All This Pain And Strife

Posted on March 4, 2012 by manda

So, here’s the deal. I love Hanson.

It isn’t ironic. It isn’t nostalgic. It isn’t like loving any other band. Especially if you’ve been a fan since 1997 when MMMBop first hit the airwaves. It’s a little more all encompassing.

And if you’re one of us, maybe you’ve felt like the boys are part of your family and maybe you cried, just a little, when Taylor married a fan that wasn’t you. In the beginning, maybe you wrote stories or scoured the internet for websites that would unequivocally tell you that Isaac’s favorite color was green and Zac really loved Dr Pepper. Like I did, you probably met some of the best friends you would ever have bonding over your love of this band, learning all the words to their songs, and papering your bedroom with pictures torn out of teen magazines. You might have done some crazy things for tickets to shows, back when they still sold out stadiums, like sneak out of your house and sleep on the streets to be first in line. I could recount a hundred hilarious and ridiculous stories that don’t sound hilarious (or sane) when told to someone who didn’t live it. Someone who didn’t know.

Now, 15 years later, maybe you feel personally affronted when they get a bad haircut because sometimes they just get it so right. Maybe you find some of the things they say idiotic or even downright offensive without the blinders of youth you once wore. It’s possible that you roll your eyes when anyone brings up their wives and intone in a sarcastic voice that you’re just here for the music – but secretly you might think Zac would be much happier if he ended up with you. You honestly do think the music is great; it makes you happy; you quote lyrics back and forth with those friends you still have from 15 years earlier. When they tour near you, you go – maybe to one show or maybe to a lot of shows – and every time, the lights go down, you sing along at the top of your lungs and dance without abandon. You know all the concert rituals; you know that when Where’s The Love is played, everyone will swing an arm around during the ‘round and round’ part or that when the harmonica shows up, If Only is about to start and you’re in for 4 minutes of jumping. After this many years, it’s possible that you get some serious air now. You know Zac can’t spell and maybe you think it’s cute. You seriously question Taylor’s fashion choices and when Ike gets on a topic, you probably just smile and know you’re in for a ramble.

And if you’re not a fan now or if you were never a fan, none of that made any sense to you at all. That’s okay, too. It’s almost impossible to put into words what it is to be a Hanson fan or how to explain that sometimes it’s just hard to love them while in the same breath you’re humming Crazy Beautiful.

Now that I’ve gotten all of that word vomit out of the way, I can move on to what this blog is really about. I know one of the first things I mentioned was that this wasn’t nostalgia-based fandom, but…that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a touch of nostalgia. Things were a lot different 15 years ago and one of the more hilarious differences, in my opinion, was the concert signs.

If you go to a show now, you won’t see a single one. Sure, there are still the girls in the outrageous homemade shirts waving glowsticks around, but concert signs seem to have died out sometime in the great black hole that was the years between This Time Around and Underneath.  Obviously there were a number of factors that stopped this phenomenon – a maturing fan base, a married band member, a diminished desire to block the view of every screaming girl behind you – but whatever the reasons, holding up signs at a Hanson concert is now a thing of the past.

Luckily, it’s a part of the past that my friends and I documented fairly well. In general, here’s how this worked – a night before a concert, we’d get together with our cheap paint, markers, poster board, and we’d create our signs. Then, after a show we’d discard them somewhere and start all over next time.

These are some of the best (and most inappropriate.)

These signs were the first that my best friend, Aja, and I ever created for the first show we ever went to and they were obviously made with whatever we had hanging around our houses.  They were also utterly and completely pointless from the standpoint of Hanson seeing them. We had lawn tickets, which basically meant that we were about 100 miles away from the stage but we carried them anyway.

Mine is the top torn cardboard masterpiece. I can’t bring myself to explain the sign fully, so I’ll just say that it was related to something I had written at the time. Also, I was mocking them even at the height of my fandom, noting on the side that Mmmbop is a very deep song!

The highlights of Aja’s sign, in my opinion, are the flower next to the I (a throwback to the MMMBop video, maybe?) and the actual drawing of pants over her name.  Also, Ike’s face in 1998 was pretty phenomenal.

The next concert was when we got a little more serious with our signs. Aja and I had secretly camped out (and ended up on the news) to score 5th row floor seats for a stadium show in Hartford, CT.  Being that close means that the band would see whatever signs we held up. I’ve done my girls a favor and cropped us all out of these photos because…well, come on.

