37 posts tagged “vox hunt”
Show us something you can't explain.
Vox Hunt: Share a song you listened to in 6th grade.
I might actually have been in early 7th grade when this song was popular; both grades spanned the calendar year in which this song was released.
What I really wish I could share is the song "Painted Lady" from this ...
... though I can't remember if my brother received this record when I was in sixth grade or seventh grade, and it was so bad that, after a few weeks of playing, he decided we should destroy it. First we tried scratching it until it was unplayable. When that didn't work to our satisfaction, we glued glitter onto the vinyl. When dry, we returned it to its cardboard jacket and then left it on the front porch of the house across the street (the Wootens) when no one was looking. I wish at least one of us had seen the reaction of whoever found it.
Just for kicks, I looked, and lo and frickin' behold! the song is actually on YouTube. Bro, this one's for you:
Postscript: My brother has informed me that the Glitter Band record entered our household in 1977, or maybe as late as 1978. Alas, I am old enough to have lapses in memory.
Post-postscript: I actually liked "Painted Lady" and was secretly sad to destroy it. Hearing it again after all these years, I still think it's quite catchy, lyrics aside.
Show us a part of your bedroom/apartment/house that could use a little work.
Submitted by arrkann la sida.
I am feeling a bit daunted by my to-do list for the holiday weekend, so today's Vox Hunt seemed like a good way to procrastinate.
I don't own a dresser/bureau. Instead, my clothes are mostly hung up semi-neatly or piled sloppily into a bookcase in my closet. I will spare you the appalling disarray of the closet.
Not having a dresser means I don't have the convenience of a dresser top on which to place decorative and functional items. For this purpose, I use the top shelf of a bookcase located just outside of the closet, facing the bathroom door.
Here is a detail of the "dresser top" with actual dust unretouched (though I did move the Hello Kitty hurricane lamp out of the way of the photos framed in black of my grandmother and mother):
Somewhere inside little box of cards and papers behind the Hello Kitty hurricane lamp, I hope I have stashed the Post-It note on which I scrawled the password to my PayPal account which I haven't used in months but suddenly have a need for. I really hope it's in there somewhere.
While we are on the subject of unretouched dust, here is a shelf in my kitchen:
By the way, that blue apothecary bottle was unearthed at the farm in Maine where I last lived with both parents.
What's up for the weekend?
- Finish draft report for work on impact of SAFETEA-LU on rural transit operations (yawn).
- Volunteer usher at the Egyptian for SIFF tomorrow for four hours during the day. (If I'm lucky, see part of a film during shift.)
- Figure out which SIFF movies to see (why did I wait so long to do so?) and buy tickets and sign up for more usher shifts accordingly.
- See officemate Seth's folk band in Ballard tomorrow evening. Record-shop at Sonic Boom in Ballard beforehand.
- Farmers' market early on Sunday.
- Limp through Sunday dance class without using right arm. Apply ice. (Prognosis from Thursday's doctor visit: shoulder impingement supraspinatus and subscapularis = curtailing activity, icing, and six weeks of physical therapy starting 7:00 a.m. June 3. Grumble.)
- Plant basil in the remaining space in the P-patch. Harvest some of the burgeoning lemon balm and borage. Learn more about borage. I planted it as a "companion plant" for the tomatoes and strawberries and it is outgrowing everything else in the patch.
- If weather is nice, spend Sunday afternoon/evening at Folklife. Hopefully find my brother and sister-in-law in the crowd. Be on the lookout for Festival Guy as well.
- Random household chores (which I never get around to doing because I cannot bring myself to be more specific than this on any "do" list). At a minimum, re-shelve the hundred-odd CDs recently purchased or pulled off shelves that are teetering in dangerous piles around television (because my DVD player doubles as a CD player) and clear off the small table which currently functions as horizontal storage rather than dining surface.
- Chip away at current book. Finish it if weather is like it has been and movies aren't commanding attention.
- If the weather is nice, dust off Sparky (my bike), inflate tires, and go for the first (sad but true) ride this year.
- Meet Karen for a beer after her filmmaking class.
- Finish draft report for work on impact of SAFETEA-LU on rural transit operations after procrastinating all three days of the weekend.
I don't expect I'll be retouching any dust this weekend.
Show us the comic strip you read most often.
The East Village Inky is actually a 'zine, published quarterly.
