Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

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T-Minus 210 Minutes

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We are buying a house in three and a half hours.

I joked on Twitter that I would treat my time off from work for the move as time to pretend I was employed as a full-time blogger. That plan might have worked, except I am presently employed as a full-time home-packer, -mover, and -buyer, which leaves precious little time for blogging.

I develop a certain metaphorical or actual amount of frothing at the mouth when someone tries to add an unknown to the critical path of a project I am managing. (The critical path is the longest path of required tasks to reach the completion of a project.)

My co-workers know this metaphorical or actual frothing look well. It’s not a bad thing – it’s my show of aggression towards something unknown that could delay my goal. A rogue task has slipped into my territory, and I have to scare it off unless it’s bigger than me (i.e., essential to the project).

Let’s just say that the house-buying process is all froth, all the time. I am like my own fucking cappuccino machine.

I know that our Realtor and mortgage lender are both project managing very effectively. I adore them. When this is all over I’ll probably write an effervescently effusive post recommending them to the internet at large.

That said, I just can’t help myself. I still need to know the timing down the the minute, and the dollars down to the cent. When one of those minutes or cents change, I get frothy.

And, if you’ve ever bought or sold a house or witnessed same, you know that variance of a couple minutes and cents isn’t entirely uncommon – especially on the day of settlement.

We are three and a half hours away from being home owners, and I have reached latte macchiato levels of froth.

Based on a true OCD story

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Scene: E and I approach the Oregon Diner, both dressed for the heat and wearing flip flops.

P: Oh, we’ll have to wash our hands after touching all of those boxes in the U-Haul.

E: Okay.

P: Oh my god! I can’t go into a public restroom wearing flip flops! What am I going to do?

E: Honey, I have sanitizer in my purse.

P: You mean for my feet, for after I wash my hands in the restroom? I don’t know…

E: No, honey, for YOUR HANDS.

P: Oh.

And, scene.

just a one-hitter / don’t stop believing

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I’m still upset about not blogging on Thursday.

It wasn’t like I forgot about it. I had words in the white box at least three times, but nothing seemed blog-worthy.

With all of this news about perfect games in baseball I was really looking forward to notching a month of blogging every day which – incredibly – I have only done three times in the past 118 months.

It’s the same sort of rarefied event as nine innings of no one on base – a perfect storm of a strong performance by me, plus my team of interesting friends and co-workers supplying me with fodder to write about.

(Also for the record books: that’s only the second time in 118 months this blog has ever discussed baseball (so don’t get your hopes up for another mention (unless you plan to read for another five years)).)

Anyhow.

We went out last night to see two of our favorite local bands in our last “we live ten minutes from South Street” hurrah.

As of noon we are about halfway through our packing process – all of the media, books, decor, and closets have been packed, but the everyday clothes, computers, dishwares have not – which is encouraging, since we have a full 120 hours left before any movers arrive.

In excavating my hall closet I unearthed about 200 issues of Rolling Stone, which I am finally willing to part with, along with my high school year book – now 11 years old, almost to the day.

I took a brief intermission from packing to page through, showing E various pictures of my rail-thin, long-haired self, alternating between my two stock high school poses – one, smiling obviously for the camera, and the other, mouth open and finger pointed in mid-discussion.

It’s amazing how many of the notes – some from people I haven’t spoken to in 11 years! – say something to the effect of, “You believed in me and it made my high school years bearable. You are so talented, and I know you will find success.”

I know I read those messages at the time, but I’m not sure if I really appreciated what they meant. If I could write something in that book today that would appear to the me of 11 years ago, it would be this:

Dear Peter 1999,

One of your greatest talents is your ability to be enthusiastic about everyone you meet, which is why you’re going to school for journalism. I know it feels like while you believe in everyone else no one believes in you. Maybe that’s because people assume (rightly) that the enthusiasm and ambition you have for them is the same as you have for yourself, so you don’t really need their belief.

Don’t be afraid to let people know you believe in yourself, too.

Don’t worry, you’re doing everything right.

Don’t change, ever.

xoxo,
– Peter 2010

I laugh until my head comes off (Amanda Palmer’s “Idioteque” debuts)

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See that Radiohead lyric in the title? That’s my past two days. Work + House has reached absolute critical intellectual mass. Whatever that means.

I love Amanda Palmer, even if I don’t always love everything she does. When she said her next release would be an album of Radiohead covers on ukulele I was beyond skeptical.

The skepticism has ended – behold, her cover of “Idioteque,” released literally minutes ago.

<a rel="nofollow" href="http://music.amandapalmer.net/album/idioteque">Idioteque by Amanda Palmer</a>

I love it. I just love it. I’ve always loved the song, but the icy, withdrawn version on Kid A has never totally connected with me. Amanda’s sounds instantly familiar, as if it was the version I was hearing in my head all along.

For more on her upcoming album hit her “Idioteque” blog post; of note:

[buy “Idioteque for] a minimum donation of 40¢ (9¢ going to radiohead and the rest to paypal)

the album will be available … for a minimum donation of 84¢…some stuff i’d like you to know about that 84¢:
– 54¢ of it is going directly back into radiohead’s pockets (the cost of selling my covers of their songs)
– the remaining 30¢ will be going to paypal to cover the transaction fee

There is no physical release beyond a limited edition LP, and anything beyond the minimum donation for digital is 100% gross profit for Amanda, which will help her recoup her production costs.

Is this the new model of indie music? I hope so, as it’s exactly what I would do. I guess we’ll see soon enough.