I Want To Be Your Friend

I love finding things other people have written, like grocery lists, to-do lists, reminders, etc. Without any context, you have to take what's there and see what it tells you about the person who wrote it.

I saw this note sitting on a table at school today. It's hilarious. It looks like someone wrote it with his or her left hand, but other than that, I have no idea what it's about. What bear? Who took it? What's going to happen to it?

Whomever wrote this, you're probably pretty awesome. I definitely want to be your friend.

Better Late Than Never

The Peter, Bjorn and John song "Young Folks" came out when I was, I think, a junior in college. It was a pretty big hit, and my standard for saying that is I remember hearing it in bars near closing time, somewhere between "Sweet Caroline" and "Don't Stop Believing." I am pretty sure it was the whistling that did it.

I never really thought about Peter, Bjorn and John until last year, when I heard "Start to Melt" on Pandora and developed a full-blown obsession with it. That song is number one on my Top 25 Most Played list on iTunes (134 listens, baby, and that doesn't count my iPod).

Now, I have fallen belatedly in love with Peter, Bjorn and John. I am kind of surprised it took me this long, since the band is from Stockholm. Apparently it's so cold and dark there they have nothing to do but improve their gene pool by selective breeding so they produce nothing but amazing-looking people and write music specifically designed for my ears.

Besides the two I already mentioned, here are my favorite Peter, Bjorn and John songs. I think they're all from the same CD, oddly enough:

"Objects of My Affection": "I laugh more often now, I cry more often now" is one of those lyrics I hear, rewind, listen to again and think "Deep, man. That's deep."
"Up Against the Wall": Seven minutes and 14 seconds of epic-ness. And yes, I am making "epic-ness" a word. It sounds better than "epic-osity" or "epic-naciousness."
"Let's Call It Off": This one sounds like they were trying a little too hard to sound "vintage" or something, but I still like it. And can you hear the sound effect I love most in the world?

Never What You Think It Is

Tonight I went to see Stephen King and Audry Neffinegger at the Fitzgerald Theater. I always like hearing authors talk about their work, and this time it turned out to be way more educational than I expected.

First, I assumed Stephen King would be morose and creepy. Anyone who has put out that many horror novels has to keep rats in the freezer or abuse his children, right? But no. He was actually very funny, very conversational and very at ease talking about his writing. He was also terribly dressed - we're talking acid-washed high-tiders and a pair of white sneakers with velcro instead of laces. Let me repeat that: white sneakers with velcro instead of laces. This was not Stephen King. This was someone's innocuous grandpa who somehow wandered onto stage.

I have never read neither "The Time Traveler's Wife" nor "Her Fearful Symmetry," but I understood them to be sweeping, romantic novels (the brochure at the event later told me this view was misinformed) so I envisioned Neffinegger to be the type of woman who wears large jewelery, decorates with lots of fake flowers and uses phrases like "dear heart" and "my most beloved" as terms of endearment. Wrong again. Neffinegger, who looks like the Goth/Renaissance/Emo girl from your high school all grown up, had no charisma whatsoever. She had an awkward, sour-sounding accent and seemed incapable of providing a remotely interesting answer to any question she was asked. She was boring - far from the interesting, gypsy-esque woman I thought her to be.

So, it just goes to show...you can't judge a book by its cover. (Bad pun alert! I rule.)

Exasperation Sets In

Remember earlier how I was writing about how I loved the library?

Well, now I hate it. Here's why:

• Why the frick is it so hard to find a working stapler? We must have 16 of them and all of them are jammed all the time.
• Who keeps monkeying with the settings on the three-hole punch, and why? You could not possibly want to have the first and second holes six inches apart and the second and third holes two inches apart. That just does not make any sense.
• Law articles and books all seem to have titles drawn from the same six words - "Legal," "rights," "law," "federal," "state," and "justice." This ensure that the first 24 searches I do will have 8,553 results (Seriously. I'm not making that up) each, unless they are incredibly, microscopically specific ("U.N. Declaration of Human Rights" + "Gloria Estefan" + "pumpkin risotto" + "flammable").
• Yes, I know you are allowed to talk on the second floor. This does not mean that you can blabber about how you feel so guilty for having McDonald's yesterday and then screech about how it is 4 p.m. and you haven't even showered yet ohmigod. Loud girl, you know who you are.
• If all you're doing is dicking around on Facebook or playing games or chatting or whatever...then why are you here? Go home. You make me hate my life a little bit more.

