warning: if you are feeling sad, DON'T LISTEN TO DENISON WITMER'S RECOVERED ALBUM...



...just kidding...denison's album of covers of the 70's loveliest songs by the likes of jackson browne and graham nash and neil young are a perfect way to start the day, which is how i started mine this morning...my downstairs apartment is currently empty, so i can turn up my music as loud as i want at 6:30 am and sing along if i like...which i do like esp. for denison's version of graham nash's 'simple man' or fleetwood mac's 'songbird'...



...i dreamed last night that i was in seattle and that i was going to have an entire weekend of no plans and i was thrilled because i was going to spend it entirely with ryan and jesse...who by the way are coming to town in about 3 weeks...i dreamed that i was walking in a park in seattle, and it was autumn, and everything was golden...the grass was covered in red and orange and gold leaves...and i walked by a party of folks, and a young man was holding a little boy in his arms singing...and i said to myself, 'his voice sounds just like jesse...' but it wasn't jesse...he looked like jesse, kinda, but more like this guy i see on the metra every morning and evening who reminds me of a combination of jesse & tom hulce (amadeus)...i think of jesse every time i see this guy...



...last night i went to see alien--the director's cut @ the big theatre in AMC's river east 21 w/ teddy, his brothers jason & david, and david's girlfriend ellen...i started having an allergy attack during the first quarter of the movie...i felt like someone had stuffed my head with lead which was slowly turning into molten lava, and i started getting really claustrophobic in that dark theatre, and so i bolted to the ladies room right after the alien emerges from kane's chest...29384 kleenexes later (god bless amc for putting REAL tissue in their restrooms) and haunting the halls of the AMC for an hour, i went back in to the movie when there was 5 minutes left before the ship was gonna self-destruct...by this time, my nose felt like someone had been scraping it with industrial guage sandpaper, and my head still felt like it had its own alien wanting to burst out of it...i was so pissed off from my miserable hour out in the halls and in the ladies room that i, who usually watches any movie w/ any type of violence or gore through 3/4 closed eyes w/ fingers stuffed in ears, just sat numbly in my seat, staring at the enourmous screen, oblivious to the potential gore i was about to witness in front of me...the worst part was over anyway...but by this point, i was like 'bring it on!' and didn't care if they cut up sigourney weaver into a million pieces with blood and guts flying in a thousand directions...i really think that wouldn't have phazed me one bit....



...today, i look like rudolph (and i don't mean the former mayor of NYC)...and i just realized that i'm wearing a red turtleneck, which must really accentuate the color of my nose nicely...



...i will pump my body with drugs so that i don't repeat last night's sinus nightmare...i hear sudafed will solve all problems related to blocked nasal passages...i heard it on the radio, you know...neil halstead is gonna put a smile on my face tonight and i will forget all my worries and sadness for 3 hours in a crowded abbey pub tonight, much like he did in april of 2002, when i stalked him w/ my camera as he sat at the merch table smoking a cigarette and enjoying andrew bird who was opening up for him...



...and then on halloween i get to see the detholz! @ the bottom lounge @ their annual halloween spectacular...i don't know if i'll ever get over my awe of the on-stage jim c...i don't think so...even though i know he really likes the photography i've done of his band's live shows, and even though i am flattered that he actually uses one of my photos from a show on his profile for that online network thingie that denison calls hipster nose candy which rhymes with hipster but which i won't name by name here, and even though jim c's always been nothing but polite to me, i still stand intimidated by this man with an electric guitar...i bet if i were walking in the park w/ jonny & ben from the detholz! and i saw jim from a distance, i'd probably start pointing at him and yelling, 'there's that guy from the detholz!' forgetthing that i was already WITH the guys from the detholz!...i'm stupid that way...like the time i yelled out 'there's the guy from poor old lu!!' @ the bumbershoot festival when i saw nick barber the bassist, and jesse & megan, whom i'd been with the past 24 hours are like, 'sarah, you're WITH the guy from poor old lu...' silly me...



...i need to go to more shows...i just need to get out more in general...i wish i got home before 6:30pm...



...so josh sends me, olarn & connolly an email that we need to get on yahoo IM so we'll stay in contact more, and i tell him to get on AIM instead, and so he does, and we IM like the good old days and he sends me poughkeepsie's weather forecast for the next day and asks me if he should fly...i remember when he was in oakland and i would sign on to the weather service and tell him whether he'd be able to fly VFR (visual flight rules) or not...i loved learning weather from josh...he'd come up w/ the best acronyms...like EAT SHIT for the indicators of convective activity...



...i just hope josh remembers that i was his first student, and that i painstakingly proofread his lesson plans (not really), and now his flight school wants to make him assistant chief pilot, which means he'd have the authority to license pilots...and it seems like just yesterday, i was waiting for josh to get home from passing his commercial license checkride and we were off to fake-berkeley to celebrate with melon balls...heeheehee...and look at us now...josh is all grown up and married and almost a chief pilot at a flight school, and me--well, i'm still same old sarah here in chicago...actually, compared to josh, i've probably been digressing...but who's comparing who to whom, eh?



been listening to--

recovered--denison witmer

the moon & antarctica--modest mouse

now you know--doug martsch

execution of all things--rilo kiley

s/t--owen

...well, i bought my mojave3 ticket for tomorrow night @ the abbey pub...this is a show i'm NOT gonna miss, come hell or high water...just thinking about seeing these guys live is gonna make me cry...neil's and rachel's voices transport me to a dreamworld where i am dancing in an endless meadow of wild grass and flowers in late afternoon sun, alone and unseen by the world, yet content to simply be...it would mean a lot to have ian go to this show w/ me...my first words to ian were a comment on his cover of neil's 'yer feet' at the first show i met him at last july @ schubas...we argued about who could sing better, and finally agreed that neil's voice was in a class of his own...and thus was our friendship forged...



