Sticky, Sweet, & A Little Overdressed

I’ve been a total slacker on songwriting this weekend, but I forgot to mention that on my way home from work on Friday, I came up with an idea for how to finish a song I started months ago. True to my usual auspicious beginnings (which mostly end up sitting around unfinished), I had come up with a great hook and a tentative chorus for it, which, when I showed it to Karsten, got him excited enough about it to write a truly inspired chorus melody. To which I said,

“Oh, shit.”

Nothing seems to freak me out more than having to write lyrics to an existing melody — especially when the melody is so fantastic. ‘Cause then there’s no wiggle room, no way to say, “Well, I can’t think of an eight-syllable way to say ‘I wish I knew the real you like I know the fake you’ in pentameter with an ending anapest, so I’ll just go with that line and he can rewrite the melody to accomodate it.” (What a weird example. I wonder what nether reaches of my subconscious that little gem just came from.)

Anyway, this one was freakin’ me out big time. And Karsten kept dropping hints that if I wanted to work on this song, he was open to discussing anything or helping me talk through how it was going to go, and all that.

Still, no progress for months.

And then Friday, boom! The story flow occurred to me, and as soon as I had that, I knew how to write the song. So I raced home, nodded hello to Karsten, made a beeline for my desk, and wrote the whole thing out.

It’s not Lennon, it’s not Simon, but it’s a start. And it’s good enough to give back to Karsten so he can finish the melody.

3 down, 27 to go.

Note that the house is actually under renovation now, but we already know we won’t like a good many of the changes. (For example, they’re installing carpet over the hardwoods. Mind you, the floors aren’t in great shape, but they’ve got character and I despise carpet.) But we found out that the seller had already received an offer like the one we were originally thinking of making: “here’s 6% less than asking; now stop the renovations and step away from the property.” But the seller’s agent said that the seller wanted to continue the work she’d already contracted. Hooookay. So we made a full-priced offer and we’re allowing them to finish the renovations. It’s weird, but hey — at least some of the work is bound to be worthwhile.

Anyway, you can see throughout most of these pictures that the renovation is underway, as there are tools lying around and there’s dust everywhere. And for whatever reason, the seller still has loads of junk piled up throughout the house and out on the back porch and driveway. Part of the agreement is that she has to remove all of it, but it was all still there when I took these photos.

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Check out this beautiful ichneumon wasp I saw at Cheekwood. Here’s more about the ichneumon (only they call it a fly). I’d never even heard of it, but Nature Boy Karsten knew what it was right away.

We received word from our apartment property manager yesterday that they were doing some work this morning requiring us to move our car from the lot by 8:00 AM, so it seemed like a good morning to go out for breakfast. Headed over to Murphy’s Loft Cafe (formerly the Red Rooster Cafe) for day-old muffins (only $1!) and coffee & juice. We enjoyed the opportunity to sit outside and leisurely sip our drinks.

Then, since all clothing at Salvation Army is 50% off on Wednesdays, it was time to do a little thrift shopping. Didn’t really find anything, which is just as well since I just bought a zillion new-to-me articles of clothing a few weeks ago.

Alright, now this is kind of embarassing. I had a coupon from the back of a Kroger receipt for a week free at Curves, which is right down the street. I thought, hey that’s convenient — I won’t have to go the office and I can still work out. I didn’t know. I swear I didn’t know! I thought it was a gym. It’s not a gym. It’s some kind of demented 30-second rotation half-hour fitness program and weigh-you-in and take-your-measurements thing. I listened politely to the woman give me the tour of the place but as soon as she said “Alright, let’s take your measurements!” I said “I don’t think I need to waste any more of your time. I don’t think this is right for me. I thought it was a gym. I was looking for treadmills. Cardio equipment. Things like that.” And she said, “Yeah, I can look at you and see you don’t need to lose weight, but I didn’t want to say anything.” She didn’t want to say anything? Until what? Until I actually did lose weight? That place is weird. Weird weird weird.

So anyway, I left, but I was all psyched up for a workout, and now I had to decide if it was worth it to me to go to the office and risk feeling stress on my vacation just to work out. And then it dawned on me that I could run in Centennial Park instead! But I was nervous about that because I haven’t run on pavement since my injury. And then I remembered that I had my rollerblades in the trunk. So I got good and warmed up by rollerblading five laps on the mile loop and then felt comfortable running two laps.

Got back home, showered, dressed, and went out with Karsten to Kalamata’s. I ordered their baba ghannouj for the first time, and it was wonderful. Nice and smoky, just the way I like it.

Went furniture-browsing (”furniture-ogling” is more like it) at Nouveau Classics and 2 Danes. Must get rich so I can afford cool mid-century modern and contemporary Scandinavian furniture in my home. Someday.