Aja stuck with the pants dropping theme and I moved on from the vague no one will understand this sign to something a little more straightforward. These signs were huge and we got a lot of colorful comments on them while waiting for the show to start and while holding them up during the show. Sorry, Taylor, we didn’t care enough about you to make a sign.

We also had a smaller sign that read: “I GOT MOE. DARYL HOOK ME UP!” I can’t for the life of me remember who exactly Daryl is, but MOE was the fanclub and could, in theory, get us backstage. Daryl did not hook any of us up (presumably because he read our other signs and ran.)

Now, as mentioned, the girls that I went with didn’t care enough about Taylor to make signs. That didn’t mean that our other friend whom we met up with at the show didn’t. Her sign eclipsed ours in size by a long shot and is pretty much my favorite concert sign ever.

This one isn’t exactly a sign, but on our way to sleep outside of a Naval base for a concert we thought we should let everyone know about our love. So we pulled off the interstate and armed with a glass paint pen, decorated my car. The end result was that I couldn’t get the paint off afterwards for weeks, no matter how hard I scrubbed.  I was a fan, but I certainly didn’t want to be driving around this way. Alas, I had no choice. I couldn’t even tell you the number of people who beeped at me and pointed while driving by until it faded away!

Our next sign was a lyric sign. It was also a lie – neither of us were 20.  I don’t know what we thought that sign would do for us, but I’m sure we had motive. If I remember correctly, we never even held it up because that day was so hot and miserable, we didn’t even care.

We also bought a round canvas and painted the MOE symbol on it. Always hoping to get backstage by virtue of being in a fanclub. Also, it never worked. Also, we threw these signs in the trash on our way out.

Then, near the end of the This Time Around shows, the sign fury started dying out. This was my last sign, which I clearly spent a significant amount of time on.  Just Play Lucy – I don’t want you to get naked anymore, I don’t care about going backstage, just play the song.  FYI, they didn’t play it.

(Yes, we were one of the groups that brought tambourines. No, we didn’t play them during the show. Yes, we did probably drive you crazy with it in line beforehand. Sorry, we’re not sorry.)

So, basically, there’re a lot of things I miss about the concerts of yore, but dirty signs are number one.

Posted in fun, music, travel | Tagged , | 6 Comments

The Needle That Sings In Your Heart

Posted on January 19, 2012 by manda

I’ve debated a bit about whether I should (and whether I could) write about what I did last night. There’s a part of me that knows that no matter what I say, I’m not going to be able to accurately reflect what it felt like but I want to try anyway.

So, what did you do last night? Me? Oh, not much. Just saw Jeff Mangum in concert.

I’m not going to go into the full history of Jeff or Neutral Milk Hotel, but I will say that seeing him perform was not something I thought would ever happen in my lifetime. I got into Neutral Milk Hotel late – in 2000, about a year after they disbanded and Jeff essentially disappeared from the public eye, I heard In The Aeroplane Over The Sea. A friend played a couple tracks over the phone to me and that was all it took. From that moment on Aeroplane, On Avery Island, and later Live From Jittery Joes (not to mention any b-side bootleg I could come by) became the soundtrack of my life.

Mangum’s voice sang me through falling in love and getting my heart broken. It was a windows down, warm summer day and the heart swelling feeling of singing along at the top of your lungs. It carried me through college, through moves, making and losing friends, life changing diagnosis, the most amazing days of my young life and the worst.

In the 12 years since I’d first heard it, not a week has gone by where I haven’t listened to Neutral Milk Hotel in some capacity. Some weeks, not a day passed without it. And in all those years I knew that hearing this voice through my speakers was all I was going to get.

Until that wasn’t true anymore. Until Jeff played a few full sets that I wasn’t able to make it to and then…scheduled more. One of these newly scheduled shows was 20 minutes from my apartment and I was online the second tickets went on sale buying one.

I’ll be honest, even after I bought a ticket and the date approached, it didn’t seem quite real. Then, the date arrived and I was rushing home after work to get changed, grab my ticket confirmation and head to the venue.

The venue was a beautiful old theater built in the early 1900s that mostly focuses on plays with the occasional music act thrown in. I thought it was the perfect place for Mangum to play. Intimate, ornate and beautiful with an old timey feel that seemed perfectly suited to the music we were about to hear.

