zach- mo music, mo money on it's way to you now

I scored 44%, making me, I guess, a yankee. I was so horrified I click it several more times until it finally read:

100% (Dixie). Is General Lee your father?

I feel so much better now.

Reading that menu made me so hungry. Who knew tiny veal meatballs made such good conversation. New photos up at the photoblog from my freeze things in ice cube trays and then take their photo series. More to come later in the week. Zach, I have my dollar and CD to mail, but I forgot it at work. Monday - it's coming your way.

I haven't gotten anything from anyone yet. I'm on it when the packages arrive.

For Valentine's Day, after dinner, we headed to a bar with some friends. The bar was hosting a Valentine's poem contest. I was a finalist with this one that I wrote for my friend Dan to read.

There once was a bitter day called Valentine's
Spent eating chalky candy, wondering who'll be mine
Maybe I should head to Nantucket
I hear there's this thing with a bucket
Instead, I'm in a smokey bar, looking for a good time

It's 5:30 am and I cannot get back to sleep. I've been worrying myself over some stupid shit. All signs indicate that John's girlfriend lives here fulltime now. Being the only person in our house without a girlfriend's house to hide out at, I'm especially sensitive to this. No one else seems to care as much as me, which makes me feel both lonely and obsessive.

I can't believe I'm awake at 5am worrying about it.

It's 5:30 am and I cannot get back to sleep. I've been worrying myself over some stupid shit. All signs indicate that John's girlfriend lives here fulltime now. Being the only person in our house without a girlfriend's house to hide out at, I'm especially sensitive to this. No one else seems to care as much as me, which makes me feel both lonely and obsessive.

I can't believe I'm awake at 5am worrying about it.

Angie and Shelly - I'm looking to you. I'll be in New Orleans in March for a bridal/bachelorrette party thing. And since it's been a decade since I've lived there - do you have any suggestions for places to go? I plan on asking my family but if you guys have any cool ideas... None of the girls are from New Orleans (though the groom is). So touristy is fine. I think we'll be staying in the Quarter, but don't know where yet.

New photo at the photoblog shot through a kaleidoscope lens.

After planting this weekend, my garden now has parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme growing together.
Zach - I burned a 4 song CD last night, I just need to mail it and $ to you.

create your own visited states map
or write about it on the open travel guide


My countries map would be lame. US, Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize.

I think "during the winter, the weather clears up stormy" is our theme.
I put up a new pear shot on my photoblog.

Send them to me. Stick a dollar in there to help me with the postage when I send em back. I'll make covers and everything.

717 Mayflower dr
Greensboro, NC 27403

Or, for added convience, those of you without cd burning technologies (or without time to fool with it) can email me a list of your songs and I will Kazaa them (or something.) Thus, eliminating the post office from the equation.

dumb stuff to do at work: While sitting at your desk, lift your right foot slightly off the floor and make clockwise circles with your foot. Now, while doing this, draw the number "6" in the air with your right hand. Your foot will change direction..... counter clockwise... you won't be able to control it.

to clear up a bit of confusion, the italics from my previous post were from a november 2002 post and not written by me.

Angie - I'll try and send you a four song CD next week with the Lake Effect theme.
I just went online to the President Match website, and I'm 100% match with John Kerry. How nice.
I took my first gardening class last night - I'm going to try and hunt down something called "Thunder Dirt" this weekend to lay in some raised beds for flowers and veggies. (which makes me wish for a truck)

Re: perfect childbearing hips. I also have insane difficulties finding jeans. I finally found the Levis I like are being made again after 6 years, though apparently not in my perfect size, in a size which is close. I need to buy 5 pairs. I also have run across several places online, which make custom jeans and pants, but probably, just finding a local tailor would be easier. I need to pull out all my half finished clothing experiments and get them done. I want to wear my uterus skirt with my mustache dissection man t-shirt to the erotic art show where two of my paintings are showing on Friday.

I don't buy a lot of music, so the things in my cd player are usually things from the library or obtained from recommendations of friends. I’m down for a cd burn off trade off. I don't have an operable burner but I should be able to get access to one. I could do a "slap yo mamma" or "in the winter..." theme.

Did I tell ya'll about playing played Isaac Newton’s bitter ex-girlfriend in a video that should be teaching high school kids the laws of motion? I remember how ruthlessly I ridiculed every educational video I was ever shown, so I’m fully prepared to be a punch line now.

If I had money for frivolity I would be on a plane immediately. I have a travel bug SO bad. I did just purchase a plane ticket for New Orleans for Stacey A's wedding which is also a jazz fest weekend...


