you know you're a homeowner when...

...you wake up naturally at 6:15 a.m. because the Home Depot down the street just opened and today begins their storewide clearance sale. And maybe you need something.

weeeeeeeee

I apologize in advance, because I know you're not going to care, but I just need someone anyone to feel the intensity that this weekend is about to bring...

Vampire Weekend

Patty Griffin

Raconteurs

Jenny Lewis

Swell Season

Foo Fighters

MGMT

Erykah Badu

Beck

Silversun Pickups

Okkervil River

Tegan and Sara

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss

....and those are just the ones I highlighted. God bless Austin City Limits, this (extra)ordinary respite from the blazing heat, and friends that love music as much than I do.

it's girl talk

In the past 6 weeks or so, a few angels introduced me to the glory that is Girl Talk. Since then, I might have made you listened to him (Gregg Gillis, that is) in my car or maybe I let you watch me do high kicks around the house with his music in the background. I scored some of the last tickets to his upcoming show in Austin yesterday afternoon and the only thing standing between me and immediate ascension was a vat of TCBY. Thanks to a link from Peters, I ultimately found this interview from two years ago. I have the attention span of a goldfish when it comes to reading, so if I can get through this whole thing, you know it's got to be interesting. I especially enjoyed the part where he calls out underground music snobs...I have no patience for pretention when I just want to get my white girl groove on.

You'll probably wonder if he's been sued for sampling so many huge artists, but I don't think he has. It would be asanine for an artist to even go there, since his mixes rekindle a love for songs you haven't thought about in years (i.e. I'm guessing Track 3 spawned more impromptu downloads of All That She Wants than Ace of Base has seen since 1993). But I am kind of wondering if since this 2006 interview, he did get a cease and desist letter after all, since the latest album Feed the Animals is offered in the same pay-what-you-want style as Radiohead's In Rainbows. (Incidentally, Radiohead also just released the stems for their track Reckoner with an invitation to "Sample, cut, take the sounds, whatever. play it in a club. Play it in your room." Very a la Girl Talk.)

Check out the the article, the album, whatever. I dare you to not shake your ass. 

she-man

"I think you have more testosterone than the rest of us" is not something you want to hear amongst a group of 10 girls. Especially at a bachelorette party. Granted it wasn't an orthodox party since we spent part of the weekend out at my boss's river house (again, my job is better than yours). But since I was on my knees on a pebble beach by the river using a wooden oar to dig an ATV out of a hole, I didn't have much room to argue.

(I got it stuck, ok? And no, I didn't know that 4-wheel drive existed. Back off.)

I don't need to be a girly girl, persay, but good lord, I don't ever want to be singled out as the 1 in 10 who may or may not be tucking in her junk. I'll admit, I have some man-habits. I spit. I skip rocks. I take shots with no chaser. I burp out loud, sometimes with a rumble, always into the phone if possible. I talk about dijar and forget to cross my legs and just a few days ago played a game with Brian that involved throwing screwdrivers into the lawn. 

I think my only saving grace is nail polish and an addiction to crafts. But then again, it's one thing to take an interest in "girl things" (i.e. I like to spend ridiculous amounts of time in Target...girl thing.) and another thing to be capable of "boy things" (i.e. digging an ATV out of a ditch...boy thing). Sure you want to be able to hold your own, but I'd prefer to be a sleeper tomboy than the obvious culprit of, say, leaving the toilet seat up.

So last night I put myself to the ultimate test: edging the lawn. 

Please behold, a sample patch. 

(look closely)

                                             ⇓

Call me Edward Scissorhands but bitches I've got estrogen!

jerry springer, live

Who needs daytime TV when you've got the Facebook news feed?*

*Note: I don't like to capitalize on other people's pain, but if you don't know how to control your Facebook privacy settings and you are okay with publicly emoting, then you're leaving yourself wide open. 

slightly aawkwaard

This is about how comfortable I feel right now in my cluttered house, but I have two great excuses to get my shit together and get setup tomorrow: my first houseguest and a white trash / tailgating shindig in honor of board games, UT vs. UTEP, and my lack of living room furniture. I'm so pumped about Liz's arrival after her harrowing drive through the desert and am ready to show off the city's goods! TGIF!

home is where the...well, somewhere

I've always adored this scene from Garden State and tend to think about it a lot when I feel homesick, homeless, or homebound (best from 1:00+).

For as long as I can remember, my concept of home has been rooted in a constant, relentless, nomadic shift. I never grew up in any one particular home (most of you understand my mom's ongoing Monopoly game). The only place I visited repeatedly during the past 25 years is now one big matryoshka doll of nostalgia—a house full of closets, which are full of boxes, which are full of photos and knick-knacks and letters. My early twenties have all been spent trading a dorm for a balcony for a bungalow in Memphis for urban living in Austin. If only I'd decided to play the game like the Red Paper Clip Guy...

During the frustrating *awesome!* venture of looking for the next place I'd call home, I spent a lot of time trying to dissect where I had felt "at home" in the past and what about those places managed to borrow a little piece of my heart. Slowly I started to realize that I couldn't define those nebulous spaces as home, persay, because the things that felt most comfortable to me usually weren't structures at all. "Home" to me is d-d-d-d-dirty rap seeping through the walls at Rosemary Lane, avoiding potholes on the bike ride back from the Draught House, grilled steaks and merlot on an ivy-lined porch in Chicago, the silhouette of my mom typing on her computer.  Now home is on the site of an old airport, where I am in hyper-nesting mode, trying to unpack all of the things that will set the scene for the next chapter of my life. Of course approaching it that way puts so much more pressure on the unpacking process, because if I choose silk drapes over tan faux wood blinds, what will that say about me?! So I'm taking it as lightly as I can (not very), but I am still so excited about the day I say I'm on my way home and I mean it.