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[May. 15th, 2007|07:04 pm] |
And to celebrate me being back from a a three month posting hiatus, I have a video of my boyfriend and my grandmother talking about the kentucky derby.
I've been busy. I have a new job. I pretty much love it. I'm interested in what I'm doing and I get along with my coworkers. I make jokes the herp and also about not wanting to screw something up, because I don't want to get fired and be forced to resort to turning tricks and the jokes are reasonably well received by my team. I like that. I can take my lunch breaks in the sun. I also get unlimited free diet coke and health insurance, so there's not much more I could ask for.
I think I've mentioned that I have a patio with a garden. I spend a lot of time talking about it. I was planting a bowl full of ranunculus tubers a couple weeks ago and I noticed I had little mushrooms growing; I got really excited, and for a few moments couldn't remember why. Then I realized that I was pumped because I have gotten my real life garden confused in my head with my Viva Pinata garden, and I needed a mushroom to tame a Sour Profitamole. Not a particularly proud moment, but you'll be happy to know that I've since learned how to grow mushrooms and tame the Profitamole. |
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[Feb. 2nd, 2007|11:32 am] |
Today I vacuumed my car on the way home from house-sitting. I do this once every six months or so, and it is remarkable only because for about five minutes I get to pretend like I am a normal person who takes care of her things and not a total slob who spills coffee on her car and leaves grapefruit peels in it because I like the smell.
Cody downloaded the new Cat Stevens album this week, oh I'm sorry, Yusuf or whatever. I never really went out of my way to listen to him before, and you know, no big deal, but I'm really troubled by one of the songs that talks all about how "heaven must have programmed you." Come on, taking an awful cliche and making it a technologically savvy cliche does not, under any circumstances, make it acceptable. Unless, of course, the point of the song is about how he is in love with a robot. In which case I'm totally behind it. |
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[Jan. 31st, 2007|12:40 pm] |
Last night I went with Julia and Liz to see Vikram Chandra speak at the SAAM about his new book, Sacred Games. From what I can tell from the excerpts he read last night, The New York Times Book Review totally did him a mischief when they compared the language and complexity of construction to Finnegan's Wake. Serves the NYTBR right, though, because I guess that in illustrating their point about the difficult vocabulary, they printed half a dozen truly filthy words in Punjabi, for which they now have to print a retraction and apology. Which is pretty funny. And I still really want to subscribe to the New York Times Book Review. Anyways, good times, great oldies, fun time with girls having dinner at the Hopvine beforehand.
I had an interview this morning, which I think went really well, but I'm not going to jinx it by overanalyzing it here. Then I went to do my volunteer work at the museum. Museum was uneventful, but on my way back to catch the bus up the Greenwood, I was standing on the corner of 3rd and Union when I noticed a guy crossing the street holding a small bottle. Next thing I know, he has passed and the hair of the woman next to me is completely on fire. The man had dropped the bottle, which was obviously lighter fluid, and had walked halfway down the block before any of us around the woman could figure out what was going on. Everyone started yelling, "That's the guy, that's the guy," and luckily, some guys chased down the asshole, and we threw a coat over the lady's head and she didn't seem to be too hurt. I guess the fire guy had tried to set an old man on fire across the street, but he couldn't catch, so he settled for dousing his back in lighter fluid, knocking him over, and hitting him with his cane. What is wrong with people? The police arrived shortly thereafter, apprehended the man, and no one was badly hurt. Still, hands down the worst thing I've seen in a long fucking time. I gave a statement about what I had seen, and went and caught my bus. It was really strange and awful and the whole thing happened in about 7 minutes. I didn't even have to get a later bus. Man, that was terrible.
Today, volunteering at 826 in about an hour and then dinner with Cody at Gorditos. Happy weird Wednesday to me. I hope my hair never get s set on fire. |
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[Jan. 22nd, 2007|09:09 pm] |
In my efforts to turn off the tv, and turn on the productivity in the New Year, tonight I pulled out 'ye olde scrapbooking project.' Pounding that stuff out always takes way more time than you think it's going to, but the sooner I sift through my dozens of shoeboxes full of photos, the sooner I can put all this stuff away instead of letting it litter my bedroom floor. Tonight I got through all the pictures of my trip to New York in 2002, and all the stuff from the subsequent summer. It was funny, because I always think of summer 2002 being one of those dark, confusing and hard times in my life, but you couldn't tell from looking at my big goofy smiles in all the pictures. There's a lesson in all that, I'm pretty sure, but I've been handling too much glue stick tonight to safely either discount or glamorize those couple of months. |
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[Jan. 16th, 2007|08:50 pm] |
Another snow day in Seattle. I wish I had taken pictures of playing football in the snow with Witold, Ross and Cody, because the sun was shining and the snow was pretty and I fell down and got my hair all touseled and dusted with ice. Other than that, my day went straight to my jammies, my recliner, and episodes of extras on demand.