Dinner at Tayst. Yum! We started with the Chickpea Cake, which was served in some kind of delicious sauce. I can’t remember how it was described on the menu and I know I can’t do it justice, but it was unbelievably good. Followed that with the Bibb Salad with (I think it was) fennel-infused walnut oil vinaigrette. For the entree, we split a very elegant baked potato with vegetable spears marinated in a ginger sauce and served in a half-red, half-yellow pool of gazpacho and ginger sauce. I finished with a scoop of raspberry-black licorice sorbet, which was just about the best thing I’ve ever tasted. It was spectacular, although Karsten says it was a bit dada for his preference. Still, he had to admit that the service was outstanding and even if the menu was a bit pretentious, the service certainly was not.

After dinner, we decided to swing by the Commodore Bar & Grill, which is one of the writers’ nights venues that became popular after several of the other ones mysteriously shut down last year within several weeks of each other. Anyway, after all this time, we’d still not checked it out. We ran into a friend who was playing a feature set tonight, so that was a nice surprise.

And then it was back home. And now I’m getting sleepy. It’s been a good, long day.

I miscalculated. Last week, I anticipated that I’d be eager to do really long workouts this week, and Karsten and I planned that he’d skip his daily run for the week as his vacation and I’d do super-long workouts each day as mine.

There’s just one problem: the gym is at the office.

Now, I knew this, of course. But I still figured it would be no problem. After all, the gym is in a different building from the one where I work, and if I went there a little later than my usual time (no reason to start my workout at 6 AM when I’m on vacation) I probably wouldn’t even run into the usual crowd, and so no one but the security guys at the front desk would need to be the wiser.

But I woke up this morning — well, more to the point, I slept in until 7:30 and then woke up this morning — with no desire to follow the same patterns I do every weekday morning. I feel like working out, but I want to do it here. Or outdoors, nearby. Work’s not far away at all, but it’s the fact that I’d be driving the same route that I do every day… you know. It’s tedious.

So I dunno. I’ll do my usual stretching/yoga/dance thing that I do throughout the day every day, and maybe I’ll do a concentrated dance workout or something. But for today, at least, I’m not going to the gym.

I’m sure I seem to be making a big deal out of nothing, but it’s incredibly, stupidly difficult for me to find ways to relax. I thought the extra-long workout would be relaxing, but it seems that it’s more relaxing to not have to drive to the office. At least for today. There’s always the rest of the week.

I’m counting yesterday as the start of my vacation ’cause that makes it seem longer.

Spent a lazy morning organizing my MP3s. I deleted a bunch I never listen to and swapped in some new workout music onto my Clie.

Went out for lunch at Cafe Coco. Disappointing. Greasy. Pricey. Small portions. (I only ever eat small portions, but I like to take home leftovers.) But we sat outside and that was nice.

Next stop: The Great Escape outlet and the main store. Finally found The Thorns CD and for only $3.99! Also picked up some super-cheap DVDs and a book on how various songwriters got inspired to write certain songs. I love books like that.

Quick trip to the zoo for Ice Day! Many of the animals got frozen treats appropriate to their diet, such as bloodsicles for tigers and fishsicles for otters. (The otter looked as eager for the treat as Karsten was to see the otter eat it.) Karsten’s favorite animals there are the meerkats and mine are the clouded leopards — and neither of them seemed to have been given any icy treats that we could see, so that was kind of a bummer.

Picked up our holds at the library, some goodies at Kroger, and then swung by Big Lots for some English muffins. Karsten noticed that they had the Kellogg’s Strawberry Mini-Wheats with the AAdvantage miles again, so we bought all 25 boxes of them. I felt like Adam Sandler’s character in Punch-Drunk Love buying all the yogurts or whatever… but it really makes a lot of sense when you break down the cost per mile. And you’re getting all that tasty cereal, to boot!

Cooked up some homemade pizza for dinner and watched “Nicholas Nickleby,” which was OK, but not fantastic.

And now I’m posting this update while munching on Strawberry Mini-Wheats. I have enough of them to eat them all the time.

Last night we kicked off our Nashvegas vacation by hanging out on the Demonbreun strip. For non-Nashvillians, this strip (pronounced something like “duh-MUN-bree-un” or “deh-MON-bree-un” — no two native Nashvillians pronounce it the same way) is what used to be a line of so-tacky-they’re-funny gift and souvenir shops. Now they’re so-trendy-they’re-not-even-cool bars and restaurants. Like Christopher Pizza Company, where we ate dinner, and Caffeine, where we had coffee and juice afterward. It’s great people-watching, though — some of the best this town has to offer. And last night, Gary Allan was scheduled to play at an outdoor concert series for one of the bars, so the strip was mad packed.

