I have a terrible sense of smell. No, really. It's terrible. In the past two years living with my charming housemates at "The Cottage," a tiny home whose unfortunate floor plan had been remodeled countless times since the house was erected in 1911, I can't count the number of times a mysterious smell would drift out of some ancient crevice of the house into the living room and a housemate would grimace, turn to me, and say, "Do you smell that?"
No. I never did. It's lucky that I don't wander around smelling homeless all the time (at least no one has ever accused me of this).
There are two unfortunate things that spring from this weird semi-disability: Scent is the strongest sense tied to memory, and the sense of smell is also closely tied to taste. This means that very rarely do I have the experience in which a scent will hit me and cause a flood of memories to come back, and I don't think I'll ever be that much of a "foodie," since I don't have a keen sense of taste either.
But this morning, as I sipped and truly savored my soy pumpkin spice latte, I discovered my own shortcut around both of those unfortunate disabilities: beverages. As I enjoyed the warm comfort of my latte, all of a sudden Jamie was standing next to me and we were chatting about something in the St. John's Starbucks that she kept in business during her college career. This made me think about the whiskey I had been sipping last night, and how, as I savored the warm musky burn, I was actually sitting next to Zach at the Fixin' To as he got lost in a flood of thoughts about a moment he shared with a homeless man on the bus that day.
In the past few months since graduating, almost all of my close friends have moved away, one by one, to chase their next dreams. Thankfully, each one of them has left me a beverage. Chai tea puts me in the sweet and calming presence of Hillary, her intense blue eyes attentively listening. The right vanilla latte pulls me back to the Flying M Coffee House with Katie, Haley, Lauren, and Liz, talking about inappropriate things way too loud for way too long. A good craft beer transports me to my parents in Plew's Brews the weekend they rushed up to Portland to be with me or just in their living room in Boise, a cup of milk puts me in the kitchen shooting shit with my brother at 3:00 a.m. The list goes on and on.
So this morning, I raise my cup to beverages.
(...Pun intended.)
And, I thank each of my loved ones for giving me a beverage that can instantly take me back to our time together, and that we will enjoy together again next time we meet.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Then I confess, hear on my knee...
...before High Heaven and you
That before you, and next unto high heaven,
I love
COHEED AND CAMBRIA.
That's right. I tired of hiding it. "Danielle," you may say, "Are you a 16 year old boy? For what reason have you not grown out of that phase? Why would you like such a band?" Worse yet, you might say, "Who the hell is Coheed and Cambria?"
Alright. So maybe my love of Coheed and Cambria springs from a deeply held desire not to grow up. Maybe it speaks to poor taste. Maybe it speaks to AWESOME taste.
Or maybe it conjurs memories of driving to school with my brother my sophomore year of high school with "In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3" blasting in his little silver hyundai, the smell of stale fast food and teenage boy thick in the air, nauseously weaving down I-84 to see, for the umpteenth day in a row, if we could make it to school in the 8 minutes and 13 seconds it took for the song to play out. Maybe some days the car was filled with angsty sibling tension over one of us thinking the other was making us late, or whatever other stupid thing we were bitching about. But some days as we ripped up the freeway, tailgating to within 4 feet in our desperation to get to school on time and singing/screaming along with INKSSE:3, there was an unmistakable sense of camaraderie, flying on the epic music through a bright Idaho morning to a school which we generally considered a wasteland. I think we listened to that song every morning for at least an entire semester.
Coheed and Cambria will forever remind me of those mornings, but I would like to take this time to argue that they are actually a really awesome band in their own right. What other band uses their entire discography to tell one epic Sci Fi tale? That's right, all five studio albums tell the story of "The Amory Wars" written by lead singer Claudio Sanchez, and the epic Sci Fi tale told through Coheed's music has been turned into a comic book series and a full length novel. Come on. What nerd reading this isn't totally excited right now?
Sci Fi + Rock = Magic.
Beside that completely awesome fact, I just dig the music. According to Wikipedia, Coheed is "Progressive Rock," but there is something so epic and expansive about their style that makes it almost operatic in scope, which may also explain my love of them. I love a band that's not afraid to make a song as long as it needs to be. In addition, they morph towards metal, punk, and pop when they need to, making them delightfully varied and diverse in their soundscape.
While I'm on my soapbox preaching the good news/Simultaneously using this blog as a music confessional...
I still listen to The Alkaline Trio on a regular basis, and occasionally indulge in My Chemical Romance and sometimes Fall Out Boy. Don't look at me like that. It's fun music. I will no longer apologize for my behavior, and I will embrace my identity as a preteen boy!
Anyway. Getting back to business. Coheed and Cambria. Next time you have to do something in approximately 8 minutes and 13 seconds, I challenge you to listen to this song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wp_Now6WDRc
and not feel totally epic while accomplishing your 8-minute task.