This weekend I saw the new sculpture park with Julia, and it was every bit as sculpture-y as promised.
I had a long talk with George yesterday about how we eat a creepy amount of eggs, in which we discussed different methods of hard-boiling and deviling eggs, and how our fixation probably bodes terribly for our combined cholesterol counts. Then we remembered that all the meals we don't eat eggs for, we eat Cheerios, which supposedly lowers your cholesterol. Thank god we're not nutritionists, so we can justify our bizarre eating habits and blame our cravings and hdl on genetics. Seriously, are there support groups for people who eat too many bowls of Cheerios per day?
On my plate for the week? Lots of work I don't get paid for, a little bit of work I get paid for, and lots of work to find more work that I will eventually get paid for.
Yesterday Cody and I were watching videos on vh1 and we saw The Waitresses video, which made me think of the first mix tape anyone ever made me. When I was 6 or 7 and The Wherehouse still had those machines that would make custom mixtapes for you, my mom paid for me to have a tape. She picked all the songs, all of which I thought were painfully cool, including "I Know What Boys Like" and "Too Shy" by Kajagoogoo. The tape popped out of the machine with the songs and Claire's Tape printed right on it, and I remember listening to it while dancing and laying around wistfully in my room until my tiny pastel boom box wore it out and ate the tape. I would pay a lot of money to have that tape back right now. Maybe my mom can remember what other songs she put on it for me.
Also! We have internet at our house now! Not only that, but Cody is magic and fixed it so that it is wireless through our whole apartment. I can email on my laptop, and listen to the radio on the big desktop, and Cody can play 8 year olds at Madden on xbox live and we can do all those things all at the same time.
I hope the snow goes away. I'm a little sick of the ice on the roads. |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 23rd, 2006|06:40 pm] |
Who really pays that close attention to the ever changing google icons? Not me, unless it is KANGAROOS KNITTING!!
I'm laying in bed right now, but will get up shortly and put on clothes so I can go visit lovely Floyd. I already made a gingerbread christmas tree this morning, but put so much glitter on it, that I doubt it is edible anymore. I am excited for Christmas, and seeing all sorts of beloved people, and eating crab tomorrow night. |
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| oh yeah, they say life goes on. |
[Dec. 20th, 2006|01:05 am] |
Also, I met my sister's new boyfriend last week, and he builds battlebots. He came over to hang out with Diana one night when my dad and I were sitting around drinking red wine and playing dominoes (shortly after arriving home from the yacht club where we were drinking white wine and playing dominoes, until the drunk woman across the room from us got so distracting with her stories about "strip dominoes," and "domino sex," and jokes about not scoring was comparable to impotence that we decided to go home where the wine was cheaper.), as we are wont to do on a free evening. Zach shows up with flowers (pink roses) for Diana, and we then badger him and Diana into playing with us. After several rousing rounds, I go into the kitchen to get a snack and start putting her flowers in a vase. . . midway through this process, I realize that on this bouquet of a dozen pink roses, the word "engagement" is written very large, indelibly, on the cellophane. I swear that the funniest moment of my week was waving the flowers at Diana and Zach, and pretending like he meant it. (Luckily he got freaked out in a charming way, not in a red flag kind of way.)
Further, my mom and I are no help at all because all month we've been singing "a little story about Zach and Diii-anne." Har Har. |
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[Dec. 19th, 2006|01:04 am] |
Some highlights of the 13 days I've been home so far:
1. Ice skating with my mom on a Friday afternoon in a thunderstorm. My mom and I promised to ice skate at least twice this December while I was home and we got in our first date when we were feeling a little itchy for the weekend to kick-start, despite the fact that we were otherwise unprepared for athletic activity (neither of us were even wearing socks). We bought socks at Walgreens, made it to the outdoor rink, managed to remember how to skate within two turns around the rink, and then, like magic, sheets of rain materialize. The rain wasn't so bad, except that because this is California, it was tropical and way warmer than the ice, so it slowly melted slushy holes in the ice, one of which I fell right into (more embarassing and wet than painful.) Nevertheless, we persisted on, admiring the infuriatingly talented skater girl who had long curly blonde hair and a ruffly peasant dress, both of which fluttered attractively behind her as she whisked around the rink with her equally adept man friend. Also. The feather-haired rink boy who was in charge of picking up the giggly teenage Asian girls who kept falling over and attempting to squeegee the puddles of tepid water off the ice kept playing air-guitar on his long handled squeegee tool. It would have been a lot cooler looking if he wasn't miming to soft rock, however.