The origin of the name Lake Effect is not super specific. Before starting this blog, Zach and I talked about ways of connecting and staying connected with people we cared about. I think I was already in Seattle, and for maybe the third time finding myself in a new community and struggling to meet people, the kind of people I wanted to know. People thinking and looking and making things and doing things. I realized some of the friends I’d made are even more precious than I realized, because they are hard to find, and I’m bad about keeping in touch. In my head I imagined some sort of vague scrawled image of a map with the criss crossing lines of how we were connected, where we'd been, where we were. (There are so many more cross-hatchings on that map three years later!) and all of these places were sort of defined in my mind by the bodies of water framing them. My experiences of ~where I am~ always relate in my head to the water nearby. East of Lake Ponchatrain at the delta of the Mississippi in the last outpost of civilization before we’re all washed away into the warm murky Gulf of Mexico. Walking along the Arno in front of the Church of San Miniato al Monte, then under a lunar eclipse by the ever so poetic Tar River, downwind of the Mississippi again ever so briefly, and now in the crook of the chilly embrace of the Puget sound and the Pacific Ocean. It is something beyond merely physical location. For my sanity I realized I could only live in places near Big Water. People either immediately understand that or don’t. It is something like being grounded, but not with ground. I wanted to keep the people in my life who are constant and in motion. And I wanted to keep people around who ground me and inspire me that way. I don’t remember if lake effect pre or post dates JT’s birthday boats. I think the boats came first. But I imagine each of us casting our boats out into the water and those invisible lines scrawled on an imaginary map drawing them homeward or pulling them onward to a journey both familiar and unfamiliar. So back to the name. …It has a nice assonance or iambic rhythm, or something don’t you think? And JT was planted in the middle of the actual Lake Effect, that weird meteorological phenomenon where a mass of clouds occur because of the vast temperature difference between the air and the water and excess amounts of snow result.
I wanted us to be that to each other. If that makes any sense to you at all, it might seem like rather a tall order, which is why I never articulated it before. There was a song I used to be quite fond of, with a line, ”And the embers never fade in the city by the lake
The place where you were born…”

Remember this Lake Effect moment?
Does Lake Effect have a manifesto, it seems like any one of you could write one. I mean everyone should, maybe this is a lake effect manifesto. Maybe I'm writing a Lake Effect manifesto right now. Maybe right now you're reading a Lake Effect manifesto, maybe every post is a Lake Effect manifesto, how does it make you feel, does it make you feel. All Lake Effectors feel. Lake Effectors make it snow, Lake Effectors are snow, light, massive, individual, downward flowing notions of upwardness, ascendant, weightless and heavy, relentless and fluffy. Forces of nature and circumstance, a combination of Geographical and Geothermal conditions. Moisture and Air, Currents and Luck . It snowed here for two days straight, which lake effector did that. Nothing stuck. Nothing sticks anymore. Lake Effectors always stick. It's about our stickyness, how we accumulate. Lake Effectors exact change, Lake Effectors have exact change. Lake Effectors pay in exact change, when they can. I'm trying, I'm trying,

If I could have Superchunk or dirty 3 play at a party. I would probably choose Superchunk cause it would seem more fun. Mary would flip though if I got Dirty Three. Maye we could convince the Tren Brothers to play instead and leave that drunk violin player at home. Though if I were going to choose any performer from scratch I might choose to fly mike west right up from Louisiana right now, cause most of my other favorite bands are broken up. I don’t know if I ever told the story about going to the Dirty Three show and meeting Mick Turner?
I went to see the Shins with like minded individuals instead of watching the superbowl and the Mates of State were watching right next to me. The Shins were the best pop band I’ve seen in quite a while. Maybe they could play my birthday party. In spite of my best intentions, we did happen to be near a tv in time to see when Janet Jackson showed off her jewelry.

Other things going on right now… I started physical therapy (again) for my neck and for my knee, which they think (duh!) are related problems. I need to find ways to do the exercises they’re prescribing for home, because most of them presume that I have large expanses of wall and floor space to lean against or lie on and flop around.

My little rat Tiberius died last night after a week or so of being under the weather. Not much else to say about that but he was a sweet cranky little rat who parted his blonde hair down the middle and I’ll miss him climbing up onto my shoulder and riding around.

>who is talk talk?

Talk Talk is a synth-rock band from the 80s who started out sounding like Depeche Mode or New Order. By the end of their career, however, they had transformed themselves into something else entirely. There late albums are both acoustic-based and jazzy. Very cool band. They wrote "Its My Life," which No Doubt covers (very well) on their new greatest hits album.

>remind me who discount is.

Discount is an excellent pop-punk band from Florida. The singer is now in a horrible band called The Kills.

>please? if you had to chose between one of the following to have a private rock show for you and 10 of your nearest and dearest friends, who would it be: a. superchunk, b. dirty three or c. hootie

I imagine my friends would enjoy Superchunk more. And probably so would I. But, Hootie would be fun too. Dirty Three are boring live. And I imagine they'd trash our party.

>and the last question i have for you is why did you tell people you have Ida in your CD player instead of Hootie?

I like Ida and they are in my cd player. Plus, as much as I like Hootie, I don't have any Hootie on CD. I should probably fix that.

>** which reminds me, a burning question i've had for around three years now, but was always too scared to ask. how did we end up with the name "Lake Effect?" is this a really stupid question with an obvious answer? oh god, i hope not.

Shelly chose it, so she can weigh in on where she heard the phrase. When the blog was just she and I, she was using it as a dummy title. I suggested we keep it, she agreed.

"during the winter, the weather clears up stormy" - how's that for a theme?

Angie - I like your idea. I can send you four songs. But I think we need a theme. Here are some suggestions
1) songs about winter
2) our top four favorite songs right now
3) songs about lakes (though this might be hard)
4) four songs we like that came out this past year
5) other suggestions....