Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end

Posted by on 06/06/2010 4 comments

Lately I’ve been listening to a lot of stuff that I used to listen to back in high school and early college.  Whether it’s because a lot of memorable stuff happened in those years or because the music was just that good, I always find myself leaning back and just enjoying myself when these songs come up on shuffle.

I listen to all kinds of music, honestly.  I listen to movie soundtracks, I listen to brainless pop, Finnish screamo, ska, classical, punk, ’40s big band jazz, indie hipster stuff, Broadway musicals, everything.  But I feel like, right around my late teens and early 20s, I found myself listening to some seriously choice music and nothing I’ve found since then has quite compared.  I have this shortlist of nostalgic songs that always bring me into a really, really good mood.  I thought I’d share:

  • Tonic – If You Could Only See
  • The Offspring – The Kids Aren’t Alright
  • Fastball – The Way
  • The Fugees – Killing Me Softly
  • Eagle-Eye Cherry – Save Tonight
  • Deep Blue Something – Breakfast at Tiffany’s
  • Incubus – Drive
  • The Verve Pipe – The Freshmen
  • The Wallflowers – One Headlight
  • Semisonic – Closing Time

There are so many others, honestly.  But without fail, if one of these songs comes up on shuffle, I just kind of sit back and bask in it.  I’ll crank it up if it’s not already blasting.  Sometimes I’ll even sing along.  A couple of these songs (‘The Way’ and ‘The Freshmen’) are even on my top 25 songs of all time list, which I put together on a whim a few weeks ago after discussing favorites with my roommate.

How about you, modest readership?  What never fails to get you in a good mood when you hear it?

Nobody puts Tekkah in the corner.

Posted by on 05/21/2010 11 comments

I use public transportation.  I haven’t had a car for years, and I’m handling it pretty well, considering I live in a city where the public transportation is constantly derided for being a “train to nowhere,” among other things.  It gets me around just fine, though, and I rely on it every day.  And 90% of the time, my rides are completely uneventful.

That other 10%?  Usually, it’s delays.  There doesn’t really seem to be a set schedule — I’ve never in my life heard anyone say “the 5:00 train” or anything like that, because such a thing doesn’t exist — but most of the time you can expect a train within five, maybe ten minutes of getting to the platform.  I can leave my apartment at 8:30 and get to work by 9:00 with near-complete regularity.  However, my ride home today lands squarely in that eventful 10%.  Let me tell you all about it.

First of all, when I arrived at the platform, it was completely packed with people.  There was an announcement not too long after I got there that said the northbound trains were delayed but on their way.  I pulled out my copy of John Green’s An Abundance of Katherines (which, by the way, is really good, so far) and waited.

And waited.

Aaaaand waited.

Meanwhile, more people crowded the platform with every passing minute.  Before too long, this guy showed up and leaned against the wall right next to me.  Since I like to be aware of my surroundings, I looked up momentarily from the book.  This guy was probably 4’10″ with dark hair that he’d slicked back with far too much gel.  When I looked up, he shot me a really unsettling look and made a kissy-face at me.  I shook my head, rolled my eyes, and went back to my book.  He moved away from me and I figured that was that… but I was wrong.

The train finally arrived and I got on, and since it had been delayed it was packed full of people. Each train car has luggage space at the front.  This luggage space also gets utilized when all the seats are full and people need somewhere to stand without being in the way of the doors.  I ended up in the luggage space, mostly due to the fact that the influx of bodies into the train pushed me in that general direction.  I only had to go one stop, so I didn’t really mind… until Mr. Kissy-Face shoved himself between me and the rest of the passengers on the train, cornering me in the luggage space as the train pulled away.

He didn’t say a word.  He just stood there, his eyes leveled at my chest, a disgusting grin on his face.  I told him to fuck off.  He waggled his eyebrows at me, and didn’t budge.  The few people around us looked uncomfortable, but no one helped me. Nice.

