memories 4 Comments

For Diana’s Listening Pleasure

I found out pretty early on in our relationship that Aaron was a big music fan. We went to Ann Arbor for our third date, a triple-date with Mary/Drew and Heather/Garza. Aaron definitely tended to gravitate toward the record stores while we were there, and was bummed that he didn’t have more money to spend on records (especially since I was jobless and had made him pay for my lunch at Amer’s). So, naturally, I was curious about the music he was listening to, as I had never heard of ANY of it.

Before Spring Break, he made me a mixtape. The spine of the insert read: “For Diana’s Listening Pleasure: selections from Aaron’s CD collection.” On the tape were the following songs:

Side A:

  1. Wally Pleasant – Stupid Day Job
  2. Sugar – Your Favorite Thing
  3. Frank Black – Fazer Eyes
  4. Catherine Wheel – I Want To Touch You
  5. Pure – Lemonade
  6. Mighty Mighty Bosstones – Someday I Suppose
  7. Ash – Jack Names The Planets
  8. Jon Spencer Blues Explosion – Blue X Man
  9. Pixies – All Over The World
  10. Man or Astro-Man? – Sferic Waves
  11. Sebadoh – Magnet’s Coil

Side B:

  1. Dirty Three – Better Go Home Now
  2. Folk Implosion – Lo-Fi Suicide
  3. Pavement – Give It A Day
  4. Clutch – Big News I
  5. Henry Rollins – Breaking Up Is Hard To Do
  6. Rollins Band – Right Here Too Much
  7. The Amps – Tipp City
  8. Afghan Whigs – Debonair
  9. Sentridoh – Perfect Excuse
  10. 24 Gone – Girl Of Colours
  11. Sugar – Explode And Make Up

I listened to this tape nonstop during my week of Spring Break in Parma, so much so that my step-Gary would often get up without saying a word and just hit the stop button on my boom box, then quietly sit back down again.

Over the years, I continued to listen to this tape. This tape was so much a staple of my listening repertoire that I frantically performed cassette tape surgery with scotch tape when it got caught in my aging boom box. After that, I hesitated to play it very often, just in case the Afghan Whigs would get caught in the heads of my tape player again. I eventually stored the tape away with my other tapes, listening instead to the follow-up tapes of Rollins spoken word and Sugar and 24 Gone and Afghan Whigs and Catherine Wheel.

A few weeks ago, I unearthed the tape from a box in the bottom of a closet, and spent a couple of days hunting down digital versions of the mixtape songs. And now, I’m sharing all 100MB of 90’s goodness with you:

[music_sampler.zip – 103MB]

I didn’t include the Rollins spoken word, but everything else is there, in the exact version I have on tape. (Note: Three files are in iTunes .m4a format; the rest are mp3s.)

I now have this set up as a playlist on my iPod. Funny how things change. Funny how all things old are new again.

college 5 Comments

You Asked For It…

…And here it is. A sampling of photos taken during the Spring of 1996, hosted on Flickr as a photoset. These photos feature myself, Mary, Liz, Heather, Garza, Drew, Steve, and Aaron. Last names have been omitted to protect the innocent and those currently in the teaching profession. 🙂

Feel free to comment either here or on Flickr. Feel free to sign up for your own free Flickr account and upload your own photos of our craziness! The more, the merrier.

Update, 9:45pm: As for a Where Are They Now sort of thing, I just wanted to mention that Steve appears to be an instructor at Ohio Technical College (as revealed by a Google search). This was as of June 2005.

Update: 10:00pm: Further Googling reveals that Liz was a grad student in theater design at the University of Louisiana at Monroe in the Fall of 1999. I believe I already knew that at some point, though, as I once found her e-mail address and contacted her, only to be smacked down with a “I hate that all my old friends are happy” e-mail. I haven’t been able to find any more recent information about Liz.

weight loss 1 Comment

Diet & Fitness Update, Week #12

Holding steady at 209.5 pounds. This is good, really, considering that we went all ballistic on sushi and BW3 and yummy Irish food and beer during Anime Punch over the weekend of March 31st – April 2nd. I had mentioned that I would be pleasantly surprised if my weight held steady — and so I am.

Continuing to do my PUSH workouts. Still not doing cardio like I should. Walking briskly for half an hour a day.

Continuing to eat five small meals a day. Breakfast has been cold cereal or a protein shake or one of our few remaining Slim-Fast low-carb shakes. Morning snackie has usually been an apple. Lunch has usually been lettuce salad with dressing. Afternoon snackie has been almonds. Dinner has been a little evil: Dreamfields macaroni and cheese, or wraps, or something quicker than baking chicken and steaming veggies.

