I've been fascinated with this collection of old cylinder recordings all day today. These are works that are old enough to be out of copyright, so UC Santa Barbara has made them available on the web in one of the best digitization projects I've ever seen. This is why I'm looking for work in this field. I hope someday I'll be involved in something this cool. There's some fantastic stuff here, and you can download the MP3s under a non-commercial Creative Commons license, or download the WAV files and use them in whatever manner you wish. I can't wait till someone uses a great song like "If he can fight like he can love, goodnight Germany!" in a movie. Long live the public domain and awesome librarians!

Friday night my friends hosted a delicious corned beef and cabbage dinner, and then we went to Bentley's and had a pint. But before that, the evening started with a reunion of Banish Misfortune at Mike & Molly's. Since this guy took way better pictures than I did, here's his Flickr album. You can't see us singing in any of these pictures, but you could if you caught Celticpalooza (ridiculous name!) on WILL last week. They filmed the concert at M & M's last summer, and I never thought I was still going to be here in town when they finally showed it. Goes to show that you can't plan life!

Tomato Nation is doing another Donors Choose fundraiser to benefit kids in New York City schools. If you haven't heard of Donors Choose, they're an organization that allows teachers to ask for donations to help their classes get much-needed equipment or take field trips that they otherwise wouldn't be able to do. The goal for this fundraiser is to have Tomato Nation readers fund $25,000 worth of projects. And if $30,000 in donations are raised, Sarah, the owner of the site, will shave her head. Now that's some good, clean Internet fun. If you'd like to help her reach her goal, you can read about the contest here and donate. And don't forget to check out Tomato Nation while you're at it.

Do you hear me? Help the children.

Or this baby gets it.

I left the Aussie's apartment this morning and was getting into my car (after seeing Dr. T's Once-and-(I hope not)-Future Boyfriend waiting for the bus on the corner), and I noticed this note underneath my windshield wiper.


Wow! I had no idea I was carrying on an affair with someone named Chris! Guess my social calendar's busier than I thought. I can't wait to see if I get any more notes the next time I'm parked at the Aussie's. But I do hope Chris's baby mama kicks him in the nuts. Hard.

...but it's actually a lesson. In the value of persistence. Perseverance. In the mantra of if-at-first-you-don't-succeed.

I used to think that I couldn't grow my hair long. After getting it cut from mid-back to shoulder length the summer before 6th grade, all subsequent attempts to grow it out were too puffy, too flat, or just not right. I decided I was a short-haired girl for the duration.

Then in the summer of 2004 I decided to give it one more go. This time I didn't give up as soon as it started looking weird. I hung on through the odd bits that wouldn't lay down flat, the days that it just seemed to hang there. I made a deal with myself to let it grow. To not give up. To get trims, style, and color as needed, but not to go back to my short hair comfort zone for at least one year. As anyone who talked to me (last summer especially) knows, I almost caved in and chopped it off many many times. But something always stopped me. And I think it was a desire to stop going for the "easiest side of the easy". Hair seems like a ridiculous thing to learn from, but by letting it grow I think I might have grown a little too. In patience, consistency, and steadiness.

Who knew all of that was in my head?

Hey y'all. Sorry to be gone so long (again). As I told my friend E, it's the day-to-day lack of pressure of not having a job that's leading me to slack off so much. After all, things can always get done tomorrow, right?

Anyway, one of the things I have been doing is submitting photos of my apartment to Apartment Therapy's Smallest-Coolest apartment design contest. So far I'm not getting plaudits for my design sense (this crowd is very into the sleek, spare (boring!) modernist look), but I have had people comment that they'd like to have brunch at my place. But only if I serve waffles! (How'd they know that was what I fixed for the Aussie and I this morning? They were only toaster waffles, though.) So go check it out and throw me a vote if you like what you see.