Crystal Madrilejos

I think this saying is one of my favorites. I tend to say them to myself quite often. Just today I realized that I said two of them, which prompted this post. They were:

There are two types of people in the world, people who love the unusually long intro to The Cure’s “The Kiss,” and people who don’t. (For the record, I love it.)

There are two types of people in the world, people who completely tear off and throw away the protective tin foil cover under the lid on things such as yogurt and ricotta cheese, and people who simply peel it back and put the plastic lid back over it when they’re done. (For the record, I tear it off and throw it away, like civilized people do.)

–a.

On my drive home from work on yesterday I heard on NPR’s All Things Considered Andrei Codrescu read “Pondering Google, Facebook and Wasting Time.” I listened to it again today with Andrew and my brother. It made us laugh.

“My regular e-mail now tells me I have Facebook messages, forcing me to go to Facebook, which is slow on account of the jillion egos battling for verbal-audio-visual attention.”

Listen to it here. (I would put the soundclip here, but I haven’t figured out a way to embed NPR audio clips. If anyone knows, please share!)

Andrei Codrescu is the founder of Exquisite Corpse.

–c.

I know that people get a song stuck in their head all the time, but have you ever gotten a name stuck in your head? I’ve had the name “Jim Zarroli” (NPR reporter) repeating in my head over and over! And Andrew currently has “P.J. Carlesimo” (NBA basketball coach and broadcaster) on repeat. It’s just one of those things.

We’re back from NYC! Thanks to our Brooklyn friends that came out to see us on our short visit, we had a wonderful time as usual.

Before we embarked on our 8+ hour drive from NE Ohio to Brooklyn, NY, Andrew printed out a list of every local NPR station from here to there ensuring our listening capabilities. We’ve done the drive so many times that we have to keep coming up with new ideas to keep us occupied. And this brings me to the main purpose of this post!

I’m sure many people are getting weary of listening or watching the news and being bombarded with dropping employment rates, rising UNemployment rates, stimulus packages, and swine flu. Talk about a real downer! Unfortunately, the bad economy has hit us close to home so I’ve been especially happy to announce that I am contributing to a new blog dedicated completely to thinking positive.

The company I work at, Wise Group, has launched a grass-roots campaign to “Unleash the Positive” to inspire people during these tough times. My first post on the wiseUP blog is up today, you can check it out here.

You can check out all the posts by going to www.wisegroup.com/blog where you can learn about our “10 to Change” challenge where we are encouraging people to try to make a difference in the world/community/city/town/themselves with only $10. My “10 to Change” idea will be posted next Wednesday (May 20th) so check back then to see what I came up with.

If you have any ideas for a “10 to Change” please feel free to email me or my editor Ann at Wise Group and we will post it on our site.

–c.

It’s been over a week and I’ve been too swamped to post this wonderful news! Some of you are already aware, but last week I was featured on the blog spruce [décor]. I was interviewed for the “Midwest Minute” section and am super thankful to Lissa for having me. You can check out the feature here.
–c.

If you have a chance, you should see this documentary. You can find out more information about it here. We were fortunate enough to have seen this movie two weekends ago at the 33rd Annual Cleveland International Film Festival.

It’s a documentary about a community and what happens to when its livelihood is threatened. It takes place in Cairo, a city of 8 million people with no official garbage collection service. For decades, the Zabbaleen, a community of about 60,000 people, have become the unofficial garbage collectors of the city. They’ve made their living collecting and recycling the trash of the residents of Cairo. But in more recent years, they’ve had to compete with foreign garbage collection companies contracted by the government to do the job they’ve built their lives on. The film focuses on three young Zabbaleens and follows them as they “come face to face with the globalization of their trade.”

“Each of the teenage boys is forced to make choices that will impact his future and the survival of his community.”

It’s a fascinating film, not only the overall story but the boys have such character it’s hard not to find them endearing.

–c.

If you haven’t seen this trailer, you must watch it.

–c.

Edward Gorey is one of my all time favorites. His writing and his illustrations are fantastic. So, as you can imagine, I was delighted when a good friend of mine passed along this book. It’s been making its rounds of the blog circuit of late but I’ve only just seen it today. The Recently Deflowered Girl by Hyacinthe Phyppe, illustrated by Gorey, is both beautiful, disturbing AND funny. It gave me a weird feeling, but I still enjoyed it.

I’m only going to show my favorite page so I don’t get in trouble. I’m sure you can find the rest out there if you do a quick search.

• Thanks Toby •

–c.

It’s officially a new year. There’s not really much more I can say about that! But it does feel good. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s just the idea of a new start, even knowing that resolutions hardly ever see the light of day, I can’t help but feel refreshed. Maybe it’s the thought that there is another year ahead of me to do all the things that I wanted to do this year that I just didn’t get around to doing. It’s unbelievable that almost a year has passed since we moved from NYC back to Ohio!! I think about the first few months living here, when the farmhouse was still a wreck. Geez, that makes my cringe. But we’ve been blessed with so many things, I can’t complain.

When I was in Europe I told Andrew that I wanted a Christmas tree this year. When I came home I walked in the door and saw the tree set up (see previous post) and I seriously almost cried, I was so happy. Not only that but, during an unseasonably warm spell, Andrew was able to dig a hole on the site of our wedding ceremony so we could plant the tree after Christmas. Luckily for us, there was another unseasonably warm day after Christmas so we could plant it. Teeny tiny.

– c.

Last time I posted was in October after I got my wisdom teeth out. It’s now New Year’s Eve and I still have holes in my mouth (though they are not painful) and I’m back in the states after 5 weeks over seas. It’s amazing how much can happen in 2 months and 19 days.

I was in Europe touring with the band Herman Dune and my band, The Baby Skins. Though being away from home/Andrew for 5 weeks is unbelievably hard, it was an opportunity that I couldn’t pass up. I plan on posting tour stories on The Baby Skins site that has been sorely neglected. Happy Holidays to everyone and Happy New Year!!! See you in 2009!

– c.