Week 13: Putting My Money Where My Mouth Is

My love of NPR has become something of a joke around here... I'd say that I start a good 30% of my sentences with "So I was listening to NPR the other day..." or "I heard this story today about..." or some variation thereof. My love affair with NPR started five years ago when I started teaching. I had a half hour drive home every day, and after eight plus hours of wrangling adolescents, I found the rapid fire commercials and jarring voices of the deejays on pop radio to be intolerable, sooo I turned to the soothing sounds of NPR.

As it turns out, NPR for the commute was just a gateway listen. Pretty soon, I was flipping to NPR every time that I got in the car, and it wasn't long before I was downloading Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me podcasts to listen to while I cooked. I even added being interviewed on NPR to my Life List. Now that I don't spend as much time in the car, I use the NPR app on my phone to keep up. At this point, I get almost all of my news from NPR and in less rational moments, I'm pretty sure that Lakshmi Singh, Audie Cornish, Guy Raz, and I are all great friends. Also, we're in a book club with Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson and Ofeibea Quist-Arcton. Seriously, NPR reporters have the best names.

Six months or so ago, I started to feel really guilty that I have been taking advantage of NPR without kicking in my fair share to keep it going. Unfortunately, my guilt struck mid-unemployment, but I told myself that as soon as I got a job, I'd make a donation. This is all to say that my new thing for last week was becoming a sustaining member of my local NPR station. Hurrah! In addition to assuaging my guilt, I am looking forward to receiving some lovely new NPR apparel in the next few weeks - it's like a yuppy/hipster uniform!

Gratitude - Day Ten

Today I'm giving thanks for silly, spontaneous celebrations (and alliteration, apparently). When I was listening to, you guessed it..., NPR this morning, I heard a short piece that inspired me to throw a mini 11/11/11 party. The only guests were Tom and myself, and he left early, but still... Spontaneous parties for no real reason are fun!

Anyway, the NPR piece was commemorating 11/11/11 by choosing eleven songs that are meant to be played "at eleven." This is, of course, a reference to the scene in Spinal Tap where Christopher Guest's character talks about how his amps "go to eleven" instead of the standard ten volume setting.

     

The NPR broadcasters then continued to talk about songs (their choices and those sent in by listeners) that have to be cranked up to full volume - songs that when they come on, you reflexively reach for the volume control. In addition to being proof (in my mind at least) that NPR is not as stuffy as some people (coughTomcough) would make it out to be, I thought that this would be a super-fun basis for an evening's festivities. It had not previously occurred to me to celebrate this auspicious date, but I do love a holiday and this seemed like as good an excuse as any to drink wine and make a special meal. I headed to the store for some wine and the fixings for chile rellenos. [I'm not sure why chile rellenos are an appropriate choice for this particular celebration, but given enough time, I'm sure I could come up with some sort of connection to the Mayan calendar's prediction that we won't see 12/12/12.]

When Tom got home, I told him to start thinking about songs that have to be played at full volume. After some serious consideration, he made our party playlist. I was allowed to contribute three songs to the eleven (obviously) song playlist. Here's what we came up with...I'm sure you won't be able to guess which ones I contributed...

{If I had been allowed more than three selections, I might have also included I Wanna Be Sedated - Ramones, Music is the Victim - Scissor Sisters, Paradise City - Guns N' Roses, and Con te Partiro - Andrea Bocelli. I'm only partially kidding about that last one, which I suppose, is why I was not allowed more selections...}

So, that was it. We put on our eleven song playlist, cranked the stereo up (to a level that was respectful of both the neighbors and the songs), poured ourselves some ($11, now that I think about it!) wine, and chowed down on some chile rellenos. Happy 11/11/11!

{Apologies for the truly horrific picture, but it was getting cold; I promise it tasted much better than it looked!}

In case you haven't had the pleasure, I give you Con te Partiro...


             

You can't tell me that doesn't deserve to be played loudly... It also makes me want to speak Italian...and possibly cry. So, in closing, I am thankful for silly celebrations and Andrea Bocelli.

Gratitude - Day Three

Today, I am grateful for coziness, a state of warm, snug comfort, according to the dictionary. It rained today, and I seized the opportunity to cultivate coziness. There are a few simple steps to creating a state of warm, snug comfort, and I will share them with you now.

