25 posts tagged “101in1001”
So, I made another shirt, this time totally constructed by me (which is probably why it is kind of awkward):
Month o' Journaling Tally: 30/120
I just submitted a story to Glimmer Train. My first submission, ever! This emotionally fraught moment will surely culminate in the first of many, many rejections. Hooray!
In other news, an important piece fell off my new bike. Now the pump keeps falling out the bottom of the seat post. Annoying? Yes. SIGH.
BIKE
It's pretty great & pretty fast (& also pretty). Everything seems to have conspired against me enjoying the bike (a few negative experiences with the bike shop, took forever to finally get it running, crashed on my first joyride, etc.) but when I'm riding that all seems to vanish. The joyride is tainted in my mind as panicky & awful, but that's the after-effects of riding home bloody and pissed off on a gravel road with crabby drivers. I'm in love with the tires (Schwalbe Big Apples) and the handlebar grips (something by BioLogic that my wrists LOVE). I like the seat (also BioLogic) (how could it POSSIBLY have taken me so long to get a seat that fits?). I totally don't need to keep talking about the technical details of my bike right now.
Other things have come to light: It sounds like it's a bad idea to lock up a folder. This is because a) all the parts come off and b) people notice it and therefore want to steal it. Despite obsessing for about a week before buying it, I somehow did not think of this. The online consensus is that you buy a folding bike so you never have to leave it outside. Which is great except for when I want to go to a dance show (only about 7 times a month) and there is no space for me to take it in. It's small, but not THAT small. So I've been mentally adjusting from, "This bike solves every problem I've ever had," to "This bike is awesome and does not solve all of my problems...just most of them." I'm going to keep Lysander the Liberator around, which means I still need a new saddle and new wheels. But Lysander is a good bike & worth the trouble.
BIKE NAME
Yeah, it gets its own category. Please help me choose:
1) Boas
2) Boudica
3) Dali
SHOWS, #24-26
#24 - 9x22 - Emily Gastineau, Beverly Cottman, Molly Kay Stoltzman
#25 - Momentum - Sally Rousse & Megan Mayer
#26 - Beyond the Owing - Directed by Genevieve Bennett
SUMMER
Just as I'm starting to get that it's summer, back-to-school stuff appears and I've missed the mulberry season altogether. My garden has suffered a bit from me being delinquent (as always--will there ever come a time when I don't feel like a delinquent gardener?) but it's doing alright. Producing gigantic zucchinis. None of my seeds sprouted except for one beet and two carrots. I have no idea what we did wrong there. I figured out yesterday that my tomatoes are wilting because they have wilt. Ah. Why didn't I think of it myself?
Going to the Boundary Waters reminded me that camping is pretty awesome and worth the effort. I'm reading a Walk in the Woods, on my dad's recommendation (and generosity, since he sent me a copy), and thoroughly enjoying it. I spend the time I'm not reading the book daydreaming about hiking. I try to relieve this frustration (since I'm NOT hiking) by going outside and standing somewhere quiet for a while twice a day and feeling wind & sun. Combined with biking it helps a bit.
101in1001
I am actually still working on it, miracle of miracles, but it's
incredibly boring so I don't update you on it. Otherwise you'd have to
hear about my struggles to get over myself and JUST CALL THE DENTAL
INSURANCE PEOPLE ALREADY. It's awful. I'll tell you when I'm all done
and throw a huge party in honor of accomplishing a bunch of stupid
crap.
OTHER STUFF
I've been writing, on paper, and it's been a lot of fun. I'm getting rid of stuff. I can't stop listening to Jay-Z's Black Album. MKT is still on hiatus, but we had a meeting last night with someone spectacular to talk about sharing a show at Bedlam in 2010. I'm still smiling. I've done NO cross-stitching or other making of physical objects for about two months. Tonight I'm going to a practice for Marcus Young's project, "Don't You Feel It Too?" I'm nervous, but I'm nervous about 70% of the time so I should probably just learn to ignore it.
THE END
I took my only night off in June to file some papers, weed the garden and sew a bag for my cell phone:
I'm kind of ridiculously happy with it. I used a sleeve off an old t-shirt I had altered and some ribbon I had lying around. It fits perfectly and protects the screen from getting all scratched. My first drawstring bag? A success! Plus it counts as one of the languishing craft projects for 101in1001. Yes!
(Pardon me for stealing my title from Trent Reznor's first tweet of today: "trent_reznor: HAPPY!" which I just find so hilarious and adorable.)
First, it started off with great news! Mad King Thomas was chosen for the best dance performance in the Twin Cities! By voters! People who vote! I don't know who they are, as I didn't know the awards were to be given, but whoever you are: what an excellent start to the day! Thank you!
Best Dance Performance in the Past 12 Months
Mad King ThomasIt's good to worry a bit when you go to a Mad King Thomas show—not about whether the artists might get hurt or what the critics will say, but how close you should get to the action onstage. During a Mad King Thomas program, the fourth wall is broken down with a sledgehammer, and everybody in the audience bears witness, at close range, to the glorious mayhem unleashed by the Sage Award-winning trio of Tara King, Theresa Madaus, and Monica Thomas. In January's Love Me, Love My Questionable Art at the Bryant-Lake Bowl, MKT shared the stage with dancers Sally Rousse, Hijack, and Galen Treuer. The evening's high jinks ran the gamut from high art to low, from twisted family stories to a doughnut auction—plus a post-feminist fashion show for good measure. King, Madaus, and Thomas owe their aesthetic to performance art icons like Karen Finley and Dancenoise, but they certainly have their own voices, and right now these women are using them to roar.
