Hey United Kingdom!

We gotta talk about this again.

My name is CAROLYN. Not Caroline. It rhymes with Marilyn, as in Monroe. You wouldn't call her Mariline, would you? So why you always gotta say my name wrong? It's so easy to say right! Care-uh-lynn. I bet it's even easier to say than Caroline. It's a prettier name too. Also, according to Andre 3000, Caroline is a stinky bitch. I smell nice, all the time, thanks to my Calvin Klein Euphoria and my Degree Antiperspirant

Just try, okay? I'll repeat it and clarify it if you have any questions. But for real, it's not like there any tribal clicks or whistles involved. It's just a variation on an old favorite.

Give it a chance, you'll like it.


Hey Ladies I Work With
Shut the mother fuck up! For real. I don't care about your petty gripes. I don't care that the new temp asks a lot of questions and doesn't file very fast yet. Quit being bitches and just do your lousy jobs. Tomorrow, there will be no unplanned meetings to discuss the fact that you didn't do anyfink wrong and that you were just trying to be helpful or that you were just joking. I don't give a shit.

I'm gonna start doing that noise Chris Tucker did in The 6th Sense to get people to stop talking. I'll do my Dr Evil impersonation and then you'll really have something to complain about. So just leave me the hell alone, okay?

Thanks jerks.

Holiday Approved

I just submitted my request to take off the 19th of November until the 3rd of December and it was immediately, happily approved.

We're going to spend two full weeks in Michigan. We'll get to have family Thanksgiving for the first time in 4 years. It's still far enough away that I am totally excited about spending half of that time with my family. Jeremy's cousin is getting married as well and I really like both her and her fiance. In fact I really like most of Jeremy's family. They are a pretty nice bunch. If I'm honest, my family's not so bad either. Not ALL the time anyhow. And when we're all pretending to be reasonable grown up people (and so long as there is plenty of beer) we get along reasonably well.

Mostly it will be nice to sleep in a lot and not have to work at all.

Also, I am reasonably excited about staying at Jeremy's Grandparents' house while they are in Florida. They have a leopard print bathroom. I will definitely take pictures

When I was 17

Last weekend I had a hunt through some of my old notebooks and I found the journal I got as a birthday present from my friend Colleen when I turned 17. This journal details just over a year of my life. There are huge chunks left out. I didn't write about how I crashed my car that summer. I didn't write about our trip to England and Germany, I don't think I even took the journal with me on that vacation (I took about 30 cassette tapes and 5 books, but no journal that I can recall). There is a lot about the first boy I dated at the beginning of my senior year in high school. A lot about how I found out he was sleeping with a lot of other girls. Even more about the growing rift between my friends and I. Loads of crap poems and ideas for stories, and don't think I'm trying to be all charming and self effacing here. These poems were so damn bad. I'll take a picture of one at a later date so you can appreciate what a lousy poet I was when I was 17. I was better than I was at say 12, but good was a long way off. There's also a lot about the boy I met online when I was 18 who ended up being the first great breaker of my heart. It's almost painful to read the entries about him, no it is painful. It's hard to read through the optimism and amazement of first love knowing the results would be so devastating to my poor 18 year old head. Not that there's anything all that special about getting your heart broken at 18, but it was MY heart, so it's special to me.

In the middle of all the broken heartedness and introspection about friends and school and parents I found a funny little reflection about London and what I would be doing if I were back in the UK. 13 years later this entry strikes me as being really really funny. I forgot how enamoured with the Tube I was. The whole idea of people reading on the train struck me as being so romantic and wonderful. And, coming from the midwest, the whole idea of public transportation that was even a little bit reliable was pretty mind blowing as far as I was concerned. It took less than a year of living here for my love affair with the underground to die. Now, I avoid it at all costs. I take the bus whenever I can and the tube turns me into a raging hosebeast who hates all her fellow men, women, children, babies, and thoughts of future citizens to come. But it's good to remember that once upon a time, the tube was the best most wonderful thing in the world to me and that London was a dream I was scared to talk about out loud I wanted it so much.

Rilo Kiley

The Rilo Kiley show last night was really, really good. I was hoping for more songs from the first two albums, but seeing how they've changed pretty drastically since those first two albums I wasn't that suprised that there weren't loads. They did play Wires and Waves though and that's one of my favorites from their first album. I was also really happy that they plated Ripchord, and surprised by how much I enjoyed Does He Love You. I've always liked that song recorded, but live it takes on a whole new dimension. Both Jenny Lewis and Blake Sennett have really wonderful voices live that are only just starting to be recorded properly. Jenny Lewis especially has such a lush voice that doesn't seem complete in recordings.

Unfortunately i committed the great faux pas of dissing their t shirts while Jenny Lewis was standing not 2 feet away from me and my big American voice. I felt like such a dick. But the t shirts were sort of lame.

Below is the set list. All of it is worth a download or listen.

'It's A Hit'
'Close Call'
'Portions For Foxes'
'Paint's Peeling'
'Breaking Up'
'Dreamworld'
'Wires And Waves'
'Ripchord'
'Under The Blacklight'
'Smoke Detector'
'Dejalo'
'15'
'Rise Up With Fists'
'Spectacular Views'
'Give A Little Love'
'Does He Love You'

Music day

Today is exciting for 3 important reasons.

