A Little Crocus

Look what I found this morning when I moved the snow shovels out of the flower bed by the back door:

I planted these a few months ago because yellow was the first color I wanted to see of spring. Sunny, springy yellow. I think I chose wisely.

Free drinks while they work out the kinks

This morning I went to Coffee Noir, a new coffee shop on 1035 E and 200 S. They're giving out everything free this weekend while they're starting out and training their employees.

This shop is in our old stamping grounds, and I'm happy to see a cute little coffee shop there instead of the old cigarette store.

The owner Ben is the nicest person and will be happy to see you stop by. If you don't like coffee, grab an Italian soda or a muffin--it's all on the house.

Women, Know Your Limits!

This video has embedding disabled, but it's worth a view on a very important issue.

Can I tell you how much I love little furry kittens?

I Heart Ponies

As Hobbes (no, not that Hobbes, but the one from Calvin and Hobbes) famously said, "I just think animals are so cute." There's a real genuine quality about them that's simple and uncomplicated.

Hooray for happy ponies.

Half-sick of shadows

My senior seminar was on the PRB, and this painting is in one of my top 10 from that group. I love her stance. I can relate to that tired, achy, stretchy feeling.

She knows not what the curse may be
And so she weaveth steadily

Happy Distraction

For about two months I've been breaking a favorite habit of mine: public radio. I can't stand to listen to the obsessive reporting on the financial crisis. Although I've been listening regularly for eight years now, I find that the last thing I want to wake up to is news of more helpless people everywhere, everyday. Seriously. I've had enough.

This leaves a big gap in my life. What do I use in the mornings to wake me up and accompany my morning routine? What about my 20-30 minute commute each way to work?

I've taken refuge in my iPod, especially since my commuting car has an iPod hookup. Thanks to several generous iTunes gifts we received for Christmas, I've found great refuge in music and audiobooks, and I've discovered they leave me in a much better mood than our current news.

Here are some of the artists or bands I've newly found in my search for distraction from depressing news:

• Fleet Foxes
• Regina Spektor
• The Killers
• Ingrid Michaelson
• The Shins
• Vashti Bunyan
• Faded Paper Figures
• Swell Season/The Frames

OK, so nothing too shocking on the list, but I'm going for escape and not the deepest, weirdest cuts. Anything else I should add for a happy distraction?

Little Button Eyes

This weekend I saw an opening film, Coraline. Because this is another stop-motion animation film by the same director of the Nightmare Before Christmas, I expected a sort of dark comedy. But this movie was creepy. Very creepy.

There's this principle that more something is similar or familiar, yet a fake, or not actually the thing it resembles, the more repulsive it is. This movie capitalizes on this principle, creating an alternate world to Coraline's own. Except everyone has button eyes. And they're weird. It's all very odd, but well done.

Smells like rain

February rain, and a sunshiny morning jog afterward, is an awakening experience.

Obviously, there's one creature at home who's not doing much jogging.

New Look

I want to thank Christina, Dave, and Baby Theo for being such good sports on the 3+ hour tour of the Draper Temple. I now have a dream that one day they will give priority to people who actually have open house tickets, or people with nursing babies, or people who are visiting from a different denomination so that they don't have to wait 2 hours at a stake center to board a bus. It is a gorgeous temple though, isn't it?

And I want to thank Gatsby for pointing out Moroni's rad new look.

Pros and Cons

I know my upper-division university writing students are in a vulnerable place as they attempt to learn how to properly research and present a thesis of their own unique understanding as colleagues to professionals and professors alike.

But I just can't help but share one topic: "Email or Snail Mail: Which Should You Choose?"

One might ask, How will this topic add unique insight and contribute to the academic conversation? Another question might be, Who is the real or intended audience for this paper, 10 years after everyone has had the Internet pumped into their homes?

Well I'll tell you, this paper presents unique arguments. The main pro of email is that you can get a free account from lots of places. And the biggest con of snail mail? Anthrax.

