I think they call it virtual coffee date.

Alternate title: today we're talking about furnaces.

There's this trend going around (maybe. does it count as a trend if I have seen two posts like it over the past year?) where you make a blog post as if you're sitting down to coffee with the reader. We could make it more real by having this be a Skype situation, but I'll spare you the trouble of signing in. This is what you'd see on your screen:

Me. Without my face on, as it were, wearing gloves, etc. I don't want to put words in your mouth but you'd probably say something about the bundling overkill. Then I'd sigh and you'd actually see the sigh manifested as a burst of steam and you'd get it.

I am sacrificing 8 hours of study/research time today to stay home and wait for the furnace guy. It's been less than 24 hours since we heard the reassuring rattle of the heat blasting through the vents, but it turns out that heat dissipates rather quickly in the present tundra.

So it's hilarious if you think I'm doing anything besides having a Game of Thrones day with the kettle staying at the ready ALL DAY. Sure, it's highly possible to study from home, but I'm already off track by blogging instead of reviewing the different types of cartilage, so it's probably too late to start now. It's past 10 AM.

What do you want to know about, on this, our virtual coffee date? I'd offer you a snack or something? I don't know how that would work.

I'll tell you a little late that I was a guest writer over at BowlCutsAndChippedTeeth.

And speaking of Rachelle... she and I have a long-running joke about going into survival mode at the drop of a hat, e.g. even at the most benign power outage, jumping to the most apocalyptic conclusion and springing to the most drastic action, involving lots of forging and makeshifts. I'm happy to report that when we noticed the furnace was out last night, Jeremy did that very thing. Within minutes we had pots of boiling water, every candle burning and every blanket gathered and all poorly insulated rooms sealed off from the main living area. We were instantly prepared for a night without heat and (bonus) for someone from Little House on the Prairie to go into labor. So he's cut from the same cloth, it seems.

If this were a real coffee sit-down, we could spend a long time doing hypothetical jokes about survivalism.

I'm suddenly very afraid that I'm being a bad virtual coffee date. The only thing on my mind has to do with the dropping temperature. The last time we had a repairman to the house (the upside/downside of renting) he was like if Gomer Pyle was a very jolly, very talkative conspiracy theorist. A real gem, disguised in coveralls.

Update on my non-furnace-goings-on? It is my last semester of school. The dog loves the snow. I am grateful that we can afford a home where an out-of-service furnace is unusual. I have been thinking about Indiana Jones because I rewatched them all over the course of the past week. I have had NPR on all morning but haven't paid attention to a single story. The dregs of my coffee have gone glacial.

I guess I will end, because I started this without a real plan and now I'm wandering. I'll end in the same vein, then, by sharing a quote that has been brewing in the undercurrent of my mind for the last few years, and I'd like to keep it there. I'm still of the mind that I'm not the resolution sort, but this is kind of one? Maybe? It's such an obnoxious cliche, but for some reason, it's pretty solid, I think. Probably because I am a Master Procrastinator.

And I'm going to try to make it less annoying and more confusing and more practical by hiding the quote on a pictorial recipe for delicious vegetable/chip/pita cracker/everything dip. You're welcome.

I'm going to go see how good the imaginary barista is at chai.

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November 10, 2000

I recently fell into the vortex that is Reading a Pile of Old Journals. This particular set of journals represents the semester I was required to journal daily for journalism class and the following semester I kept it up, giving us almost a year's worth of 14-year-old Jori thoughts recorded for posterity.

This kind of feels like it could be a Learning to Love You More project, but it was actually spurred by a thing I found here, which is based on this increasingly popular movement. Who knew.

Basically the writings I found are general analyses of days, seemingly measured against the following criteria:

1. Who did I see at school?
2. Did I have to go to school?
3. Did I a) get the house to myself after school, or b) have to share it with my brother?
4. Did I have to interact with anyone? 

If the answer to No. 2 or No. 3b was yes, the day was evidently automatically categorized as dumb or boring, which I emphasized by repeating myself multiple times per page. Who needed Honor's English when you could articulate like that?

Obligatory photo evidence of the Jori I've been reading. Not the best representation, but I couldn't find a Beatles-shirt-wearing-braces-donning woefully dramatic photo in my own archives. 
Left: a guy of whom we were stealthily trying to take a picture. Right: ME & BFF, at the time. 

Other highlights include:

• a seven-page summary of my thoughts and apprehensions about a New Year's Eve party I had to attend 
• multiple mentions of and detailed accounts of how tragic it is that I'll probably never end up marrying a doctor I met (kind of a Kiefer Sutherland + Prince William fellow? At best?)
• the MOST EXTREME RAGE and FURY FILLED WRITINGS about my brother*
• songs I had to remember to record on cassette the next time they came on the radio because I wasn't allowed to buy the cd
• running countdowns for various cd releases, school holidays, and Saturday Night Live

My general response 13 years later = wait, what?

I think I talked about hating school so much because of the company I was forced to keep therein? and maybe because I needed to cover my tracks for actually liking the schoolish parts of school.

*It was also kind of surprising because I forgot that my brother and I weren't really friends at all for a good 10ish years of our siblinghood.

Among the rundowns and summaries of my daily goings on, there are a few real heavy-hitters that I labeled "the real entries". Thus, I present:

JOURNAL AUGUST 22- DEC 31 2000:

A dramatic reading of those selected samples.

