bird by bird

Happy New Year's!!! (click on link)

It's New Years Eve, and it is blizzarding out, so I suppose it would be appropriate for me to reflect on the past year. Here goes: 2010 was a year of moving and shaking. I had a total of five addresses and began to consider a career change to become a professional gypsy. I moved with the seasons and with changing freedoms and responsibilities first living in a murder house in Vermillion, then to a Lawrence, KS house on Maine St., then my Watertown family home, then my aunt's windowless basement bedroom, then the cinderblock castle apartment with KS, and finally I'm here at my Watertown family home for a few more weeks until NYC. 2010 taught me the importance of efficient and organized packing (and unpacking), and by the end of it all, I think all the little moves and little goodbyes have helped lead up to my biggest move and my biggest goodbye of all. There was also a whole lotta shaking going on in 2010. I got all shook up at the Char Bar once or twice, and Club David,...

Big AL graduation from grad school 2010 Little AL high school graduation 2009

So much has happened in the last month that the thought of writing a coherent narrative is too overwhelming for me to handle on a Sunday night. I suppose a real writer could tackle such a task, but I am not a real writer, certainly not an "A" writer (just ask my very last report card). Here's what's been going on in December... resume-style.  Researched and wrote a seminar paper about divine and courtly love in medieval allegory, completed a 3500 word essay about death and technology, and put together an annotated bibliography of grammar pedagogy research (barf!). Emptied out my office, desk, mailbox, and shelf. Turned in my key, left Dakota Hall for the last time, and didn't look back. Celebrated the culinary mastery of Vermillion's finest food establishments: RED, Mona Lisi's (first time!), Pro's, Chae's, and Viejo (all in one week!) Called myself Brenda and called KS June to a toothless man sitting at the bar at Carey's on our last nig...

I finally sat down and watched Almost Famous in its entirety today, thanks to GG. Throughout the film, I thought, "How did it possibly take me this long to finally see this??" I gave it two red nail polished thumbs up! Here's my favorite quote: "I always tell the girls, never take it seriously. If you never take it seriously, you never get hurt; you never get hurt, you always have fun; and if you ever get lonely, just go to the record store and visit your friends." --Penny Lane

Because everyone loves a good coffee date!

Mining the Collaboration with Advanced Analytics Using some of IBM's expertise in deep data mining and analysis, we will crunch all the content to help develop a SmarterCities Open Model , which cities and groups around the world can build on to start SmarterCities grassroots projects. The data will remain free and open, under Creative Commons license, so that it can grow and be improved over time. This creative output will also flow into and inform work at IBM's new network of Analytics Centers launching around the globe: in Berlin, Tokyo, Beijing, New York, London and Washington, D.C. SmarterCities is an outgrowth of IBM's Smarter Planet initiative, which is focused on how all the systems in the world -- including food production, healthcare delivery,...

Go to this website and vote for Megan Dirks! She was published in this book earlier and was juror's pick. http://newamericanpaintings.wordpress.com/2010/12/17/inaugural-new-american-paintings-annual-prize-readers-choice-poll/

So I graduated today!!!! The speaker at graduation was from the SD Board of Regents, but instead of summarizing his commencement speech, I thought I'd post a (better) commencement speech from my girl, Annie. I like to read it imagining that she's talking to me. "I gave the undergraduate and interdisciplinary studies commencement address at the University of California at Berkeley in May. A number of people asked for a copy of the speech, and I told them I'd post it on Salon. So here it is, shorter and slightly fiddled with. I am honored and surprised that you asked me to speak today. This must be a magical day for you. I wouldn't know. I accidentally forgot to graduate from college. I meant to, 30 years ago, but things got away from me. I did graduate from high school, though -- do I get a partial credit for that? Although, unfortunately, my father had forgotten to pay the book bill, so at the graduation ceremony, when I opened the case to see my diploma, it ...

Last year at this time, I told a friend that my goal was to have 20 followers by New Year's Eve. She so sweetly messaged her friends asking them to "follow" me, but still I think I only made it to 19 by the time the bell struck twelve. But I just looked and realized that now I have 44 followers! How did that happen?! I really feel so so honored that people pop in to this blog from time to time to read, watch, or see whatever I've been wasting my time finding or putting together. THANK YOU for being interested in the same kinds of things that I'm interested in, and thank you for following. So, what do you say... 50 by December 31st?

I think that the main purpose of this blog is to share cool, interesting, beautiful, thought-provoking, funny, original, strange stuff with my friends. But lately I've been thinking that maybe there's another reason, too. In my creative non-fiction class, we talk about how writing is a way of figuring out something or working our way through what's going on inside of us. And I think that this blog is sort of a way for me to do that as well. So this post isn't going to be funny or cool or strange, but instead it's just my attempt to work my way through what's going on inside of me.   *** I was searching through old facebook messages today to find an address, and I came across a bunch of old messages to and from MD. It's strange because I just finished a piece for my non-fiction class on this exact thing, finding technological artifacts as reminders of death. More on that later.. I thought I would post some snippets of messages.. it's so strange how lif...

