Band Geeks Going Pop

For those of you treating this blog as one big "I Spy" game- you may have noticed my saxophone case rotate through the room.This is one of those heftier items (both literally and figuratively) that probably isn't going anywhere anytime soon.  For those of you who haven't spotted it, once you know what you're looking for, it's kind of hard to miss. I put giant flower power stickers on it back in the 7th grade (1995 for those of you keeping track). There are also a few Blues Clues stickers, as per my ironic fandom of the show. I joined band in middle school and played all through college. Like dance classes, basketball, and learning the German language, this was one of the many time consuming hobbies of my youth that I have rarely used in my adult life. And as such, I have a lot of crap associated with it at my parent's house. 

If you were in band as a middle schooler, music books were the cool things to have.

I know you're still trying to wrap your head around the paradoxical location of the word "cool" right after the phrase "in band as a middle schooler". I'll give you a moment. 

This is the kind of thing we did for fun on our down time. You would spend all fall learning to play Sleigh Ride. In the spring you'd devote large chunks of time to fumbling through Stars and Stripes Forever while marching through the school parking lot. In the mid 90's, nothing said summer fun to a band kid like letting loose with the latest Disney movie hits.  The pop music on the right is from late middle school/ early high school, when I got really cool. 

28 Top Hits for the Alto Sax

Smash Pop Hit

I'm a little sad to see these gems go, but hopefully some young kid has picked them up from the Bennington Transfer station and is so excited that she can finally learn to play "Every Heartbeat". The table of contents on the left might be worth clicking on to enlarge. I'm pretty sure I marked off all the songs I was working on. Apparently I've blocked out that I was an avid Ricky Martin fan.

A Change of Pace

Happy Winter Break!

For the second time this year I drove my luxury vehicle, a 1999 Chrysler Cirrus, from Virginia to New Hampshire and back. I took the time at the end of my stay to tend to the old room. My cleaning spree did not last that long. I tore through my room in about 90 minutes.  I filled the trunk and backseat of my car. I skipped out on part of my New Year's weekend plans to ensure that I could make it to the transfer station on Saturday. then I filled the car again with stuff to take back to Virginia.  This was not the slow, methodical process that is the starting point for most of these posts; nor was it one of the numerous times I set things aside to get rid of, only for them to simply inhabit a different corner of the room.  I was driven after having an experience that was both new and familiar.

For the first time in over five years, I had to sleep in this room.

Everyone in my family was home for Christmas. My brother and his wife were in his room, formerly known as the main living quarters of my Penthouse Suite. My sister and her family were in her old room, which I had secretly dubbed Storage Room B. That left my fiance and I to maneuver around each other in about six square feet of usable floor space. For four days.  By the end, I was itching to clear out some crap.

I snapped a handful of item specific photos as I cleared everything out. Those will make their appearance eventually. For now, here's a brief series of before and after shots.

Nothing to see here.

I went home this past weekend for the first time in two months. Given that I now live 400 miles away in Virginia, maintaining a blog about cleaning the room I grew up in is nearly impossible. I had such grandiose ideas about doing a mega cleaning that would give me some material to work with over the next couple weeks. I forgot to factor in that I was doing about a million other things this weekend. In reality, I think I had about two weeks worth of activities planned for myself. After about an hour and a half. this is what I came up with. I'll be honest, when posting pictures, I had to really look at them to remember which was the before and which was the after.

All those boxes on the bed are filled with old papers that can be burned or brought to the recycling center next time I am home. There just wasn't the time this trip. That blue bin and its contents are now down here with me, and that sweet pair of Heelys is, thankfully, staying put (I see you doing the math and realizing there's no way those were around when I was a kid. Yes, being 25 and showing up at the shoe store for a pair of roller skate sneakers is exactly the type of ridiculous experience you would think it would be).

I did feel accomplished when I came across this necklace. It belongs to my friend Todd and got packed up with my stuff when I left camp a few years ago. It has a degree of sentimental value for him and he'd ask about it periodically. I didn't want to tell him as time went on that I was becoming more and more sure it was lost forever. That is, until I was cleaning out a paper bag full of shoes and there it was at the bottom. Yup. I keep my shoes in a paper bag.

Books: The Next Big Heartache, Part II

I had a fun conversation over Facebook today that reminded me I had a draft of this post kicking around. Figured it was as good an opportunity as any to finish it up.  Since 8th grade, my favorite book has been William Goldman's The Princess Bride.  The photo below as taken when I was debating which of my multiple copies to take with me when I moved: The 30th anniversary version, which includes the first chapter of the "long lost sequel" Buttercup's Baby, or the first copy I bought, which has all my favorite passages underlined and notes scribbled in the margins in gel pen. (I could have also gone with the 25th anniversary edition, or the German translation, among others).

A quick update. I have moved to Northern Virgina, where I am currently enrolled in graduate program to become a (real) Reading Specialist. Like many of the moves I have made over the past 9 years, I arrived in town Friday and started class Monday (this used to be, "leave camp Saturday, move in to college Sunday"). I drove down here without knowing exactly where I was going to live, so I packed light. Three bags of clothes, my sewing machine, bedding, beading supplies, professional development books  about reading I already owned, some dishes

and one single milk crate of recreational reading.

