cats and dreams

Most nights, especially winter nights, Slinky sleeps with me. She'll claw or bite at the blanket over my head until I roll over on to me right side, lift it up, and let her in, where she curls up with her feet against my stomach, her head between my breasts, her claws in my armpit (serving me with good reminders whenever they need to be clipped), and my arm around her. She'll then fall asleep for a good two hours or so before (a) getting too warm, (b) sensing Widget is near by, or (c) I move, in which case she slinks back out, only to return to repeat the whole scenario probably about half an hour later. I've gotten very good at the whole "roll over and pull up the blanket" bit without waking up (too much), but sometimes I get pulled just enough out of deep sleep for it to affect my dreams; I've found when she's curled up with me like that, I dream two types of dream more often -- the one type is the "I'm pregnant" type (because, you know, there I am lying in bed with my arm around something round, warm, and living pressed up against my stomach) and the other is the "there's a cat in my dream" type. Last night it was one of the latter, appropriately, since the rest of the dream's subject matter was "herding cats", i.e., I was trying to corral all the participants in next week's workshop in Lille in the hotel lobby so that we could shepherd them all out to the metro to the university campus where the workshop is being held, without losing any of them. And of course, no one seemed to think twice that Slinky had come along with me to Lille, and was going to be joining us at the conference. I rather like the idea of people bringing their cats along with them to conferences. Can't you imagine how comfortable that would be, everyone in the audience with a cat on their lap?

On the one hand, it was amusing. But on the other hand, geez, dreaming about the workshop, is that really necessary? All the plans have been going well. Then again, I should probably be thankful that it wasn't a nightmare about teaching, since my first class is this evening. I've never had one of the "naked in front of the class" dreams, though I regularly get the "late for class/show up on the wrong day" dreams, so maybe I'm due.

my new favorite music

I used to be very conservative in my music tastes -- not for any principled reason, but mostly because what I listened to when I was young was what my parents listened to in college, and I was more than satisfied with that, and developed a more than ample music collection stemming from those preferences. Then I moved off to college, where normally one expects to expand their music horizons, and I did, but only in a small way -- Dan Keidl introduced me to Granian and Erasure, leleth_faery to the Crüxshadows and other darkwave/newwave music, Phil to Caroline's Spine, and then I met Joel and learned about groups like Radiohead, Firewater, Neutral Milk Hotel. I stumbled upon Placebo all by myself -- I don't even remember how. Of course when we got married, all of Joel's music became accessible to me, but I never delved much in to it. The only new musical discoveries we made in the first 5 years we were together were Franz Ferdinand, Death Cab for Cutie, Modest Mouse, and the Postal Service. Then about a year ago I followed a link to a Shearwater concert from gflower's blog, and was hooked immediately. (Which reminds me, I really need to get tickets for their next Amsterdam show, on the 17th). I started following NPR's "Song of the Day", and became better friends with Joel's friend Martijn who is a big music buff, and now a year later I'm relatively conversant in current indie music, have been to more shows in the last 6 months than I'd been in the previous 10 years, and am often swapping recommendations with Martijn, my mom, and my mom's college friend Keith who was responsible for most of the music I listened to growing up. I've developed a long play list from NPR's SotD, but only once did I discover something that immediately set me off to find more, and, when I found more, made me fall in love: Fun. It's probably impossible for Strawbs to ever be displaced from the prize place of "my favorite band", so there's no comparison to that really, but since September or so, Fun has definitely been firmly ensconced in the #2 slot. I've listed to "Aim & Ignite" 3-5 times a week every week since I discovered them. Love that music.

Martijn has a music blog where he posts his "Top 23" every 10 days or so. Monday night when we were at his place for supper and Dutch lessons, he had his current top 23 on shuffle and there was one song that made me pause and ask who it was: Julian Plenti, "Games for Days". Since then, I've been shuffling through the various songs available on youtube, and, yup, I've found new favorite music (though "favorite" here should be taken in a transient sense: They've certainly not ousted either Strawbs or Fun from their places, and probably Shearwater can be comfortable in #3 for the time being). It's "favorite" in my new "want to listen to every day" music, and also "favorite" in "I want to actually have the album" sort of way. So when I went to Matador today to pre-order Shearwater's new record (I think with paying for it in dollars and getting the 15% discount, even with shipping it will end up being cheaper than buying it at the show in two weeks), I also put in the Julian Plenti album. Whoo! Looking forward to both of those arriving.

I have to admit, though, having never really been a contemporary-music person, it's a little weird being more indie-music-literate than Joel is!

too funny not to share

Nabbed from giselle0002: http://www.reallifecomics.com/. Way too funny.