an open letter to art garfunkel

dear art -
can i call you Art? or would you prefer Mr. Garfunkel? i've listened to too many of your records for formalities, sir, Art it is.
i grew up on the music you made with Simon. the first record that i listened to obsessively was your 1980 Concert in Central Park album which i absconded from my older sister -- i still remember her name written on the CD (in all lowercase), which i believe was gifted to her by a high school friend. i think it was Tommy Tsai.
i was in 5th grade, and i'm pretty positive that I was the only 11 year old in the greater Tri-Cities area who knew every word to "The Boxer". you were the soundtrack to my personal life, and your music has followed me since my first discovery of yours and Simon's music. i have favorites, i have ones that i skip upon hearing the first chord (namely "Kodachrome" and "I Am a Rock"). because your music released and your breakup was made permanent long before i was born, it became one of my missions in life to get my peers to enjoy your music. i have been mildly successful at this.
i have something to admit, though. to you in particular.
i get annoyed when you sing lead. you are just such a much better harmonizer (usually singing a third above Simon, where you belong) than you are a lead vocalist. this is perhaps why your solo career has been dismal compared to that of your friend Simon. whenever i hear your group's epic masterpiece single "Bridge Over Troubled Water" i enjoy every part until the bridge of the song comes on -- the part that begins, "sail on silvergirl..." it is a nice change of pace that Simon becomes the background vocalist, but i kind of just want the bridge to be over.
now, i don't want to accuse you of riding on Simon's coattails for the entirety of your group's tenure, but is that the reason why you broke up? did you feel emasculated by your bandmates' far superior talent as a leading vocalist? do you think this would've been different had the band been named "Garfunkel and Simon"?
as stated earlier, i lived my childhood with The Concert in Central Park album in tow and at times i could sense your bitterness towards Simon. in one of the speaking intros to your song "American Tune" you mentioned that (i'm paraphrasing from memory here) "This is a song that is one of the only ones in the show that is not a... a Paul Simon tune." what is that supposed to mean? listen to that recording again, Art. your tone is slightly snarky.
i'm assuming now, in 2010, you're a little more adjusted than you were in 1980. it is 30 years later after all. but still, bitter is not a good color on you.
i'm not even going to go into your hair style. that's an entirely different story.
with all that said, i will sing "At The Zoo" to my children. hold that in your heart.
your #1 fan in Generation Y,
Sarah E. Weakley

p.s. to all my readers in the blogging world, listen to more Simon and Garfunkel. go on grooveshark.com and listen to the whole catalogue. simple songwriting, beautiful melodies, well thought out lyrics. i won't give you my favorite songs -- i want to you to come to your own conclusions.

typical

a few things that are typical:
i completely underestimate the amount of time activities take, mostly because i am very overconfident in my planning (this, i imagine, is because i'm inwardly gloating about my ability to make a feasible plan). this makes me 11 minutes late for life.
other times, i forget the simplest details in my attempt to be efficient. (these things range from getting all the way to the train station and forget to have cash in my wallet to pay for my money-saving (and more efficient!) trip in a cab.)
both of these things happened today in the post office. my friends and i at the Loch Raven post office are well acquainted. bulk mailings for work, countless packages mailed to donors, 500 stamps purchased, all timely. but it's the holidays, and the only time for me to get to the post office is during my lunch break. this is of course everyone else's lunch break. the line is out the door.
i have all my christmas presents purchased, the flat rate shipping boxes procured and ready to be filled with wonderful items for my whole family. i got ALL my christmas shopping done for my family and it's the 14th. (read: overconfidence).
i will avoid the hellish line by using the automated postage station that i have come to know and love. so simple, so quick! poor suckers (and old people) waiting in line for 45 minutes because they don't trust technology -- i am brilliant. (read: overconfidence, gloating in head)
i'll avoid this whole line, just grab some packing tape from the wall, pack the boxes up...in five minutes all my packages (and two of joy's) are sent to the west coast.
BALLS.
i can't pay for the packing tape with the automated postage machine. i have overlooked the simple detail of buying my own packing tape at another store, instead opting to quickly grab the most convenient tape around and rabidly put together the boxes. i've epically failed at both planning and being efficient. i stand in line for 30 minutes with a crying baby ahead of me and couldn't help but laugh at myself at my folly. so typical sarah weakley.
the tape cost $3.29. $3.29 and 45 minutes is what it cost to dial my pride down a few notches.

jt

the reasons to love justin timberlake continue to pile up. not only have i loved jt ever since he ditched those other four schmucks and became a solo artist (although i love NSYNC for nostalgia purposes) he was spotted by some paparazzi with an NPR shirt.
since i have now become a full-fledged lover of NPR and the interesting news they report, justin wearing this shirt makes him that much more attractive. i know, i know, we don't need yet ANOTHER reason to think JT is the greatest ever, but here it is.

check out the blog on NPR to see the NPR post "Ten Speculative Reasons Justin Timberlake Might Be Wearing this NPR Shirt"
i hope he's coming out with a new album soon. alyssa, do you know? i count on you for this kind of information.
here's to you, justin. we enjoy your shirt choices.

