The other whale says, "Frank, you're drunk."...

Photo by Drew Herron

Up until very recently I couldn't stand Beck.

I'm not sure what it was about his music but it grated on me. Then at some point in the last year a switch must have flipped in my brain because according to Last.fm he is in my top 10 most listened to artists in the last 3 months. I use this as an argument that "adult contemporary" might actually be a thing, but I have to wonder why I have taken such a shining to him when I have fully maintained my dislike for other popular artists like Radiohead. Similarly, why am I warming up to brussels sprouts and avocado but still hate bacon. And if my preferences are changing, seemingly at random, do I really even know who I am?

Of course I know who I am. That is just overdramatic bullshit, but the idea that I'm not totally familiar with myself stands.

IJ and I are going to Atlanta this weekend and he stumbled upon the fact that The Polyphonic Spree is playing. I was alerted while at work by text messages with exclamation points. A jazzed IJ hard to resist so I was go for Polyphonic Spree launch. After I responded I realized there was just one problem...

I don't like The Polyphonic Spree.

At all.

Or do I? See I can't remember what about them I disliked so it's possible that, like Beck, avocados, and brussels sprouts, I will now think they are the bees' knees. But do I want to be that person, or do I want to be the much more familiar person who rallies to go to the Fountains of Wayne show in the same building?

Change is important, but how far do you let the change take itself before you step in and say, "No, I think that's far enough."?

...and when do you tell yourself to shut up and enjoy the show.

Time for 2011 to face the music...

There is a room in my house that is very clearly meant to be a dining room. There is a two-way, swinging door to the kitchen for easy opening when one's hands are full of casserole or some such dish and an open  archway to the living room for flow. It is optimally shaped to allow for the placement of a table and chairs.

While I, being the daughter of an architect after all, have the greatest respect for architectural suggestion, we have chosen to go in another direction with the space.

Along with more CDs than two people should probably ever own it houses Indie Jake's ever growing vinyl collection

 and the half of a collection of 78s I inherited from my grandparents that ever made it out of Daddy & Chickadee's house.

It is by far our favorite space in the house (and the least cluttered). Right now I am curled up in the red chair with a Low album on the turntable, and the sun coming through the matchstick shades our landlord seems to adore. It is perfect. It is also very conducive to reflecting. 

At the end of every year there seems to be a barrage of "Thank goodness, XXXX is over. Next year is going to be better." But obviously, since this happens EVERY New Years, it's not that the past year was really that terrible, it's that we have had an entire year to mount up complaints. So much has happened and the new year seems fresh and empty.

We have had our share of gripes against 2011 here in the Laughs Too Easily household. There have been accidents and illnesses; there have been tears and stress. But, in a rather uncharacteristic move, I'm choosing to look at the brighter side of things. The sun through the blinds side.

2011 was a year I spent entirely as part of the best little family I could ever hope for.

It is a year that we ended without the loss of a loved one which seemed almost inevitable back in July.

2011 was a year that saw a resolution to the two worst angers I was carrying towards people. One through resolution and one through moving on.

It was a year with jobs and health insurance.

But most importantly, it was a year with potential. I'm not making any resolutions as such this year. All I'm saying is that I want to build 2012 on the shoulders of 2011 and come out of this new year in an even better place. 

...but hopefully in that better place there will still be the red chair, and the turntable, and the sun through the blinds.

Seriously though guys, you need to reconsider the unitards;they aren't doing anything good for your butts...

My childhood babysitter was a woman who lived down the street from us. I remember her as being very old but she was probably only in her 60s at the time, then again she could have actually been very old, who knows.  Either way she was caring, grandmotherly and used to let me come over and play in the emptied out swimming pool full of car parts and gardening supplies in her back garden. I remember her lecturing me on the importance of writing actual letters and once watching me put a staple through my finger so I would learn not to do thoughtless, silly things (which clearly was not a lasting lesson).

Since they did not go with the traditional choice of flakey teenage sitter, nights when my parents went out were less filled with algebra homework and phone calls to boyfriends (which is what pop culture has led me to think accompanies such caretakers) and more filled with Angela Lansbury.  My sitter was extremely fond of watching only two shows: Murder She Wrote and Perry Mason. Many an evening were spent solving a crime or arguing a case, but as soon as Jessica or Perry was done with their duty the TV clicked off. Once in a while she was slow to the button and the next program would start. Traces of space, strange looking characters and that guy I watched on Reading Rainbow would pop up, but inevitably she would flip them off and begin reading Readers Digest.

I never thought much about these glimpses of Star Trek I saw. I was too young to be interested on my own and by the time I was old enough to be in nerd circles where Wars or Trek mattered I had amassed a group of Lucas fanatics as friends. Much as I despise all the whining Luke does in Star Wars IV, I never really explored my other option.

Enter Netflix.

When all of Star Trek went up for stream Indie Jake's trekkie heart was reignited with its love of all things in the final frontier and it was decided that I needed to watch this business. You see his parents, like good nerd parents had taught him in the ways of galaxy exploration and, not to sound too emo, but IJ doesn't have tons of happy childhood memory triggers (or memory triggers at all), so when we hit on one of course I was going to go along.

OH DEAR LORD, I LOVE ME SOME STAR TREK.

Even Wesley's ugly sweaters and Riker's tendency to shtup anything that's female and has a pulse.

True, it took me a while to warm up to the thinking man's undercurrent of Next Gen, constantly exploring what it means to be human, but now I'm hooked. And I've got about 20 more years of episodes to watch!

I'ma say it. Plain and simple.

I'm a trekkie and I didn't even know it.



...now where can I get me a Klingon to English dictionary?