Anyway, it was a short ride, because I was getting off at the next stop.  When the train pulled up, I said, “I’m getting off here,” and started to move… and he didn’t budge.  He crossed his arms and made another kissy-face at me and refused to move.  He was really trying my patience.  I told him to get the fuck out of my way, and yet he didn’t move.  I had probably another couple of seconds and the train would leave the platform, so I did what any self-respecting girl would do.

I clocked him with John Green’s An Abundance of Katherines.

He got out of my way and I got applause from the people who had been witnessing all of this — thanks again for the help, assholes — and I headed home.  Lesson learned: walk softly and carry a good book.

Without teachers, we are nothing.

Posted by on 05/13/2010 3 comments

I love teachers. Where would you be without them? Would you know how to read? Would you know how to write? Would you be able to do your job? Would you have the skills with which to best express your creativity?

Highly unlikely.

My family is full of teachers. Both of my mom’s parents were teachers. My aunt is a teacher. I’ve grown up surrounded by teachers. All my life I’ve understood the pursuit of knowledge to be the ultimate life goal to have — it’s a quest without an end, and a quest that brings nothing but benefits as long as you continue to follow it. There are infinite possibilities.

This week’s Girl Talk Thursday is to talk about your favorite teachers. And oh, I’ve had quite a few. I’ve had a few I’ve disliked, to be sure, but in the long run I’ve had far more that I’ve valued greatly — and besides, that’s the point of today’s exercise: discussing our favorite teachers.

  • My senior lit teacher, a man who introduced us to senior year by sitting us all down and asking us, “How many of you read The Great Gatsby last year?” When everyone raised their hands, he continued. “How many of you spent half the year ripping symbolism out of every page and nitpicking every metaphor to death?” Again, everyone raised their hands. He then took the rest of the first class of the year teaching us that you do not have to like every book — but you do need to know how to appreciate a book and understand its themes. A classic is a classic for a reason.
  • My 10th grade world history teacher gave the most intense, involved lectures I ever had in high school. Tons of note-taking and overhead-copying, really intense tests… and every time we began a new chapter, she gave us a blank map of the region we’d be studying and let us spend a day marking down the important cities and locations of important battles that were coming up in the chapter.  With crayons.
  • From 9th to 11th grade, I had a band director who saw my talent and potential and nurtured it — he pushed me to try out for section leader in the marching band (I performed leader duties for 11th and 12th grade, despite only being the official section leader in the 11th grade), he pushed me to try out for drum major (I chose to keep playing my instrument), and he pushed me to try out for the symphony orchestra (which I did). Without him I may have missed some serious opportunities for advancement.
  • Senior year, I had a different band director, but he was just as valuable to me as a teacher. He listened to his students when they had complaints, he treated us like equals, he didn’t show any favoritism, and perhaps the best thing he did (which I hated at the time, but see the value in now) was that he encouraged improvisation and “moving off the page” in the jazz band, where I played the piano.
  • Last, but most certainly not least, my piano teacher. I was with her from the age of 7 until I graduated high school. She not only taught me how to play the piano, she was also a great friend and confidante. As I moved from childhood to young adulthood, there were often things I felt uncomfortable discussing with my mother for some reason or another, and she was the person I would talk to. She gave me advice on everything from piano technique to friends and boys. She wasn’t just a piano teacher — she was a teacher of life itself, and my favorite of all the instructors I’ve ever had.

I’m going to be a fireman when the floods roll back.

Posted by on 04/29/2010 7 comments

It’s Girl Talk Thursday, and today’s theme is ‘what did you want to be when you grew up?’ And oh man, there’s nothing I love more than a good ramble.

Seriously, it’s going to be a ramble.