1. The new New Pornographers album is being released in the UK
2. The new Rilo Kiley album is being released in the UK
3. I have 2 tickets to attend the Rilo Kiley show this evening in Islington

This will all hopefully make up for my weekend spent breaking dishes (on accident, not because I'm some sort of lousy dish breaking drama queen), accidentally putting Jeremy's work suit in the wash (on the hand wash cycle, but still not good at all), and feeling socially awkward at a friend's barbecue on Saturday. No that I won't feel socially awkward at the show tonight, I probably will. But there will be a better soundtrack and maybe, just maybe, they will play my favorite song about being socially awkward Better Son/Daughter. They'll also play some dancy type tunes I bet and that will be fun too.

Know what?

I think life would be way better if I were REALLY REALLY wealthy and I lived in Southern Italy. I'd probably summer someplace a bit cooler, but most of the time I would sit on a raft in the sea wearing a large straw hat drinking Prosecco. I think that if my life were like that it would be a lot better and I would be a nicer person and then the world would be a better place.

Therefore, if you give me some money it would make the word a better place so you should give me money.

Really.

Took a tumble

I've been feeling kind of down the last few days. I thought myself sick again on Monday night and barely got any sleep so I called in sick on Tuesday. My stomach did still hurt and I did still feel lousy.

I'm spending a lot of time at work lately making sure that other people are happy and as a result have not been paying much attention to the fact that I am pretty miserable. I'm at my office too much and that means I'm not writing and I'm not at home when builders come by to give us quotes and the second bedroom won't turn itself into a writing space, now will it?

But there are good things too. My friend Dana and her old boyfriend/new fiance were here this weekend and it was really good to see them. Also, her cat The Foodlion (an awesome crosseyed bosom cuddler of a cat) who was very sick when she left Chicago appears to have made a full recovery. We walked up One Tree Hill on Monday morning and saw a very nice view of London. We went to the Wapping Project on Monday night and saw good art and ate better food (I had treacle tart, it was awesome).

But still, I am feeling pulled under right now. I blame the drunken fall I took (or rather am told I took, red wine + my period = NO CAROLYN NO!) on Sunday. I bumped my stupid head. I need a change, but it can't be too major because I still need to pay my share of the mortgage and keep Oliver well fed. I'll be better soon, I know I keep saying that, but really, I mean it this time.

Okay, okay

I know I said I wouldn't talk about work on here anymore but this is BIG

I finally have a boss again! And when i told him about my smelly personnel problems (although no actual reference to BO was made) he said to me "Well, I'm here to back you up now."


I nearly swooned.

Buh Bye Martika

This weekend I found my copy of Matthew Sweet's pop wonderland 100% Fun and I banished Toy Soldiers back to 1988 (for now). It has happily been replaced by Sick of Myself a song I find much more useful. I like to sing it to myself when people are being jerks. I don't know why, but it makes me feel better. Same with Beth Orton's cover of Ooh Child.

Phew.

Lake Superior is Shrinking

And a good Michigander is ready to tell you why. That's right, it's not global warming that modern myth created by liberals to inconvenience YOU. Oh no, the water is being shipped to the desert! It's the only reasonable explanation.

Baseball and Love

My friend Thomas just got engaged at a Cubs game. According to his Myspace bulletin his lady proposed and he said yes. Then the Cubs won. Their engagement was announced on the big board thingamadoo. Romance is not dead.

My other friend Dana just got engaged too. While walking along the beach in Roger's Park and sunrise her young man proposed and she said yes. Yet more proof in favor of romance. Well, romance in Chicago anyhow.

Dana and her young man will be in London on Friday and I am very excited to see them and toast their marriage. I like it when friends get engaged and rather than having a sinking feeling in your gut you just feel happy and excited for them. And that is how I feel in both these cases. Because any woman who knows Thomas well enough to propose to him in one of his happiest places (surrounded by baseball, beer and encased meats) is clearly his soul mate. And any man brave enough to choose jewelry for Dana (she's a jeweller and a perfectionist) is clearly her soul mate.

Hooray for Thomas and Dana and their forthcoming nuptials!

We do all fall down, it's true!

I have have had the song Toy Soldiers stuck in my head since I saw the video on some countdown show. I totally forgot how awesome that song is. And the video too is pretty completely amazing. Like when Martika and her friends first see the 'bad boy on drugs' and he pulls her away from them drawing her out of her childish school uniformed hair and into his den of inequity! Next thing you know she's got short teased hair and is wearing alterna-lite clothes.


I mock now, but the truth is that I practically wore out my Martika tape when this song came out. I really, really, really thought she was the awesomest. Think about it, she used to be on Kids Incorporated and there she was all grown up with lacy sleeves, leather jackets and wide leg trousers. Oh man, did I want to be her. Plus, her song totally had a message. I was always a sucker for songs with a message. Hold On, that Wilson Phillips Classic, was another favorite of mine. But this isn't about that lovely trio of pop royalty offspring (oh those poor Wilson girls).


This is about Martika and the fact that Toy Soldiers has been stuck in my head since SATURDAY! When I was 12, this would have been awesome, but right now at the ripe old age of 30 it is getting just a tiny bit annoying.


I even watched the video for that Lionel Richie classic Hello last night without any movement from Martika. Usually Lionel can push any song out of my head whether it's on his own or with his musical partners the Commodores. This situation may call for drastic measures. I may need to bust out some Polyphonic Spree, or even, dare I say it, Matthew Sweet. Sick of Myself can usually get me out of any jam!