Challenges ahead

The holiday weekend is rapidly approaching and I couldn't be happier about it. Labor Day sort of signifies the end of Summer, although it certainly feels more like Summer right now than it has much of the season so far. After last year's terrible drought and heat, we've lucked out this year with some really nice weather. I was able to spend much of it with the windows open and the air conditioner off. Good for me, good for Bea and good for the electricity bill. This week has changed all that with the typical Missouri summer weather arriving, at last. We're in the upper nineties every day with the heat index in the low 100s. Not as awesome.

Still, Labor Day is almost here and soon enough Fall will really arrive. I love Fall. The semester has already begun at Mizzou. We're into our second week of classes and things are slowly getting into a bit of a regular routine. The parking garages are becoming less of a traffic jam each day. Fewer students are getting lost and needing directions. The classes are coming in for their tours and orientations. At work, we've had an onslaught of professor requests for tours and orientations this semester. I don't remember it being this hectic before. We're scheduling multiple tours per day in some instances and re-opening the library after hours in other instances. It's nice, but I think we'll all be happy when those settle down, too.

I finished my summer reading challenge last week. "...And the Ladies of the Club" was a great book and I recommend it for people who like historical fiction and for those who have the time to commit to an epic story...(I mean epic in the real word, not slang terminology). After hanging out with the women of Waynesboro, Ohio for months now, I needed something completely different to read. So, I finally dug into the Advanced Reader Copies that the publishers were handing out at ALA in June. I picked up over a dozen ARCs and galleys and decided it was high time I I'm starting to read those and first decided to read a mystery set in the Amazon called "The Ways of Evil Men", which will be published in January. I'm only a few chapters in so far, but it's pretty interesting at this point. As I read my ARCs, I'll try to review them on here if I care to recommend them. I use Goodreads for my book tracking and always always always try to review the books that I read.

I'm finding that I always need a challenge of some sort. Always need something to be sort of reaching toward. A goal or program that I impose upon myself just to see if I can do it. I have no challenge right now. I could use selling my house as a challenge, but that's not what I mean. I mean challenge in the sense that I alone control my success or failure. In the past several years I've found that I work best under some sort of challenge. Like, the 365 photo challenge, the nothing over $30.00 wardrobe challenge, various reading challenges and other photo challenges, etc. I've found that these things really give me something to focus on, but also have a pretty big impact on my life. The 365 photo challenge made me view the world around me a lot more closely and become much more aware of my surroundings. It was great to get outside of myself and spend a lot of time finding beauty and creativity in my ordinary surroundings. It made me a better photographer, too. The wardrobe challenge had a huge impact on me, not only in the ways in which my spending habits changed, but also the ways in which I view quality of clothing. Before I did that project, I would buy mediocre clothing at ludicrous prices because I thought that was just what you had to do. Getting screwed by labels was just the way of the world. Afterward, I find that I refuse to buy things full price; I do a lot more with less, and I really think hard before buying clothes. I still adhere to a lot of the principles that I followed when I was in the $30.00 or less project. I really just don't buy clothes much anymore. I have become a lot more creative about my wardrobe and throw together combos of pieces to see if they work or how I feel about them. When I was a little girl, I had all the confidence in the world about putting together outfits and creating a wardrobe out of different pieces my parents would find for me. I look at pictures of me when I was young and think, 'Nice style, little one.' But, once I got to be about 12 and then all the way through probably my early 20s, I got really boring in my style. It's part of the awkward phase where I wanted to blend in more than stand out. I was awkwardly tall and clothing often just didn't fit right. I chose the path of least bullying and sort of hunkered down and bought the labels that everyone else had just to get through it, you know? But, in the last several years, I've sort of re-discovered the creative fashion girl that I used to be. I'm so glad to have found her again. People used to stare (and they still do) at some of the outfits I will wear. I have purple hair now, which also gets some comments, but mostly I get compliments about outfits and hairstyles and accessories that I throw together. I'm not sure I'm as confident as I was when I was the little girl in the pictures, and I don't know that I ever will be that sure of myself again, but I'm a long way from the insecure and awkward girl I see in pictures from my teenage years.This is all to say that I'm not sure what to do next? I've tackled photography, clothing, and reading... I can't really think of any sort of movie/tv challenge that I'd actually want to do. I know people do "Life Lists" and list out accomplishments or things they want to do before they die. That seems overwhelming. I kind of prefer to work in the semi-present. Challenges that I can see to the end in a year or less, you know? My life is not so stable that I actually know where I will be a year from now, either. I think it's best to keep my goals short-sighted.

