now i want some fried chicken, oy
yesterday's post was long so i left some stuff out. namely, on thursday i met admin s (from when i worked in the libraries) for lunch - fried chicken sandwich with a fried egg and pepper jack cheese and hot honey, so sticky and delicious - and because she had to get something from another admin at the building where we all used to work i got to go back there and wander around and remember the folks i used to work with, and some of them are still there! altho very few people were actually in, and it was really weird to see the space so empty. but i got to say hi to a couple people which was nice. also one of the lovely folks from hr - and i mean that sincerely, i mean they really were lovely - has left the libraries and gone to another department because they weren't actually moving up where they were. so on the one hand i'm sad they're gone but on the other this new department is lucky to have them.
also i got nominated for two random awards at work - one for something called the gratitude book club, which i think is a new thing one of the faculty started, and if you're nominated you get to pick a book from their amazon list as a reward (i got a cookbook :D ) (one of my pi's nominated me for i guess my hard work and willingness to do new stuff), and one for what's called a spot award. one of the other admins nominated me for that partly because i keep baking cookies for the admin lunches. i got a huge kick out of that. i have no idea what you get for a spot award but honestly it doesn't matter. i'm just so tickled that someone liked the chocolate chip cookies enough to nominate me for an award.
because curling season is over i now have four more hours to myself on sundays and today i kept thinking there was something else i had to do that i forgot. (i did not have anything else on my to do list that i forgot to do.) i filed my taxes, yay - owe the fed, get a small refund from the state, gone are the days when i got enough of a refund to buy a couch with - went to the grocery store, sat in starbucks for a while, wrote some smut, got some sun.
and now i have a poem! :D
On a walk past bulldozers and trucks
pouring tarmac for the NJ Eisenhower highway
my grandmother said to me as we turned
into a market with olive barrels, hanging
meat, piles of sumac and coriander -
“he shakes away my blues.” It was 1959,
and what did I know about starving
in the Syrian desert or the Turkish whips
that lashed the bodies of Armenian
women on the roads of dust. I wouldn’t
have believed that she saw
those things. The radio
was always on the sink in my grandmother’s
kitchen. “He’s a whirling dervish” she said -
whirling dervish - the whoosh of the phrase
stayed with me. I too felt his trance -
even then - as she pounded spices
with a brass mortar and pestle.
The air on fire under him
the red clay of Macon dusting his bones.
What did I know about Sufism
Sister Rosetta or bird feet at the Royal Peacock?
In the yard the bittersweet is drying up,
the berries turning gold and red.
The way memory deepens with light.
His shaking gospel voice. The heart
going up in flames. My grandmother
survived the worst that humans do.
--Peter Balakian, "Little Richard"
also i got nominated for two random awards at work - one for something called the gratitude book club, which i think is a new thing one of the faculty started, and if you're nominated you get to pick a book from their amazon list as a reward (i got a cookbook :D ) (one of my pi's nominated me for i guess my hard work and willingness to do new stuff), and one for what's called a spot award. one of the other admins nominated me for that partly because i keep baking cookies for the admin lunches. i got a huge kick out of that. i have no idea what you get for a spot award but honestly it doesn't matter. i'm just so tickled that someone liked the chocolate chip cookies enough to nominate me for an award.
because curling season is over i now have four more hours to myself on sundays and today i kept thinking there was something else i had to do that i forgot. (i did not have anything else on my to do list that i forgot to do.) i filed my taxes, yay - owe the fed, get a small refund from the state, gone are the days when i got enough of a refund to buy a couch with - went to the grocery store, sat in starbucks for a while, wrote some smut, got some sun.
and now i have a poem! :D
On a walk past bulldozers and trucks
pouring tarmac for the NJ Eisenhower highway
my grandmother said to me as we turned
into a market with olive barrels, hanging
meat, piles of sumac and coriander -
“he shakes away my blues.” It was 1959,
and what did I know about starving
in the Syrian desert or the Turkish whips
that lashed the bodies of Armenian
women on the roads of dust. I wouldn’t
have believed that she saw
those things. The radio
was always on the sink in my grandmother’s
kitchen. “He’s a whirling dervish” she said -
whirling dervish - the whoosh of the phrase
stayed with me. I too felt his trance -
even then - as she pounded spices
with a brass mortar and pestle.
The air on fire under him
the red clay of Macon dusting his bones.
What did I know about Sufism
Sister Rosetta or bird feet at the Royal Peacock?
In the yard the bittersweet is drying up,
the berries turning gold and red.
The way memory deepens with light.
His shaking gospel voice. The heart
going up in flames. My grandmother
survived the worst that humans do.
--Peter Balakian, "Little Richard"