The opening act, The Music Tapes, fronted by Julian Koster who played with Jeff in Neutral Milk Hotel, was fun and irreverent. A 7 foot metronome, a singing television and a little marching through the audience while playing music.  I enjoyed their performance, but if I’m being honest, I probably would have enjoyed anything. I mean, I was about to see Jeff Mangum, you know? I was already thrilled out of my mind.

They set up the stage for Jeff – a chair surrounded by 4 guitars, a few bottles of water and a sheet music stand with his set list on it. Finally, the lights went down and he walked out. Baggy pants, a plaid shirt and a newsboy cap with chin length brown hair – you’d never know that it wasn’t 1998 or that most of us had been waiting at least 10 years to see this. Everyone erupted in hollering and clapping while he quickly strode across the stage, took a seat, picked up a guitar and started playing Two-Headed Boy Part 2.

I couldn’t tone down the wild grin that had spread across my face while I leaned forward, hands clasped, and listened in dead silence with the rest of the crowd.

Before starting the next song, he quietly said, “You can sing along.” He played the opening notes to Holland 1945 and the whole crowd yelled out the countdown 2…1, 2, 3, 4 and we sang. After it was over, a girl near me exclaimed “I just sang with Jeff Mangum!” in a shocked tone and that was exactly how I felt.

The setlist for the show couldn’t have been more perfect. I teared up when he brought Julian out and they played Engine. Before playing Little Birds he told us that he didn’t play the song much, strummed one note and joked “So, did you like it?” There was so much laughter and joy from both the audience and Jeff.

People shouted out song requests – one guy called out for True Love Will Find You In The End, which Jeff had covered in the past and Jeff replied, “Hey thanks, friend! You too!” Someone asked his favorite color (it’s yellow), someone else yelled out praises that made him laugh. At one point he paused and asked us if we were happy. I yelled out “HELL YES” amongst a chorus of voices yelling out the same. A venue full of people who couldn’t be happier if they tried.

He played King of Carrot Flowers part 1, Naomi, Gardenhead/Leave Me Alone, A Baby For Pree, King of Carrot Flowers part 2 & 3, Oh Comely and Ghost. Each song was better than the last. His voice was perfectly on point the entire time. Everyone in the crowd threw back their heads and sang out I love you Jesus Christ; Jesus Christ I love you, yes I do with all their hearts.

Then he started Two-Headed Boy to close out the show. It was flawless and overwhelming. I spent a portion of the song with my eyes closed so I could listen better. At the end of the song, he stopped singing and told us to sing. 1600 people singing the ending de de de’s as Julian and the rest of The Music Tapes came out and they went right into The Fool. To say people momentarily lost their shit was an understatement. The horns, the accordion, the percussion, the guitar – it was perfect, it was beautiful, and it was entirely unexpected.

After The Fool, they all walked off stage and the crowd immediately leapt to their feet, cheering and clapping until Jeff and Julian came back out to play In The Aeroplane Over The Sea. Julian played the singing saw while Jeff played guitar and sang it out. It sounded exactly like every emotion I’d ever felt while listening to that song through all the moments of the last 12 years of my life. Every time I felt overwhelmed in love, every time I laughed until I cried, every beautiful second was sounding back at me for those final 4 minutes.

Then, as quickly as it began, it was over. The lights came up and we all poured out of the building and stumbled to our cars. For a minute after I got in my car, I just sat in silence – a smile playing across my face and my eyes welled up with fresh tears. Had it really happened? Was I really there? I keep describing it as overwhelming and it was. It was perfectly, joyously, heart wrenchingly overwhelming but it had happened. I saw Jeff Mangum. I watched his smile light up a room and I heard my life pour out of his mouth while I sang along.

And a small part of me – the tiniest part that only I can see – feels like a different girl because of it.

Posted in fun, jeff mangum, music | 1 Comment

A Blog About Blogging

Posted on January 12, 2012 by manda

So, let’s be frank here shall we? Blogging…I’m not good at it. Don’t get me wrong, I have all the best intentions. I have moments practically every day where I think “That would be such a funny blog” or “I should really write about this” but then…well, I don’t. Maybe I sit down to do it but then my apartment is too cold to stay at the computer or I’m hungry or I need to pee or what is my cat doing or is there a rerun of America’s Next Top Model that I’ve seen 73 times on television? You see where I’m going.

if only I had a laptop, I lament, I would be such an awesome blogger. No, I wouldn’t.

