My happy place

There's this exercise that they have us do at work that's supposed to be helpful relieving stress which abounds in the medical field because even at the lowest level (like appointment scheduling) you still encounter life and death situations on a fairly regular basis. They tell you to close your eyes and picture you're on tropical beach. It's a variation on the "go to your happy place" trick.

I've never really had a good imagination...not in that way. I mean I can picture a smokey blues club in the French Quarter in New Orleans, filled with people, some in elaborate costumes, some in regular clothes, with a band playing bluesy zydeco music. It's a scene in a story that delivered itself fully formed into my head. But I can't "see" it when I close my eyes.

Also, a tropical beach is not my happy place. This is my happy place:



My happy place is the gardens at the Alhambra. I have a thing about architecture, not that I know anything about it, but I love looking at interesting buildings. Alhambra is certainly interesting architecture, but what I really loved was the gardens. I don't know why, but I felt really happy and at peace there. While I can't close my eyes and call to mind a picture of my happy place I can, with my eyes wide open, recall the feeling of sitting in those gardens on a beautiful day (sunny but not too hot).

Granada is an amazing city, with a somewhat violent history resulting in a sort of odd truce of a kind and there is a lot of beauty there. It seems like there's a light in things there (both actual and metaphorical) that you don't see other places, or that I didn't see other places. There were a lot of places I loved there...the cathedral, the Plaza Nueva, the tea shops...but the gardens at the Alhambra were special.

A misty mellow mood

It was really misty this morning where I live and that always makes me think of Led Zeppelin for some reason. Mist puts me in a good, mellow mood and there's always music to go with my moods. I'm not the only one who connects weather with mood and mood with music (and therefor weather with music, isn't logic fun). What does this have to do with anything?

Well, take a look at the first several days of my songs of the day:

What Is And What Should Never Be (Led Zeppelin)

Shh (Atmosphere)

Just Like a Woman (Bob Dylan)

Self Esteem (The Ofspring)

This Year (Mountain Goats)

Juke Box Hero (Foreigner)

Whipping Post (Allman Brothers)

Winter (Rolling Stones)

I started out the year in a good mood, mellow, like today, and the music matched that mood (as did the lyrics, "So if you wake up with the sunrise, and all your dreams are still as new, and happiness is what you need so bad, Well, girl, the answer lies with you, yeah", "If you can drink tap water and breathe the air say, shhh"), but then it was cold and stormy and my mood was foul, you can see it in the music (and lyrics), I went from defeated to angry and back again ("She breaks just like a little girl", "I'm just a sucker with low self esteem", "I am gonna make it through this year if it kills me", "Sometimes I feel like I'm tied to the whipping post", "It's sure been a cold, cold winter, And a lot of love is all burned out, It's sure been a hard, hard winter, My feet been draggin' 'cross the ground")

You'll notice I skipped right over Jukebox Hero. That's because the significance of that song had nothing to do with my mood (or the weather). I was in Subway (committing to a sandwich topping) and Jukebox Hero came on the radio and it reminded me of my new found friend (to whom the songs of the day were addressed) because he is a huge Foreigner fan. In fact, if you know him, as I'm sure some of you do since I see his blog in my stats as the referring URL occasionally, you should buy him a Foreigner CD (perhaps as a graduation gift) or make him a Foreigner mix, he'll love it.

Cold Feelings

It's been suggested to me that I should blog songs of the day and I decided it was a good idea, but rather than starting fresh I'm going to take a nostalgic look back at the songs of the day e-mails I sent. To start with, you should know that I didn't actually do the songs of the day on a daily basis, I sent them weekly, sometimes more often than that but never actually daily. I probably won't blog them daily either both because I'm lazy that way and because I'll have other things I'll want to blog about. Also, not all of the previous songs of the day had significance. Sometimes I just put my Zune on shuffle and used the first song that came up and that won't make for a very interesting blog entry.

To kick things off, I'll tell you how the songs of the day began. It was the afternoon of December 31, 2006 and I was sending out an e-mail to all my close friends and family telling them that, though I'm not usually one for new years resolutions, I was making one that year, and the resolution was to try to keep in touch with them better. Then I thought about someone I'd just met that quarter in school. We weren't that close, but in the run up to finals we'd spent a large amount of time in GChat and not all of it was spent discussing our final. We spent a fair amount of that time talking about music. I'd had a crush on him all quarter, and after talking to him about music and politics and stuff I started to really like him too (you know what I mean, and if you don't then read my archives). Shortly after finals he left the country (for study abroad among other things) and I knew he wasn't going to be back at school until after I graduated. I thought I should make an effort to keep in touch with him too, but I'd already sent the new years resolution e-mail, and I knew that we weren't already close so if I failed at keeping in touch it would close the window completely on that friendship. It wasn't like the other people I'd resolved to keep in touch with who I was already close with and if I failed at keeping touch better I'd still pick up just where I left off next time I see them. I needed something to push me to actually keep in touch. So, I decided on the songs of the day, and I sent him an e-mail explaining it all. I said that sometimes they will be songs to fit my mood that day, sometimes just my favorite songs, sometimes songs that I think he'd like or that remind me of him, and sometimes completely random songs.

