Saturday, August 30, 2008

Lacking Originality

Bikes Bikes Bikes! My new obsession! I'm so excited! I Finally got to ride my dinosaur of a bike to work today! Remember the beautiful beach cruiser bike I was so excited about getting from the Collective? Well, there's been multiple difficulties with the tires and then everything was fine except for a missing nut, which I replaced this morning with pieces from my little boy's bike... it was ingenious, really - and of course somebody else's idea...but I needed something to get me to work today. Last night after my venture at the Gallivan I returned to my mountain bike to find the back tire completely flat. I knew something was wrong with it on the way there.

So anyway, transportation is always an issue and I'm finding bikes to be almost as much trouble as cars, only cheaper to fix... why can't everything just work? What if Everything did Just Work? Then we'd never have trials or problems or growth, right?

Today is Saturday and I'm at work. I'd be enjoying myself more if I weren't so desperately hungry. I was hungry when I went to bed at 3 last night and those peanut butter M&M's from then have worn off...like seven hours ago. There's a very small girl here, otherwise I'd be eating my lunch. She's got these big eyes that would just beg me to share, I know it :)

Events from yesterday: I got my hair cut (yes again. So what if it's only been 2 months?). I fell off my bike for the first time since I've had it (it was that car's fault, I swear - they pulled up way too far and in avoiding it I hit the curb the wrong way and toppled over) like there's any right was to hit a curb... luckily I slowed down tremendously and really didn't even get scraped. My palms are tougher than I thought.

Events from the yesterdays before: I'm on the last book of the Sisterhood series and really thoroughly enjoying it. I asked one of my friends to pick up a copy for me since they were geographically closer. As a former bookstore employee I automatically reverted back to bookstore terms "it'd be on the A-frame on the table next to the big bay and hopefully it'll be in mass market, not just trade paper" Yes, then I realized I was being ridiculous and simply called ahead to have a copy pulled for me and held up at the front... and no, it's not in mass market yet,
darn it.

I'm having rock climbing withdrawals. I haven't climbed in days anything and I really really want to, especially outside. Maybe tonight after work I'll climb the wall just for fun.

I realize this post lacks the necessary substance for it to be called Useful. But since when are blogs supposed to be useful? The bottom line: my life is finally smoothing out, all the way into the little corners even! I have a schedule - work, school, kids, fun - and it's flexible enough as not to get boring (no 9-5 everyday and then some)

I love it! Flat tires, missing nuts, and all.
(no pun intended :)

Thursday, August 21, 2008

The Wheels on the Bike Go....

As irony would have it, Cup O' Joes has temporarily reopened just blocks from where I live...and actually on the same property as the school I'm going to... isn't that nuts? So, yeah, I guess I'm okay with that. Still, nothing beats the original location.

Monday was my official first day at my new job! I love it! I won't say where, but I get to help people write stuff and I get to teach writing workshops! How great is that! :) Yes, it's the perfect job for me! Did I already specify where in my past post? Probably...

I started school officially yesterday too! (Everything's so official!) I'm taking my one math class, which is pretty much all the time, and I'm taking a film class which is four hours on Mondays...Mondays and Thursdays will for a long time be repulsively full for me! Yet fun, I'm sure.

OOOH, Yeah, I almost forgot!! I, me, the person who hates heights and falling to include slides and swings (I hate that plummeting stomach feeling) I went Rock Climbing on Saturday!! For the first time Ever!! Ropes and all, I had a belayer... (different from a delayer...that's what I am)

At one point I was hanging upside down, clinging to a boulder, and I just couldn't keep my grip! I swung out, upside-down, spinning, over a 50 foot drop...maybe more, who knows... it was pretty intense! (okay, it was probably more like 20 feet...who knows...I'll have to check with my belayer) It was awesome! I really want to go again this weekend!

New hobbies include that and bike riding! I've got two awesome bikes! Which reminds me, those tires are probably in by now! Gotta check on that.

Hey, so have you ever seen the movie Herald and Maude?? What a trippy flick. It was showing at the Gallivan on Monday and I happened upon watching some/most of it... I'll have to see it sometime when there's not some major crowd watching it with me...I really hate crowds.

Things I love about city life: the cafes - namely all privately owned small, unique business restaurants/shops, like Fabulously Fourth Street Music! (love it!) Unique bike stands, like the one outside the library that says Books, the urban feel - and all that that entails...mostly.

Things I hate about the city: crowded buses/bus stations/trax/trax stations/really just crowds in general, the noise of construction - freaks me out!, the people who stare, the people who stare and start talking, the people who smell like rancid sweaty alcohol - ooh, yeah, that's gotta be #1.

But all in all, SLC is pretty fun, and pretty. There's this guy who keeps walking by where I am who looks just like Herald...weird.

My next post may have more substance...but then again, perhaps not.

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Dancin' Dancin' Dancin' !!

Alright, so this post will definitely make up for my last one which was kind of a downer, (but still important).

I'm SO Freaking Excited!! :)

ONE: I got my bike!!
TWO: I got the job!!

Yippee!!