When I was a kid, I wanted to do everything. I really did. Depending on the time of day, my plans for the future were anything from “a one-name pop star like Madonna” to “a marine biologist” to, on the best of days, “in charge of everything.” I used to have fantasies of being the first lady President, of being an Olympic gymnast, of being a Broadway star, of flying airplanes, of living on a houseboat and writing novels… all kinds of things. The one-name pop star thing had wings for a long time, actually, I was convinced that my debut album (of Mariah Carey-esque power ballads — the really juicy 90s kind, obviously) would be this great pop-art thing with my signature just plastered in giant type diagonally across the front in bright red, a kicky photo of me doing some cheerful dance move behind it. I had plans, see.

But the truth of the matter — and this is still true, honestly, to this very day — is that when I grew up, I wanted to be Indiana Jones. Of all the future plans I had, this was the meatiest of them. This was what I wanted to do. I wanted to save mythical things from evil, freedom-hating, non-Democratic boogeymen, because that’s what Indy does! He saves priceless relics from Nazis and Communists! He’s like the Batman of Eurocentrism, I tell you!

Ah, Indiana Jones. He’s so sexy with his hat and his whip and his job. He’s a professor! He’s a teacher! I guarantee you had I been the appropriate age to portray one of his students in the movie, I’d have been the girl up front with “I love you” written creepily across my eyelids (say what? You don’t remember her? What’s wrong with you!?). The man had screaming hordes at his office hours! It was like Beatlemania but for one man! That’s impressive teaching, right there. In all my years in academia I’ve never seen anything even remotely like it, even when the teacher was the hottest thing in all of TRMS — oh, Algebra I. Best class ever. Couldn’t tell you squat about the math these days, though…

But I digress. Where were we? Oh. Indy.

Best of all? His hobby. He was a teacher by profession, see, but in his spare time he went gallivanting around the world finding impossible, legendary treasures and bringing them home because “they belong in a museum.” Now, that is, in itself, up for debate, to be sure, but honestly when faced with the options most of Indy’s relics were faced with (a museum… or the personal collection of someone like Adolf Hitler), I’d say they belonged in museums, too.

Now, I can’t say that a big part of me wasn’t utterly enchanted by Harrison Ford’s gorgeous face, or that another part of me wasn’t completely hypnotized by the grail theme in The Last Crusade (seriously, that’s one of the most gorgeous pieces of scoring John Williams has ever done — It comes in at 0:43, I dare you not to get chills), but yeah. I wanted to be Indiana Jones when I grew up, and I still sort of do.

Hell, it looks like I’m actually going to be a professor when all is said and done. The question is, will my students mob my office hours? Probably not — though that’s probably for the best.

Under the sexual arena of earthly delight, there lies a pit of socks.

Posted by on 04/02/2010 No comments

Yesterday’s Girl Talk Thursday topic was about clothes.  More specifically, it’s about clothes that make you feel awesome.

Let me tell you something, first of all.  I am an ultra-nerdy graduate student.  My daily outfit is exactly this: Chucks (green or white, depending on my mood), jeans, and a nerdy t-shirt (and, if it’s cold, a long-sleeve tee underneath).  If it’s really cold outside, I’ll throw a hoodie on over top of it all.  Sometimes I’ll wear a shirt without nerdy stuff on it if I have to be somewhere that I might need to not look quite so much like an obvious college kid.

However, I wear these things because they make me feel awesome.  Specifically:

1. The nerdy shirt. I am a connoisseur of nerdy shirts.  From Team Edward (James Olmos) to Thesaurus and beyond, I hoard nerdy shirts.  Some people collect postage stamps, I collect shirts.  Nothing delights me more than having a fantastic conversation because a fellow nerd saw my shirt and got excited.

2. Colorful knee socks. Almost my entire sock collection is knee socks.  I think of all the socks I own that maybe two pairs are plain white socks, and perhaps a half-dozen of them are shorter than knee-length.  There’s something about wearing brightly colored socks that makes me feel fantastic, even if I’m the only person that knows I have them on.