At some point while pondering New Years Resolutions, I thought that I might want to really start updating my blog and writing more. I would talk about everything! I would make goals! I would DIY! I would network! I would be funny! I would be touching! I would share art! I would talk about my day to day life! It would be awesome! Look at your calendar. As I’m writing this, mine says January 12th, which is a full 11 days after the rest of the world had settled into working on their resolutions. Mine haven’t even been written and if I’m being honest, they never will be.

 Okay, I did write some resolutions. But I was drunk and can’t read them. Story of my unhelpful life.

If you’ll allow me a moment to get a little introspective, I believe my problem with blogging is this: any blog that I create is based on the notion that people will have to like me, as a person, for whatever reason, in order to read it. This cuts my readership down to about 5 if I’m being generous. Why? Because here’s the deal – I’m not going to teach you how to cook anything. At best, I may share a photo of something I cooked – at worst, I’ve started eating it before the thought occurs to me. I can’t be expected to take progress pictures, who do you think I am? Replace “cook” with “craft”, “draw”, “DIY” and any other common blog topic that involves the process. Obviously, I’m not eating all of that after completion, but you get what I’m saying.

Did you know I painted this desk? I did. It tasted really great, too.

I’m also not going to give you helpful tips on how to live your life to its full potential or get out of debt or open a 401k like other common blog genres. Why? Because when I’m looking at my electric bill at the same time I’m looking at concert tickets for a concert that’s not even in my state, I’m buying the tickets and worrying about it later. That blog would be called “How To Get In Debt & Stay There.” I also don’t care how you quit your job and are now blogging from beaches in Fiji. Know why? Because in order to have that life you have to write really boring blogs about how other Joe Schmoes can do the same thing and I’m nodding off just thinking about it.

 Full disclosure, I have a 401k. Do you know how it works? I don’t.

I don’t care about SEO. I consider networking just a way to get free drinks. I don’t want to utilize social media to my advantage. I find all that horribly boring and would probably be stomping my way to the computer like Paul Rudd having to clean up his plate in Wet Hot American Summer if I had to read about it without getting paid for it, forget about blogging about it.


Unless utilizing social media to my advantage means getting my favorite celeb to retweet me and fall in love.

So, without a niche, shall we say, anything I blog is about me or things I think are funny/interesting, and relies on you liking me enough to read it. I don’t even like me enough for that. I’m kind of smarmy and have a bad habit of getting fixated on things. Obviously, I think my fixations are funny but twitter has shown me that other people may not always agree. That’s right, I was persecuted and unfollowed for professing my love of Tim Riggins and Hanson.

Professing it 1440 times doesn’t seem like that much to me.

I suppose what I’m getting at here is this: my intentions are to update my blog more. It didn’t work out for me last time because I was trying to have A BLOG where I posted about IMPORTANT GOALS and WORTHY TOPICS and that just doesn’t work for me. I want to be vaguely anonymous in terms of never connecting my social media/blog to my job, and write about that time I dropped my pizza in a puddle and cried about it or that time I gutted a teddy bear to sneak a video camera into a concert.

Welcome to that.

Posted in fun | 7 Comments

You Can’t Win If You Don’t Play

Posted on August 10, 2011 by manda


(source)

Tonight’s Powerball lottery jackpot is a cool 220 million dollars. I fully intend to stop at a convenience store on my drive home to pick up a ticket (followed by hoping, praying and maybe a little ritual dancing). Now, I’m not really a gambling girl – I don’t do well at casinos and I’ve never won a scratch off ticket in my life – however, sometimes my need to be filthy rich compels me. I also have a standing agreement with one of my co-workers that should one of us win multi-millions on a lotto ticket, we give the other 1 million. So I like to play the big ones because, let’s face it, giving away 1 million out of 220 million is so much less painful than giving it away from 4 million.

Yes, I would still be a millionaire but in my fantasy lotto winning world I’m fairly greedy. Stop giving me those looks.

Anyway, I started thinking about what I would actually do if I did win the lottery. Obviously the first thing I would do is probably have a heart attack and die but after being resuscitated – what would I do with that much money? If you’re thinking that I would disappear from my current life just to avoid giving my co-worker her agreed upon amount YOU ARE RIGHT.

Just kidding, I would give it to her. In small bills inside of a leather briefcase while dressed like a mobster. I can get away with that now. I’m a millionaire.