The subsequent e-mails just contained song titles (and artist names), but I included a song for the day in that first explanation e-mail too. The song that day was Cold Feelings by Social Distortion. The significance with this song is actually the band, not the song.

I'd been getting interested in punk rock around this same time. Historically I shied away from punk rock out of a deep-seated resentment towards my brother. You see, my brother is four and a half years older than me and my mom let him, as far as I could tell, do whatever he wanted when he was a teenager. He didn't have a curfew, he was allowed to go, alone, into the big bad city to see punk rock shows and she said nothing. In fact, he had a fake ID which my mother found and then returned to him when he explained that the only reason he had it was to get into shows, not for drinking (which apparently was the truth but that's beside the point really). My mother told me at the time that when I was his age I too would be allowed to do such things. Of course that turned out to be a lie and when I called her on it 4 years later her only justification for it was that he's a boy. My cries of sexism (from my mother the lawyer) fell on deaf ears. She didn't even try to deny her sexist double standard. Now, of course, I do go to punk rock shows but I never go to them alone, or let my friends go to them alone, because the idea that girls can't go to punk rock shows alone is so ingrained in me. But for years, I just stayed away from punk rock because it reminded me of the unfairness that is being a girl. However, just before I met the songs-of-the-day guy, I'd been getting interested in punk rock, Social Distortion in particular. So, the first thing I noticed when I met him was that he was wearing a Social Distortion shirt.

In January that year I'd gone to Austin and seen a show at Stubbs as a result of which I ended up on their mailing list and I now get monthly e-mails about who's playing there. A couple months prior to starting the songs of the day e-mails I'd posted a note in facebook lamenting that I didn't live in Texas because both Social Distortion and Joan Jett were on the Stubbs calendar for that month. He posted a reply to the note commenting on my good taste (for liking Social Distortion) and letting me know that Joan Jett was playing that very night here in Seattle. I ended up not being able to go to Joan Jett because I didn't get off work until 8:00 and by the time I made it down to the Showbox it was sold out. The whole thing made me realize that Seattle has almost as much live music going on as Austin and I should be out there seeing some of it. Actually, Seattle doesn't have nearly as much live music going on as Austin but that bar is set unbelievably high; Seattle has a lot of live music. I still haven't seen Social Distortion or Joan Jett but I've been to a lot more shows since then.

The point being that a love of music, and Social Distortion in particular, was, you might say, the foundation of the friendship and that's why I chose a song by them for the first song of the day.

Piecing together the perfect man

I've devoted a bit of blog space lately to discussion of my "type" (or lack there of), and, in fact, in the past several months the topic has come up surprisingly often with my friends of what we're looking for. What, or who, is the perfect guy (or girl if you go that way)? It's been asked more times than I can count.

In my latest favorite movie (P.S. I Love You), a confused man asks the woman he's interested in what it is that women want and she responds that women have no idea what they want. While that may be true much of the time, we often think we do until we meet someone who doesn't meet any of the criteria and yet we want them anyway. So here, for posterity, is a list of the things I think I want, as embodied by my favorite characters from film and television.

This guy:


That would be Chase Hammond (from the film Drive Me Crazy, written by the incomparable Rob Thomas of Veronica Mars fame), not Adrian Greiner or his more famous character Vincent Chase. What makes Chase Hammond the perfect guy? Lots of things, loyalty, not taking anything (including himself) too seriously, he likes punk rock and baseball, he has a lot of great qualities, but what makes him perfect is his idea of the perfect date. First of all, when he's asked what his idea of the perfect date is, he asks if they mean "date" as in a person or a series of events showing that he has a great appreciation for the intricacies of language (which is another great quality), when it is clarified that they mean the person he says this, "She's the kinda girl that will call you on your bullshit. She isn't afraid to dance and she offers to pay. She doesn't decide before a date whether or not she's going to kiss you; she's not totally earnest, yet she's not completely ironic either...she orders dessert and she can be ready in ten minutes". You have to love that answer.