Drunken Sentimentality

Has something ever happened to you that didn't seem like a big deal at the time, but then later became a memory that is surprisingly potent?

Last year, after finishing my finals, I went out with some friends and proceeded to get really drunk on gin and tonics at Keys Cafe and Bakery, a sort-of old person downtown Minneapolis restaurant famous for its breakfast. So, kind of a weird atmosphere in which to get obliterated, is what I am saying. I mean, how is it the same place can serve you both a pumpkin muffin and a shot of Jagermeister? But that's not the point of this story.

As I recall, the final got out at noon, so by 2 p.m. or so I was pretty far gone. I went back to my apartment and tried to sleep off my blurry vision and incoherent thoughts.

Now here's where the memory starts. I woke up around 5 p.m., just as the sun was setting and the sky was a very weird neon shade of orange and pink. This was in late April and it was unseasonably warm. I remember feeling the sweat trickle down the back of my neck. I remember feeling disoriented. Why is the sky such a strange color? Why am I so warm? What time is it? What had woken me up was my cell phone, which was vibrating on my nightstand. It was some more friends, who had never stopped celebrating, telling me to come out again. So I did. We went to a bunch of bars and I don't even remember which ones. That isn't really part of the memory.

Here's the second part of the memory - much later that night I was walking home (stumbling - let's be honest) and I came to the part of Nicollet Mall where there are crab apple trees planted along the sidewalk. The white blossoms were so profuse that the fallen petals on the street were as thick as snow. The light from the library, which filters out through its glass walls, created a strangely stage-like atmosphere, like I had suddenly wandered on to the set of a movie. Again, the disorientation: Why is there snow? Where is that light coming from? I also remember feeling a sense of disappointment that was really hard to place. Am I really done? Is that all there is? Can I go back and try to do better? Am I really ready for that to be over?

I think three things make this a really vivid memory for me. First, that sense of being crestfallen. It's odd, since normally being done with school for the year is a good thing. But it felt so anticlimactic. Second, the alcohol (not too much to say there. It is what it is). Third, that unusual time and place - a warm, early spring night bathed in such an otherworldly light. And those crab apple trees....

I don't take too much from this memory. It doesn't even necessarily mean anything. It's just strangely bright in my mind and I never would've guessed that night I'd be thinking about it nine months later.

Chess is Like Basketball and Ping-Pong. Let Me Explain.

Recently, after owning it for a mere 1.5 years, I discovered my laptop has a chess game on it.

Chess was, for some reason, a fad when I was in elementary school (this was between the Era of Snap Bracelets and before The Age of Pogs). I remember there being an all-class tournament when I was in 5th grade. I had a book that told you how to play chess, but instead of using it to become the next Bobby Fischer, I would just look at the illustrations, which showed actual knights riding toward peasants (pawns) with swords drawn, vengeful knife-wielding queens streaking toward glowering bishops, etc. It was pretty intense.

Flash forward to now. I have the difficulty setting on my chess game turned to two and yet I have only won two out of 18 games. Clearly, I am not good at chess. For some reason, though, I still like to play. It's like basketball and ping-pong in that way - I'm terrible at it, but I still find it fun.

Here are some random observations about chess:

• Rooks are my favorite of the major pieces. Bishops are my least.
• I can't do that "think three moves ahead" thing they tell you to do because the other side has this irritating way of moving pieces not in accord with my master scheme. Inconsiderate, right?
• I always quit when one side gets down to just its king because I hate that whole deal of constantly putting the king in check only to have him move on square away, check again, one square again, etc. It's boring. (This could account for my low win percentage, now that I think about it, because quitting a game counts as a loss).
• The chess game I have has an "Undo" button that lets you take back a boneheaded move. I wish I had never discovered that, because I abuse the privilege.
• The only time I will sacrifice my queen is if it results in my capturing the other side's queen. This results in using my queen too cautiously, and therefore ineffectively. My dad always beat me because he actually used his queen, but I can never work up the confidence.

A Sense of Place

Oh, Minneapolis. I love you most when you're Gotham-esque.