Aversion to Cold

It is August and here I am wearing a long sleeved shirt, I even turned off my fan last night before I fell asleep, because I was getting cold. If you weren’t already aware of my strangeness here is another quirk. As if personal space issues weren’t enough I have cold issues too! Meaning I am almost always cold or on the brink of being cold.
And my new apartment doesn’t have air-conditioning! I think that this statement would appall most people, but it really doesn’t bother me too much. I think it’s because I am usually gone during the heat of the day and it is always cooler at night, plus you aren’t really moving around much at night anyway. So on that subject, the air-cooling one, I have a 2-speed twin window fan that is currently installed in one of my three street facing windows. This fan is quite sufficient.

I have, on a number of occasions been laughed at for wearing cold weather clothing in the summer. One of these times was earlier this summer, sometime in July. (apparently the hottest month of the year! Especially in Oklahoma.)
The incident occurred one Friday when I was leaving work, I was fortunate enough to be able to leave at noon on Fridays, but one caveat to this was that I was unable to go to lunch with everyone in the office, because they always left at 11:15am for lunch and I left at noon.
So anyway, I was headed out the door in my Banana Republic, dark wash skinny jeans, a pastel colored plaid old school 3 button cotton pullover with a mandarin collar, Black ballet flats with a cute button on the side, and a new Powder Blue Pashmina that my sister had just brought back from New York City for me.

I had the Pashmina wrapped loosely around my neck as I was walking out the front door of the office and the moment I pushed open the door…there was Brad (my good friend who I’ve known since we attended High school together and now, oddly enough working together) coming back from lunch. He look one look at me and said something like “What are you doing?!! It is like 1,000,000 degrees exactly, out here!” I must admit, he did look a little warm upon opening the door, but I was coming from the downstairs office Library( where I was setup doing computer work for the summer ) The room I worked in was always 20 degrees below, and for a person, such as myself, who has almost no body fat and a predisposition for the abhorrence of cold, there really was no hope. I turned my car’s air-conditioner on exactly 3 times the entire summer, two of those times purely for the benefit of others rather than myself, and then once on a day it hit 109 or something.

Back to the point, said friend Brad , just stood there while I tried to explain the reasoning behind the aforementioned outfit of choice, the cold, the new Pashmina I wanted to wear etc.. But this wasn’t good enough, Brad continued to berate me while Dennis (the company moneyman, not the CEO or President but still pretty high up the ladder) walked up and laughingly said “and she’s got a jacket under her arm, too!” This as you can imagine was quite embarrassing to me and I continued to plead my cold case, but to no avail… all was lost.

I stepped back and allowed Dennis to enter the building while I conversed momentarily with Brad, at which time I unwound the Powder Blue Pashmina from about my neck and tucked it into my capricious tote bag, slid my tortoise shell sunglasses into place, gave Brad a withering, but slightly bemused glance, turned and walked to my car, heading off to unwind at Double Shot.
Double Shot Coffee Co. my favorite place to be, next to Church and with family, but more on that later, Double Shot deserves more than one post of its own. After that day, the term “1 million degrees exactly!” was added to my repertoire and Brad and I both, use it to describe something totally outrageous and unpredictable, and am continually teased about my propensity for being continually cold.

This propensity is not really a good thing, it makes life difficult, you have to always carry about a sweater (In my car at home I usually had a collection of 3 or 4 sweaters and jackets lying about, in the back seat, just waiting for me to get cold) and if you ever clean out your car, watch out, you’ll be cold for a week.
Because you’d forget to bring another one out to the car, or you left the other one at work or on the couch…and then you’d be out somewhere and the weather outside would be fine but the second you walked inside you’d be hit with an artic blast of air-conditioned air, and where would you be then? “Up a creek” and then someone might lend you their sweater or something and I’ve found that this is not always the best idea… for reasons obvious only to myself and a few others. So…don’t take it personally if I refuse the sweater and choose to freeze in my own unprepared-ness.

Always one foot on the ground

Fidelity

(Shake it up)

I never loved nobody fully
Always one foot on the ground
And by protecting my heart truly
I got lost in the sounds
I hear in my mind
All these voices
I hear in my mind all these words
I hear in my mind all this music

And it breaks my heart
And it breaks my heart
And it breaks my heart
It breaks my heart

And suppose I never met you
Suppose we never fell in love
Suppose I never ever let you kiss me so sweet and so soft
Suppose I never ever saw you
Suppose we never ever called
Suppose I kept on singing love songs just to break my own fall
Just to break my fall
Just to break my fall
Break my fall
Break my fall

All my friends say that of course its gonna get better
Gonna get better
Better better better better
Better better better

I never love nobody fully
Always one foot on the ground
And by protecting by heart truly
I got lost
In the sounds
I hear in my mind
All these voices
I hear in my mind all these words
I hear in my mind
All this music
And it breaks my heart
It breaks my heart
Breaks my
Heart
Breaks my heart
~Regina Spektor

I think that this song at once breaks and uplifts my heart…is that strange?I don’t know. Maybe it is because I relate to it on a couple of levels.
I am the sort of person who is grounded, in my beliefs, ideals expectations and most prominently in reality sometimes this thinking gets called pessimism but I don’t see it that way, since I am continually hopeful, but it is in this reality that occasionally becomes a hyper-reality. It is hard to explain…

OK, I come from the idea that dating isn’t something that you do flippantly and if you couldn’t potentially spend the rest of your life with that person then you have no business dating them, not to say that you are super-serious the minute you start dating a person (That would be stupid) but that you have the future in mind while you begin spending time and learning about the other person. Time and the quality of time spent with the other person is key. I don’t know… I really don’t think that I am asking for too much…I mean I want to have a friend for life whether I marry them or not.