But then what? I would obviously tell my family members and probably make some really obnoxious tweets about it. Then I’d order a pizza with extra cheese (I can afford that now, people), call out from work the next day and go about finding a lawyer and a financial planner. You have to get that boring stuff out of the way first. Invest some, make sure I’m safe and set for the rest of my life and not one of those people who is bankrupt 5 years after winning and blah blah blah.

I wouldn’t quit my job right away. I’d want to keep working until I was so frustrated about something that I could flip a table and scream “I don’t need this shit. I’M RICH AND I’M GOING HOME.”  I’d also want to keep working until I figured out an alternate health insurance solution. Now that I’m rich, that solution may just be move to a European country with universal health care.

I would take my parents, my sister, my grandfather and my aunt out to a really nice dinner where everyone could order lobster without feeling guilty and tip our waiter 100% of the bill. I’d also like to give each one of them a million dollars as well as pay off my parent’s house and my aunt’s debt. I would go home and pay all of my student loans and other debt in full.

Then I’d request a month’s leave from work and fly to Indiana to spend a week with my grandparents down there where I would pay off their house and hire a lifetime chauffer to drive them to doctors’ visits or anywhere they needed to go.

Next I’d go on vacation. Three weeks lounging on a beach in Hawaii in a pink bikini sipping mixed drinks and eating pineapple. Now, if you know me, you’d know that that wouldn’t normally be my first choice of a vacation destination. I burn like crazy, I hate being hot, beaches are boring but…doing something I wouldn’t normally do seems like exactly the right way to unwind and come to terms with my new awesome life.

Once I’m back home, I’d go back to work. Then I’d have to start making the Life Decisions. Where do I want to live? Where do I want to travel? What charities do I want to start making big contributions to? Where is the nearest French bulldog breeder who can give me a puppy immediately? Whose faces do I want to rub my new wealth in? (Okay, that last one seems harsh, but imagine finding some old flame or friend who really did you wrong and just letting them know how amazing everything is for you now. So much fun.)

I can’t imagine I would live much differently than I do now – I would still want to be frugal and green. I wouldn’t want a huge house. I couldn’t even imagine buying a new car (the window finally goes up and down on my old clunker! Who could give up such a luxury?) I would just be able to live where I wanted without so much worry and travel and see places that right now I can only dream about. I’d be able to help out the people who’ve helped me so much until this point. I would never have to work a job that didn’t fulfill me totally. And I could buy a sweater from J. Crew once in a while without it being on super clearance. Pretty awesome.

Fingers crossed that my next blog update is just a big I WONNNNNNNN flashing graphic repeated about 100 times.

 

Posted in goals, money | 1 Comment

Produce Overload

Posted on August 7, 2011 by manda

I am in the midst of what can only refer to as the Ultimate First World Problem. I have too much food. In the above picture, the right hand side are all the vegetables I got in my weekly CSA box and the left hand side is what I picked up at the farmer’s market last week. Despite not being through what I already had, I received another weekly box and took yet another trip to the farmer’s market. My refrigerator is out of control and things are going bad faster than I even realize.

Here is the number one problem with my CSA – I don’t always want to eat what they’re growing that week. Of course, I want to support my local farmers and eat the majority of my meals based on what’s in season but things get to a point where if I have to look at one more squash I am going to kill whoever the first person to decide eating squash was a good idea was.

Right now I’m washing mason jars so I can pickle cucumbers and turn tart cherries in jam but in general, I am in a total cooking and food rut (both of which are corresponding with a general life rut) that I can’t seem to snap out of.

 

Posted in CSA, food, sustainable living | 3 Comments

August Goals

Posted on August 4, 2011 by manda

I’m a little late on August goals because I couldn’t decide what should be my priorities this month.  In the end, I decided to keep it on the lighter side because rigid planning really hasn’t worked out well for me this summer. Not that that’s a bad thing – too much has been spur of the moment, which is awesome and (obviously) not something you can lay out goals for.

So, without further ado:

  1. Stick to a reduced budget.  I was originally planning to do another No Spend Month, but right at the month’s beginning I had a big car repair that kind of threw those plans out of wack. If I can do this reduced budget this month, I’ll carry it on to other months. I want to be more aggressive with debt so I can either plan a big move or a big European vacation come December.
  2. Make pickles with the pickling cucumbers I’ve been getting in my CSA and freezer jam with the tart cherries I picked up at last week’s market. I’ve already bought canning jars – I’m just sticking with recipes that don’t require actual canning procedures. (I don’t want to buy all the extra equipment!)
  3. Get stuff ready to sell at my parents garage sale mid-August. That’ll include not just bringing over small things that I want to sell, but also taking good photos of the furniture I want to get rid of in hopes someone will want to come back to my apartment to pick it up!
  4. Clean and organize my spare room/office. It’s ridiculous.
  5. Turn in my empty soda bottles and stop buying more!
  6. Be happy. Have fun. Eat healthy. Sleep enough.