That before you, and next unto high heaven,
I love
COHEED AND CAMBRIA.
That's right. I tired of hiding it. "Danielle," you may say, "Are you a 16 year old boy? For what reason have you not grown out of that phase? Why would you like such a band?" Worse yet, you might say, "Who the hell is Coheed and Cambria?"
Alright. So maybe my love of Coheed and Cambria springs from a deeply held desire not to grow up. Maybe it speaks to poor taste. Maybe it speaks to AWESOME taste.
Or maybe it conjurs memories of driving to school with my brother my sophomore year of high school with "In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3" blasting in his little silver hyundai, the smell of stale fast food and teenage boy thick in the air, nauseously weaving down I-84 to see, for the umpteenth day in a row, if we could make it to school in the 8 minutes and 13 seconds it took for the song to play out. Maybe some days the car was filled with angsty sibling tension over one of us thinking the other was making us late, or whatever other stupid thing we were bitching about. But some days as we ripped up the freeway, tailgating to within 4 feet in our desperation to get to school on time and singing/screaming along with INKSSE:3, there was an unmistakable sense of camaraderie, flying on the epic music through a bright Idaho morning to a school which we generally considered a wasteland. I think we listened to that song every morning for at least an entire semester.
Coheed and Cambria will forever remind me of those mornings, but I would like to take this time to argue that they are actually a really awesome band in their own right. What other band uses their entire discography to tell one epic Sci Fi tale? That's right, all five studio albums tell the story of "The Amory Wars" written by lead singer Claudio Sanchez, and the epic Sci Fi tale told through Coheed's music has been turned into a comic book series and a full length novel. Come on. What nerd reading this isn't totally excited right now?
Sci Fi + Rock = Magic.
Beside that completely awesome fact, I just dig the music. According to Wikipedia, Coheed is "Progressive Rock," but there is something so epic and expansive about their style that makes it almost operatic in scope, which may also explain my love of them. I love a band that's not afraid to make a song as long as it needs to be. In addition, they morph towards metal, punk, and pop when they need to, making them delightfully varied and diverse in their soundscape.
While I'm on my soapbox preaching the good news/Simultaneously using this blog as a music confessional...
I still listen to The Alkaline Trio on a regular basis, and occasionally indulge in My Chemical Romance and sometimes Fall Out Boy. Don't look at me like that. It's fun music. I will no longer apologize for my behavior, and I will embrace my identity as a preteen boy!
Anyway. Getting back to business. Coheed and Cambria. Next time you have to do something in approximately 8 minutes and 13 seconds, I challenge you to listen to this song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wp_Now6WDRc
and not feel totally epic while accomplishing your 8-minute task.
Monday, September 26, 2011
Danielle Creates a Blog/Coping with Office work
BLOG!!!!!
That's an onomotopoeia if ever I've heard one.
Since I began working ye olde 8-5 office job, I've spent quite a bit of time in a cubicle doing mindless data entry, giving me plenty of time to sit and reflect on life, the world etc. This put the idea into my head of starting a blog as a forum to reflect on these musings and turn them into some kind of meaningful way to distill my thoughts into a kind of artistic outlet.
As an actor/singer/artist type currently lacking in an outlet, this blog idea has been niggling in the back of my mind, and I am now, at this MOMENT, taking the plunge and going for it. So. Here is my first blog post.
Ways of coping with a mindless office-monkey job, in no particular order:
1. Starting a blog while you're at work.
(Minimizing this window whenever someone important looking walks by.)
2. Wasting time on facebook.
3. A constant stream of music--
a. Discovering new bands
b. Rediscovering old bands I used to love
c. Trying to type along with the rhythm of the music--DIY percussion.
4. Listening to TED talks. Openly weeping at my computer when they get really intense, making my cubicle mates wonder why I'm weeping at whatever data I'm currently entering.
5. Playing with hand-me-up toys that my coworker brings in to work
6. Chain emails forwarded from coworkers
7. Coworkers that are funny/entertaining/otherwise awesome
8. Experimenting with various levels of caffeination
9. Ten minute breaks in the company gym
10. Happy Hour
Finally, I don't mean to imply that everyone that works in this office is "coping" with their office job, as I assume that many people here enjoy their jobs. I assume that because not everything here is a data entry temp job like mine--there is a fairly sizable finance department, a massive IT department...and for many people this is probably not a job but an interesting career. That said, there is a widely popular activity that could be thought of as a coping mechanism for the fairly stationary work that takes place in your average office. I don't participate in it, but it seems like half this company does.