Do you have any idea how much more I would get out of lectures if they were all presented this way?!!?

There's this scene in Gilmore Girls when Lorelia and Rory are talking on the phone the morning that Logan, Rory's boyfriend, moves to London.  Lorelia asks Rory, "How was the goodbye?" and Rory responds, "Awful. There's nothing good about a goodbye. It was a very poorly named ritual. It was a bad-bye. A very bad-bye." I think Rory (or rather, the writers of GG) are so right. Who the heck came up with that word anyway? What a [oxy]moron!

Two years ago, we spent the month of December sitting in the dark facing our television our faces blue with the reflection of the screen. We were sitting in our living room but we were lost watching disk after disk of the tv series of the same name lost. We were starved for adventure for physical trial and triumph for movement and ambition all of which we lacked that December. At night I dreamed of the island and had reoccurring Lost-mares of the Hatch because though we didn't say it aloud we all thought it "Please, don't go down there."

Louis: I have to say, this is my first trip to New York...not for me. The garbage, the noise, I don't know how you put up with it. Carrie: Thanks. I had a great time. Louis: Wait, you're going home alone? It's rough out there. Carrie: Nah. It isn't so bad. Carrie (voiceover): If Louis was right, and you only get one great love, then New York may just be mine...and I can't have nobody talkin' shit about my boyfriend. --Sex and the City

AL and EH  Spring 2005 Central Park. NYC AL and EH Fall 2008 Central Park, NYC

It's about this time in the semester when I look at the long list of meaningless tasks that I have left to complete when I ask myself the ultimate question, "What's the point?" Really, what is the point to all of this? What good will I serve humanity by completing a 20 page seminar paper about irony in medieval allegory? How will my annotated bibliography on second language grammar instruction contribute to well-being of mankind? And most importantly, will my students even know if I don't read their final portfolios? Life is twisted, complicated, fast, and short, and it's days like today when I really don't want to waste any more of mine being miserable and stressed over work that doesn't feed the hungry or nurse the sick. But yet, I do what I have to do. Only 8ish more days of annotations and comma splices, and then I'll be free to hug and help and high five everyone, improving our earth in my own little Amanda Lightfield way. Hang in ther...

Happy Birthday AB!

I like trees much more when I'm sitting under them resting in their shade. Instead, here I am here, hoovering over their thinly sliced guts trying to make sense of the words printed in size 11 Times New Roman. I hate this time of the year. Don't tell Jesus.

I know a lot of people who are in love. I am not one of them. Neither is little AL. We talked about it the other night and watched this clip from 500 Days of Summer . She turned to me and said, "It's not fair that people in love get to be so much happier than us." I think I agree. How depressing. Them Us

JG is back. Thank. God.

My roommate KS is in law school, and for her trial tech class, she needed volunteers to serve on her mock trial jury. Of course LS and I jumped at the chance! We love everything Law & Order and were so excited to see our rockstar friend in action, but we were both a bit concerned about our longstanding issues with church giggles and initiation giggles. We feared that court room giggles could be the worst yet. Regardless, we put our fears behind us and braved the court room. There was some stifled and outright laughter, but for the most part, we behaved ourselves. We even learned a thing or two! So... If you ever get summoned to [mock] jury duty Bring something to write with. That way, every time something happens that makes you want to say a smart ass remark to the person sitting next to you (LS), you can write it down and discuss during recess. Come prepared. Bring a list on non-funny images to counteract all of the courtroom comedies you've ever seen that will inevitably ...

"I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms around her and sleep. Not fuck, like in those movies. Not even have sex. Just sleep together in the most innocent sense of the phrase. But I lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was hurricane." — John Green in Looking for Alaska

You know what I hate?? I hate when I have an idea, a light-bulb-going-off, this-is-going-to-make-me-millions, can't-wait-for-my-10-year-reunion kind of idea, and then, I realize that someone has already thought of it. Lately, I've been working on a piece for my creative non-fiction class looking at death and technology. I want to look at how technology in the 21st century makes grief and moving on more difficult than it was 100 or 200 years ago. I want to explore how facebook profiles, email addresses, and phone numbers of dead people are both haunting and healing for those who grieve. Ultimately, I want to reach some sort of conclusion about letting go of the dead: the real and the virtual. But this morning I made the mistake of googling it, and it turns out that this idea has already been written about, and not only that, but it has been written about in a much more convincing and provoking way. Ugh. Typical. Any-who, I still think the idea is interesting, and I'm still g...