obligatory thanksgiving post

i won't do a full year wrap up until the first of the year (which will be very epic, i feel). my moves alone are worthy of some sort of self-actualization language. but that's for later.
as most of you know, joy and i went to new york to visit andrew and mo this thanksgiving. it was my first thanksgiving away from home and my first foray into twentysomething holidays: there were eight lovely people there with various connections to andrew (joy and myself), mo his girlfriend (hannah and kelsey) and both of them (drew and drew's girlfriend). best food i've ever had. joy and i decided that choosing thanksgiving with our friend who is the best cook we know was a phenomenal choice.
here's the crew at the table (and yes, i'm behind the camera -- didn't want to deal with the self timer).
i'm thankful for these people - new friends, old friends, and old OLD friend (yes, that's bacon). the thanksgiving day parade made me feel like a little kid, as joy can vouch. i shouted "DORA THE EXPLORER!!! (with that same excitement for every other balloon) and made sure that joy looked over the crowd to take pictures of the floats. looking back at the photos, i'm pretty positive that NO ONE needs 50 pictures of giant balloons. but that's the way it goes. and yes, it did get me into the holiday spirit. here's the rockin animatronic turkey:

i guess this year i'm most thankful for knowing friends who will always be willing to let you sleep on their couch, delicious organic food AND.... tattoo parlors open at all hours and jazz clubs and shuffle board and tiffany earrings and handmade hats and laughs and belgian beer and the east village and the west village and brooklyn and central park and boots and reminiscing and weird music and marzipan and spiked cider and arts and crafts and squash and florists and co-ops that won't let you in and old bosses who text you HAPPY THANKSGIVING and getting lost with joy because we're overconfident in our skills and macy's and balloons and future trips and falafel and self-serve yogurt and gilmore girls marathons and ikea and public transportation and watching joy sleep on public transportation and french press coffee and andrew's communication style and mo and joy tap dancing and good weather and and AND.

friends who always make you feel at home.

if they taught me anything...

living in the south is an experience that i will carry with me for the rest of my life. i still have furniture there, which is really the only remnant of the place i have left, but mostly i will remember the south for being one of the most politically draining experiences of my life. maybe if i lived in columbia or charleston, where there are some more democrats around, or maybe if i didn't happen to work in such a insanely Palin- Joe Wilson-loving work environment, i would appreciate it more. but i didn't.
my biggest complaint was that republicans assumed i was a democrat because i was a young woman from the West, and that i really didn't know much of anything about what the republican party believes. and only, IF ONLY, i would listen to Rush Limbaugh, i would come over to the light side and become a Republican.
well folks, that strategy failed miserably. in fact, it only emboldened my commitment to ALMOST ANYTHING other than the Republican party platform. reading the Times today, I looked at the proposed RNC Resolutions for their winter meeting. The RNC is proposing that if they're constituents don't believe in at least 7 out of 10 items, they will be at risk for not getting money from the RNC. harsh.
After peeking at the Resolutions, I can say that I disagree with every one of them. It's nice to know that I do, in fact, know where i stand in my political beliefs. now i'm not saying i'm 100% jazzed on what's going on with the Democrats, but at least I agree with their basic tenets. (and yes, Dad, i will continue to be pissed about Afghanistan-- check out the most hilarious Onion article about it here). but at least i know i'm not involved with the RNC b.s. blech.
take that South Carolina.

p-town

i haven't posted in a while. i do have substantive things to say, and anecdotes (particularly about my new favorite bagel shop), but my college friend Matt Lamb, the giant discus thrower, posted this picture on facebook taken from WSU's The Daily Evergreen about drinking in Pullman and all the problems that go along with it.
The numbers really speak for themselves, and the last two truly underscore the ridiculousness of my college years.


See, Baltimore is pretty scary sometimes, but at least i don't get assaulted by Chewbacca.

avoid

for the most part, i feel like i do things in an efficient manner. and when i want to do something, i do it. want to go to a concert? i will figure out how to get there and buy tickets for the team. complain you haven't seen me in forever? i'll pick a time to meet. i feel like efficiency is something i'm pretty good at.
efficiency, though, only occurs when i WANT to do something. when i don't want to do something, or feel it would take all too much effort, i am the master avoider. i will put off fixing things that are broken, cooking an actual meal for DAYS at a time, and general household/life maintenance. these avoidances finally got too much for me to handle, so i fixed some. here are these, my least favorite activities that i finally manned-up and got to doing.
- system recovery on my laptop. it's been broken for about two months now, completely out of comission by a nasty terrible virus. i've had this disk (it was the second one i ordered) for over a week. i'm just now getting my computer fixed. mostly because i'm tired of what's on my ipod. and, for those of you i talk to on a regular basis, you never have to hear about my broken computer again! (i hope)
- dealing with pants that are too long. as a short girl, this will always be a struggle. got a phenomenal pair of jeans that were 4 inches too long. yep, 4 inches. rocked the heat n bond hem. i felt domestic.
- changed my billing address with bank of america. once again, they screwed me. i couldn't just change it online, i had to hand write a letter with my signature. this seems like a bush-league operation for BoA.
items that i still haven't done, and have lived here for a month now:
- unclog my drain. yep, it's gross. i know it. i try not to think about it.
- hung up my own shower curtain. i have a cute one, but next to fixing things on my computer, it is my least favorite household activity to do. it always takes too long. i have a shower curtain that sucks and came with my apartment, but i currently have no reason to change it.
- put together: a stool, a side table, a organization thing. all ikea. and, considering the amount of posts i've dedicated to the ikea situation, there no further explanation is needed.

at this point, the only reason i will do these activities is if someone sleeps at my house. and, since i have an air mattress, i feel like these things won't ever get done until i move again.

...so, looks like i'll go to a new coffee shop instead.

here's to avoidance.