Author: the outside lane

I was very amused listening to The Ticket today.  The Hardliners were talking about number one songs from the day they were born, through their 21st birthdays.  Of course I had to come home and check out my own list.

I have a deep, abiding, shameful love of most of these songs.  Ask my girlfriends about Time in a Bottle.  They’ll tell you.  So will every request-taking band I’ve ever encountered.  I have yet to have a band take my request.  Time in a Bottle is live band kryptonite.  As is Girl From Ipanema, my other perennial favorite.

There is no way to hear Meee-eee-eee and Missus, Missus Jo-ow-wones without singing along to that thing they have going one, and do not even get me started on the Bee Gees, Chic, or 70s era Rod Stewart because I can’t talk about them without singing entire discographies.  

Physical?  Best workout video ever!  Maneater?  Heck yeah!  She only comes out at night.  Say, Say, Say?  How can you resist watching Michael Jackson lull Macca into a false sense of security just before fleecing him of the Beatles catalog?  Don’t play games with my affection, indeed.  Like a Virgin?  I can still remember the first time I heard that song.  It was Jennifer Wiggs, singing it in PE class, and another girl telling her with adoring bemusement, “Sweetie, you ARE a virgin!”  We were in 7th Grade. My understanding of how virginity was lost was still a little fuzzy, but after watching the video, I was pretty sure it had something to do with neon bracelets, Venice, and bustiers.

Say You, Say Me…oh my word.  How many times did I go see White Nights just to watch Mikhail Baryshnikov do standing splits up against a wall?  It was an awakening of sorts, but mainly to my sudden interest in the Soviet Union and the Russian language.  Say it together, naturally.

I still cannot resist the opening licks of Faith, and Poison will always be my favorite hair band.  Phil Collins should be illegal, though.

’74, ’79, ’86, and ’89’s songs are all flushable.  The others I either can’t recall, or don’t mind.

It’s not a great list.  But I have Time in a Bottle and Le Freak.  I have Le Freak.  It’s an awesome list.  Who am I trying to kid?

I found my new hobby.

I listen to NPR on my commute, and regularly find myself thinking, “I know what that is, but I don’t know anything about it.”  Take NATO for example.  I know what NATO is, know what it does, and have some idea of how it came about, but it’s all very nebulous and indistinct.  I want to be an informed citizen, so I need to know more than just what the acronym stands for, right?  Or at least what the acronym stands for–especially since I had it wrong.  North Atlantic Treaty Organization, not North er-um-er Treaty Organization.

Unable to find anyone willing to play with me, I abandoned an idea for further self-education decades ago, and dove headfirst into zealotry instead.  I am no longer a zealot, but am still very curious, so I am reconstructing the old idea to fit into the 21st Century.

The old idea was to take four subjects monthly (an artist, a scientist, a political figure, a religious figure), study them out and keep myself an index file.  In 1991, that would have meant a lot of time at the library.  In 2012, it means filling the celebrity void left in my internet usage with meaningful reading.

Now, I intend to take four subjects monthly, study them out, then blog a summary of what I find most relevant or interesting about them.  Instead of limiting myself to public figures, I’ll be looking at whole categories.  When considering art, it might be an artist, or it might be a movement.  It might be one specific work.  I will consider art, history, geography, science, and politics for now, and I’m starting with that mental list I’ve made from NPR reports.

For the rest of January, I will be looking at the history of NATO–I’m counting that as politics.  I’m already reading about Catherine the Great, and I’ve been nibbling at the Tudor Dynasty–counting as history.  I’m looking at Russian geography, the science behind the Small Pox vaccination, and am going to consider art depicting military feats from 1770–1800.

In other words, some of my posting will be great bloody bores!  Unless you’re into that sort of thing.

Shout out to Zendictive, whose comments always make me smile.

Even CNN is trying to tempt me to break my No Celebrity Gossip resolution.  Fie on them!  I will not fold!

I am not sure whether to be amazed or embarrassed by the amount of time I now realize I was spending on [specifics redacted because I had just typed way too much information about other people’s drama.]  I think embarrassed is the right way to go, and once the shock wears off, I’m sure I will be.  Meanwhile, I am simply agog at how very little I have to do on the internet now.  I check gmail, check facebook, read my comics and…then go back to my books.

I picked up a new one this morning, and by “picked up” I mean I added one to my Kindle.  I heard Connie Rice, cousin of the former Secretary of State by that same last name, on NPR, talking about her book about her struggles both against and with the LAPD in efforts to build a strong, healthy community.  Had to have it.  As soon as I finish Catherine the Great (whose reign’s naval prowess is impressing me just now) I’ll start on that one.  From one strong, world changing leader to another.  Impressive women.

I’m told that if I want to succeed in establishing myself as a blogger worth reading, I need to pick a topic and stick with it, becoming an expert in it.  Oops.  Never going to happen.  I can’t even stick with a hobby longer than it takes to master it, then I’m off to the next.  In fact, I’m due a new one.  Wonder what it’s going to be?

I’ve done it.  Fait accompli.  All of my clothes–every stitch of them–now fit neatly into my chest of drawers and my closet.  With some wiggle room.  However, Thor’s are a different story.  Ha!  Granted, that has a lot to do with growth spurts and a Grandma, but I still have a lot of work to do on his wardrobe.  And, I want to do more work on mine.  I’ve already started a new charity bag.

I need to tidy up a little more before bed, then, I think I’ll sleep like a log.

It’s been a full day’s work, and I’m not close to finished, but after taking ten 13-gallon bags STUFFED with clothes to the donation site, I am confident that I have met my goal of being able to contain all of my clothing in half a closet and one chest of drawers.  Go team me!

Tonight, I am going through my troves of sleepwear and culling out that massive stash.  You see, the problem isn’t that I buy a lot.  The problem is that I am easy on my clothes, so just about everything I own is in nice condition, no matter how old it is.  In fact, one of the shirts I am keeping is–dare I admit it?  20 years old.  B likes it on me, so it gets to stay.

How that matters where sleepwear is concerned is that my sleepwear is in even better condition, as it is only ever slept in.  So I have scads of fluffy, pretty things that are so fluffy and pretty it is hard to part with them.  Kind of like the shoes (which go to their new home tomorrow).  It doesn’t hurt that back in the thin days, I always bought size large because I liked to swim in my clothes, so everything still fits.  However, I have given myself the two drawers in the bottom of our platform bed to house my sleepwear, and I am way out of room.  Time to move on.  Time to share the relative wealth.

Way too much laundry to do, but once it is done and everything is put away, it’s just maintenance.  Maintenance is easier than organization.

Organization is a pain!