Therefore, I'm sorta halfway thinking of doing one of those 30 by 30 lists. I turn 30 next Spring and, by all accounts, it seems like people kind of expect you to have your shit together by that time. I don't feel like I'm flailing about without any sort of direction, I just feel like my direction changes a lot. I cyber-stalked other peoples 30 by 30 lists and find many of them less than inspiring or I've already done the things on their list (i.e. buy a home, visit Machu Picchu (word!), get a real job) or things I have no inclination to do (i.e. have a baby, get married, skydive, hold a tarantula). I have about 8 months to finish this list, or decide that I don't want to do some of the tasks I put on here now (to be fair, some of these were already scheduled events between now and Spring, so it's not like I'm pulling all of these out of thin air). I could only think of 27, so these are the 27 things I'd like to do by the time I turn 30:

1) Be a vegetarian for a week
2) Keep a plant alive for at least two months
3) Take a tai chi class
4) Make my own jar of pasta sauce
5) Go on a road trip - solo. (I did a baby version of this last year, but I mean, a multi-state-American-Dream sort of road trip)
6) See The Blue Man Group in concert
7) Sell my house
8) Say 'Yes' to invitations (I realize this is sort of abstract, but you know...attempt to be more outgoing and  and less hermit-ish)
9) Go 'glamping'
10) Eat only at local establishments for a week...no chains.
11) Learn the "Single Ladies" dance from Beyonce's video
12) Apply for a job I think I'd enjoy, whether I feel that I'm qualified for it or not.
13) Register for a class at the adult education place in town
14) Attend class at the adult education place in town (I have a habit of registering and then punking out once the scheduled day of the class arrives.)
15) Get a virtual pen pal. (I miss receiving actual e-mails about friends and I long ago gave up on the project a friend and I were doing of actually sending letters through the mail.)
16) Chill out on the beach
17) Pick up someone else's tab at a restaurant
18) Archive my grandparents WWII letters
19) Teach Beatrix to walk on a leash (bwaahahahah.)
20) Have a kick-ass Halloween costume for this year's Halloween event at work
21) Write a fan letter to someone (My dad recently found a letter that my mom wrote to Jimmy Buffett and it has made me want to write a fan letter to somebody. But...to whom?)
22) Listen to every cd and every record I own all the way through
23) See a professional ballet/stay awake through a professional ballet
24) Go to more than one film screening during True/False 2014
25) Become more confident at giving tours and lectures at work
26) Read all of the books I picked up from ALA 2013 (alternatively: vow to not pick up as many the next time I attend ALA.)
27) Cook chicken fried rice all by myself (obviously, not the same week that I'm attempting #1)

Well...

Cutie pie overload.

Seriously, this is how life should be everyday:

Gold Cup Final!

I spent the weekend in Chicago and went to the Gold Cup Final at Soldier Field on Sunday afternoon. It was USA v. Panama and it was such a blast. There were a lot of USA fans, a lot of Panama fans, and some fans who thought Mexico would be there instead and were there just to be at a Final. If the US hadn't made the Final, that's how it would have been for me. I would still have gone, but it was so much more fun being able to root for my own team. It was my first professional soccer game and the seats were fantastic, the crowd was fun, and the US Men's National Team won the game and the trophy (WOOOOT!)! I got to see Landon Donovan on his comeback run to try to make the World Cup team next year (I think he's probably a shoe-in at this point), and see some of the younger guys who are trying to prove they should be on the WC team, also. It was exciting to be a part of it and it was such a wonderful time!

Soccer isn't really a big deal in the US. It's been slowly gaining momentum over the last decade or so, especially with the broadening of the Major League Soccer organization in the US. I remember the 1994 World Cup that the US hosted and what a big deal that was. 69,000 people on average attended the world cup games that year, which (surprisingly) is still the record of average attendance at World Cup matches. So far, no other World Cup has brought so many people consistently into the seats to watch soccer as the one hosted by the US nearly 20 years ago. 

So, that stat would seem to show that USA loves soccer, yes? Except, they sorta don't. A lot of people around the globe love it, and a lot of people in the US love it, but it's hard, as a fan, to get others excited about it in the USA if they can't watch it on tv each week. They didn't grow up watching it and dreaming of being a pro soccer player because they weren't able to watch the games on tv each week of the season like they could with football, baseball or basketball. I think it could catch on and I think there are several networks that are finally figuring out the market for soccer fans. We don't have to be satisfied to only watch the English Premier League games once in a blue moon, or wait every four years to be able to see some of the World Cup games.