...listening to mojave 3 or slowdive or neil's solo stuff makes me think of ian and denison and jesse...all these guys have a way of making me feel beautifully sad with their songs...



...and i am feeling rather sad lately...it's something i have to go through...sometimes the sadness comes unannounced and uninvited and unrelenting...



...i am feeling a need for god in my life...sometimes you just know what you need, even if you don't want to admit it...



...i think douglas coupland put it best at the end of life after god...so here is that passage that pierces my heart like a dagger:



"now--here is my secret: i tell it to you with an openness of heart that i doubt i shall ever achieve again, so i pray that you are in a quiet room as you hear these words. my secret is that i need god--that i am sick and can no longer make it alone. i need god to help me give, because i no longer seem to be capable of giving; to help me be kind, as i no longer seem capable of kindness; to help me love, as i seem beyond being able to love.



i walk deeper and deeper into the rushing water. my testicles pull up into myself. the water enters my belly button and it freezes my chest, my arms, my neck. it reaches my nouth, my nose, my ears and the roar is so loud--this roar, this clapping of hands.



these hands--the hands that heal; the hands that hold; the hands we desire because they are better than desire.



i submerge myself in the pool completely. i grab my knees and i forget gravity and i float within the pool and yet, even here, i hear the roar of water, the roar of clapping hands.



these hands--the hands that care, the hands that mold; the hands that touch the lips, the lips that speak the words--the words that tell us we are whole..."

...yes, i know...it's been awhile...



...but if you only knew what i've been through the past few days, you would take pity on me for sure...



...i spent most of last week in a Total Rewards Management class downtown @ U of C's Gleacher center...this was class #2 in a series of 9 classes that i have to take and pass exams on as part of becoming a Certified Compensation Professional (CCP) which will be a pretty nice meal ticket combined with the compensation experience that my boss is overjoyed to give me...Total Rewards Management is the current HR philosophy in remuneration of employees...it basically has to do with finding the right combination of compensation, benefits and work experience to attract, retain and motivate the right employees...fascinating stuff really...



...then there was the weekend...which was just work work work for me, making up for the work i should've done had i not been in class last week...normally, i wouldn't have to make up any work not done because of a class, but this week was special...it's my annual crazy time of the year when i generate dozens of spreadsheets for paying our company's merit increases & bonuses, and since i'm the only one who knows how to do it and we have a strict schedule to abide by, i didn't have much of a choice but to work this weekend...my boss had made special provisions to allow me to take that class because i needed to get it out of the way to take the other classes, and i'd promised her i'd still get my work done, so i was just making good on my word...



...working the weekend wouldn't have been so horrible had i not had unforseen technical difficulties...apparently, when i got a new laptop the beginning of this year and then upgraded to windows2000, it didn't have everything i needed to be running a VB application in excel that i use for generating the spreadsheets...i got stuck on one line of code and there was nothing i knew to fix it...i finally dug up my old laptop, which happened to have been collecting dust in my apartment all these months, and i ended up getting it to work on there...i eneded up digging up my old external cd-rom burner cuz my old laptop doesn't have a burner on it, and managed to do some semblance of my work on that old geezer of a machine and burned a cdrom to see if it would work off my machine @ work...



...i had three computers going in my apartment sunday...it was nuts...



...and now, i've got three machines going in my office at work...it's still nuts...



...and what's more, i was bedridden for 14 hours last night w/ a migraine you wouldn't believe...the pain made me throw up everything i'd eaten in the previous 24 hours, which included an odd medley of food groups...



...that's it for now...



been listening to--

s/t--hidari mae

turn on the bright lights--interpol

a brief history of amazing letdowns--lilys

excuses for travelers--mojave 3

ask me tomorrow--mojave 3

tallahasee--the mountain goats

souvlaki--slowdive

harmacy--sebadoh

in the presence of nothing--lilys

our constant concern--mates of state

team boo--mates of state

start here--the gloria record

purely evil--the rogers sisters

when we were small--rosie thomas

burning my travels clean--rocky votolato

bossanova--the pixies

i break chairs--damien jurado

either-or--elliott smith

mutilate us--am/fm

oh elliott...



...there is no way for me to know the suffering another person endures that results in his extinguishing his own still-young life...i don't know what was going through elliott smith's head if in fact he did commit suicide...i know he's suffered for a long time, struggling with his addictions...it just makes me really really sad that he is no longer on this earth...

ok i realize i have been derelict in my duty here to give a play-by-play of life as sarah knows it, but it can't be helped for a few more days...



...i start class wednesday morning downtown @ the UofC's gleacher center for another class as part of becoming a certified compensation professional...class goes through thursday and then exam friday...that means no internet access all day long for 3 days...



...right now i am having an allergy attack all by my lonesome in my apartment (which is the way i prefer it if i'm gonna have one of these attacks)...i've got snot exploding from what feels like every orifice above my neck...my body is full of drugs right now...allegra, singular, sudofed, nasonex...i get so desperate whenever i get one of these allergy attacks that i start snarfing the drugs before i can think straight...and then once you've consumed those little pills or sprayed those nasal sprays, there's not much you can do to take it back, ya know...



...ugh...