over the hills and far away

I believe today is the day. One year ago, my friend Andy Woodward passed away in his sleep, the result of a congenital heart failure. I don't want to make the attempt to condense into a silly blog entry all my memories and feelings surrounding the connection I had to him, but suffice it to say that he was a singular person.

Without a doubt, I am a better person for having known him, and to have experienced his powerful trajectory of peculiar individuality. Andy was fucking weird. Weird, brilliant, sometimes off putting, provocative, ludicrous, and almost charged with a desire to live his life to his own standards of person hood. I know that doesn't make any sense. It's hard to describe Andy in a way that is truly Andy.

Look, here's a picture of him and my pal Shannon when we were dumb 16 year olds:

And again, intentionally caressing a guitar case in an unsettling manner:

But I think this photo of us at our informal 5-year high school reunion is my favorite of Andy, as he's grown out of the horror show of adolescence. He graduated from Virginia Tech, and was completing his Master's in education so that he could teach high school English. Here he is, serenely bemused, a little hammy, and finally comfortable in his own skin:

I miss him, and can only helplessly question why someone with his brilliant and good-hearted potential had to turn it all in on account of a bum heart valve. RIP, Andy. May you discomfit all the angels of God's entourage.

walking on the beaches, looking at the peaches

Things I have gotten totally pumped about within the last few hours, end to end, causing me to kind of want to tell everyone about it despite being surrounded by squares:

• Pose Drawing!!!! I've been doing 90-second stints, and am already feeling a lot more confident in my grasp of anatomy. Especially drawing heads with the egg-shape method.
• The following songs:
  - Ratatat - "Alps"
  - Queen - "I Want to Break Free"
  - The Everly Brothers - "Cathy's Clown"
  - Homestuck - "Crystamanthequins" and "Three In The Morning (RJ's I Can Barely Sleep In This Casino Mix)"
• David Lynch's Blue Velvet (feat. Kyle MacLachlan. Jegus.)

• Getting a new computer through a combination of Brock's enduring generosity and forking some cash over to the fine fellows at Newegg. I WILL DRAW SO MANY THINGS ON MY NEW LARGE MONITOR SCREEN! Note: the last time I acquired a new computer was in 2004, hopy shit.

Lately my favorite activity at work has been not doing work, because there is none to do. That's fine with me. I just wish bringing in my Wacom tablet was acceptable, to say nothing of potentially functional with these shit computers.

OKAY PEACE EVERYONE

today, from a distance

Something about my mood today is agreeable to appreciating poetry (which is rarer than maybe you would think). Found this in my old lj friends list. I am always waiting for this to happen, and it is always happening.

After Years

Ted Kooser

Today, from a distance, I saw you
walking away, and without a sound
the glittering face of a glacier
slid into the sea. An ancient oak
fell in the Cumberlands, holding only
a handful of leaves, and an old woman
scattering corn to her chickens looked up
for an instant. At the other side
of the galaxy, a star thirty-five times
the size of our own sun exploded
and vanished, leaving a small green spot
on the astronomer's retina
as he stood on the great open dome
of my heart with no one to tell.

you're bad news

My 97 year old "Bubbe" goofing with us, originally uploaded by ashapiro515.

It's probably not a good thing that I have to fight the urge to flip off one of my coworkers every time I am within a few feet of them, or vice versa.

you could be a star - it ain't hard

You guys, what is with "everything" bagels? I was just eating one on my lunchbreak*, and realized that nothing about their name indicates what is actually involved in their flavoring. They could be flavored like everything you hate about Wisconsin! Or everything going bad in the back of the Crazy Mocha refrigerator. It's a risky option, is all I'm saying. I would never order one if I was in America for the first time, speaking English with a thick Estonian accent.

Anyway, times! Here is a bit of weird fate-style hooliganry: this weeekend people complimented my singing voice in a pretty sincere fashion, enough to increase my confidence in it and start believing that it is maybe something other people would like to hear sometimes! And then today one of my Patrick friends asked if I wanted to sing for/with his band which I already like a lot. And which also contains other good friends of mine. This is exciting, except that this move actually decreases the band's dedicated fanbase by 50%. Whoops.

Pretty soon I can start practicing striking this pose:

Maybe I should get some wrist bands.

*Other things I did on my lunch break: crocheted more of a green beret; listened to Sonic Youth. It was the kind of lunchbreak EVERYONE WANTS but ONLY I GET TO HAVE SUCKAAAHS!

how do you catch a cloud and pin it down?

I caught The Sound of Music on TV a week or so ago, right at the bit where Maria's leaving the abbey and pumping herself up to be the best gosh darned governess Captain von Trapp and his gaggle of anklebiters could ever imagine. Julie Andrews as Fraulein Maria has to be the most adorable lady ever pasted onto my television screen. I actually teared up a significant amount right in the middle of her "I Have Confidence!!!! IN ME!!!" routine, because I had realized that:

a) My mom grew up with this movie, and would have been at a somewhat impressionable age when it came out; I'm relatively certain it holds not only a lot of nostalgia or her but some significance for her adolescent attempts to form her sense of identity (she was kind of a quirky kid, no surprise). And:

b) Julie Andrews and my mother have some resemblance to each other, making point (a) more poignant. (It's easier to see in photos where they are of similar ages, but the angle here I thought was good for comparison.)

I never had much of a soft spot for The Sound of Music, but I think that's changed now. Also, I find I have a strong desire to get some Mary Poppins queued up. Brock has never seen it! Can you imagine!

a buddy in peril

This week has been strangely marked. The weather, hotter than usual, has left me groggy in the mornings. And, there have been nightly concerns to keep me up late when I have sworn I would retire earlier: Brock's cat has had serious troubles with his urogenital tract and given us some major scares. Tuesday night, he was squatting all over Brock's room and it was discovered that he had blood seeping from his willie. Brock rushed him to an emergency vet (AVETS in Monroeville), a catheter procedure was done to remove a urinary blockage, and Brock barely covered the payment for the outpatient procedure when an inpatient procedure would have been far preferable. With limited funds, though, there was essentially no option.

Oh Hay Buddy, How's It Goin', a cat.

The buddy seemed okay until last night, when he started peeing everywhere and then only passing tiny blood-tinged drops. We were pretty wrecked over it, especially because most vet treatment facilities offer limited options in payment plans, and it looked for a while like the buddy might have to be laid to rest to prevent suffering due to lack of funds. Thankfully, some helpful suggestions from posters on your local notboto board prompted us to hold on to some hope. Brock encouraged the buddy to drink, instead of withholding water for fear of bursting his (presumably blocked) bladder, and he found a payment solution via the CareCredit card. The situation is still a little uncertain, but last I heard from Brock's report, the little dude had managed a few instances of substantial weeing in his box overnight. He is taking the dude to see a vet today.

This whole trial has made me seriously consider getting some pet health insurance for Malachy, or simply applying for a credit card for cases of emergency like this one. I can't countenance the notion of having to give up on one of my favorite little dudes in all the world because I don't have the funding to save his ass. I was tore up enough over the idea of having to lose the buddy.

Fingers crossed for OHBHIG, King of Cats. We haven't had enough of his antics yet.