moxie

well, thank you, dear reader, for your suggestions. however, lacking in leisurely lengths of time for a proper "name the kitten" contest, josh & i decided this morning on moxie. this definition from wikipedia is extremely apt:

Moxie, a carbonated beverage, is considered to be the USA's first mass produced soft drink. Created in 1884 in Lowell, Massachusetts by Dr. Augustin Thompson, Moxie was marketed under the product name "Moxie Nerve Food" and originally sold as a "cure all" medicine (snake oil). Later in the 20th century, it was sold in carbonated form and merchandised as an invigorating drink, which claimed to endow the drinker with "spunk."

so there you have it. tomorrow he goes in for an exam, some shots, and a much-needed deworming. huzzah!

happy (x3) anniversary

help! we need to name our beautiful new russian blue mix! he is 12 weeks old and, as the tradition has started with monty and mango, it must be a five letter word that begins with "m". some ideas, in no particular order, so far are...

• malen
• monet
• melee
• moxie
• money
• marlo
• marco
• miles

and we could use your help! offer your vote or your suggestion in the comment box below!

hi-fi stereo

among all that was lacking yesterday is last night's fair helping of sleep. i have to be at work in an hour and am no where near awake since the insomnia hit me around ten o'clock (a typical bedtime on a work day). apparently i've overdone my sleep rations somewhere in the universe and so it was determined that i should not sleep last night except fitfully betwixt unruly cats, unusually warm night air, and a mind that wouldn't stop running around, going on and on about what needs to be done around the house, and wondering about getting a service out here to spray for ants.

appart from that, erin is on her way to austin right now, and i'm feeling inexplicably exhuasted. oh, wait, that's because i didn't sleep last night. well, i suppose i'd better hop to it and go to work.

we're going to look at kittens today!

::there is no spoon::

...and other things lacking presently include:

• adrienne's grandfather's cat is NOT pregnant
• tact from the first customer of the day who whined in front of his teenage daughter about having to show id in order to cash some checks
• my concentration--i spent the morning reading harry potter and have less than fifty pages to go
• food in my tummy. see above.
• another cat in my life. hummm.

::three-year itch::

i'm in love. maybe he'll have me. i can only hope. please stand by.

ok, so mr. harley is a bit of a lump & my friend adrienne's grandfather has a cat that's going to have kittens, so i'll probably end up helping out with that. they should be born in the beginning of august and i'll be helping out with the adoption process (ie putting pix on craigslist and getting them spayed/neutered in advance). should be fun.

my gosh, though, i have no idea what i'm in for, do i? how exciting! in the meantime, anyone have advice on kittens: useful websites/texts? let me know in the comments box!

::club four hundred::

ah, anniversaries galore for the month of july. today is post #400, but i won't promise interesting stories. this morning calls for lists. or stream-of-consciousness.

stay tuned for the three-year celebration on july 30th.

this morning has been fun. fed the cats and discovered armies of ants marching back and forth on my kitchen counter. they were going in-and-out of the misplaced bag containing the leftover biscuit from the k-k-kfc-i-a. i think the absence of ants leads one to unfortunate and untimely forgetfulness, even though i've been feeding the cats in various locations throughout the house in order to deter or confuse the little buggers. well, at least i can say i've managed to store the angel food cake in the fridge. now that would have been messy!

the funny thing is (do you really need me to tell you the funny thing?), that, as i was filling the sink with super-sudsy-soapy water i imagined the ants covering bjork's "army of me". specifically the part where she sings "and if you complain / once more / you'll meet an army of me" because there i was, staring in awe and loathing at the hundreds of ants piling in and out of the bag that contained a single, crusty biscuit. MY BISCUIT! and then you think, that biscuit, how it must've felt. and you want to run around and scream "my biscuits are burning!" because surely that's how it would feel. if you were being nibbled away by an army of ants. it would feel like you were on fire. but me, all i did was yell and holler at the ants and i grabbed the small, greasy brown bag and lifted it gingerly and swiftly from the counter and dumped it into the sink, writhing with ants who would soon meet their doom in the dish-soapy water.

since seven forty-five this morning, since the above events, my skin has been twitching from phantom ants which i imagine to be crawling on my arms, hands, and legs. everytime i look, there's nothing there. but i feel them. and i think i deserve a hot, soapy bath. thankfully, though, it won't kill me. but it just might inspire some housework.

hope your day is going better. i'll leave you with this gorgeous picture of my cat, monty. en guarde, chuck & jude!

