One of the really great and really trying things about group-living is all the sharing. Mmm sharing. The good comes in the form of tasty food and great music. The trials come in the form of messy bathrooms, scattered kitchens, noise, germs, etc.

At the moment I'm really loving the shared music I've gained from living in this house with eight other people. I've accumulated most of Ani's albums from Scott and have them all on my computer now. I'm loving my new Waifs tunes and the Dar Williams and Be Good Tanyas I took from Julie. I've been listening to more Talking Heads thanks to Mitch and have been living out my teenage angst through The Arcade Fire and Bright Eyes with Jodi. I've been falling asleep to The Postal Service and feeling whimsical with the Amelie soundtrack. I'd say all these cats have had a good influence on me. I will definitely miss being able to walk down the hall and pick up something new from someone else whenever the desire strikes. Pretty soon I'm gonna have to be more self-sufficient and enterprising in order to broaden my own horizons. After eleven-or-so years of group living, this is going to be kinda weird.

Dead-beat

Yesterday as Ed and I walked out of the house headed for the grocery store, a jumpy awkwardly-sized creature caught my eye as I was locking the door. I peered down the walk and then stepped closer to find a lone baby bird, hopping and chirping about and staring at the sky with a mixture of terror and wonder. As soon as it noticed us peering at it it opened its mouth as if to say Damnit woman, where are my worms?! and then quickly realized we were much too big to be its mama. Ed told me immediately that we couldn't touch it or its mother would reject it and then it would surely die. Though this is probably true it was terribly hard to reconcile myself to doing nothing and leaving it to die anyway, as I felt it surely would.

This lonely squawky bird was the perfect baby, a lovely combinatin of cute-as-buttons and ugly as sin. It was actually quite BIG for a baby and I had a moment where I'd convinced myself it was something exotic like a hawk or eagle but then realized it was probably more likely a crow or pigeon, considering our environs. I was slightly sad to let that glimmer of romance leave my eye.

We went to the store and came back to find it in the same place as when we'd left. I didn't know what to do but trumpet, Oh bird, oh bird where's your mama? over and over as Ed herded me into the house and shut the door behind me.

This is the suck. I haven't checked on the bird yet today but am sure it has either died of starvation or been eaten by one of the stray neighborhood cats in the night. This begs a much bigger and more complex question, but what the heck's a girl to do when leaving nature alone means inevitable destruction?

Burnin' Ring of Fire

Ed and I watched Walk the Line tonight and I am officially in love with this movie, with Reese Witherspoon and Joaquin Pheonix, with the 1950s, the birth of rock n' roll, poofy dresses and Southern Christian singers. Dear god, I swooned. Ed swooned. We swooned after squirming through the terrible parts and then cried at the end when it worked out afterall. I so rarely watch movies that make me swoon this way that I am now committed to buying it and its soundtrack and listening only to Johnny Cash and June Carter while wearing poofy dresses for the rest of my days. Seriously, how perfect was this movie?

Design, Woe

I'm all but spastic about the changes I've made around here in the last few days: I've added a list to the sidebar, changed the font color, rearranged spacing and order, got rid of the Blogger nonsense at the top of the page and created a banner (albeit a kindergarten-styled one) and made it my header. It's all I can do not to run from the room with laptop in hand to find Ed and make him ooh and ahh with me at every miniscule difference I create. Messing with design is sort of fun, and also sort of infuriating. I understand just enough to do some cool stuff, but if it doesn't go right on the first try I don't know enough to have any clue about figuring out why. See: the width of my banner. It needs to gain a few pounds to catch up with how fat my text body is. Cheetos for all.

Mmm. Cheetos.

I also am beginning to think that Blogger's templates are making things more difficult since they have (I think) Blogger-specific code which refers to some body of design-magic to which I have no access or understanding. While I could get rid of it altogether and start from square one, I am slightly terrified of the idea of a blank template and nothing but my own pithy knowledge to serve me.

More of substance to come in the future, once I get over this obsession with font style and weight et al and can move on to the actual purpose of creating this blog. Which is to...umm..write things in it. Yes. I'll be getting to that shortly.