So, not much to report this week. No big weight losses, but no gains, either. I’m counting that as a positive thing.

Next week: Weigh and Measure for the end of Month #3. Maybe I’ll share a swimsuit photo with the internets. Who knows?

gardening 1 Comment

Holy Shit, It’s Alive!

Last year, I planted Lilies of the Valley, some purchased from Michigan Bulb and some gifted from Scott at work. None of them appreciated the fact that I often forget to water my outdoor plants. And that I had planted them underneath an overhang, so they wouldn’t receive any direct rainfall. Or sun.

In a last-ditch effort to salvage my plants, I moved them from the overhang to a large container outside. I had intended to move the container inside before the snows came — but, like most of my autumn garden chores, that didn’t happen. So, this container of Lilies of the Valley has been sitting outside the back door all winter. I expected that I’d killed them from drought long before the snow came, anyway, and had pretty much written them off.

Imagine my surprise when I opened the back door this evening and found this:

How’d that happen?!

Add one more to the list of Not Quite Dead plants, I guess. Also on the list: my poor, neglected rose; the tiger lilies Scott gave me; my miniature daffodils; and the seedlings I’m growing indoors.

While I’m on the subject of gardening, let me air one of my grievances about my back yard:

All around our yard are these fantastic arborvitae tree-hedges. They’re easily 20 feet tall, and act as a very effective privacy screen. For some reason, though, whoever planted the arborvitae didn’t want to block out the next-door neighbors. As a result, every time I go outside to garden, the neighbors’ dog starts barking at me.

Now, I’m not scared of dogs, and I’m not scared of the neighbors. In fact, we’ve never officially met the neighbors, even after two years of living here. So, when the dog comes out and starts barking at me, and the young adult male son (Christopher, I believe) comes out onto the deck to see what the dog’s barking at, and finds me squinting up at him into the sunshine, it makes for an awkward moment. Especially when the only thing I can think of to say is, “Hello, puppy dog!”

Yeah, I guess you could say I have a way with words. *facepalm*

I’d like to screen off this section of fence with a natural screen, as well… but, now that I see how high up that deck is, I’m not sure I want trees or shrubs quite that tall on that side. You know? I’d like to have SOME sun in my damn yard. I was thinking of planting my hollyhocks there, but I don’t think they’ll grow THAT tall. If my Roses of Sharon have survived the winter, I could plant them over there, and they’d eventually grow tall enough, I think. It would take a while, though.

I don’t know. I do know that I don’t want to have to stay right by the back door for the rest of forever, in the shielded corner where the house meets the garage. If I were a social creature, maybe I wouldn’t mind. As I am, though, I just want to be left alone to garden in peace.

college 18 Comments

Ten Years Ago Today

In the Spring of 1996, I had just returned to BGSU after a semester of Academic Suspension. I was assigned to live in Rodgers Hall, and my randomly selected roommate was Mary.

This is important. Follow this.

Mary was attending BGSU because she had followed her boyfriend, Andrew, up from the University of Dayton. Andrew was originally from Toledo and had returned there after he had — flunked out? Quit? My memory isn’t quite sure of which. At any rate, he came home and his girlfriend came along, to be near him. And I was rooming with her.

Mary had recently gone to a party where a couple of Andrew’s high school buddies were in attendance. Apparently, she had told one of the guys that he dressed like he was gay. This, of course, had pissed the guy off, and made him not want to be at any parties with his buddy’s girlfriend anymore.

When Mary found out about my parentage (can girls be bastards?), she remembered an amusing anecdote about the young man she’d offended, and how he had mentioned that he needed to find a girl without a father. She decided to hook us up, kind of as an apology for telling him he dressed gay. At Mary’s request, Andrew gave her Aaron’s e-mail address to give to me.

And the rest is history. ^_^

Ten years ago today, I wrote about this new boyfriend of mine, and what we did and how I felt. I was fairly graphic, as I didn’t want to forget any single moment, so there will be some judicious editing of explicit things that I (and Aaron, I’m sure) would not be comfortable sharing with the internet.

As a final aside before I get into the journal entry: at this point in my life, I still considered myself Mormon, but inactive. I was, in fact, a virgin, and I am not at ALL ashamed to admit that. Aaron, on the other hand, was totally wanting some nookie (by our third date), but got derailed when I told him that I was a Mormon and didn’t have sex. Yet.

So, with all the backstory out of the way, on with our story:
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