listen to this and this and this

tomorrow, a drive to the east and the north, to Michigan. exploring and helping friend Chalice settle in a bit.

today, packing and cleaning house a bit, and thinking about all the writing I said I would do this summer. is my head in writing-mode? sometimes.

I've also been catching up on things I bookmarked to read later. I've had time to wander into nooks and crannies of internet places I didn't have much time for during school-time.

a good chunk of these nooks have been audio nooks. like this song. mm. and I listened to this interview with Lynda Barry the other day. I brought her book Syllabus home from Kentucky with me and will spend some of the summer flipping through it for teaching inspiration. could I get away with having my students all choose code names to use in my class? would that be interesting? hm.

more listening awesomeness: The Allusionist. the most recent episode is about the word brunch. if you have any sort of affection for words, etymologies, or the webs of interwoven meanings among this or that family of phrases, you must go put some of this podcast in your ears. it's pretty great stuff.

one non-audio nook is The Pastry Box. they publish daily short essays on lots of life + internet topics. I tend to like them. maybe you will too. Eric A. Meyer's piece from earlier in the month got me thinking about my habit (or should I call it a weird talent?) of remembering really random dates, some conventionally significant and others very not. September 25 was the day my friends and I in sixth grade all decided to wear our hair in pigtails. April 5 after midnight was the day that one boy said "...but how about a goodnight kiss?" and February 26 was the first of a few breakups with that redheaded, too-tall, long-gone first boyfriend. August 7 was the end of summer semester a few years back.

these are some that I can remember without checking a calendar, without looking at timestamped status updates. plenty more dates and events, significant and non, are at my fingertips if I want to look them up. journal, planner, social media. lots of records are being kept. life + internet = data, piling into great huge piles.

and that all reminds me of this book, Demiurge, two chapters of which live in a little online alcove here. friend Chris linked me to it a while back. I haven't read far. not sure what to think yet, but data and copies the control/regulation of those things are the scary futuristic themes of this story. of course I am intrigued.

so much to read and hear and consume. also to write and bake and give, along the way. I don't know if my balance is quite right, whatever that means. my head is in writing mode sometimes and in listening mode other times. all the modes are allowed to blur together, I think. hopefully my head doesn't get too confused living in different modes all at once.