A handful of the performers I’m looking forward to seeing at Coachella:

Animal Collective - Chores

Jens Lekman - Your Arms Around Me

Vampire Weekend - Walcott

Battles - Ddiamondd

Hot Chip - One Pure Thought (new video)

Objective: Prepare for a trip which will involve “camping” (at a music festival), rock-climbing and walking around a lot in a much warmer climate than I’m used to (the average temperature in late April in the Indio Valley is a high of ~90°F, low of about ~60°F).

Item 1: Comfortable walking shoes.
Method: Shopping.

My 6 year-old Sauconies just aren’t cutting it in the all-day comfort department anymore, but they are seriously the most comfortable just-kicking-around shoes I’ve ever owned. After much research into available color combinations in my size, the pictured sneakers were ordered and will be arriving on Tuesday. That color combination is called Bayou/Black.

Item 2: Single-person tent and lightweight sleeping bag.
Method: Excavation?

I am assured that someone in my family owns both of these already - but that they’re either in the basement or the attic. I have a week and a half to put on my miner’s helmet and gas mask and see what I can find… and if they cannot be found or are found to be in an unacceptable condition, I think I can borrow a tent from a friend at work, and might just have to pony up the ~$40 for a sleeping bag. Perhaps the Columbia Double Whammy Fleece Sleeping Bag and Pillow.

Item 3: TSA-approved luggage lock
Method: Damn, a trip to Target.

My big “trans-Atlantic” suitcase is equipped with a TSA-approved lock. But the suitcase I’m taking to California is not quite as fancy or huge or heavy, so I’ll have to buy a lock. I don’t want to find the contents of my suitcase strewn about the luggage carriage because they decided to randomly inspect MY suitcase and then just zipped it up halfway (it’s happened to more than a few people I know). Chances are that if there’s a lock, it will be second nature (while running through their robot-like procedures) to replace it after closing the suitcase.

There’s more (shorts! a hat!) but I’ll deal with those later.

Today is my brother’s 29th birthday. I’ve already welcomed him to Old. There will be family dinner tonight. There may be blood (or just verbal aggression). I should do some mental preparation - maybe even go running so I’m feeling relaxed before we embark upon the excitement of the evening.

At this moment, Northern New Jersey is experiencing some rather heavy rain with flashes of lighting. I heard a rumble of far-off thunder a few minutes ago, and I am hoping it makes its way over here. That would be conducive to a very good night’s sleep after a very long and mentally exhausting week.

It makes me want to read poetry. Here are a few glorious poems I’ve stumbled across recently while looking for new poetry on the internets. April is a great month for that since it’s National Poetry Month and there are so many “poem-a-day” lists that spring up for this month alone. It makes me quite happy.

• The Dark-Light of Spring by Eric Leigh

• From Obelisk to Water’s Edge by Ray DiPalma

• End of April by Phillis Levin

• “Are you the new person drawn toward me?” by Walt Whitman

And one that I’ve liked for a while since I read it in Nine Horses, but which I don’t think I’ve shared before:

• Litany by Billy Collins

While I’m at it, here is one I absolutely love, also from Billy Collins (which I think I should memorize because it’s always good to have something beautiful stored away in your brain. My memorization of “Jabberwocky” probably doesn’t count):

• Picnic, Lightning

• Violet is a repository of beautiful things. They sent me a “Penmanship” themed newsletter last week… and I am in absolute lust with these two items:

On the left, Cards for a Year… “40 cards and 42 envelopes. Each card is imprinted with an icon; text inside the card states the occasion.” Simple… perfect. I love the look and feel of these types of cards - just heavy white cardstock with a single iconic image. It plays right into my esthetic.

On the right, Punctuation Cards. Each card has punctuation marks letter-pressed onto it in bright colors. Striking!

• Then, there’s the new Portishead CD, “Third.” It’s been my soundtrack for the car/train/walk/computer since Saturday afternoon. It releases on April 28th, but some songs have been circulating on music blogs - and here are two that are in my top 4 from the album (so far):

  Portishead - Machine Gun
  

  Portishead -We Carry On
  

• Portishead will be performing at Coachella. So will a plethora of other musical acts I enjoy. Luckily, I will be attending Coachella, so I will get to benefit from all of these musical acts I enjoy performing in once place over a span of three days. Here’s another band I am looking forward to seeing - Cut Copy. They’ve a very retro 80’s feel to them which I enjoy… it’s not world-changing, but it’s fun. Especially around the 1:14 mark. I might be posting sample songs from several of other bands over the next few days:

  Cut Copy - Future
  

• I finally acted on the LibraryThing early reviewer email that I get every month and decided to throw my name in the hat for a few review copies of forthcoming books. I got an email today notifying me that I will be receiving one of them: Love Marriage by V.V. Ganeshananthan. It sounds right up my alley.

