liberty valence

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New site.  Same idiocy.  I have the future in my apartment now.  By that I mean the internet.

Thea Lux (dot) com.

If you want to help with web design, I'll paint you pictures.  

It's pretty sparse over there right now.  Pardon the construction and all that jazz.  

You are all very pretty.
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It's been a while since a post and I'm trying to decide what to do about it.  There's no internet in them there hills I live in, and even though there's a lot (as in too much) going on, I'm finding an absolute lack of time to write.

I miss it.

I'll figure it out.

And when I do, it might be on a new site all together.
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The new record "Pain Makes You Older" is now up on iTunes!

Go, The Future!
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Happy holidays.


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In DC for the holidays. 

Yesterday was spent at the airport along with the other seven million weird looking people waiting for their delayed flights to take off or be canceled.  I lucked out, though.  I cannot avoid seeing someone I know in this small-world city.  I found not one, but four other stranded friends of mine in the same wing of the airport.  Including a guy who got his hair cut in my salon once who I only shared about four sentences with initially.  Now we're BFFs, totes. 

So we spent our holiday bonuses on Ho-ho-Heinekin and Jew-meson.  We weren't able to persuade an ex-Second City main stage performer to hang with us, as he frantically looked for his flight to Baltimore, but after four hours of holiday cheer, we were all a little less annoyed that our travel plans had been soured. 

I eventually landed around 3 in the morning and spent today cooking and attempting to not be a bitch to my family.  It's a very hard task that I'm often not successful at, but I do what I can before my inner eighth grader unleashes itself. 
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Our family tradition is to have an appetizer dinner and then head to the Unitarian church down the road for a Xmas Eve service.  There, I undoubtedly wll become irritated that CHRIST is discussed so much at CHRISTmas, my sister and I eventually get a shuddering case of the giggles, I make the false promise to myself to attend the weekly meditative sermon at a UU church in my neck of the woods, and then we burn our fingers with wax from our candles.  Things pretty much followed that course, with only a few changes.  There were some nutty hippie types groovy-dancing like happy birds during "Hark the Harold Angels Sing."  Also, an added bonus:  There were some misprinted lyrics to "Silent Night" that made everyone start  the last verse without singing the refrain "silent night" first. The result was a congregation singing, with the utmost good intentions, but still resembling a brilliant trainwreck:

Child of god, Love's pure light
Radiant beams from thy ... ehhhrrm pure light...
Radiant beams from... redeeming...mutter mutter...
Mutter mutter...at thy birth.

It was a Christmas miracle.
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Two weeks without an update.  This lack of internet is pretty awful.  I don't enjoy updates as much as reflective essays, but here we go:

Winter has hit.  In the move I managed to misplace several key winter items.  One being a hiking boot for winter shoe-wear.  After tearing apart my already cluttered room I decided to treat myself to some new boots just in time for the North Pole to heavily dump on us.  Boots.

That's a really interesting update...

I have been offered full-time at the computer store and will take it.  I've given my two weeks at the salon and look forward to making the same amount of money, but gaining benefits and an extra day off.  

Shit. That's it.  This is awful...
I'm going to DC for Xmas.  
I am done with Xmas shopping.  
I will be reluctantly attending orientation for school in January.
I'm working on some new songs that are folky and non-sandwich-shoppy and have no idea what to do with them.
I bought the boyfriend a sweater from the J. Peterman catalog that could be classified as grandpa-fisherman.
I have been biking in the frigid cold, but not the snowy cold.  I like wearing my new Balaclava.

I need some writing challenges.  Essays or songs, no matter.  Winter's causing a slump.  Suggestions?
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So we'll stay in our apartment a little longer.  Which is fine, because who has a security deposit and first month's rent anyway?  Not this guy, that's who!  We've managed to tidy up the place enough for me to have a spot to paint again.  A canvas was swiped from a place of employment (Not any of mine.  I only steal hearts, not 5 x 6 canvases.) and I'm revamping the image, aka, completely painting over it.  The painting, which is one of the most boring Jackson Pollack lazy modern "art" rip-offs to ever puke on a canvas, is HUGE.  The piece was originally entitled "Circle of Life."  I'm kicking myself for not taking a photo before I painted over it.