::i *heart* beck::

seeing beck at the gibson (universal) amphitheatre...leaves me clamoring for words. i enjoyed the show to the nth degree, from start to finish. though my personal highlight was his acoustic rendition of "everybody's gotta learn sometimes". just his sweet vocals and a guitar gave me chills. i especially loved his twist on the melody. trust me, it was just a breath-stopping moment. the only disappointment was the lack of merchandise...specifically the booths that ran out of a black t-shirt with a boom-box on it which read "my beat is correct" which IS NOT FOR SALE at the website. if you have any idea where i can get my hot little hands on this piece of precious merch, drop me a line in the comments box.

the openers were fun. the tv sheriff was over-the-top-hilarious. the video ape...well, if you're up for watching it, i know it will speak for itself. it's possible you might need to be in a certain mood to tolerate it's shiny, blurry, ridiculous adventuring into the wonderment of modern video mixing technology. if you've always wondered about treet (aka spam) this will explain it all.

in addition, i am newly christened a fan of the decemberists because of their performance. there's something romantic about their story-telling and songwriting. beautiful modal harmonies and various instruments you don't see on stage as often as you used to: violin, upright bass, accordian. it was pretty magical and i became an instant devotee, nearly prepared to slap the boys who stormed the the row behind us during their last song (the mariner's revenge song) and exclaimed "what is this? simon & garfunkel?" in the words of napoleon dynamite, "idiot!"

in the end, beck was amazing. his bandmates are fantastic, talented, and an overall fun group of guys. i wouldn't miss a chance to see them in the future. and, if there is ever a dvd of the concert, i would totally buy it.

::it's HOT::

i'm literally sweating out my UCI application this afternoon. it's 84o in the house right now and i'm so stubborn about putting on the air conditioning. i'd rather walk aroud the house in a bathing suit. my argument for conserving energy also involves NOT vaccuuming and NOT doing any laundry. it's too hot to move, so i'll just sit in this chair, stare at the computer, and sweat it out. maybe i'll feel like working in a little while. or maybe i'll actually go to the gym. they do have air conditioning there. half an hour more...i ate a big, late lunch.

i've finished the most painstaking and time-consuming task of entering my transcript history into uci's online application. i do appreciate the convenience of it all, but the process once again reminded me of all those years i lacked committement to school. chalk it up to immaturity. i've got 219 units attempted (!) and 71 completed with a 2.9 GPA. i do have one permanent "f" on my transcript which is just about killing me, but the only way i'll end up retaking harmony 3 (music theory) is if something changes with my work hours. or if i take it at uci. but i can't imagine a better theory teacher than saddleback college's own norm weston, so i'll let it be for the time being.

now it's time to work on my essays. i'm not even going to look at the drafts i started in november. i need to be in the "now". but first, a taste of air conditioning for the sweltering soul: i'm going to the gym!

::take two::

today officially begins my quest for admissions to uci. i realize i've been rather absent the past week. unintentional, i promise. life has been happening in an all-consuming sort of way between various obligations and work and visiting with friends and family. i'm up without an alarm today (though i suppose my cat mango fearlessly batting at the blinds in order that he might be fed breakfast is alarming enough).

it's twenty minutes before seven and the house is relatively quiet. i've fed the kids and settled on the couch to blog and write. and now comes the writing....

::weight a minute now::

whilst i'm unable to explain how particular people end up at the 'muse, i'm fascinated at being able to unveil the mystery of where some of my readership stems from. i'm happy to discover that i have received about over 500 sessions (in layman's terms, hits, but josh explained to me that the term "hits" includes multiple bits of information being pulled from the server, ie. style sheets, css, images, links, etc.) so far for the month of july. my amusement, however, stems from the search terms that end up bringing in a reader. phrases like:

• cleanup of feline vomit
• mean,median, mode in a song
• how much does jessica simpson weigh now?
• jessica simpson's tongue

i'm concerned with the obsession the public seems to have with weight, not that i don't contemplate it myself at times. but my queries would run something like "jessica simpson's abs and how i can get them". short of weird science experiments, i know that the answer is hardly going to be discovered on my blog. let alone the fact that i'm hacking away at the keyboard; the answer is "go to the gym", my friends, and i'll leave it at that. i haven't been since last saturday and in a week's time there will be one open within walking distance from my house, so i'll get me some abs like that by the end of the summer, i promise.

in other news, i just finished hemingway's a moveable feast and, being somewhat ignorant of the author's life history, continued reading the brief biography on the few remaining pages. when i learned of his suicide, it hit me as though i just lost a close friend to tragic circumstances. hemingway is so honest in his text, which catalogues the time spent in paris in the 1920's with other writers such as f. scott fitzgerald (who finished the great gatsby during this time) and t.s. eliot, among others. regardless of any fictional events that may have been injected into this memoir of his, hem is fabulously brilliant. he is full of realisms for the writer to adapt into their own way of being. my favorite two quotes, though i fully intended to go through the book a second time & highlight other wonderful insights, are:

All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know.

--and--

I knew I must write a novel. But it seemed an impossible thing to do when I had been trying with great difficulty to write paragraphs that would be a distillation of what made a novel. It was necessary to write longer stories now as you would train for a longer race.

oh, hem, such wisdom! i'm starting to think that my one-dollar composition books and hoard of delicately decorated journals ought to be shed for the simplicity of a moleskine based on superstitious hopes of brilliance via some inherent osmosis(hemingway used a moleskine notebook for his writings).

::newsflash::

er, uci's summer admissions submission has been moved to july 18 - august18, so my saga has been temporarily delayed. the happy news though, is that my major is not closed. it will be:

english with an emphases in creative writing
with a minor in literary journalism

phew!

also, i've finally documented the recent los angeles photo-shooting drive-by i took with erin the other weekend. you can check it out here.