3. Dresses. Those that know me know that I wear dresses infrequently and almost always in the summer, when it’s brought on by the feeling of “sweet candy Jesus, it’s hot outside,” and not so much a real desire to wear dresses.  However, when I have an excuse to wear a pretty dress?  I feel amazing.  I think a lot of that comes from the wow-factor reactions I get (since I never wear dresses, my friends always get excited when I do), but some of it comes from the part of me that still kind of wants to be an animated princess (you know the ones — the feisty, book-reading Belle type).

4.  Boots. There’s nothing quite like pulling on a pair of motorcycle boots and stomping around in them like you’re the next incarnation of Sarah Connor.

5.  Workout clothes. I think this comes from the badass feeling I get after running for half an hour and sweating my guts out more than the clothes themselves, but I’ve come to associate the two and now just getting into the sports bra is enough to make me feel like Kara Thrace, so I thought I’d include it.

Change is a good thing!

Posted by on 04/01/2010 2 comments

In the spirit of spring and one of my very favorite foods, I have taken the time to give tekkah.net a layout with some personal flair.  The last one was only meant to be a placeholder until I had time and inspiration to, at the very least, create a custom header and color scheme for the site.  I like what I’ve come up with, it’s fresh, easy to read, and hell, who doesn’t love strawberries?

Let me take a moment to tell you about one of my very favorite things: mansikkasoppa.  It’s hard to describe — well, hard to describe eloquently, anyway, as I tend to get a bit “mmmmmmm” and “nom nom nommmmm” about it — but it’s a delicious strawberry soup that my paternal grandmother pretty much has the market on, as far as I’m concerned.

One of my most vivid memories of my childhood trips to Finland is that of my grandmother’s kitchen.  She’s one of those people who just has to feed you every time you visit, and for the entire time you’re there.  She’s a woman who looks at her curvy, well-fed granddaughter and turns to her mother and says, “What are you feeding her? She’s too thin.”  I remember my siblings and I sat together at the table, each of us holding a cheese grater, and going to town on a freshly opened package of Oltermann cheese with the same flavor-high feelings that adults enjoy when sharing a good bottle of wine.  And I remember most of all sitting at that table as my grandmother ladled out warm bowlfuls of mansikkasoppa, not daring to temper it with cream like my father, barely having waited for it to cool down enough to eat without burning our mouths.

My brother, in his culinary experimentations, has tried time and time again to make a mansikkasoppa of his own, but the boy can’t help himself.  He’s always adding other berries.  Blueberries.  Raspberries.  Blackberries.  Things That Are Not Strawberries.  Now, I have nothing against other berries, but mansikkasoppa is called mansikkasoppa for a reason.  Mansikka (strawberry) and soppa (soup).  It’s not mansikkavadelmamustikkasoppa.  That’s a mouthful.  But that’s not even the reason Henri hasn’t managed to replicate grandma’s mansikkasoppa, and I’ll tell you why.

It’s the strawberries.

I am completely convinced, as are all the other Finns I know, that there just isn’t a strawberry good enough for a true mansikkasoppa outside of Finland.  They just don’t grow the same anywhere else.  In Finland they’re impossibly sweet and exceptionally juicy.  Mansikkasoppa made without Finnish strawberries is just lacking.  Perhaps it’s the atmosphere, perhaps it’s the feeling of aaah, motherland that comes with enjoying Finnish things in Finland, but it just isn’t the same no matter how much Finnishness you have in your bones.

In any case, since I can’t get a bowlful of that delicious, delicious mansikkasoppa for myself, I thought I would at least celebrate the strawberry with my layout.  May this year’s berry harvest produce good souping strawberries the world over!

Three little words.

Posted by on 03/24/2010 2 comments

“I love you.”

How many of us have, at one point in our lives, told someone that we loved them when we didn’t?  How many people consider the depth and meaning of those three little words?

I say that I love stuff all the time.  I love my bed.  I love books.  I love sparklers on the fourth of July.  I love watching the Olympics.  I love the Beatles.  I love sushi, spaghetti, mint chip ice cream, and my mother’s meatloaf (it is suddenly very apparent to me that perhaps just saying I love food would be a bit easier here).