We got bored with it eventually and couldn’t think of anywhere else we were dying to go, so we went home and watched our DVD rental: “Along Came Polly,” which was OK, but it was very obvious that it was the same screenwriter who did “Zoolander” and “Meet the Parents” — he rehashed a good many gags. Jennifer Aniston was great, though. She made a role that could have been a little hard to get across — someone flakey and commitment-phobic — seem endearing and credible.

Oh, and I gave myself a mud mask facial last night, too. That was nice. Except Karsten made fun of my mint-green face. Bastard.

Not sure what’s on for today yet.

“Everybody always laughs at love
but what they want is to be proven wrong”
- Allen/Hall/Oates, “Did It in a Minute”

It isn’t just that this is a great lyric (though I certainly think it is). It’s the way they wrote the prechorus/build melody to go with it: drawn-out, punctuated, really driving home the meaning by making the listener wait for it. That must have been one hell of a cowriting session. I would love to have been a fly on the wall.

It’s tougher, in some ways, to write lyrics in a void. Sure, I always have a working melody while I’m writing lyrics, but it rarely ends up being anything like the melody we end up using for the song (thank goodness). Something like the Hall & Oates example above would be nearly impossible to achieve in the kind of writing arrangement we primarily use.

But there are advantages to our arrangement, of course: I’m unconstrained by any existing melody as I write the lyrics, which leaves me limitless room to move and turn around, change my mind, scrap whole sections, and invent new structures. Of course, when I do the latter, as I recently did, I make it very challenging for Karsten. But hey, that’s what he’s good at, so I’m comfortable leaving that to him.

And we do the real-time co-writing thing every once in a while. Enough to remind us that it’s not the way we prefer to work. I think we learn a lot from each other and from the experience whenever we do, and I hope we never stop doing it, but I never plan for it to be more than an occasional change of pace.

So perhaps the greatness of the above example of collaboration will forever elude us. Or maybe we’ll find our own ways to attain greatness. Maybe we’re already finding them, and they just need enough repetition to produce quality results. To paraphrase the line, everybody always laughs at Hall & Oates, but what they forget is the 6 #1 singles, more than a dozen top 40 singles, and 19 gold and platinum albums. I’d like to be that laughable.

Cozy photo taken this afternoon.

That’s Baby Clyde the Wonder Potto curled up in Karsten’s arm nook.

And the detractors say cats are distant. They’ve never spent a quiet Sunday afternoon at our home.

Several of our nicknames for Baby Clyde involve the word “potto” because his wide, round eyes and somewhat pointy nose remind us both of a potto. He also has the longest and most dense fur of all the cats, and he sheds like crazy whenever we pet him, which is many times throughout the day. So Karsten came up with a new nickname for him.

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I’m working late, and my boss gave me permission to order some food and expense it. So I got some Chinese delivery and invited Karsten to bring his portable keyboard and stuff and come have some food too, as he sometimes does when I stay late at the office.

So anyway, I just ate two platefuls of greasy, delicious broccoli with spicy garlic sauce, and I mean it really was good, but I feel gross! I can’t remember the last time I ate that much grease in one sitting. Yeesh.

But did I mention how good it was?

OK. Back to work. (But bleah! But mmm!)

I left the office at lunch to work from home the rest of the day, and while we were eating lunch, Karsten mentioned that he had a craving for sweet corn muffins. So I made them. Vegan ones. They were not very sweet, though, so maybe I’m not such an ideal wife, unless it really is the thought that counts.

Last week, our friend Lair invited us to a Halloween party. Yesterday he told us he’d canceled it and that he’d be playing a writers’ round that night, and that everyone would be in costume anyway. Good thing, too, since already got his costume together and I’d hate to see it go to waste. He’s going as a “country & western hockey player.” Hey, absurd is his middle name. Well, actually, it’s Ocelot, but it should have been Absurd.

Me, I’m going as a naughty school girl. Yeah, I know, it’s so Britney and so done, but according to my sources, these kinds of things are still shocking in Nashville and I can’t resist something with that kind of shock value.

My boss’ boss just asked if and I could house-sit for her this weekend. Um, yeah? She lives in Belle Meade, which is the toniest section of Nashville, in a gi-normous house with an unbelievable master bedroom and bathroom suite. Including a jacuzzi.

The catch? She has two incredibly hyper, needy dogs that we have to walk every few hours. But that’s not such a big catch, really. The walking is fine, of course, and the dogs settle down eventually. Sort of.

And she said she just bought a case of wine and the freezer is stocked with food. Looks like a little party for me and my love.