11. Running marathons. Seriously, it's intense. There is a surprisingly large population at this company that runs anywhere from 3-13 miles before work and on their lunch hours, and they do their "long runs" on the weekend. So these people subject themselves to 40 hours a week of sitting quietly at a computer in a little box, and then spend like 20 hours a week just running all over the city of Portland. It's an interesting impulse, and I think it speaks on some level to the human need to have "wrought" their own existence through some kind of intense physical effort. My own Dad, a mechanical engineer for HP, is a third degree black belt in Taekwondo and an expert skiier and mountain biker. If he can't be intensely active physically, he starts to go a little stir crazy.
I mean really, just thinking about the concept of "going to the gym," it's like we've all agreed that we'll go sit in an office all day dealing with machines, but then outside of work you're also socially obligated to go move your body on a bunch of different machines so that it looks to the rest of society like you actually do something with your body. Weird.
Then of course, there's the flip side of that coin evident in the handful of people whose bodies have become obese from this modern lifestyle in which the physical "work" that you are contributing to society is made up completely of the activities of typing, moving your mouse, "swiveling," and occasionally rolling. The rest of the work happens between your brain and the computer/internet. Rather than running all the hell over the city of Portland or plugging their bodies into a treadmill or eliptical after unplugging from the computer, they are, theoretically, finding bliss and escape in delicious foods.
My recently-discovered way of physically coping with this lifestyle?
12. Bikram yoga. Thank you Groupon.
Signing off.
Oh wait! P.S. Credit needs to be given to my dear friend Roya for giving me the inspiration to do this! She is a super fabulous Communications guru and runs a badass blog. Check it out at royaghorbani.wordpress.com
That's an onomotopoeia if ever I've heard one.
Since I began working ye olde 8-5 office job, I've spent quite a bit of time in a cubicle doing mindless data entry, giving me plenty of time to sit and reflect on life, the world etc. This put the idea into my head of starting a blog as a forum to reflect on these musings and turn them into some kind of meaningful way to distill my thoughts into a kind of artistic outlet.
As an actor/singer/artist type currently lacking in an outlet, this blog idea has been niggling in the back of my mind, and I am now, at this MOMENT, taking the plunge and going for it. So. Here is my first blog post.
Ways of coping with a mindless office-monkey job, in no particular order:
1. Starting a blog while you're at work.
(Minimizing this window whenever someone important looking walks by.)
2. Wasting time on facebook.
3. A constant stream of music--
a. Discovering new bands
b. Rediscovering old bands I used to love
c. Trying to type along with the rhythm of the music--DIY percussion.
4. Listening to TED talks. Openly weeping at my computer when they get really intense, making my cubicle mates wonder why I'm weeping at whatever data I'm currently entering.
5. Playing with hand-me-up toys that my coworker brings in to work
6. Chain emails forwarded from coworkers
7. Coworkers that are funny/entertaining/otherwise awesome
8. Experimenting with various levels of caffeination
9. Ten minute breaks in the company gym
10. Happy Hour
Finally, I don't mean to imply that everyone that works in this office is "coping" with their office job, as I assume that many people here enjoy their jobs. I assume that because not everything here is a data entry temp job like mine--there is a fairly sizable finance department, a massive IT department...and for many people this is probably not a job but an interesting career. That said, there is a widely popular activity that could be thought of as a coping mechanism for the fairly stationary work that takes place in your average office. I don't participate in it, but it seems like half this company does.
11. Running marathons. Seriously, it's intense. There is a surprisingly large population at this company that runs anywhere from 3-13 miles before work and on their lunch hours, and they do their "long runs" on the weekend. So these people subject themselves to 40 hours a week of sitting quietly at a computer in a little box, and then spend like 20 hours a week just running all over the city of Portland. It's an interesting impulse, and I think it speaks on some level to the human need to have "wrought" their own existence through some kind of intense physical effort. My own Dad, a mechanical engineer for HP, is a third degree black belt in Taekwondo and an expert skiier and mountain biker. If he can't be intensely active physically, he starts to go a little stir crazy.
I mean really, just thinking about the concept of "going to the gym," it's like we've all agreed that we'll go sit in an office all day dealing with machines, but then outside of work you're also socially obligated to go move your body on a bunch of different machines so that it looks to the rest of society like you actually do something with your body. Weird.
Then of course, there's the flip side of that coin evident in the handful of people whose bodies have become obese from this modern lifestyle in which the physical "work" that you are contributing to society is made up completely of the activities of typing, moving your mouse, "swiveling," and occasionally rolling. The rest of the work happens between your brain and the computer/internet. Rather than running all the hell over the city of Portland or plugging their bodies into a treadmill or eliptical after unplugging from the computer, they are, theoretically, finding bliss and escape in delicious foods.
My recently-discovered way of physically coping with this lifestyle?
12. Bikram yoga. Thank you Groupon.
Signing off.
Oh wait! P.S. Credit needs to be given to my dear friend Roya for giving me the inspiration to do this! She is a super fabulous Communications guru and runs a badass blog. Check it out at royaghorbani.wordpress.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)