These Things Don't Happen

Yesterday afternoon, I was on my weekly conference call with some folks in the New York University office. About 20 minutes into the conversation, one of the NYU folks made a comment about some sort of thunderous noise that seemed to shake the building. But they laughed it off that they must be exaggerating. Two minutes later, the fire alarm went off in their building, and the call was cut short as they evacuated.

Those of us on this side of the call had no idea what happened, but eventually the news caught up and filled us in:

Parking attendant survives three-story fall in SUV

That's right. A car fell out of a parking garage and crashed into my customer's office building, damaging their work area on the first floor. We heard from them this morning: they are working from home today. Wild.

Friday Random Ten

"Dream Attack" by New Order on Technique
"The Voice of God" by 4Him on The Basics of Life
"Touch of the Master's Hand" by Wayne Watson on How Time Flies
"Existential Blues" by Tom "T-Bone" Stankus on Dr. Demento 20th Anniversary Collection
"Concerto No. 1 in E flat" by Franz Liszt on Favourite Piano Concertos
"Total Devotion" by When In Rome on When In Rome
"Jamie G. " by Joe Jackson on Laughter & Lust
"Satisfied" by PFR* on Goldie's Last Day
"Telling Me to Go" by Kaiser Chiefs on Telling Me to Go - Single
"Come To Me" by Bobby McFerrin on Simple Pleasures

This was an odd little collection, but I really enjoyed it. I especially like the juxtaposition of "Satisfied" with "Telling Me to Go." Those two things go together, indeed.

* Acts I've seen live

Friday Random Ten

"Gardening At Night" by R.E.M. on Eponymous
"Weight of the World" by Erasure on The Innocents
"No One Loves Me Like You" by Jars of Clay* on If I Left The Zoo
"18th Floor Balcony/It's Just Me" by Blue October on Foiled
"Oh Very Young" by Cat Stevens on Greatest Hits
"Missionary Man" by Eurythmics on Greatest Hits
"What's Going On" by Marvin Gaye on The Big Chill
"Rain Down" by Delirious? on World Service
"HypoCrites" by Anything Box on Peace
"Boogie Shoes" by K.C. & The Sunshine Band on Saturday Night Fever

Other than a very few tracks, we've gone seriously retro this week. I guess iTunes was getting me ready to meet with middle-aged clients for three days starting Sunday. And that nice long Blue October track is prepping me for their show at Stubbs next Friday night. I really appreciate inanimate computer programs looking out for me. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

* Acts I've seen live

1 of 4

The second weekend of the tournament is now complete, and I only picked 1 of the Final Four. Preposterous! How can UNC be the only school I expected to see at this point in these games? At the beginning of this weekend's games, I switched gears from rooting for my bracket to rooting for the underdog in virtually every matchup. Because a messy bracket means a happy Heather. I think it's probably like betting against your team in a big game. If they win, you don't even care that you lost the money, and if they lose, you have a payout instead.

And so, I'm having a blast watching this year's tournament fun. The games, for the most part, have been really great -- tight contests with high energy and unexpected performances. This is the part of the year when coaches and players lay everything they have out on the court and see if it's enough. And lay it out there they have. Awesome game yesterday, Villanova! Great game today, Michigan State! There were so many last weekend, I can't even name them all, but if we can keep the underdogs winning, I will be quite the happy camper. Three seed to win it all, anyone?

Friday Random Ten

"If We Are the Body" by Casting Crowns on Casting Crowns
"A Fifth of Beethoven" by Walter Murphy on Saturday Night Fever
"F.O.D." by Green Day on Dookie
"I Eat Cannibals" by Toto Coelo on Living In Oblivion
"Let You Down" by Dave Matthews Band on Crash
"Pancho and Lefty" by Merle Haggard on His Epic Hits: The First Eleven
"Thank God I'm A Country Boy" by John Denver on The Very Best of John Denver
"Annie's Song" by John Denver on The Very Best of John Denver
"I'm Gonna Love You Too" by Buddy Holly & The Crickets on From the Original Master Tapes
"Go Your Own Way" by Fleetwood Mac on Greatest Hits

This is a pretty "Greatest Hits"-heavy set, but I liked it anyway. And, since I'm feeling under the weather, that's about all the commentary I can manage.

* Acts I've seen live

Dividing the House(hold)

The house is the only really complicated thing that we have to figure out how to handle. We only bought it a year ago, and while the market in Santa Barbara hasn't tanked like it has in other parts of California, I seriously doubt we could break even at this point. So, we'll probably refinance it (which was the plan when we originally purchased) to something a little more manageable for one or the other of us (most likely with renters), and the other will officially move out. It would seem obvious that I would be the one to move out, since GB actually has a job there and I don't, but looks can be deceiving. He's on the short list for a tenure-track faculty position, so that could mean he'd be moving, and I'd be the one to take over the homestead. Ugh. I hate limbo. I'm ready to make some decisions and move forward. He should hear on that in the next couple of weeks, and then we'll go from there.

We also have a lot of other stuff that we've accumulated in the last 10+ years. Excessive accumulation has occurred in the book department. We have four full bookshelves of books, as well as the boxes of books that we've never had a place for. I guess that happens when many Friday nights were spent at bookstores. I think when we moved out from Austin, we had 20 boxes of just books.

And then GB told me about a dream he had last week. Apparently, in the dream, we were trying to divide up all the stuff, and we were fighting about it. Not fighting about who was going to get anything in particular, but about who was going to HAVE to take stuff.
"No, no, no. Like hell I'm going to take the books."
"Well I don't want the f*ing books!"
"Goddammit, you *have* to take them. 'Cause I sure as hell don't want them!"
"If you're going to be that way about it...You have to take the house if I take the books."

And I just laughed and laughed. Partly because I am really enjoying laughing again, and partly out of relief. The subconscious mind does some crazy stuff while sorting through things, and this little subconscious moment in GB's head says that we can probably work this all out as adults. It really shouldn't be that hard for us to do as reasonable humans, but this was the first indicator that we might not be completely crazy for trying approach this as a mediated (rather than all-lawyered-up) divorce.

Basketball Therapy

This past weekend, I had the most fun I've had in an extremely long time. I took Thursday and Friday off of work, and spent 4 full days watching basketball, basketball and more basketball. I've never actually taken the days off work -- always just was unproductive for the day keeping up with four games at a time. Forty-eight games in four days just doesn't leave a whole lot of time for much of anything else. But it was an absolute blast.

Part of the greatness of the weekend, though, didn't have anything to do with basketball. Recently, I had reconnected with an old friend from college, and on a whim we decided to get together to watch all the games of the first weekend. So I drove up to Dallas on Wednesday night, and I couldn't believe how easily we just jumped back in like no time ever passed. It was the most comfortable I've felt in my own skin in such a long time. I was reminded I used to be funny -- witty, silly, dorky (of course), but mostly I just hadn't remembered being laughed with in so long.

Overall, it was just a perfect vacation weekend. And those two overtime games were about as awesome as they could have been.