Okay, so, my bike! I absolutely LOVE it! I got it from the awesome Bike Collective, of course, on 2300 and West Temple where you can go and put in volunteer hours towards a bike of your choice from their shop, or you can just buy a bike from them and fix it up yourself and learn all of its intimacies, or you can take a bike you already own and fix it up or donate it to the cause. Lots of things! It's just one of the best things this city has to offer, really. Amazing.

So if none of that made sense, I found the bike I wanted a few months back (I know I've already posted about most of this) put in a bunch of volunteer hours towards owning it and then did a very stupid thing: I let the bike just sit there. Normally they pull neglected bikes after a couple of weeks so it can go to someone else. I got Very lucky. I sheepishly called Monday inquiring of its existance and It Happened to Still be there!! So I went in last night and officially claimed it as mine! Then I spent the evening fixing it and Voila!! I now have a BEAUTIFUL Rideable bike!

The BC offers a free class Saturdays on bike safety and how-to's and everything. I'm going this Saturday, cuz seriously, I feel like without the class me riding in the city is pretty much suicide. And are helmets Really required?? They look SO dorky! I know, I know. I'm very happy with the head that I have - dorky or not, I'll do what it takes to protect it. But I am going to be picky in my choice of helmets. I'm actually pretty reluctant to ride my bike at all until that class...

Anyway, Okay, So I bet you're Dying to know about the Job! (or by now you've gotten so lost in my ramblings, you've forgotten any mention of it : )

I Got the Job At the CWC!! Yippee!! They Hired me!! I start Tuesday!! Hoorah! Hoorah!
CWC: Community Writing Center! Part time hours sharing the passion to write! I getta critique stuff for people, mentor, coach writing groups, teach workshops! Awesome!! That last one's my very favorite: teach workshops! You know, that's the place I spent all of Arts Festival at volunteering. Now I get to work there!

Now if the other place would just call me... I had an interview with them, too, and they said I could have another one...just waiting and waiting. I'll be less vague when I get the job.

Job, School, Bike!! Fall's gonna be awesome!!

Monday, August 4, 2008

Ode to Joe's

Thanks Robert, it's nice to know people are keeping tabs. I've just been so Busy!

First off. Bad news, folks, and I'm trying to keep my head about myself...
You know that coffee shop I always mention I'm blogging from?? You know, the one I go to to write my novel, work on homework, eat yummy sandwiches, ice cream, my source for chai, a good game of pool, a social life? The place I read my prose and poetry at open mike-night on Saturdays to groups of people who can appreciate the written and spoken word and who share their own... pretty much my home-away-from-home for the past four months...that one? Its official name: A Cup of Joe. ...Cup o' Joe's.

Yeah, that one. Anyway, it officially closed its doors Friday night. That's right, out of business, no longer open, shut down. The reasons are many and complicated and political and sad. If we're lucky it'll reopen in a new location soon, which, people tell me, suggests hope. But I liked that location, I liked the feel of that place, the central-metro-urban cultural feel and all that that entailed... I loved the people who worked there, some of my best friends these past few months...

Lets just say, and it's redundant: it goes to show how much our economy really is failing, when small businesses struggle so much like that. Anyone who knows me knows how against the 'doom and gloom' attitude I am - I really won't go into it - but times are getting strange to me. I admit I'm young, I don't know or understand a lot of what happened in history, or what's happening now. But this is what I see:

A war, gas prices rising, talk of recession, denial of recession, people going into shops bargaining for lower prices - this costs too much, why's this cost so much, can I get a discount? - "milk $4 a gallon"... small businesses not making enough, being shuffled out by the bigger dogs who have more money. The patterns of our world... it's a little scary to me now that it's actually a reality first hand, you know what I mean?

So the hope? Maintain that community feel now more than ever, find it where ever it can be found; know who your neighbors are, do the things you enjoy most. Cup o' Joe's might reopen somewhere else. In the meantime the group is meeting at Cafe Marmalade, a place I've never heard of, a place I've never been. I really hope to see all the same faces - or at least a lot of them- there. That'll at least make if feel a little familiar. Ever notice how when things just start getting stable, that's when an earthquake hits? Sure, you can call it 'change'. I suck at dealing with any kind of change. I finish a book, I get depressed for a week, wishing to be in that same story and knowing no matter if I reread it, it'll never be the same...

Alright. I'll stop.

So what else have I been up to? The good news? I finished out my first semester of school in seven years! (that's a funny nonsensical sentence - you get what I mean;) I'm done with summer (more difficult change to deal with, really) semester and headed on to fall. I've had a couple of job interviews, still waiting to hear. Hopefully I'll have a couple of big announcements to make by the end of this week! I hope! Summer semester was awesome! I've never done as well in school as I did this time around! I got a couple of good pieces of writing out of it, too, and lots of useful knowledge. Other than that, I've been working on getting my little girl registered for First Grade! (Can you believe it!) and working on making my apartment a little more homelier, sorting out my collection of books. They've been all over the floor of my living room all weekend and I absolutely love it, the stacks and piles and I can pick one up at random and just get lost in the prose!

I got a new CD: Mike Doughty - I highly recommend his stuff, it's great!
And I wrote a couple of new poems for the first time in years. Did you know I write poetry too?
Other than that, just trying to keep my head about myself...