QotD: Show us one of your plants.
The soapy water was triumphant! The aphids have retreated!
Unfortunately, the human forgot to follow up with non-soapy water for a week and a half, but there are a few hopeful little growth spurts happening.
Show us a spice in your kitchen.
Submitted by homebody.
I’m not absolutely positively sure, but I’m pretty sure this key was from one of the interior doors of the Perryville house. This key was something I found in my mom’s jewelry box, when sorting through her things after she died. I remember there being a key like this in Mom’s bedroom door in that house.
We moved to Perryville, Maryland, the summer before I started 6th grade, when Mom departed from her second brief marriage. For a 12-year-old with a passion for anything “antique,” the house was a marvelous place of exploration and discovery of secret spaces and mysterious detritus. It had a split staircase leading from both the front hallway and back near the kitchen, French doors and a bay window in the living room, a built-in corner cabinet in the dining room, a wrap-around porch, a basement with a scary root cellar and another secret room that held old terra cotta pots and rusty hardware, five bedrooms on the second floor, and, most wonderful of all, a dormer-windowed, creaky-floored, two-roomed attic. There was a secret compartment on a landing on the way to the attic (where we stored luggage and I imagined more secret things should be hidden), and a previous owner had left an old metal bed frame and an assortment of ancient gift boxes and wrapping paper which eventually got used by our family long before retro was fashionable.
There was also a multi-roomed outbuilding (carriage house? I think we referred to it as the garage or maybe the shed) out back which contained more rusty hardware, wood scraps, a renting neighbor’s boat, and wasps. The large yard was mostly grass and dandelions but contained a few peony, azalea, pussywillow, forsythia, and old rose bushes. Mom added tulips and a small vegetable patch in the back, plus a young peach tree which I received as a 13th birthday gift. Out front, on the corner of the lot, was a massive blue spruce tree which served as an exterior hiding place.
That was the house we lived in when Heidi (the German Shepherd) and Punkin (the orange tabby) were in their senior years, George (a beloved young cat) disappeared, Mongo (another young cat, also referred to as The Slump) joined the household, as a did, briefly, Kelly (another German Shepherd who never quite grasped the concept of housebreaking, was also supsected of having injured Mongo, and with whom Mom lost patience). That was the house we lived in when we went to a private school which was a painful experience for me (I returned to public school after my brother graduated). That was the house we lived in when I went through the worst of adolescence. That was the house we lived in when my brother stopped talking to my father, forever, and I soon followed suit, at least until my late 20s. That was the house we lived in when I started ballet classes, and the attic became my practice studio. I fancied myself to be suffering for my art because the attic was unheated and poorly insulated and thus usually an uncomfortable temperature.
The attic was also wonderful because, on a really hot summer day, you could spend a little while there sweltering, then run all the way down to the basement and feel very cool and refreshed indeed.
It was a magical house to be inside of during a thunderstorm, those intense mid-Atlantic summer storms. It was also close enough to the railroad tracks that I remember falling asleep many nights to the sound of a freight train passing through town. I imagined that the trains at night were orchestras endlessly tuning up.
We lived there until just after I started 10th grade and my brother went off to college, at which point Mom decided it would be more cost-efficient to move to a smaller rental on the grounds of the Veterans Administration hospital where she worked as a nurse.
In addition to the (probable) key, Mom also moved a pair of wooden shutters from the Perryville house that I carried with me for many moves, using as room divider, folding-screen style. I left them back east, though, when I headed west two years ago. But I have the key, and, every now and then, I even dream a dream in that house.
Show us a photo of cherry blossoms in bloom.... Or, if you don't have cherry blossoms where you live, show us a photograph of any flower in bloom!
Show us the most productive thing you'll accomplish today.
I am feeling rather proud of myself because I NEVER do them this early. How good it feels to have it done...
... and now I get to sort out this:
While these photos aren't very, well, photo-worthy, they are less unsavory than the floor burn on the skin above the metatarsals my left foot, from today's dance class. I'm a wee bit proud of that, too, since it was acquired via a very fast floorwork sequence that I finally "got."
Show us your favorite t-shirt.
Tough choice. I also love my flying cassettes shirt from Heavy Rotation, but it is too wrinkled and low-contrast to be discernible in the attempted photo.
They are all badly wrinkled because I, um, tend to stuff them into a pile on a shelf in my closet.