::movie meme::

yes, kidchamp, i haven't forgotten...

number of films i see in a year: gee, i dunno, maybe 30? does this include watching movies you own over and over? i really don't get to the cinema quite as often as i'd like to.

last film i rented / saw at home: love me if you dare happened to be on IFC or Bravo recently and i was simply awestruck.

last film i saw at a theater: bewitched. a fun romp with nicole kidman and will ferrell and shirley maclaine and michael caine. very lighthearted, and just what i needed at the time.

last film i saw and hated: ...apparently wasn't even worthy of remembering the title. and, hate is such a strong word.

film i know i should see: trois couleurs: blue. of course i should see the entire set, but the last time i tried to watch it i found myself incredibly depressed, despite its beauty.

3 films i love:
le fabuleux destin d'amelie poulain. it leaves me speechless to bask in yann tiersen's scoring of a film so rich in colors and textures, with brilliant writing and cast to boot. je t'aime, amelie.

the lion king. i didn't promise not to be juvenile! i have always had a special place in my heart for my most favorite of all disney animated films. elton john's (music is such a key element for me) songwriting is so full of life! i still tear up when mufasa dies....

the lord of the rings. epic. this trilogy moved me. then i went to new zealand and was moved even more by the beauty of the place. again, howard shore's scoring was dramatic and fitting. and it would be difficult to come up with a theme that could support a film as enormous as this one is.

3 unsuspecting baton recipients: anyone? anyone? bueller?

::favorite things::

just recently i've been blessed with the ability to sort through my site stats and dig through my referrals from various search engines. in no particular order, my recent favorites are:

1. "barbie and the rockers" + cassette
2. cheesecake factory offer oregon
3. where can i get music that will play the whole song with words for neopets?
4. how much does ashley judd weigh
5. cool volkswagon backgrounds
6. if it was 5:53 pm here what time would it be in london england.
7. percent of speeding tickets brought to trail
8. who did brian setzer marry in may 2005
9. "proof that aliens exist" e
10. assemble dot patio furniture

most of these things i know nothing about, yet you came here anyway. maybe, just maybe, you've forgiven me for not answering your query properly. except for the person who ended up here after googling "tori amos sans panties". they are still deeply, deeply disappointed.

my awful confession: i've been looking up the search terms that are obviously misspelled and correcting them!

::sim::

i'm painfully hooked on the sims thanks to last week's visitors. though i find myself persistently frustrated in stage three of the game, where my sim "jean" is rooming with "mimi", a lazy slob who brings in a wussy $110/day (actually not that bad for real-life standards, however, since sims work 7 days/week and bills come in the mail every few days for around $1000, it's pretty much pocket change). not only is "mimi" a free-loader worthy of jerry springer, she only cooks on the grill (can't blame her for that--i love my bbq), and frequently throws her food on the floor instead of in the trash. this morning she started a fire on the grill which burned our beverage cooler into ashes and "jean" arrived home from work just in time to catch all this. of course this results in complete panic as both sims hop around frantically and their little thought bubbles with pictures of fire hop right along with them as they wave their arms in panic. it's actually funny, but not at all realistic because the only possible response for "mimi" is calling the fire department. there is no hose in the yard and you can only wash your hands in the sink (as opposed to, say, filling a bucket with water--but we don't have those either). what a predicament!

so, if you're not familiar with the game, there are some key quality of living things that need to be cared for. the ones i will focus on (and my gripe about the game) are: hunger, bladder, social, and fun. your job, as the player of this game, is to insure that all these aspects of your subject's well-being are "in the green". as time wears on, an indicator bar will gradually become more red and then you have to make your sim do something to take care of this. when "jean" goes to work from 9-3, I have noticed that things pretty much don't change, which concerns me. it would appear that she doesn't get a lunch break, is not allowed to use the bathroom, and can't enjoy herself the least bit since she doesn't socialize with her coworkers or have any fun while at work. i wonder who to file a complaint with? after all, if i don't get "jean" to the toilet in time, she'll pee her pants and start crying. and that just isn't pretty.

::green::

the first of july...and here i am (it's about time). my day may have started with a leisurely wake-up call at eight, but i'm on a mission and it's time for extreme action. day one of the uc application process. lucky me has the entire month to report on the agony and the accomplishment of it all.

i've been so nervous in recent weeks that my body has taken on a complete digestive rebellion. food just doesn't appeal to me lately, especially in wake of the aftermath i know is coming. my love for food seems to overcome this; i recall many piano recitals where i nibbled nervously as i awaited my call to the stage. i also tried the glenn gould version of soaking my arms and hands in warm-hot water, but food always appealed to me more.

today: confirmed that my major is open. will pursue english with an emphasis in creative writing. still debating the whole literary journalism thing: considering a minor in that field. discovered that the online application process is only available from july 18 - august18. this resulted in much head scratching since the application acceptance period is from july 1 - july 31. a little annoyed, i grab pdf's from the website so i can familiarize myself with the process. seriously consider the need to meet with a counselor so i get this right on the first try.