But when it comes to people… well, I try to be a bit more careful with the word “love.”

Back when I was in the eighth grade and dating for the first time, J. and I said “I love you” to one another a few weeks into the relationship.  I look back and I realize we said it in the same way that a lot of teenagers do — we didn’t love each other, we couldn’t possibly.  We’d only just met, so we didn’t really know each other very well.  But we’d been taught by tv and movies and books that love happens all the time and very quickly, so like Romeo and Juliet, we completely confused “I like you a lot!” with “I love you.”

Ah, the follies of youth.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve had very little reason to use “I love you” in the romantic sense.  I didn’t really date through college — I got my flirtation out in high school, had my heart stomped on freshman year of college, and retreated into a rather comfortable life of Not Really Looking for Love.  I didn’t avoid men, certainly, but I didn’t really reach out, either.  But I still said “I love you.”

I say “I love you” to my family members.  I say “I love you” to my closest friends.  I love them, and I feel like you should tell people that you love them when you do.  People deserve to hear about it when you care for them.  However, over years and years of not dating and only using “I love you” to mean familial and friendly love, the weight it held in the romantic sense got completely pushed to the back of my mind.

Cue my fumbling re-entry into the dating world.  Girl meets boy, girl finds boy interesting.  Girl and boy start dating… boy says “I love you” almost instantly.

Girl freezes stone solid.

Suddenly I was in the eighth grade all over again.  “He can’t possibly love me, he doesn’t know anything about me.  We only just met.  There’s no way.  Why did he say that?”

The worst part?  The first few times he said it, I said it back.  I may as well have been telling him I love strawberries and cream for all the emotion I put behind it.  I didn’t love him.  I barely knew him.  When I realized what was happening I stopped myself and didn’t say it again, because I didn’t love him.  We went our separate ways not too much later — it just didn’t work.

Despite all that, I’m actually really glad he said it, and here’s why: it reminded me of the weight those words are supposed to have.  It reminded me of the meaning those three little words should carry when said to a significant other.  At the age of 25 I was re-learning a life lesson I first learned when I was 14 years old.  Here was something I already knew, deep in the back of my mind, coming back to the fore.

And now I ask you, readers — have you re-learned something recently?

Nerdfighting!

Posted by on 03/11/2010 2 comments

About a week ago, my friend Josh told me about the vlogbrothers. They are author John Green and his brother Hank (of ecogeek) and they are, quite possibly, my new favorite people on the internet.

I have to admit, I’ve never read a thing by John Green (though his books have now mysteriously found their way to my wishlist). Until Josh linked me to vlogbrothers I’d never even heard of him. Once I started watching, though, I couldn’t stop. There’s years of correspondence between the two brothers on YouTube, and it’s inspiring to see that their project began as an experiment: two brothers agree to no textual correspondence for one year. They chose to try to keep up with each other via videoblog, and they succeeded. While they did so, they became an internet sensation with a dedicated following, and over the years their project has evolved into something that can only really be described as Crazy Awesome.

I think I like the vlogbrothers so much because not only are they doing what they can to make the world better, but they’re freaking entertaining as well. Both of them are crazy smart: John’s a liberal arts kind of a guy, while Hank’s a science geek. And they’re both supernerds. Harry Potter jokes, literary references, “Live Long and Prosper” hand signs, and more litter their videos. It’s so refreshing to see smart, funny nerds making an impact in a world where people tend to value, or at least pander to, the lowest common denominator. Most refreshing of all is the fact that no matter what they’re talking about, they always, always come across as relatable — even when giving very strong opinions on things ranging from politics to literature. And while they talk about serious business things sometimes, they can also be incredibly normal — one of their most recent exchanges (an accusation of Nintendo Sabotage and a rebuttal) reminded me vividly of my own sibling rivalries, though we didn’t have any pets to blame things on when we were young.