Music is my boyfriend

Have you tried the Genuis sidebar in iTunes? You know, it takes what you have in your library and figures out new playlists for you based on what playlists other people have made?

Because I am the type to get in a rut, this has been amazing at pulling out all kinds of songs I forgot I had in my library, or songs Kevin downloaded, and making a playlist around certain subtle moods.

I do want to know, though, why it insists on putting the Carpenters "Merry Christmas, Darling" in so many of my playlists. There it is, next to Beck's "Where It's At" or Feist's "1234." But I swear I have other songs in my library.

I'm thinking of loading up Lex de Azevedo's "A Time to Love" soundtrack to mess with everyone else's playlists.

Coneflowers

Right now the only Echinacea I'm getting is in my cough drops.

Contrast

I wouldn't even call the day I took this picture of downtown a particularly clear one.

Hey sky, remember me?

Hopeful Celebration

May this Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day be an especially reflective one. And as we go forward with new oportunities, may we be the change we wish to see in the world.

A little brightness

Something bright emerging on a typical pollution-ridden January inversion day.

Platinum Man

There are times in a marriage that are golden. And when a certain husband finds a certain favorite painting for his wife and gives it to her, without even really knowing how much she has admired it, you have one of those times.

Then he tells her he loves it because it reminds him of the beauty of the "divine feminine." It's not just gold, it's platinum.

Sunset on Oquirrhs

It may be an absolute week from hell, but last night I found this fleeting vision as I walked to my car. By the time I was on the freeway, the clouds had closed in and it was gone.

My passion is to part a curtain

"My continuing passion is to part a curtain, that invisible veil of indifference that falls between us and that blinds us to each other's presence, each other's wonder, each other's human plight."
-- Eudora Welty

Homer : Well I won the belching contest at work. (belches in Jay's face, everyone laughs)
Jay : Nice, Homer. (belches longer and louder, car alarms go off outside)
Lisa : Wow! How many Pulitzer prize winners can do that?
Jay : Just me and Eudora Welty.
--The Simpsons, "A Star is Burns"

I love the quote from Eudora Welty (actually, I love both of the above quotes). This hits on my favorite philosophy from grad school, Emmanuel Levinas' post-modern ethics.

Lately I've had words on the tip of my tongue for others--why didn't they say this thing I wanted them to say? Why can't I get this friend of mine to be the kind of friend I want them to be? Why do they have to keep doing these things they do? (No friends, I'm not talking about you. These are examples.)

It's very easy for my to become absorbed by my own thought and perceptions. This self-absorption makes me want to create other people in my own image--hey, how can that be bad? It means that I can set up expectations, with or without informing the other party, and then wonder why they didn't say the thing I expected them to say or do what I expected them to do. They don't because they're not me. They're other.

I would say that the "veil of indifference" Welty refers to is only exists because to us it appears to be a reflection, that veil that tricks us into thinking that the other is actually the same with us, that we have some control over the other, that we are free and they are confined to our minimal understanding of them. That we know all their deepest thoughts.

Stepping beyond that, I begin to see those around me for who they are, for their otherness wrapped up in their infinite number of experiences and thoughts that are different than mine. At first I'm learning to be OK with this, that I can't make someone be who they're not. But I hope for more than that. I hope that eventually I will learn to love them precisely because I cannot make them be who they are not. Because in that otherness, I learn to see the immense enormity that is another human soul. Also, the idea that I don't know everything actually brings me hope (I'll explain this sometime if that seems odd).

I love how Welty describes this thought process as a passion. I don't know that discovering others' otherness is yet a passion for me, but I want to move that way.

Snow

Celestial white winter's light

Slippy, drippy

Stopped, ossified

Surfeit and superabundance

Fixated, roaring in static

First Cat Pic of the Year

Even a feral-born cat knows how to make herself comfortable under soft, warm blankets.

Here's to the new year with happiness, love, and comforts for all.

We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.