How To Disappear Completely

Slumdog Millionaire

Probably the best movie I'll see all year, say I. But really, with a soundtrack that includes MIA and original music by AR Rahman, how can you justify not watching this film? The plot is delightfully imaginative, weaving together a single night's "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" questions with the entire life and love of a street orphan. You can get a taste of the cinematography from the trailer. It's beautiful. Watch it.

And they were all together again.

fleet fox claymation

Please enjoy a little Clay-mation dreaminess a la Fleet Foxes:

I just bought the LP with some Christmas money. Such excitement. :)

eclectic christmas tree

We went hunting with flashlights for a tree. We were followed by kittens from the barn. Unwilling to let these poor kittens get lost in the wilderness of our 80 acres, we ended up carrying them around with us for the remainder of the tree hunt. My dad assembled his homemade Christmas tree stand and we had much fun decorating the tree with all of our numerous ornaments that range from the art projects of kindergartens past to artsy steel cut-outs. We also had just as much fun decorating Anna, who was vulnerably perched on the arm of our couch, in order to get the top of the tree fully covered with ornaments as well.

And something new this year are the retro bubble lights my mom got. It's like having lava lamps on the Christmas tree.

and I turned round and there you go

"This sounds like Tinkerbell meets The Day the Earth Stood Still." ~my mom.
"Um....this is Messiaen's A Song for the Solar System. He turned 100 on Friday." ~me.

I'm sure my mom is glad I'm home for the holidays, bringing my weird music along with me. So I switched to Fleet Foxes. One can't complain about Fleet Foxes, right?

Play a Sufjan Christmas video game!!

Just go here and click the picture of Sufjan's face. The most hilarious part is talking to Grandmabot. I usually get off the phone by telling her the Christmas tree is on fire and I need to go. She seems to understand.

stretch that dollar...yes, it can touch its toes, too.

So TechMission is currently in the budding stages of partnering with friendly software company Auburn Quad in order to launch a version of social networking fundraising. It's pretty cool, because it lets you take ownership, craft your own message, add your own favorite YouTube videos, pictures, etc. It takes the pale cardboard tortilla chip of fundraising and serves it hot...with salsa!

Once upon a time, giving was like this:

I'm afraid my lagging blog activity has probably chased away many of my fair readers, but if you still hang around, please check out my fundraising page Stretch That Dollar and sing along to Pennies from Heaven.

sometimes I wash my clothes because I am too lazy to hang them back up again

I came home tired to realize that if I want to wear clean underwear on the plane, I need to wash my clothes tonight. Fortunately, Tuesday nights in the basement are rather slow around here and I threw those clothes right in the washer, with no lines or traffic jams.

Sometimes people ask me "So, like, do you only talk if I talk first?" But unlike HD cable, I don't offer stories on demand. Instead I wander off into my own little world, which--I hate to break it to the rest of you curious outsiders--really isn't as exciting and mysterious as it sounds. Quite frankly, at this time of year it's the monsoon season and everything's all clouded over anyway.

Part of that inner world is an alternate remake of what should have happened in the course of Sarah's history. Such as rewinding the moment when deviled eggs intended for the Christmas party fall off the serving platter and hit the ground instead. Yet such quantum universe wishing keeps me from enjoying the now. Such as when my secret Santa recipient was so excited by her clip-on mini lamp with a bendable neck that she clipped it to her sweater and shaped it into some curious alien mining light. Though it didn't shine with the same blue LED glow, her face was pretty much as bright as the lamp. It was a toy that was pretty crazy and still something she needed for hands-free tech repairs.

Those are the moments that I wish to remember.

National Public Service for Musicians, too?

Will there be room for a national public service initiative for music education in Obama's administration? Maybe we should call it Teach for Musical America....

Anyway, check out MusicianCorps! (And don't forget to click on a few google ads while you are there....)

life is a series of status messages

How did we ever summarize our life into one pithy sentence before the advent of the status message? I like to think I am generally adept at cramming cleverness into a single line and today's hectic work day yielded a barrage of such summaries:

In the morning, as I ran around madly polishing off the fine details of two grants: All we like chickens have gone a-crazed.

In the afternoon, after a trip to the post office to mail forementioned grants: The eagle has landed...I repeat...the eagle has landed!

In the late afternoon, as I wrapped up a long day: This bird metaphor has flown...

And now I'm just blaring Blondie in the old apartment, as I burn CDs to transfer to my little mini cute ipod.

a progressive dinner does not mean you serve fair trade coffee...

...as it turns out. But the inter-apartment progressive dinner that Laura organized turned out to be a smashing hit just the same. Rather than fitting into the traditional mold of appetizers at one house, salad at another, soup at another, entree elsewhere, we went a little more hip and did tapas hopping instead. We started at the top of our triple decker (yours truly) with homemade eggnog (courtesy of Heidi) and cheesy chicken kiev and yam cakes (Laura's dishes), followed by chocolate thumbprints (to which I added a dash of cloves and ginger to the sugar coating). This was followed with an array of deviled eggs, mushroom pasties, chicken wings and wine on the second floor. Then we all trooped downstairs to the first floor for fondue. The haute cusine desserts followed at our neighbors' house across the street. This required a brief dash through the cold, but the chocolate raspberry cake, pumpkin flan and bread pudding were well worth the journey. We also enjoyed green tea with a dash of Hennessy.

And of course, though we retired back to our respective apartments around midnight, there was the ever-present Battlestar Galactica disc to be finished...

...and we awoke to the first snow of the winter. Sister Winter is here at last.

And here's a somber warning for all you Christmas Eve Shoppers (you'll need to click on the actual song).