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July Goals Recap

Posted on July 31, 2011 by manda

1. Pare down and organize. I have too much stuff – it’s cluttering my rooms and it’s cluttering my head. Go through my closet and donate everything I don’t wear. Sell some things on craigslist. Organize my spare room into a more useable art and office room. Kinda. I did start putting things aside to sell at my parents’ tag sale in August and I donated a lot of clothes to Goodwill. I still have a lot to do but I’m really enjoying the more minimalistic direction my life is taking.

2. Bake for someone else. I made chocolate chip cookies and gave them away to a bunch of people and made a chocolate zucchini bread for a new friend who was down in the dumps. It was ridiculously hot this month, so anything involving turning on my oven was really kept to a minimum!

3. Start doing the 30 day shred interspersed with yoga. Yes and no. Been doing a lot more yoga (and thinking about joining in some outdoor group classes once the heat breaks) but the 30 day shred hurt my knees, so I need to come up with a different plan for next month.

4. Do some research on week long meditation retreats. I really liked the look of the Insight Meditation Society but am still looking into other options. I did start a separate savings branch to cover the costs of the retreat I decide to take.

5. Take my aunt out for her birthday to lunch and a movie. We ate delicious burgers and died laughing at Horrible Bosses.

6. Try to plan a day to hang out with a friend I haven’t seen in a while.  Planned and followed through yesterday with my oldest friend. Book shopping, delicious sandwich eating, movie watching. We also made plans for an overnight trip to Boston for a concert and shopping. Super excited.

7. Make a Harry Potter related t-shirt to wear to the last ever midnight showing. Ha! Well, I made a shirt, but instead of making a screen and doing it the proper way like I normally would, I bought spray fabric dye and cut a stencil out of freezer paper. To say that it looked homemade is generous. That’s what happens when you pick laziness! I still wore it, of course. It said “MISCHIEF MANAGED”. How could I not?

8. Send a thank you card and maybe a gift basket to my grandparents in Indiana for the time I spent with them over the last week. No – I did call them a few times though just to chat and they were really happy for that. I think sometimes your time is nicer than any gift.

Bye July 2011! You were pretty good.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Harry Potter

Posted on July 15, 2011 by manda

Last night I went to the last ever midnight premier for a Harry Potter movie. It was what I’d come to expect from these experiences – long lines of people waiting to get in, chatting about our excitement with new faces who’d be our new best friends for the brief hours where we wait, rushes to get the best seat, then more waiting. Invariably, people will be decked out in full costume. A Mad Eye Moody will try to get the whole theater to do the wave, which we will and the closer we get, someone will start calling out the minutes left until it starts to which everyone else will cheer.

There’s a lot of pent up energy. This time, more than usual because we all have a sense that this is the final time we’ll be in a group like this, sharing our love for a group of people that we’ve come to know as family and a story we’ve come to feel as our own.

It’s never a quiet group, but I have to say that last night’s premier was different. Instead of a din throughout the whole movie, it was as if the whole crowd acted as a single entity. We all laughed at the same moments, cheered at the same moments, clapped at the same moments, and cried together at the same moments.

This is the world and the culture JK Rowling created. We knew what was going to happen. We read every word that was written. We’d already seen Snape’s true colors and discovered what Harry didn’t know about his fate. And yet? We sat there in dead silence while Harry watched Snape’s memories and made his way out to the forbidden forest, resolved to do what we already had accepted that he must. The only sound in the crowd of hundreds was that of muffled sighs and sniffling from everyone, male and female, young and old.

I’m truly sad that this whole experience, the books and now their movie adaptations, are over, and as we all shuffled off to our cars at 2:30am this morning I couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed with a gratitude at being able to be a part of it at all.

I came to know this world later than a lot of people did. I was too cool to read books about witches and wizards when they first starting coming out. It was baby stuff and I rolled my eyes at it, truth be told. But when I finally gave in and got sucked into this world, things changed. It was vast, complex and compelling. There were no black and white personalities – people were good AND bad; they were heroes and villains at the same time; they second-guessed themselves and they made mistakes – some terrible – in their histories. They were human, flawed, and perfect. And I’m going to miss every one of them.