Someone not too long ago asked what I wanted in a guy, specifically a “Boyfriend” and I told them that I didn’t know exactly, I mean I had all of these ideas floating around, but nothing specific, so I am going to try an articulate the ideas of guys I ‘think’ I would like and then those I’m ‘actually’ drawn to.
I like tall guys, really tall, you know … the ones who walk in the room and everyone knows they are there. Not the really dorky awkward ones, but the other one, the one who knows he’s tall and is fine with it but has enough self reserve not to tower over people with his ego too. You know the saying “tall, dark and handsome”? Well I thought that all those were pretty good for me, give or take the dark, but tall, handsome…now those were required. I thought.
But I have recently realized that I actually seem to be drawn to those less assuming guys who often have more expansive personalities and that are closer in height to my 5’7” I kind of like 6’ or round about. I always 'think' I’m tall, taller than I really am so I like someone who I can see eye to eye with, well with a little looking up on my part…but the eye to eye thing applies to more than just the physical. I like good conversation so for me, it is imperative that the guy can talk, at least to me, and well.

Swarthy - swarth·y adj with a dark and often weather-beaten complexion. I think that this is a good term for the type of guy I seem to like… I Think, well, maybe not quite, but close. I’m seemingly drawn to the compact well- built athletic type…but not too athletic. Body conscious but not to the extreme, one who is comfortable with themselves but has no objection to improvement or pushing themselves a bit further to obtain a goal.

Jeez, I don’t know what I’m saying… Its pretty simple, I want someone who will push me to be better mentally, physically, spiritually and emotionally and who won’t mind if I push right back. That whole give/ take thing. I discussed this once, with a friend…the ‘perfect’ guy for me is someone whose passions in life are ones I can share and who won’t mind sharing mine. I say ‘perfect’ with the full and complete knowledge that no person is perfect, the term is used in a literary sense, descriptively. Well this topic is one that could go on indefinitely so I’ll just save it…and come back later

(Aug 15th 2007, When I started writing this, Aug 17th 2007, when I finished)

The Beginnings of a blog (Aug.14)

There are so very many things that need to be written and recorded. I have been quite lax this summer when it comes to this blogging business; although I have been continually documenting and taking note of various occurrences in the life that is mine.
I will attempt at a later date to recount and reflect upon some of the events that occurred during my seemingly bland summer, but now… I am sitting on my comfortably modern microfibre sofa in a simple little studio apartment on a busy street in Logan Square, Chicago. I am currently debating on whether or not I want to attempt to hang my largest piece of art (a simply amazing print of an etching? Depicting the Biblical account of Daniel in the Lions Den.) It is a formidable task. The little picture shelves that I made for my matted photos are a whole different pile of mud, but much more manageable, all I really have to do with those is decide the best place to place them on the wall…
I am currently listening to “Everything” by Michael Buble. It is an amazing song, one of my favorites I think. He has such an amazing voice…
Ok, back to the point of this little bit of writing. I have a work-study in the “Sullivan Fabrication Studio” A.K.A. The Woodshop, and today I was working in said woodshop, only it was quite slow for a good portion of the morning and early afternoon so… me being the type of person who likes to be busy with something, I start looking up joinery techniques. Apparently Dayton (one of the studio TA’s) thought that me doing this was immensely funny, and after having made several comments like “and now she’s on to half-lap joints!” etc… and also telling Weston and Brian that I was “Studying back here” And me just replying with a “well I like to be informed, and I wanted some background info before I start a project”.
I don’t understand why people think it funny or strange for someone to just look things up and take notes on the subject if they don’t know and want to lean more on a particular subject. That is what I try to do. I think that the box joint along with a little mortise and tenon work might be what I need to use.
I am thinking about building a free-standing counter top/table piece to go in my little kitchen area and I have a particular idea in mind so I was doing a bit of research today before I invested a good sum of money, materials and possibly some of my peace of mind, which generally gets thrown out the window when you jump head long into something you know little if not anything about. And what do I get, three woodshop guys laughing and sniggering about my “studiousness” ugh. And I’ll say is again ugh! Sometimes people annoy me, but I suppose that that is sometimes the nature of people, to annoy. Then again, it could just be ignorance, but who knows. The good thing about it is that we were having fun, albeit at my expense, but I did get a demo from Brian on how to do some fancy drill work. That was fun! Now all I have to do is finish hanging my pictures before I really get down to business on this whole woodworking thing.