Step 1: Find appropriately cozy apparel. I, personally, broke out my "sexy lumberjack" flannel shirt for the first time this fall. Plaid flannel is ideal when cultivating coziness. If it is cute and ruffled, all the better.

{Thanks to my sisters for finding this shirt and letting me bite off their style.}

Step 2: Put on some rainy day music or NPR. I went with the soothing tones of Ira Glass and This American Life. I'm a geek, get over it. For serious though, listen to Ira Glass's voice - instant coziness. I pulled up the podcast on my phone and plugged it into Tom's new amp (Yamaha!) which upped the cozy factor even more because it looks old timey and emanates a warm red glow.

Step 3: Cook or bake something, preferably something that will fill your home with the smell of cinnamon and/or nutmeg. This part can be tricky because you have to use whatever ingredients you have on hand because running to the store in the driving rain is not snug or comfortable. Happily, I had everything necessary for pumpkin cookies. I get extra cozy points for having pumpkin on hand.

Step 4: Enjoy. Eat a cookie; listen to the rain; take a nap if you want. If you have a partner in coziness, now would be a great time to play Scrabble.  That's it - relax and enjoy the state of snug, warm comfort you have created.

Apparently my neighborhood is not as gentrified as I thought it was...

So, there I am - in my Prius, listening to NPR, on my way home from the art store where I purchased watercolors and paper for a little project I have in mind. I am also wearing yoga pants. Basically, I am the picture of yuppiedom. [Yes, I am aware that the p in yuppie stands for professional and that I am currently unemployed, but that is not strictly relevant to the story at hand.]

As I am about to turn down my quiet tree-lined street, the police car coming from the opposite direction lights up and turns in front of me. Before I really register what's happening, the officer has parked diagonally across my street, hopped out of his car, and pulled a gun on a guy sitting on the steps of an apartment two doors down from mine. Things then proceeded just like they do on Law and Order. The cop started yelling and cursing at the alleged hoodlum. The (alleged) hoodlum put his hands up and dropped to his knees. The cop continued, "Lie down! Put your fucking face down!" Etcetera.

I didn't know whether to try to squeeze past the patrol car or stay where I was. I mean, it was just the three of us on the street; what if Officer Saves-the-Day needed back-up? By this time there was a helicopter circling over head, so I opted for slowly rolling through the intersection, pausing briefly to take a picture (you're welcome), and continuing to my garage.

By the time I made it up to my mailbox from the garage, there were four more cars and a half dozen cops outside, and the suspicious individual was in handcuffs.

Cut to commercial. Cue Law and Order theme music.

All Things Considered...

David Folkenflik, Nell Greenfieldboyce, Frank Langfitt, Kai Ryssdal,  Steve Inskeep, Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson. I listen for their thorough reporting and insightful commentary, but I also delight in their names. Yuki Noguchi, Ofeibea Quist-Arcton, Lakshmi Singh, Dina Temple-Raston, Nina Totenberg. Because, you know, in addition to public radio, white people also really like diversity and having two last names. Who am I kidding? I truly enjoy most of the things on the list of Stuff White People Like. I hate that I am such a cliche, but come on... Hummus? The Daily Show? Oscar Parties? What's not to like? Now that I am in the throws of a food revolution, I can add organic food to the list of evidence that I am, in fact, a white person.

I digress, the point was...NPR. NPR is awesome, makes me feel smarter, and devotes only a small percentage of its airwaves to musings on the future of Tiger's career. The names of the reporters and commentators, however, do kill me, so I was embarrassingly excited when I came across this website and the Discover Your NPR Name game.  It entertained me for a moment so I thought I'd share the two easy steps for joining the ranks of Lakshmi, Soraya, and the gang.

1. Take the first letter of your middle name and insert it some where in your first name.
2. Replace your last name with the name of the smallest foreign town you have ever visited.

With that, I am Katge Artemonas, signing off.

This photo is totally unrelated other than that I saw it on the NPR website, but it's painfully cute... Someone should probably tell that guy with the list that white people also really like pandas.

Ann Batdorf/Smithsonian Institution via AP