2. I am working for the wine company again, doing all manner of office things. There are many perks to this job (the most important being that I get to work more than 8 hours a week, and at an hourly rate that within the first week I had already made more money than I did in the entire month of November.), but my favorite is drinking Diet Black Cherry Cola out of large wine glasses from the tasting room. And I get to work with my faux-godmother, Rose. Also, it's holiday gift basket season. Further, it is always gratifying to work somewhere where people think you're smart and talented, even if it is just being talented at making spreadsheets, because apparently it is very hard to find people who are smart enough to run Excel. |
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[Dec. 17th, 2006|10:38 am] |
It's my brother's 21st birthday and at the end of the night I tricked him into drinking a glass of water by putting a chunk of cheddar cheese at the bottom.
One more glass of water and I can send him to bed. A better update tomorrow.
love,
Claire |
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[Dec. 4th, 2006|10:36 pm] |
Going to San Francisco tomorrow. Huzzah!
Done with work for the day. Woot!
Sitting next to two people at the coffeeshop planning their wedding and writing their hippie vows together. Pretty Cute!
Gunniess Gingerbread Cakes! Tasty!
Going to parking ticket court in an hour. Not so fun! But better than paying 45 dollars!
So yeah, time to go pack. I haven't even taken my suitcase down from the shelf in the closet. Yikes. |
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[Nov. 30th, 2006|08:19 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | langhorn slim - english tea | ] |
I'm going to miss hbo when we finally cancel it. It's just as well, because fancy cable has totally ruined my ability to function like a normal human being. For example, this morning I watched Singles at 7 am and couldn't take my shower until after Matt Dillon and Bridget Fonda got back together. Also, last night Before Sunrise was on, and I used to love that movie until Cody absolutely ruined Ethan Hawke for me. We were watching the movie and I was talking about how cute he was, and Cody disagreed and said that Ethan Hawke talks and acts just like this friend of ours who I used to date forever ago. And damn it, Cody totally nailed it. The whole pseudo-intellectual, charming, smarmy thing - spot on. In a matter of seconds, this lovely movie totally fell apart for me. I fear what will happen the next time Reality Bites comes on tv. I could have cried; but instead I just changed the channel to Jeopardy and rooted for the guy who hits on girls in coffeeshops with Thomas Pynchon tattoos. Stupid Ethan Hawke and his stupid getting divorced from Uma Thurman. It was a sad day for Claire Tarlson indeed. |
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[Nov. 30th, 2006|05:56 pm] |
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So yeah, you might have heard, it’s snowing in Seattle this week. I mean, not snowing in a real way, but in a Pacific Northwest kind of way where we got an inch or two of snow and over the last couple days it has stayed so cold that the snow didn’t really stick, but hardened into mean little slick spots all over the neighborhoods where I tread. It’s been a pretty quiet week with me working on my final for my class and being too much of a wimp to venture into the elements. Yesterday I went all the way downtown to do my internship at the museum for a couple hours. Big stuff, I know. Today I wore my new shoes to Bauhaus to use the internet and work on my project and slushed pleasantly through all the melted ice and puddles. I feel like since this is my last week in Seattle that I should be running myself ragged to get all sorts of stuff in before I go to California for the holidays, but I guess the truth is that all that will still be here in 2007. (But yes, Seattle folks, let’s do something fun this weekend. After this weekend I won’t be back until New Years.) |
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| (no subject) |
[Nov. 21st, 2006|10:06 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | exploding hearts | ] |
I'm sitting in my car outside of Seattle Center updating my livejournal while I wait for my classmate to get back to work at the Pacific Science Center so that I pick up some discount coupons to go see the Dead Sea Scroll exhibit with my parents tomorrow. That feels like some sort of delicious triumvirate of nerdiness, but it may just be that I'm hypersensitive to those things now. Last night I got really stressed out about the impending holidays, mostly connected to my grandmother's recently exacerbated tendency to be especially emotionally manipulative and melodramatic. Of course none of it will be as bad as my worst imaginings, especially since my mom and I are going to the Dickens Fair together.
Lots of thunder and lightning and hail in Seattle. Exciting.
I bought the ingredients this afternoon to make Guinness Gingerbread Cake for a second dessert on Thursday. My family and some beloved hangers on are going to be eating Thanksgiving dinner at my apartment on Thursday, which should be, at the very least, exciting. My mom and I will do the cooking and I promise not to stab my grandmother, no matter how many passive aggressive things she says about my silverware drawer. Cody and I shampooed our carpets this weekend in honor of the occasion. The carpets look great, and I finished hanging a bunch of pictures. As soon as I get my digital camera fixed / replaced I'll post lots of pictures of me in my gingham apron in my adorable apartment. It just feels like this is really the first time I've been able to decorate however I want, and I'm really pleased with the results. I went far too long without a place like that.
