mfa in creative writing, but we all know that that's just lawyer talk, cause i'm telling you, it's a darn good blog.
andrew david. "yes this is a rather plain wedding picture and yes i wore those sandals during the wedding and yes thats danny and alison at the bottom of the page and yes you can tell becky that ive finally read some wendell berry" saskatchewan, canada.
may you be as happy as n-than oin-s both tonight and on thanksgiving day!
andrew david "smiley" saskatoon, saskatchewan.
i think that i have gre posttraumatic stress disorder. nora and mari are preparing to take the test sometime this winter, and their ceaseless vocabulary drills have me dreaming of my own gre test. this evening i've been haunted by a really tough question from the math section. it goes something like this:
during his stay at robbins, andrew spent most of his time in one of three apartments, two 4-person apartments and a 2-person apartment. if no one who lived in a 2 -person apartment is currently married, the editor lived with three men who are currently married, and the engineers only lived with philosophers or other engineers, what were the majors of andrew's roommates? and for extra credit, what does this have to do with the other andrew?
| major | 2006 occupation | 2006 marital status |
|---|---|---|
| 1 biology | 1 researcher | 1 married |
| 1 english | 1 editor | 1 single |
| 3 accounting | 3 accountants (2+ cpas) | 2 married, 1 single |
| 1 history | 1 barista/editor (ee) | 1 single |
| 3 engineering | 3 engineers | 2 married, 1 single |
| 1 philosophy | 1 manual laborer/webdesigner with an mdiv | 1 married |
in september of 2000, i joined jonathan, brady, and danny in a two-bedroom attempt at apartment life. like any self-sufficient city-dwellers, we cooked in our own kitchen, lounged in our own living room, and squatted on our own toilet. very adult of us, we thought. but despite our self-reliance, i've since decided that our apartment was the collegiate equivalent of a half-way house. in order to lessen the shock of independent life, the university furnished each apartment with a security blanket--well, really it was more a security rug than a blanket, and it sat in the entryway, a metaphysical appendage of our front door. indeed, it was the dorm doors of robbins that kept us insulated from darkness of the real world.
forgive me. i just finished thomas pynchon's the crying of lot 49, and i'm afraid that his wacky, nonsensical style has somehow seeped into my blog. let me offer (and then dismiss) a quick spu tutorial.
students at the college of queen anne often refer to their school as the spu bubble. they lament the university's cultural composition (primarily conservative caucasian girls) and urge one another to pop free of the campus confines and explore more diverse seattle haunts. while at spu, i worked across the lake at a market research center in bellevue, and because the phone-room at northwest research group (it's sad...i still remember the number: 1-800-545-5909) was a haven for cultural diversity (and crazies), i never felt too passionately about spu's lack of hetergeneity. still, when speaking vaguely of doors and their ability to separate one from the real world, i understand that most spu-affiliated readers (after shrugging their shoulders in bewilderment) might speculate that i am satirically referring to robbins as an academic hotel california. the doors hem you in; they are everywhere (everywhere!). you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave. or something like that.
they'd be wrong.
(note to self: don't employ this trick again--it's word-wasteful to spend so much time talking about what you don't mean).
(beth's note to myself: stop preluding)
during the past three years i've lived in a house and a pair of apartments. i've chatted with my neighbors about soccer, stolen cars, and Jesus "being some crazy, mixed up sh-t, man," but i've never peeked inside their homes, stared at their fish, or even considered stealing their milk. in robbins we were protected from the anonymity of this real world. the doors in robbins were always open, inviting us into communion.
and it was there that i finally met the other andrew....
andrew david. "jello 1 -- basi lays the trap" robbins, seattle, wa.
by the way, those are matts not andrews.
total robbins apartments (i.e., neighbors) that i entered unannounced: 6+
total post-spu apartments/houses (i.e., neighbors) that i have entered unannounced: 0
and now, the long awaited return of the 17 point scale's gossip column...
Another eligible SPU bachelor bites the dust. Congrats!
actually, this poses a question that i've been meaning to ask miss manners. you see, despite this gossip column, i tend to keep things to myself. if ---------'s engaged, that's his news to share, not mine. if jonathan and kim have a baby girl, that's their news, not mine. so miss manners, or anyone with an opinion, when does it become appropriate for that bit of news to enter the public sector through a second hand source such as me? that is, when can i feel certain that i won't be spoiling their chance to share the news? for instance, just last night i was hanging out with mutual friends of danny. i don't think they'd heard the news, and i wasn't sure whether to tell them....
alright, here's the origin of yester-yesterday's blog. before my brief exploration of spittle, i was actually having rather ordinary thoughts like 'gosh, so-and-so is so great...' and i think this is a fairly human thing to think. after all, any myspace page or legitimate biography will have a section devoted to heroes. everyone has heroes. and i don't mean that we all have some real life equivalent to muscular men running around in tights and a bright cape. indeed, we might, but those magnificons would be superheroes not regular, no adjective meaning 'superior' or 'excellent' preceeding the word, everyday heroes. in any case, as i thought about how great (but not super, just so-so) so-and-so was, i wondered how many of the 2.6 million blogs represent serious attempts to chronicle statements of herodom. after discovering that there are only 3, i thought 'this is an untapped market! for my next blog, i should launch a journal of personal essays about my heroes (but again, not super-heroes). that will be uplifting and people will super love it!'
by the way, if you're wondering 'who's so-and-so?', so was i. back in elementary school. you see, on sunday evenings our pastor used to tell anecdotes about so-and-so. it took me awhile, but after hearing a few allusions to this perculiar entity, i realized that the pastor was just slurring his words a bit. still i couldn't understand what our neighbor's golden retriever, Solo, had to do with the Israelites or the transfiguration.
okay, back to that sunset. believe it or not, we recently received an email from a reader with a bit of expertise in this field:
"i really like your sunset picture. did you shoot that on automatic (exposure)? Was that on your hike with Steve? Hope you feel better!"
okay, anyone with commen sense will wonder, 'how does a low budget blog like the 17 point scale have access to anyone with photography clout?' therefore, after making a thorough search of our archives, we uncovered the following information to support his credibilty (please pardon the picture; there is something shameful in using such a poor picture in a series of posts regarding photography. however, after clicking on the photo, you will note our informant's camera laying dormant beside him on the table. this is somehow relevant):
Name: confidential
Past Experience: Falcon Photographer http://thefalcononline.com/story/1684
Past Experience Caveat: the pictures on that link fail to illustrate the actual level of his work. they're just the best i could google in five minutes.
Training: star-pupil of the Director of Photography at World Vision
Training Caveat: photography aside, they deserve your money: http://www.worldvision.org/
In any case, the 17 point scale would like to issue the following statement in response to his query:
"I feel quite a bit better, maybe 91%. The photograph was indeed shot using automatic (exposure). It was shot in July of 2005 on the Kenai Peninsula. But there's something you should know about that photo..."
(if these cliffhangers are vexing, i'm sorry -- more on apologies later -- it just takes too long to write anything substantial. perhaps i should save info up and post in big fat bursts)