To create context: recently-turned 15-year-old Jori, writing a weekish or two after an appendectomy performed by THE doctor. To set the mood: Sarah McLachlan music, probably.

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fashionably timely*.

*not.

Cuchara is a beautiful, beautiful place and I am so grateful that we were able to spend some time there. I dragged my limping camera around (more on that later, perhaps) some of the time, but most of the time was just good for watching, and listening, and reveling in good company. 

Not pictured: I climbed a sand dune that is 2% the height of Mt. Everest, but don't let that pittance fool you for one second- it was a beast. I saw a bear up close, in the wild, but it was pretty chill so we all carried on all right. I saw a snake and deer and antelope and smoke from wildfires (unfortunately) and ate fresh trout and hung out with some pretty premium toddlers, truth be told (actually that part is pictured, above).

It was good. And again, I am grateful.

the Day of Mothers post

You know I am thankful to my parents for so many things. I am grateful for the big things, the things that sound cliche when written out or said aloud, but they are really the most important things.

But I am also increasingly thankful for the little bits and pieces.

To my mom, I am thankful for:

-the introduction to yoga
-the Reading Gene (probably a little from both parents, but still- I've watched her devour many a library stack through the years)
-her teaching me to karate chop before folding. I still do it.
-her making me a cup of herbal tea and letting me watch Frasier with her one night a long time ago when I couldn't sleep (this was both my introduction to a good cup of tea and its power beyond an intended bedtime)
-all of the (probably hundreds of) walks
-her teaching my brother and me that it is perfectly acceptable to bust out a British accent even if the occasion doesn't call for it
-her drawing a picture of a women's slip for me to take to my teacher when I lost a permission slip once
-her love of a good motorcycle jaunt (which, to be fair, is majorly my dad's arena, but I love that she's usually down for it) or bicycle jaunt
-her invention of the best lunch ever when we were in Canada (related: her love of a good city market)

I feel like I'm selling her very short by ending the list (which is a mere fraction of exhaustive) there. I could go on and on. And then I could start a list of all of the other mothers I know and appreciate. Maybe I will, at some point. But for now, know that this is but a sampling of the unmatched character of my mom, to whom and for whom I am grateful, and from whom I have learned much. To put it briefly.

Cheers.

Nothing to do with anything

The Soundtrack to my Last Several Days:
Devendra Banhart's newest

Where Do I Wish I Could Have Gone?
A real live comic con. That one, specifically.

A Thousand Continuous Paper Cuts.
Is what dry hands feel like, in case you were wondering. When I was little, we tried everything to make them feel better. Hint: never Clinique's "unscented" lotion. Never.

March 6.
I usually make my brother a pie or cake for his birthday. Like on this March 6. Or this one. Or this one, even though the cake isn't pictured. He is too far away right now for that to be practical. I miss his company terribly.

A Better Note:
My Jeremy will very soon no longer be a long-term substitute, but a regular old teacher. A sigh of relief was heard 'round the house. He also recently bought me a bunch of seeds, so I can try my hand for the 39th time at herb gardening. My last efforts (with basil seeds from Rachelle) went so well and the basil leaves smelled so good that Tiberius tumbled the pot and lovingly licked them all. And that was the end of that.

Before I left for school yesterday, I ran up the attic stairs to get a picture of the constant state of snow flurry. This (naturally) doesn't do justice but there you have it: my dutiful contribution to the midwestern IT SNOWED documentation (weird yet true: this is a color photograph).

12 and 13

Twelve Things I Did in 2012. 13 days late. In 2013.

1. Moved to Iowa

2. Had quite a few visits from dear friends and family, including but not limited to a Roommate of Old (in OK) and a Grantford (in IA)

3. Acquired a brand new niece

4. Biked many miles in the woods

5. Helped my husband and brother and Casey from Craiglist move an antique piano across a vast expanse of rugged terrain in extreme heat.

6. Did not run any races for the first time in many years

7. Finished my first semester of graduate school with a decent GPA

8. Had an extremely memorable Christmas (ask me about it. it's a whole story that involves firetrucks and ambuli).

9. Took many a road trip on a limited segment of I-35 (between Iowa, Kansas, and Oklahoma)

10. Took a plane trip to Atlanta

11. Euthanized many mice for the good of medical research and still feel weird about it

12. Made my first ever of my entire life Year In Review List and ended it with a total cop-out item*.

And this would be a great place for resolutions. Or intentions. Or a To Do list for the year. I used to take these very seriously, write them down on December 31 and roll them up and slide them into a Pringles can that would be extensively taped up and packed away with the Christmas things and not opened until the next December 31. I did that for several years but I think I abandoned it in 1999, or shortly thereafter. 

So anyway. I tried to think of resolutions this year, for the first time since I dropped the Pringles can tradition. I went back and forth between really annoying ideas that could feasibly double nicely as cross-stitch pillow fodder and ideas that aimed really low, for an esteem boost. The whole ordeal annoyed me so I dropped it. No resolutions, no To Do lists. 

Except poaching an egg. I want to learn to poach an egg well, but I feel weird about having two egg posts in a row.

*I made this list a few weeks ago, when I was supposed to be studying for finals.