Next we have this guy:



Not to be confused with this guy:



Which is to say Marc Darcy from Bridget Jones Diary, as opposed to Mr. Darcy of Pride and Prejudice fame, though they bear striking resemblance to each other, not just because both were played by Colin Firth. Mr. Darcy has his moments of perfection as well, as, I'm sure, does Colin Firth, but Marc Darcy has one specific element of perfection that I'm interested in. Marc Darcy likes Bridget Jones just as she is and he tells her so. That's it. That is what makes him perfect. Okay, he's not bad to look at (even in this hideous sweater), and he's a successful lawyer, and not a skeezy corporate lawyer but a Human Rights lawyer, and he's clearly very close with his family, and he's thoughtful, and kind, and he cooks...all good things, but what makes him absolutely perfect is the fact that he's not afraid to tell the girl that he likes her, even though he knows she's sort of involved with someone else who, by the way has already stolen one woman he loved. It's really hard to tell someone that you like them. Sometimes you have to because not telling them is harder, but even then it's still not easy to say, knowing the possible result (even likely result) is rejection.

Look back in the archives and you'll find I have a thing for fictional bad boys. Normally I wouldn't claim that any of those characters are embodiments of perfection since they tend not to have qualities that I look for in real life men (in fact their most appealing quality, their reformation for the love of a good woman, doesn't exist in real life men), but there's one exception.

This guy:



Okay, he's a vampire, and pretty much devoted to murder and anarchy (until he gets his soul back in season 7), but the soulless vampire thing is fiction, like the desire to reform his bad boy ways for the love of a good woman. He does have some traits that are attainable in real life. Primarily a sort of focused devotion. I'll admit that this particular quality can become overbearing, or irritating, especially if it's coming from someone you aren't interested in, but when it's coming from someone you are interested in it's kind of perfect. When Spike loves a woman she is the center of his universe, he'll do anything for her. The other thing he's got that's irresistible is the ability to make anything he says sound like a come on. Again, it's a quality that could come off as creepy, but somehow he manages not to cross that line. Also, he writes poetry and uses words like effulgent.

While we're in the Buffyverse there's another perfect character:



Like most of these paragons of male perfection, Oz has many great qualities. He plays bass in a rock band. He's a genius. He's unflappable. And he notices Willow for the first time when she's dressed head to toe in fur (in an Eskimo costume) which I suppose is evidence of his unique taste, not just in women, but in all things. However, I mostly like him for his dry wit. You can never underestimate the power of a good sense of humor.

While we're on the subject of sense of humor, I have to mention this guy:



Hilarious, yes, but that's not the only thing he's got going for him. Look at his hands. They're perfect, and he talks with them. I have to love a guy who talks with his hands. Also, he gets adorably flustered when his guests unexpectedly start talking about sex, but that's just a bonus. Mainly it's the talking with his hands thing.

Saving the best for last we have this guy:



Pacey actually has all of the great qualities I've talked about and I don't need to reiterate them. Instead lets get specific. One of my favorite episodes of Dawson's Creek is called Stolen Kisses (it's season 3, episode 19). It's the episode where Pacey and Joey finally get together. Joey tells Pacey something like he makes her feel alive and he responds by announcing that he's going to kiss her. He says that, in about 10 seconds, he's going to kiss her and if she doesn't want him to then she's going to have to stop him. Now, on the surface, that may sound like a sort of neanderthal think to say, but it's really not, when you consider that he could have just grabbed her and kissed without saying anything. The announcement gives her the opportunity to walk away if she doesn't want to get kissed. You might say that asking if you can kiss her is the better route to take, and it's certainly more polite, but confidence is attractive and asking if you can kiss someone shows a lack of confidence.

You may wonder, if you know me, why I didn't include this guy:

While Barney is awesome, always well dressed, loyal, he'll do anything for his friends, he knows the retail price of everything under the sun, and he's totally hot, he's also kind of a nightmare with women. So, he gets an honourable mention, but he doesn't make the list.

Songs of the day

They say that college is where you meet the friends you'll have for the rest of life. My own college experience was a little fractured. I went to college right out of high school and I did make a few good friends, but none that lasted.

Making friends has never been super easy for me. I'm shy. I'm an incredibly open person so I tend to connect with people really quickly but it's all contingent on them engaging me because I don't know how to approach people and start conversations. When I went to college I decided that while I couldn't change that about myself I could say yes to every new experience, and I did, and I may have developed some really great lifelong friends if I'd stayed in school to the end, but I dropped out after two years.

