Category: Life

January 17th, 2010

Oh, hi.

So I’m unemployed right now. Usually when this happens it’s a horrible period in my life, but right now it’s AWESOME. I was at my last job for over a year before they fired me for no reason, so I’m drawing benefits to the tune of $73 a week, which means I can kick a little cash Aaron’s way to help with the bills, I can pay for my phone, and I can afford to gas up the car occasionally and go thrift store shopping once a week.

For a while I was in danger of spiraling into boredom and despair, but the last week has been pretty amazing and everything seems to be looking up. I’ve been organizing things around the house, cleaning, and really getting into cooking–I get excited about reduction sauces now. I’ve read from several different sources (including Keri Smith’s blog and issue #15 of the zine Doris) that the only way to really fight depression when you have no way to occupy yourself is to get outside and walk for hours at a time. It’s gotten warmer in the last few days so I could do that regularly, and it really works. I found a shortcut to the post office, and I’ve pretty much mastered the local attempt at public transit (short buses that stop running at 6 p.m. and don’t run at all on weekends). I have a million ideas for a million projects, and in general I feel more alive than I have in a really long time.

That’s all just to say that you probably won’t see me around here much, not that you have lately anyway. I should probably go see Avatar just so I can write another rant about a crap movie and get more attention, but I just feel too awesome right now to subject myself to that. Maybe I’ll post some of my adventures here in the not-too-distant future. Stay tuned, if you want.

May 26th, 2009

Minutiae and Photographs

This past weekend was three days long, which means I went an unusually long period without my daily routine, and that means my body FLIPPED OUT and now I’m sick. I came home early from work today; my throat is swollen and much of my body is sore. This is the second time this month that’s happened. It’s starting to piss me off.

In addition to getting sick, I spent Memorial Day weekend nerding out with the Terminator movies, a franchise I’d forgotten I loved so much. The new Terminator movie is awful, maybe a step or two above Star Trek on the suckometer, and yet I fully adored it. Aaron and I saw it on Saturday, and in preparation I watched the original on Friday (a good thing, too, or I might have missed a couple nice in-jokes in the new movie), and followed them up with T2 last night. Suddenly I was 14 again, back when I wanted to marry Michael Biehn and I thought the cocking-a-shotgun-by-rotating-it-in-one-hand trick was the awesomest thing ever. 

Just so you don’t think this blog is all about the cheesy science fiction movies I watch on a disturbingly frequent basis, here are some photos I’ve taken recently on the Minolta 35mm SLR that’s been in my family for several decades. This camera just inexplicably started working again a couple months ago after nearly a year of not being able to see anything through the lens. I should probably get it checked out and fix the broken light meter and make any number of improvements, but for now it is rendered more charming by its few minor faults and it takes really gorgeous photos, so I’m in no rush.

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May 7th, 2009

One Day, Highly Compressed

I have decided, in a fit of late-night restlessness, to bring back the Blogarama. I’ve gone quite some time–over a year, maybe?–without a personal blog, and while I haven’t exactly missed it, I do yearn for a centralized place to store my thoughts and creative ventures. So the Hannahrama is back in blog form. (Remember Alf? He’s back! In Pog form.) I hope you enjoy it.

Today the joy of getting a full-time slot at work was mitigated by the news that my mom has osteoporosis. Moreover, my grandmother has it, and my other grandmother probably did too, which means the likelihood of me eventually having it go up to about a hundred percent as I understand it. Occasionally when I try to lift heavy objects, I get this strange and horrible brittle pain deep in the bones of my arms; I already know I don’t get nearly enough calcium, and I bought supplements a while back to help change that, but I don’t take them regularly.

Suddenly I actually feel compelled to take care of myself, and it sucks. I’m 25–I shouldn’t be worried about what life will be like when I’m 60. But despite my free-spirited attitude in most aspects of my life, deep down, I do care. In fact, I care about what life will be like when my kids are 60. I usually only think about stuff like that late at night when my emotions have no middle ground, and I can’t think about it for too long or it does my head in.

In fact, my internal egg-timer just chimed and now I have to stop thinking about it. Must distract myself! Look, it’s Thom Yorke!

Thom Yorke Live Mercury Awards

Tonight my friend Mel came over to work on a new song. It’s been a while since we’ve written together; our last band broke up a couple months ago when our bassist passive-aggressively sold his mixing board right after our first show, thus rendering it nigh impossible for us to practice. Mel and I were back to being an acoustic duo, which is probably for the best, but we both took some time off afterward. Anyway, tonight we demoed this song in about two hours, and I’m terribly proud of it. When You’re Out of My Mind