YES AWESOME HOORAY DELIGHT
Then...THEN I was in contact improv class and I got to start off with a warm up with KVL and EDL and we all giggled and it turns out I like giggling in the morning. And then some other fantastic dancing and flying and rolling around and sweating (augh, I love the pure, clean sweat of an early morning, post-shower work-out). We did handstands and cartwheels and I accidentally did a backbend but I feel GREAT! And then I meant to take the bus to work, but I accidentally just biked the whole way because the weather is unbelievably perfect!
Also, for yesterday's day of happiness, I saw my first daffodil AND it was Mad King Thomas' anniversary of being official! Even though I didn't see my other two, it was a good day to celebrate and be happy about.
I'm just going to ignore the gender politics/stereotypes here, and confess that last night I gave up 10 pairs of shoes, out of 44 pairs. I thought I owned more, and wanted to give away 10%, but I ended up getting rid of 23%! YES. Math. I am both ashamed and happy, and what better way to celebrate than by airing my shame for all? It was hard, and I don't really know why I still need 34 pairs of shoes. I'm working on it, okay? I GAVE UP A PAIR OF NEON PINK PUMPS FOR GOD'S SAKE.
Anyway, um, that was embarrassing.
---
A handful of open letters:
You, in the pink shorts: I get it. You are a Serious, and Seriously Fast, Cyclist. I know I'm a Fred: My bike rattles, I'm wearing my work pants with the legs rolled up, I have a bag strapped to the back of my bike, I repaired my broken fender with a zip tie and I have pink reflective dots scattered at random on my helmet. You're hanging out in my five-way intersection, by the way, where month after month in the cold I have to defend my turf from depressed, insolent drivers, and here you are, and you won't even smile or say hello. Who are you and why can't you just be friendly? It's a beautiful goddam day! Get off my road! Eat a sandwich! I shake my fist heartily at you!
You, two little old ladies: I don't mind waiting for you to pass to make my turn. In fact, it warmed my cold, bitter heart (recently frozen by pink-shorts) when you parted ways and said, "See you later, Leonore!" and thanked me for waiting. Someday I hope to ride around town with my friends, with a backpack on and a box on my rear rack, full of robot parts or tomatoes or whatever.
You, ten-dollar bill: Thanks for being obviously money, so that I made a quick u-turn and picked you up. Not quite as awesome as when I found $20 outside the Domino's in Ames, Iowa (poor kid who lost his pizza money), but still pretty dang awesome.
---
Well, alright, now that I've taken/given my daily dose of uncomfortably revealing truths, I guess I'll get back to work.
Two football games & several episodes of Battlestar Galactica (no spoilers plz, I am in season 2.0) pulled me through a gargantuan task of sorting. I've been accumulating these boxes of jewelry, makeup, hair stuff & medicines. These are weaknesses I have, in that I can't avoid accumulating them....despite the fact that I don't wear makeup, don't paint my nails, rarely wear jewelry, and never ever do anything with my hair.
I threw away a boxfull of expired medication. I threw away duplicate makeup. I threw away shit that has been annoying me for (no joke) years. Broken jewelry. I gave away anything functional. Apparently I have 10 tubes of chapstick (in addition to the three (3?! wtf is wrong with me?) I carry on my person) and stored them in a soup can.
The good news: Everything is now contained. I no longer have to navigate epic boxes of claspless bracelets and eyeshadow in triplicate.
The bad news: Well, not everything is contained. There are earrings in my night stand, mascara in my coat pocket, etc. I'm a hoarder, apparently. Ugh.
It's not SO hard to get rid of things, but it must be pretty hard since I've been trying to take care of this for six months at least. I feel compelled to keep makeup around, despite never wearing any (even on stage)--mostly I think I never want to get caught with an opportunity to look like David Bowie and no tools to execute it.
The good AND bad news is that now I am addicted to getting rid of my possessions. Undoubtedly this will fade and I'll still be swimming in useless crap.
Well, I'm notorious for short-term enthusiasm and long-term aimlessness. So far the 101in1001 project has kept me on track for some middling goals. I'm back in the reading habit, I can do more push-ups, etc.
I'm starting to wonder if there aren't some goals that I have that are now a bit more important than they were so long ago (um, like...360+ days ago). I've gotten rid of a lot of books I'll never read, but I still have a pretty extensive collection of books I want to read but may not have time to given how many specific books I still need to read. I am reading a great collection of short stories, but that's maybe 1% of my goal...whereas if I finally read Middlesex I will be 5% closer to checking an item off. I think my previous goal of "Read all the books I own but haven't read, or give them away." will become:
- Don't bring new (to me) books into the house.
- Before the end of 101in1001, make another concerted effort to pare down the library.
- Finish five miscellaneous craft projects that have been languishing untouched for months and months.
I know, pathetic, right? But it's 15 better than I started with, and perhaps more importantly: It allows me to cross off one of my 101 goals! Hooray!
I'm still push upping with the best of 'em. Entering week 3 and nervous as it has a reputation of being hard.