As you may know, I have a hard time sorting through books. Combing through my collection and pulling titles to tie me over until I go home for a visit proved difficult. I wanted to bring a good balance of books I've already read and may want to reread (or at least like to leaf through now and then), and ones that I haven't read at all yet (meaning finding books that I own and  would be interested in reading, but for whatever reason, haven't yet). Here's what I ended up going with:

Read:

• Sin Boldly; Dr. Dave's Guide to Writing the College Paper, by David R. Williams
• Great book on essay writing. I highly recommend it to anyone in school or actively writing.
• A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (half read)
• Welcome to the Monkey House, by Kurt Vonnegut
• The Kid  Nobody Could Handle has always been one of my favorite short stories.
• Tough Sh*t, by Kevin Smith
• I read this over the summer. There are some great motivational chapters that kept me going through my job search.  
• World War Z, by Max Brooks
• What Learning Leaves, by Taylor Mali
• The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
• The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros
• The Turner Diaries, by Andrew MacDonald 
• I could probably write a blurb about each of these, but this one probably deserves the most explanation. It became part of my collection when I discovered it on the shelves of a children's library which is stocked entirely by (sometimes clearly unsorted) donated books (some of you may just know it as Grube). I had just seen a documentary about American Neo-Nazis that referenced it. A sense of responsibility prompted me to take it out of the reach of kids. A sense of curiosity lead me to read it. I can't say I agree with, well, anything that is in it, but it does offer some very insightful passages, such as, "...one of the major purposes of political terror, always and everywhere, is to force the authorities to take reprisals and become more repressive, thus alienating a portion of the population and generating sympathy for the terrorists. And the other purpose is to create unrest by destroying the population's sense of security and their belief in the invincibility of the government." (51)
• Walk Two Moons, by Sharon Creech
• The Zombie Survival Guide, by Max Brooks
• Hope for the Flowers, by Trina Paulus
• The Princess Bride, by William Goldman (obviously)

Unread:

• Going After Cacciato, by Tim O'Brien
• If I Die in a Combat Zone, by Tim O'Brien
• The Good Earth, by Pearl S. Buck
•  Room, by Emma Donoghue
• Freakonomics, by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
• The World is Flat, by Thomas L. Friedman
• The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time, by David L. Ulin
• Eating the Dinosaur, by Chuck Klosterman
• Mother Night, by Kurt Vonnegut
• Bridal Bargins, by Denise and Alan Fields
• Rip the Page: Adventures in Creative Writing, by Karen Benke

Finished Since I got here:

• Inkheart, by Cornelia Funke

"...good luck movin up 'cause I-yyyyy-'m MOVIN OUT! "

I am leaving.

I am leaving for the summer, effective this weekend. After that, it is on to points unknown.

I still don't have anything lined up for September.

My cousin's kids are visiting our house this week. My sister's bedroom sleeps two. There are three of them. My mother suggested I simply clear a path to the bed in my room.

Let's picture that.

"Welcome to New Hampshire kids! After you long drive up from Kentucky by way of Vermont, one of you gets to sleep in this dusty hoarder's cave. Who wants to call dibs?"

I took it as an opportunity to finally clear out of my brother's room. Thus, now giving my parents two functioning guest rooms. The room is now essentially the way I found it two years ago when I moved back home.

And where, you may ask, will I be sleeping this week? This may not be an option....

I know. It looks as bad now as it did in October when this whole thing started. But consider, I have now condensed 20 years of childhood memories and an apartment's worth of stuff first into 3 rooms, and now down into one. I am getting there.  Whether or not I'll be around next fall for progress to continue is yet to be seen.

So Long for Now

From the last post: 

"Check back Sunday to see if I got back on top of things. Ooooo, the SUSPENSE!"

Did you indeed check back in a week later?  Did you notice there was no new entry? Did/ does that provide an adequate answer to the inquiry above? It did for me.

Some "official", but-you-probably-saw-it-coming news:

This blog is going on hiatus.

As I mentioned two weeks ago, spring is my busiest time of the year. For those of you who are unaware, my current position as an In-School Suspension Coordinator has been cut from the school district budget for next year. Even fewer of you may realize that this is the 7th year in a row that circumstances have lead me to spend the majority of April and May job searching- as in EVERY year since grad school. (Go here, here, and/ or here for more of the nitty gritty details.) The whole thing has become pretty routine at this point, and I dare say that so far this is one of my most successful job searches yet. I've landed multiple interviews already and been accepted into a grad program. All that being said, it is time consuming. Add to that a number of other time sensitive projects I have on the table, and this poor little blog has fallen by the wayside.

With my plans for the fall up in the air, I may actually be moving out of my parents house. Camp starts in 5 weeks. That means that I'll need to focus much more heavily on getting my current room back to its original "guest bedroom" statu.  Any (sporadic) posts in the near future will probably deal with that.

Thanks for the support. It has been a really fun project. I was genuinely surprised at how many people read it.

Here's the last picture for a while. This is the desk where I do my writing. It took me nearly two hours today to clean it out.

Backsliding like Nobody's Business

So, I was going to sit down and write, "Oh man, looks like it has been a couple weeks..." Then I saw that it has actually been almost two months.

And it shows.

Here's the disheveled room where I store my stuff:

And here is the squalor in which I have been living:

I tend to forget that spring is my busiest time of the year for me. I'm job searching all across the five states, getting ready for one of my last summers of camp, debating the merits of grad school, maintaining my long distance relationship on the cusp of being in its 9th year, vaguely planning a wedding, and working 10 hours a day.

Check back Sunday to see if I got back on top of things. Ooooo, the SUSPENSE!




(Sorry, just watched the "reality show" episode of 30 Rock. It is about the closest to melodrama I've seen recently. Wanted to jump on the bandwagon)