I'm bad at keeping in touch with people and my closest friends were my boyfriends roommates anyway. Not that they were just his friends, but I did think that occasionally and I think I put all the responsibility on him to keep in touch with them. I miss them a lot actually, I wish it had been true that they'd become lifelong friends.

After two years at Western I dropped out and moved back to Seattle from Bellingham (and so did the boyfriend) so we lost touch with our college friends. We'd moved away, we'd left school, we just weren't in the same place as them in either life or location.

I've made some great friends in life. I've even made some really great girl friends in the past 5 years and that's something I never thought would happen. However, I've still felt like I missed out on the lifelong college friends thing.

I went back to school a few years ago to finish my degree and I got a second chance. I met a bunch of really cool people the second time around, which I thought would be hard because I was older but that didn't seem to matter. The problem comes now that I'm done with school. Like I said, I'm really bad at keeping in touch with people. Even if I only manage to keep one friend I made in college though, I'll count that as a success.

So, I made a point of keeping in touch with one friend I made in school the second time around. I decided, to relieve myself of trying to come up with things to say, I would send him e-mails with songs of the day and I did that for a little over a year. I decided to take the training wheels off though and, of course, I'm having some trouble. I don't know how to keep in touch with someone that I don't see everyday. Maybe I should reach for the crutch and re-start the songs of the day, but this inability to keep in touch with people, and the deeper inability to start conversations, is something I'd like to be able to change about myself.

It's in his kiss

When I was in high school I used to tell my boyfriend(s) (if you can call them that, and the only reason I do is because I've yet to think of a more accurate term), I used to say to them, "kiss me like you mean it". There's this idea that a lot of women have that you can tell a lot of things from a kiss, not just how you feel (if a someone kisses you and you feel nothing then you know, without any further investigation that he's not for you), but how they feel. There's even a wildly popular song about it ("if you want to know if he loves you so, it's in his kiss").

I have not really ever believed this or more accurately I've been on the fence about it. I was always more of the "a kiss is just a kiss" school of thought. When I told boys to kiss me like they meant it I always assumed that they could (regardless of how they really felt about me) but somehow the resulting kisses always fell short of that expectation so maybe, somewhere in the back of my mind I believed that there really is something you can tell just from a kiss. I have definitely always had a very specific idea about what makes a good kiss and a bad kiss and yet I've also found that even a remarkably bad kiss can be better than a remarkably good kiss if it makes me feel something.

A friend of mine would probably argue that the answers are in a look, not a kiss. She was recently talking about how hot Timothy Olyphant was in the movie Catch and Release, not because of anything about his appearance, but because of the way he looked at Jennifer Garner. I have a name for this look. I call it the fillet mignon look. You see, sometimes a guy will look at you like he's been starving for months and you are nice juicy fillet mignon. It's a difficult look to resist and, I think, a difficult look to fake (which makes it all the more impressive when you see it portrayed in film).

Perhaps you're wondering what brought all of this to mind. Well, I watched P.S. I love you this weekend. This wouldn't normally be my type of movie. I mean, yes, I'm a girl, so the lure of a good tear jerker isn't lost on me (nor is the lure of naked Jeffrey Dean Morgan lost on me), but I think tear jerkers have a very fine line to tread and this one, from the previews I'd seen, I thought probably crossed the line. You see, tragedy happens and in film there is a tendency to accentuate it with the obvious intention at tugging the viewers heart strings and that contrivance tends to put me off. This movie didn't cross that line though and I was pleasantly surprised. So pleasantly surprised, in fact, that I watched it twice.

In the film there is a minor character that puts potential dates to a rigorous test, first she asks if they're gay, then if they are single, then if they are employed and finally she kisses them. Mind you these are guys she's just introduced herself to, never met them before, and if they fail any of these tests she simply walks away. Clearly the first two are pretty vital tests, the third I might take issue with since she doesn't bother to get into the circumstances at all, but the fourth I really wonder about. Yes, if you kiss someone and feel nothing that could be a deal breaker, but if it's a complete stranger I think you might be skipping a few steps that might have some affect on what you feel when you kiss them (like getting to know them first). She's not the only one that puts a lot of weight on first kisses. The main character has a couple of first kisses as well, one falls short and she and the guy agree they are better as friends and another one that is so great she marries the guy. The girls in this movie clearly believe that the truth lies in his kiss. However, what really struck me were the looks that passed between these characters. Jeffrey Dean Morgan definitely gives Hillary Swank the fillet mignon look several times. If a guy looks at you like that you can't not feel something. You just can't.