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<3ing Murakami
May 23, 2006

Like all excuses, I've been spending my time spent wisely elsewhere: either watching Naruto (while knitting washcloths) on the computer or reading through books as quickly as I go through water. I feel like I'm 12 again, when summer = staying inside where it's cool and reading, not moving for hours except for the occasional subconscious reach for the Nalgene full of cold H2O or iced coffee.

The book-before-last I finished has me wanting to continue with the author’s full portfolio. I regret to say that I came into Murakami late – I had read Sputnik Sweetheart a few years ago, and don’t remember getting into the book that much. Obviously, the book itself didn’t stick in my memory to this day, but that’s probably because my young mind couldn’t wrap itself around the genius that is Murakami. I bought Kafka on the Shore after a woman in my bookclub recommended it back in February, and looked forward to reading it, since I had really enjoyed The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. I read it over 6 days – during breaks at home (from freelance work), before bed, and whenever the time made itself available.

The book is amazing, and I truly feel that it’s the best book I’ve read in probably the past 4 years. I guess I’ve always been into strange stories – my favorite book to this day is The Plague by Albert Camus, and the similarly existential but enlightening storylines fill my heart with wonder and love. Murakami’s story of a boy on a mission and things that happen to those around him entrances the senses and makes the reader hungry for more. Murakami says that to him, “…writing a novel is like having a dream.” This novel is dream-like, but with enough centered reality to keep focus. The shifting lines of concentration within the first 2/3rds of the book kept me reading hungrily, wanting to know how all of the different data given ended up at the end – how everything melded together. And meld together everything did – the end was sublime, paced perfectly with all of the characters' fates coming to perfect closures.

At this point, Murakami is certainly in my top-5 list of authors, dead or alive, on this planet.

Thank you to all that donated to Matt’s fundraising efforts. I’ll let everyone know about the results of the drawing by the end of the month. As for me, I’m heading off to spend Memorial Day weekend in Montana with my husband and his never-before-met-by-me father. There will definitely be tons of photos to share when I get back. Wish me luck on our 12-hour (one-way by car) journey!

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AIDS Walk NYC 2006
May 16, 2006

My friend Matt has lived in NYC now for just about a year. He's gotten so into the community, in fact, that he's going to do something crazy: walk with a shiteload of other people for a good cause. So, here comes the request for money: Matt needs your donations. More specifically, those people that are living with HIV and AIDS need your donations. Everyone knows that all of this research and time and testing for cures and drugs and everything else takes a lot of money, and most organizations don't have enough of it. For your paltry (or generous!) donation, a ton of awesome organizations will be helped out through the next year - organizations that help people in dire need.

To donate is simple - simply click on the "AIDS Walk New York" button on the left there. That'll take you to Matt's donation page. Enter your donation amount and click on the "Continue" button. Fill in your information and it's done! The website only takes donations of $25 or more, so if you can't afford the price of dinner or a week's worth of double-tall-mochas to help people, get together with a friend and slap $12.50 apiece to donate. Just get out there and do it. Annnnnd if you donate to Matt from here, every person who donates any amount will be put into a drawing for a special gift pack from me; just send me an email with your name and how much you donated (here's where I see how many readers I actually get who care... sigh). Don't wait!!! Donate today!!! The walk is this Sunday, so get the ol' debit or credit card out and click on the link already!!

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It's all about the funny
May 15, 2006

Lazy post time: The FUNNY edition:


  • The Now Show Podcast May 5th Episode making fun of Ricky Gervais. And don't get me wrong - I <3 Ricky Gervais. But, OMG the funny.
  • 146648581_012345803f.jpg
  • This photo, translated by Caitlin
  • This post by Defective Yeti
  • dear jesus.
    Will you please make all the caffine I have just injested NOT give me a tummyache and instead go.to.my.brain to make it work, as devlyn says, "betterly?"
    Your Fan,
    Laura.

Yesterday I was telling Ben about the time when I had put together some wet food for Baby Kitty, and I almost stuck the spork thing in my mouth before putting it in the sink. I caught myself right before it went in, and then almost gave myself a heart attack thinking about the disgusting things in cat food.

On a serious note, I had some of the worst insomnia last night of my life. I don't think I was able to actually fall asleep until around 3.30am, then I kept waking at certain times freaking out about my work pager. My new position has me toting a little beeping box that I have to answer 3-4 days a week. While this isn't the happiest thing ever, it's not as bad as I thought it would be, so there's really not much to complain about. However, the phantom neighbor who was either a) having dancepartyUSA or b) playing Guitar Hero very loudly all night long is so going to get the cops called on him/her next time that shite goes down. So. Not. Cool.

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*Rolling my eyes*
May 7, 2006

Currently there is a young teenage boy mowing the tiny little patches of grass between the sidewalk and the street in front of my house. Normally I wouldn't mind this at all, but today? It has been raining. And anyone that knows anything about mowing lawns knows that grass doesn't cut well directly after rain. Therefore, the lawn is going to look like crap: patchy and uneven.

Mowing Boy 2

I guess that's what I get for living in a building where the landlord won't hire proper gardeners. *sigh*


(ed) P.S. He's now also pruning the large bush right outside my window. With little tiny clippers. This isn't looking good...

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Something is wrong here...
May 3, 2006

About 2 weeks ago, I suddenly started saying "W00T" with no irony in every day conversation. Sure, the conversations may have been with myself, but there is something wrong about taking what I considered a geeky online term and applying it to every day life. This may have to do with my GQ (read: g33k quotient) cubing within the past 3 weeks. My job has changed again, and my head is filling with all sorts of knowledge that is indispensible, but I'm having issues remembering passwords again.

I had an interesting thing happen to me a couple of weeks ago: after getting my new iPod, I was cleaning up some ID tags in iTunes and adding dates and info and all that. Whilst doing this, I was using the incredibly handy website "Google" (anyone heard of it yet? It's going to be big!) to look up some of the lesser-known album information, when I happened to run into my own website. Not this one right now, on which you are reading these words, but one of my really really old websites out on Geocities when Geocities used to be Geocities and not Yahoo. Having my first site on BHI (Beverly Hills Internet), which eventually became Geocities, I had a plethora of sites starting around '94 and '95 all about me and my interests and my cats and what fun it is to g33k in HTML.

Anyhow, the site I found is here. It's a Green Day fansite I ran for around 3 years, and quit when I lost my computer in '99. You may be able to tell that this was the first website I created with the dreaded MS FrontPage - an incredibly crappy program used for making websites. I was all up in this because it made websites so. easy. and fast. to make! So I used the templates and pre-built backgrounds and animated gifs and all the lovely things which are still to this day included with the installation, and now when I look back at it, it just kind of makes me sick. I'm glad I went old school again when creating my next website, which is totally not in existence any more. In fact, the funny thing is that some people must have actually been going to my site on and off, since it's still up on the servers, and I haven't logged into the Yahoo webpage deal in at least 2-3 years. As a result, most of the links are broken, and most of the photos don't work any longer.

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

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