Posted in books, film, fun | 11 Comments

July Goals

Posted on July 6, 2011 by manda

I pretty much took June off – not just from goals but also from life. The whole month was a blur of which I can’t remember all that much. I know there was karaoke, being with a big group of people doing our best to make everything sound as pretentious as we might have done in all seriousness during college, lemonade and fresh picked strawberries, snuggling, huge humidity hair, red heat stained cheeks, and some grass stains on old jeans. I also know that I didn’t document a bit of it. I didn’t take any photos. I didn’t scribble any notes or paper journal entries or mention any of it in any of my tweeting. I just lived the month and let it take me around. It was nice and it was out of character for the girl I had convinced myself that I needed to become but certainly not out of character for the girl I used to be and would like to get back to.

So, while I slip into another month of goal making, I want to keep that girl in mind. The one that doesn’t need structure 24 hours a day and who can let people into her heart while allowing them to love her as well. The girl who is good enough exactly how she is no matter how much she let people make her feel otherwise in the past.

The past is over and today is a new day with new hopes and new goals.

1. Pare down and organize. I have too much stuff – it’s cluttering my rooms and it’s cluttering my head. Go through my closet and donate everything I don’t wear. Sell some things on craigslist. Organize my spare room into a more useable art and office room.

2. Bake for someone else. Muffins for Grampa? Cookies for my mom and dad? Cake for a new friend? Brownies for co-workers? Just surprises for no reason other than they are someone in my life that I value in some way.

3. Start doing the 30 day shred interspersed with yoga.

4. Do some research on week long meditation retreats. I think this could be a really beneficial solo trip for me to take.

5. Take my aunt out for her birthday to lunch and a movie.

6. Try to plan a day to hang out with a friend I haven’t seen in a while.

7. Make a Harry Potter related t-shirt to wear to the last ever midnight showing. Yes, I embrace my geekiness and love for the boy who lived. I also solemnly swear that I’m up to no good.

8. Send a thank you card and maybe a gift basket to my grandparents in Indiana for the time I spent with them over the last week. They could not have been more hospitable and I want to make sure they know that even though we live so far apart, they are loved and a part of my heart.

Who knows what else I’ll do this month? There’s a whole world of possibilities and for the first time in a long time, I’m open to them all.

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In The Midwest

Posted on July 4, 2011 by manda

The entire month of June was a blur for me. A fast blur that culminated in driving west to visit my mother’s side of the family whom I hadn’t seen for more years than I can remember. Without going into too much of his personal details, my grandfather has been battling leukemia for a few years and recently got news that the treatments were no longer working, so this trip was both a week to catch up with family members as well as a chance for us to spend time with him for what may be the last time.

Some highlights:

- We stayed at a hotel in the middle of nowhere Kentucky where the only thing I could see out of my window was corn. Down the street in one direction was a gas station and a restaurant called Hillbillies where I ate half a hamburger and cried out of exhaustion (and probably culture shock!) our first night there. In the other direction was corn and cows. Yes, just corn and cows. For miles.

- I learned a ton about my ancestry while really enjoying my grandmother’s fireball personality and my grandfather’s quiet patience. My grandfather is over 6 feet tall and my grandmother is under 5 feet tall. There were quite a few times during the week where I misunderstood entirely what was being said due to my grandmother’s thick southern drawl. They are ridiculously cute.

- We ate lunch at a senior citizen gathering one day and let me tell you, senior women think I’m just the sweetest little thing they ever saw. I need to hang around the over 75 crowd more often. My sweetness is so lost on people my age who know I’m a secret jerk.

- I got hit on once but it was an extended flirtation where a guy followed me around a Hobby Lobby making comments about the things for sale and staring at me for a good 15-20 minutes before finally saying, in a great southern drawl, “You sure are pretty.” I just smiled and ran away.

- I really wanted to pet cows but no one would let me out of the car when they were out near the road. I even tried going to my cousin’s farm but his cows wouldn’t come over to me. It was so sad.

- We watched a lot of Let’s Make A Deal.

- Pizza is TERRIBLE in Indiana.

- I managed to forget something important on the checkout counter of the hotel we stopped in during the long drive home.

I’m glad to be home. It was both a nice and incredibly difficult week.

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