I am still waiting for the day when St. Louis gets an MLS team (c'mon, fools!) and the day when I can watch soccer on tv as regularly as I can see a football game, basketball game, or (ugh) golf during their seasons.  MLS is slowly taking off and I've even caught a few of the Sporting KC games on my tv, and I don't have cable. It's a good thing for soccer and for those of us who have been patiently trying to watch it for years in the US. Also good is that a lot of the guys who just won the Gold Cup play in the MLS, not on the European teams. They had a great showing, which is good for MLS and US soccer in general. 

Even though it isn't easy to be a soccer fan and stay up to date on what's up with the team, going to see the US play in the Gold Cup Final was awesome. I'll try to upload some pictures later if I can because we had fantastic seats just 16 rows from the field and the crowd was excited and upbeat for the Final. Being a part of that was wonderful and definitely something to remember.

Throwback Movie Night: Some Like It Hot

In 1959, Marilyn Monroe's most popular movie, "Some Like It Hot" was released. Billy Wilder directed the film and it starred MM, Jack Lemmon, and Tony Curtis as three members of an all-girl traveling band. Lemmon and Curtis are musicians who were witness to a mob hit in Chicago and dressed as women to escape the mob, who were hunting them down.



This was the first movie I'd watched with Marilyn Monroe in it. I think I mentioned several weeks ago how I has seen the biopic on Marilyn Monroe and thought it would be nice to see the real thing in a movie someday. I have to say that I wasn't all that impressed with Ms. Monroe's acting ability as Sugar Kane Kowalczyk, a ukelele/singer in the band. Tony Curtis plays Josephine and Jack Lemmon plays Daphne. Of course, each have their own girl problems...just of different sorts. Tony Curtis wants to woo Sugar, and so he has to go back and forth between pretending to be her friend Josephine, and pretending to be a male millionaire on vacation. Jack Lemmon has other problems and a millionaire has fallen in love with Daphne and he has to try to keep up the charade and try to escape the affectionate nature of the smitten millionaire, but gets sort of caught up in the romance and soon finds himself happily engaged, all while still running from the mob.

I thought Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon completely stole the show. I find Jack Lemmon hilarious in almost everything and Tony Curtis wasn't half bad, either. Marilyn Monroe wasn't terrible, but sort of predictable. Admittedly, she wasn't cast to be a comic. Her sex appeal got her the part and a lot of the movie was specifically designed with that in mind. I did like some of her outfits... I usually do like the costumes in a lot of these older movies. I might try to watch her in a different movie sometime. One where she's not so out-acted. Maybe she'd be better. This was the one that seemed to be her most well-known film, though.

Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis were very funny at times. I think the movie was worthwhile to see, but I don't know that I need to watch it over and over again. I also didn't think it was amazingly hilarious. It was good and Lemmon had some really classic lines and scenes, but the story really dragged on at some points. I was surprised to learn that "Some Like It Hot" was voted #1 on AFI's 100 Funniest Movies of all time... Hmm.

Through the perilous fight

YAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAY!!! The US Men's National Team has made it to the finals of the Gold Cup on Sunday! This is fantastic news because months ago I bought tickets for the final in the hopes of seeing the US play! It was a bit of a gamble, since the men have a history of floundering, but this year they've been on a tear. As it turns out, our head coach was booted out of tonight's game and therefore won't be allowed to coach on Sunday, but none of the players were kicked out, so they'll all be eligible to play!

My first international soccer game! My first tournament final of any sport! My first time at Soldier Field! GO USA SOCCER!

It's a neighborly day in this beauty wood.

Somebody sent me a link to another blog post on the generation sort of caught between the so-called Gen Xers and Millennials. To the blogger, this is the group of folks born between 1978 and 1983. Well, I am not technically in that group, which I suppose makes me a Millennial? I have no idea. But, at any rate, the sender seemingly felt that I would identify with this blogger.

I have to say that I found it more troubling than anything else. It's a well-written blog. Very poetic, in a way. Very clever. But...at the bottom of it all, I think I disagree with it. Here's a bit of it:

"I was born in the 1979-1983 generation gap—a few years short of X, a few years ahead of Millennials. We’re a generation defined by disaster: Columbine, 9/11. We came of age at the peak of the War on Terror, came into the job market just in time to lose everything in the crash.

We stayed up past our bedtimes to watch the Berlin Wall come down, and the fall of the Soviet Union. We spent elementary school learning and re-learning geography. Generation Change.

[...]

We never had air-raid drills, because we were born into a world that understood there was no real point to them. Generation Mortality.

We are not the Lost Generation. No great war stripped us of our innocence in a deafening blast; instead, it was eaten away layer by layer in a sandstorm of small atrocities that scattered us as they wore us away. Our apocalypse is one of inexorable decay, not sudden catastrophe. Generation Entropy.