("Abstract Expressionist" was the tag line on the artist's business card.  Abstract Expressionism is art-speak for "Make messy things that may or may not look cool on a canvas and bullshit your way through an artist's statement to gain grants you don't deserve."  End soapbox rant.)

"Circle of Life," didn't live too long.  I quickly gessoed the canvas and started with a blank slate.  Possibly out of a subconscious need for irony, I've been working on another mediocre painting on top of it.  My image is uninspired, based off of a dumb cat doodle drawn while hanging out in my kitchen.  Maybe it'll turn into a brilliant pop art piece, but as of right now, I am not impressed with my work, and it's no famous Campbell's Soup Can.  I figure it's better this way.  The cycle can continue and some other young artist can be repulsed to the point of mischievous amusement, swipe the canvas off their place of employment's wall, and the circle of life can continue...
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The Greeks wanted us to move in on December 1st.  An impossibility when a deposit hasn't been saved up or a replacement roommate didn't exist.  Unfortunately they were unwilling to budge on the move-in date and we had to pass on the apartment.  We tried to sneak in with a Trojan horse and everything, but they wouldn't open the doors.  There will be more places.  We just have to make the decision to go for space vs. location.  Oh, and if we can pay for a room with peanuts and smiles.
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So many exciting things have happened this week.  An all-store meeting occurred at the computer store and made me seethe enough to decide to go back to school for interpreting.  I had a previous seethe last year around this time but got bogged down in the application process.  I finally have resigned to the fact that until I master how to be a working actor I will always have a day job.  I'd rather work six days a week and actually be able to pay my bills rather than be strung along with the empty promise of being full-time at a computer store that prefers energetic 20 year-olds who don't need to pay off debt.  As much as my brain is immaturely trying to reject this idea like a botched organ transplant, I will figure this out eventually and continue to do what I do, just this time with night classes.  Unless any other company wants to hire me to write comedy for them again... Ahem...
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So I thought I would just curl up on a couch and write a college essay or two... Then my computer had an aneurysm and imploded right before i was going to leave for Indiana for the Thanksgiving holiday.  Hopefully the time away from it has made it think about what it's done and apologize.  My coworkers took mercy on me and attempted to salvage the hard drive.  No data was lost.  All my brilliant musical masterpieces are still intact... They're just homeless.  I work tomorrow.  Hopefully there is a happy ending to this electronic meltdown and I can avoid buying a new hard drive.
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Thanksgiving has happened.  I traveled to Indiana to eat meals completely made of butter and cheese.  My stomach had to split into four sections to process the food.  I started writing essays and filling out a FAFSA application, unsure of whether or not it would even count towards this year's remaining semester.  Again I'll utter my catch phrase of 2008, "We'll figure it out."
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Chicago's winter is shitting flurries out of its snow-hole, all I can do it grumble my desires to move to the west coast.  Let's see what 2009 brings.
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The apartment I saw last night made me happy.  The Greek Lady Landlord also made me happy.  She did the obligatory "are you getting married" question to the young couple looking to rent a room together.  I told her I was pregnant with the Lord and needed an inn to house us for the night.  Not really.  I told her I was thankful for a man who treated me well and we loved each other.  Awwww... Now give us the apartment.  She told us how she liked how we were happy and imitated the others who were mopey when they saw the place.

"I like how you all are laughing.  Smiles and bright.  None of this [she does her impression of a misanthropic prospective renter] frowns all the time.  I no like that.  I like you smile!"

She said will teach us how to cook and unfortunately the laundry is not in the building after all... There's a washer, but through her thick accent I couldn't determine if it was broken or if it just wasn't for tenants since it wasn't coin operated.  The first floor is occupied by a tiny older woman dressed in a tiny older woman mumu who was not at all annoyed that I accidentally rang her doorbell.  I think I can fit her in a suitcase.  I should not do this, but I think it's entirely possible.  

I do want this apartment.
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Oh, and right before we saw the apartment we locked our keys in the car and I missed a babysitting gig because we were busy attempting to open the car unsuccessfully with a coat hanger and then used a phone at McDonald's to call an unhelpful 311 line and then I flagged down a narcotics cop car but they didn't have anything to open the car with and they called a regular cop in that district but no one answered so I flagged down a tow truck and he charged us 40 bucks and opened the car in 2 minutes after we'd been attempting to open the car for two hours.
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Other than that, the night was fine.
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