Beyond being simply enjoyable, the vlogbrothers have made me think of how I keep in touch with my siblings. We’re all in the Greater Atlanta area for now, but we are getting older, and our correspondence is mostly facebook messages and random, sporadic phone calls. It certainly makes me think that perhaps we could try a little harder to keep in touch now, before we find ourselves in our thirties and barely familiar with one another.

Count me as a brand-spanking-new Nerdfighter. DFTBA!

Incubating. It’s what I do.

Posted by on 02/21/2010 2 comments

Maybe a week ago, give or take a couple of days, my roommate Sarah linked me to this article on CNN: Are you a procrastinator or an incubator? Her commentary as she linked me the post?  “Oh my god, it’s SO US.”

I’m a graduate student.  I know the pressure of deadlines.  As I read the article, I found myself nodding along.  I put my assignments off to the last minute, but when I do them, my work is solid.  My completion of my tasks is never in question — everything always gets done, and it always gets done well.  I just have trouble doing anything ahead of time.

What’s interesting to me is how I spend my time leading up to the point where I finally buckle down and start working on my assignment.  I don’t whittle it away in front of the TV — I find myself productive in other areas of my life.  I clean.  I organize.  I exercise.  I do other homework.  The hours leading into any deadline are the most productive hours of my life, because not only do I get the ultimate assignment finished, I also take care of other tasks that I’d been putting off.  One can always tell when I’ve had a paper due because my apartment is significantly more organized than when I have nothing hanging over my head.

The checklist at the bottom of CNN’s article asks you to rate six signs that you might be an incubator from one to four.  If you score over 20 points total, you may be an incubator.

I scored 24 points.  How about you?

The Meaning of Love

Posted by on 02/10/2010 3 comments

It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often, it’s not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it’s always there: fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know, none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge — they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I’ve got a sneaking suspicion… love actually is all around.

-Love Actually

This past weekend was, quite possibly, the longest weekend of my life.

Over the holidays, my dad suffered a concussion while on a business trip. Six weeks later, his brain began to bleed. My brother took him to the ER last Friday and he was admitted into the ICU.

On Sunday, I got a phone call from my brother saying that dad’s situation had deteriorated and he was being admitted for emergency surgery later that day. My sister came to pick me up and I went to the hospital to wait with my family. The official serious business name of what was plaguing dad was a bilateral subacute subdural hematoma — basically, there was blood in his head putting pressure on his brain.

When I arrived, not only was my family there, but my dad’s best friend and his fiancee were there as well as one of my mom’s coworkers. Before dad came out of surgery, my parents’ neighbors appeared, having heard through the neighborhood grapevine that dad was in the hospital. All weekend long mom has been fielding worried phone calls and inquiries from family and friends, each of us has been getting texts and calls from people asking after dad’s condition, and my brother’s best friend is driving down for the upcoming weekend to be with us.

Dad’s been moved out of the ICU, and now that he’s back to his cantankerous old self, it looks like the worst is behind us. It’s been a long weekend for sure, and one I will never forget. I don’t know how they do it but I swear they make hospital beds in some strange alternate universe optical illusion factory. My dad looked so small in that bed. It’s one of the most jarring things I’ve ever seen. Perhaps it’s an idealistic thing — no matter what a dad actually looks like, to his daughter he’s always daddy. Even at twenty-five I tend to think he’s got the answers for everything, he can fix anything, if I can’t lift it daddy can. Seeing him all small and broken was heartbreaking.

I’m so, so thankful that my dad pulled through this, and I’m so, so thankful that the support network around my family is as robust as it is. I never expected such a huge outpouring of love and concern, and I’m thankful for all of it.

It’s a nice reminder. Love isn’t flowers, or chocolate, or sex. Love isn’t setting one day a year aside to tell the person that you love “I love you.” Love is every day, love is bringing food to your friend when their husband is in the ICU. Love is playing scrabble with your brother to keep yourself from crying in the waiting room. Love is taking the ten seconds to tweet “thinking of you” to your friend when you can’t think of anything better to say.

Love is being there. That’s all it takes.