Archives for the month of: November, 2009

Scratch paper*

November 20, 09 //
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It’s past bedtime (why did I stay up to watch the most boring finale of “Project Runway” in the history of the show?), but I started thinking of bands for the best-of-the-decade list while I was in the shower, and I’m afraid that if I don’t write them down, I’ll forget them when I make my actual list. So, not in numerical order:

  • The Libertines, Up the Bracket
  • Dolorean, Violence in the Snowy Fields
  • The Model Rockets, Tell the Kids the Cops Are Here

I can’t say with absolute certainty that the latter two will make the list, but they’re strong contenders. (The Libertines will unquestionably be there.)

And then some more obvious choices came to mind, so I should capture them here just in case:

  • Patty Griffin, Impossible Dream
  • Robbie Fulks, Couples in Trouble
  • Sam Phillips, Fan Dance
  • Patty Loveless, Mountain Soul
  • Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings, 100 Days and 100 Nights (or maybe Naturally, or for that matter, Dap-Dippin’…can’t decide)
  • Richard Thompson, The Old Kit Bag (this one isn’t a certainty, but I can’t really imagine leaving it out)
  • John Doyle, Evening Comes Early (I was so happy when I checked the release date and found that this wonderful record was indeed released this decade)
  • Reigning Sound, Time Bomb High School (I’m missing Reigning Sound at Maxwell’s even as I type this–couldn’t get the day off work tomorrow, and schlepping to Hoboken by myself on a school night just wasn’t going to happen. I have no one but myself to blame, but I’m still disappointed.)

Plus a few maybes:

  • Wussy, Left for Dead
  • Caitlin Cary, While You Weren’t Looking
  • Sunny Sweeney, Heartbreaker’s Hall of Fame

If I add all of these to the six I’ve already put on the list, I’m only a little bit over 15, so I’m not doing too badly. Of course, there’s all the other records I’m forgetting…

*Is “scratch paper” a regionalism? Seems to me that I used to call it “scrap paper,” but then in high school it became “scratch paper,” maybe because everyone else said it that way, or maybe I picked it up somewhere else. (Sometimes I have trouble distinguishing between regionalisms, generational usage, and stuff-I-picked-up-somewhere-isms.) What do you call paper on which you make notes or work out your math problems or whatever?

Still slogging through jogging; just not doing much blogging

November 17, 09 //
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(And for that subject line, I probably deserve a flogging.)

I’m debating between one more day of week 4 and starting on day 1 of week 5 of the Couch-to-5K program tonight. I didn’t manage the expected three days of week 4 last week, partly because I’m lazy and partly because week 4 just wasn’t very much fun at all. It alternates three- and five-minute jogging intervals with walking intervals that are half as long, and those five-minute jogs were really hard. I did them, and I didn’t give up even on the night when my breathing was particularly bad, but it was tough enough to make me start questioning whether I’m really cut out for this program. But I’m still not ready to quit completely.

There have been some signs that, as I suspected from the start, I’m just not very well designed for running/jogging: some tightness in my hamstring, some gasp-inducing knee pain that comes on all of a sudden when I’m sitting still—pain that’s more severe than anything my knees have felt in decades. But strangely, and interestingly (er…to me, at least), the desire to be someone who runs has so far been stronger than either my concerns about injury or my lifelong tendency to quit when something doesn’t come easily to me. I’m not sure how long that balance will hold; I’ve been more tired and more depressed than usual lately, which makes it harder to sustain interest in any activity. But I’m trying to appreciate it while it lasts, I guess.