I had nice coffee with Elisa yesterday, and she inspired me to do something bad and buy shoes on the internet. Like I need another pair of cute ballet flats.
I applied for another job this morning. I have a feeling my cover letters are getting better, though I have no substantial evidence to base this on. |
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[Nov. 8th, 2006|11:43 pm] |
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There is a terrible dead something in the alleyway behind my apartment - the dead something is either a really big rat or a really small possum. Despite the fact that it's been there for 48 hours, I still manage to forget about it and scream really loudly every time I see it. Rain soaked and missing hair is not a good look for indeterminate dead rodents. |
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[Nov. 8th, 2006|07:33 pm] |
So I've been effectively mostly unemployed for 13 days now, which is mostly shitty. I'm still working half days a couple days a week, which no one could live on unless they worked as hard as I did over the summer and fall and had the resultant savings. I've managed to justify not running out and getting the first job I can find, because I am really committed to going home to California for at least three weeks in December. Also, having so much time free during the week has made it possible for me to get an amazing volunteer/intern position at the Seattle Art Museum in the library which will be good for me in a personal, professional and academic sense. Of course I feel like I am putting my wants before my needs, and that not working a lot makes me a mostly worthless citizen (except I totally voted yesterday, which maybe earns me another week of citizen points before I am truly one of those people on their couch in their underwear all day. Besides, I can only ever spend half the day on the couch in my underwear because we don't get internet at our apartment anymore and so at some point I always have to go buy a cup of tea and use the internet somewhere for an hour or two. Now they are playing Tom Petty in Victrola. I've kind of learned to like Tom Petty in the last year or two.). So yeah, I've been getting a lot of use out of my netflix subscription, I've been making the centerpieces for my grandmother's 80th birthday party in a couple weeks, I've been hanging pictures and decorating my new apartment, and I've been planning all the Christmas ornaments I'm going to make this year.
My family is coming to Seattle for Thanksgiving and my grandmother's birthday because my parents are throwing her a big party. Thanksgiving dinner is at my apartment which is wierd and exciting and will hopefully be fun. Cody is pumped mostly because he'll get to watch the Broncos game now. Which I totally don't understand (why would you ruin Thanksgiving with sports?!) but I've been spending my evenings knitting and cross-stitching lately, so I guess I don't really get to make fun. I need to rent a carpet cleaner this weekend in preparation of the Thanksgiving extravaganza. I also kind of want to find a pumpkin to make all kinds of delicious pumpkin treats.
My museum class is going really well. Saturday morning I was super burnt out and didn't want to do my homework or go to class, but was glad I did because it was a really good day. My classes felt pertinent, and we had class at the Henry which had this totally amazing Stephen Shore exhibition going on. Highly recommended. I just wish the bookstore would have had exhibit postcards for me to buy. Instead, I stole a bunch of brochures so I could cut out the photos and paste them all over my apartment.
Stuff is going fast. I'm still very ambivalent about all that. |
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[Oct. 31st, 2006|12:09 am] |
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And then other days, your job quits itself for you. |
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| (no subject) |
[Oct. 19th, 2006|05:26 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | Basement Jaxx - Hot N Cold | ] |
Some days I swear I'm going to quit my job, but then other days Sophie amazes me by doing this adorable little squat dance to Basement Jaxx and I have to admit that there are very cool aspects of my employment. |
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| (no subject) |
[Oct. 10th, 2006|06:45 pm] |
A Guide to Not Making Friends in Your New, Cool, Museum Studies Program.
(by Claire Tarlson and Katie Tiehen)
1. At lunchtime, sit down with a nice, friendly looking girl that you recognize from class.
2. Immediately mention how you think Daniel Radcliffe is hot.
3. Spend three whole minutes defending your choice to call high school aged boys "hot."
4. Move on to the topic of Harry Potter podcasts and talk about the casting drama for the final three movies. Demonstrate a creepy grasp of the inner workings of the Harry Potter contract negotiations, the explanation for which obviously being that we listen to the podcasts.
5. Try and save ourselves by making fun of Grey's Anatomy. Fail when the girl we're talking to obviously doesn't watch the show or care that we like to trash talk it.
6. Dig our hole deeper by talking about how the older son on Weeds is also totally hot.
At this point, the person you've sat down with will obviously get up and walk away, laughing nervously and claiming to have to make a phone call, because you've brain-freezed and can not figure out a way to get off the topic of teenage boys and trashy television. You will feel silly for a couple minutes, but quickly forget the embarassment after you've retreated to a quiet corner to watch the most recent episode of Extras on Katie's laptop. Who needs new friends when you have Ricky Gervais? |
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