[...]

We were the last generation to be told repeatedly that no one would hire us with purple hair and nose rings.

Financially, we’re closer to the Millennials than Gen X. We can’t afford to wait for glamorously nonspecific media jobs. We grew up in the shadow of the dot-com boom and bust: close enough to the eye of the storm to know that we are unlikely to have nice things.

We were the first generation in nearly a century to enter a workforce defined by underemployment and defanged unions. By and large, we don’t know what it feels like to go to work with the power of collective bargaining at our backs.

We’ve seen just enough of the other side to know what we’re missing.

Our American Dream isn’t a house in the suburbs. It’s being able to afford to go to the doctor when we get sick. It’s not getting ahead so much as finally maybe breaking even.

We’re a generation of reluctant entrepreneurs, empowered to make the leap to creative careers and self-employment largely because our “real" jobs have left us with so little to lose. We know better than to trust anyone else to provide us with stability."

How depressing is that? How very self-pitying? I sort of wanted to just respond to the person who sent this to me with a short "Shit happens, man." response. I can't argue with the truth of the blogger. I'm sure lots of people (clearly, friends of mine) agree with the writer. It makes me sort of disappointed in them, though. Maybe I'm too optimistic, or naive, or whatever. But, its too easy to be so cynical and self-pitying. What a cop out. Yes, we grew up in a time when things have been sort of rough, but (I've said this before, I think) it makes you a stronger person. All of the examples that this blogger uses seem to boil down to 'nothing stays the same' mixed with a little 'expect the worst'. It's an entire group of people just waiting for the other shoe to drop. How lame. What about a group of people who deal well with a changing world? Who learned tolerance at an early age? Who grew up watching Mr. Rogers and Sesame Street and singing along with them about the alphabet and 'won't you be my neighbor'? Who don't look twice at people of different races or hearing different languages because we've been around that our entire lives? Who see the beauty in diversity instead of feeling threatened by it? Who don't tell their kids 'you won't get a job with purple hair and a nose ring'? Who, yes, have seen evil, but who have also seen the wonder and beauty of people flying across oceans in a hot air balloon, baseball figures turning back flips in the infield (Yeah, Ozzie Smith!), grew up knowing a woman could become Secretary of State for the United States, saw the Hubble space telescope launched into space, saw Nelson Mandela finally freed after nearly three decades, saw the Million Man March, watched the world change on a personal level when our own families got computers and the amazement of having the world at our fingertips, we saw them build a road under the English Channel (I have always found this particularly fascinating...). We grew up in an amazing time, that doesn't have to be defined by school shootings, wars on terror, and doping in sports. I'm not saying ignore the rough stuff; I'm saying stop ignoring the good stuff. I don't want to be included in a group that paints itself as down-on-their-luck and to-be-pitied. And, again, I'm not technically part of this blogger's view of Generation Nothing, but I'm close enough that it bothers me that there are apparently a lot of people who do feel like they are Nothing. Can't you remember Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers? Big Bird and Mr. Rogers would be so disappointed in you right now.

"“When I say it's you I like, I'm talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more than anything you can ever see or hear or touch. That deep part of you that allows you to stand for those things without which humankind cannot survive. Love that conquers hate, peace that rises triumphant over war, and justice that proves more powerful than greed.” --Fred Rogers

Throwback Movie Night: Grumpy Old Men

Yay! We're back with TMN!

No better way to welcome back TMN than with "Grumpy Old Men"! I love this movie, but had forgotten how much I loved it until watching it again. Made in 1993, it stars Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau as two elderly men who grew up together in this small Minnesota town. They raised their families next-door to each other and spent most of their adult lives at each others throats. For fifty years, they have insulted each other at every turn. Now, a new neighbor, played by Ann Margaret, moves in across the street and they begin competing for her affections.


Jack Lemmon plays John Gustafson, Walter Matthau plays Max Goldman, and Ann Margaret plays Ariel Truax. Ariel moves in and sets the small town upside down. She snowmobiles at midnight, runs into the snow and flops around in broad daylight, and generally is everything that John and Max haven't seen in a long time. They both set their sights on her and their ugly relationship gets even worse.

It's a great movie because of the dialogue between Lemmon and Matthau. Lines like:

"Do me a favor. Put your lip over your head... and swallow."

"Mind your own business, will ya? Mind your own business. Why don't you tie your shoelace, you'll fall on your stupid head."


This was the 6th of a total of 10 times that the two would do a movie together. They were really great friends, but after shooting this movie in Minnesota, Matthau ended up with double pneumonia and spent a while in the hospital. They did a follow-up to this movie with a sequel in 1995.