“‘In this globe-scattered Sri Lankan family, we speak of only two kinds of marriage. The first is the Arranged Marriage. The second is the Love Marriage. In reality, there is a whole spectrum in between, but most of us spend years running away from the first toward the second.’
The daughter of Sri Lankan immigrants who left their collapsing country and married in America, Yalini finds herself caught between the traditions of her ancestors and the lure of her own modern world. But when she is summoned to Toronto to help care for her dying uncle, Kumaran, a former member of the militant Tamil Tigers, Yalini is forced to see that violence is not a relic of the Sri Lankan past, but very much a part of her Western present. … (show rest)

While Kumaran’s loved ones gather around him to say goodbye, Yalini traces her family’s roots—and the conflicts facing them as ethnic Tamils—through a series of marriages. Now, as Kumaran’s death and his daughter’s politically motivated nuptials edge closer, Yalini must decide where she stands.

Lyrical and innovative, V. V. Ganeshananthan’s novel brilliantly unfolds how generations of struggle both form and fractures families.”

• Here’s a super creative move: this spiffy perfume tester technique from Givenchy. Elegant, eye-catching, and a bit unusual: ribbon. Three styles of ribbon, actually, each pre-printed with the name of the three fragrances in this new line (which they’re treating like a wine - complete with a vintage). Long enough that you can tie it around your wrist/hair/purse strap.

The fragrances themselves are a bit too strong, too floral and too “my summer mink is at the cleaners” for me (and I realize that that might mean something different to different people… I guess it’s my shorthand for something that’s cloyingly sweet and reminds me of extremely wealthy older women).

And yes, I did actually hear a woman utter that sentence once upon a time. It was surreal.

I love this photograph of my friend Michelle’s daughter, Juliette.

I snapped it today while she was crawling up onto my lap - and I just gave it that soft glow in Photoshop.

My only issue is that my knee is in sharper focus than her face, but I will learn how to take better pictures using this new camera with time and practice and by reading through the various books I have.

That’s another nice thing about working for a publisher: access to books I can USE in real life (not that I don’t love fiction, too). I’ve got the field guide for my camera (Nikon D40), and a whole slew of Photo Workshop books.

Still, for an amateur shutterbug attempt, I do like this photo quite a bit.

Yes, this is New Jersey. Those are trees. In my backyard.

Unfortunately, there weren’t any DEER around for this photo. Maybe next time.

While driving back from doing some shopping with my friend Theresa (Nordstrom’s and Sephora - a girl’s gotta treat herself sometimes. I behaved myself and got some Sephora brand eyeshadow as well as my free birthday gift since I am part of their “insider’s” club thingie) we were listening to the oldies station.

Radio these days plays nothing I want to hear, so I’m all about NPR, the oldies station and my iPod. With those three, I’m guaranteed to have something interesting to listen to ALL the time.

The song that was just beginning to play was Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.” We both let out a sort of squeak which apparently meant (in our personal friend language) that we were going to be singing along, ‘Wayne’s World’ style.

And we did. Boy, did we. I know it’s nothing new, but it’s been quite a while since that was the hotness (if ever it really was) and we still know all the words - like, really. We were not approximating sounds. I was impressed with us - all girlie shopping and then all spazzy like that. These are the moments that make life worth living.

Now, I must away to bed. I have to be in the office early tomorrow morning and I need to go running before that, so the only way to accomplish that is to get up at least 45 minutes earlier than usual. It’s not going to be fun.

Then again, I’m going to have plenty of fun later this month when I go out to California for Coachella and spend some time “up north” in San Francisco. More on that later…

I’ve been playing with the camera. And reading about it. And taking pictures of various things in my bedroom. Like my books.

One of the two Buddha bookends I purchased a few years ago. And clearly haven’t dusted enough since then. Oh - taken with my new camera!