the garden angel

i just finished reading a book called the garden angel. it was one of those books i just randomly picked up in the library, but ended up really liking. it has basically two main characters, a single, 20-something year old woman named cutter and an older unhappily married woman named elizabeth. elizabeth and cutter become friends - and that is really all there is to the story. except there's a lot more, of course - the things that happen to them, while seemingly bad at the time, end up changing their lives for the better. that's what i like to think (and do ultimately believe, although sometimes it's hard), life has a way of working itself out. i don't mean that things always end up good - because they don't - but that what's supposed to happen usually happens. i have to believe that the universe has some sort of grand plan and that it will somehow come to pass. perhaps that's not true, but it helps to get me through the day sometimes.

anyway. back to the book. which was good until, oh, the last 20 pages or so. and then it seemed like the author was just in a big hurry to tie all the loose ends up. i hate when that happens to a book. but the endings are always hard, i suppose. beginnings and endings are never easy.

i wish i knew how to post audio on here - because i'd love to post the song i was listening to on the bus ride home tonight. do you know how sometimes you listen to a song, and it just seems to fit the moment? for whatever reason - it could be because you are really happy, or really sad, or lonely, or.. whatever. and then songs also carry memories - there are certain songs that i listen to that give me the unpleasant feeling of being a teenager again. or that remind me of a certain mood, or a certain person or place. what is it about music that does that?

so i thought maybe for my own entertainment, i'd pick out one cd at random and write a little bit about it. so my album for today is... one beat by sleater kinney (2002). i don't remember when i became a sleater kinney fan - it was probably some time when i was in college, because i remember going to see them at a festival in northampton, mass. i will be the first to admit that, during high school and college, i was obsessed with all things seattle. i loved pearl jam and nirvana, i thought rain and clouds were the best, and i drank coffee even though i hated the taste of it. i couldn't wait to move here. so i'm sure the seattle connection is how i heard of sleater kinney...

so, anyway, there you go. that's my confession for today. but, i love sleater kinney regardless, although they are no longer together (they went on "indefinate hiatus" a couple of years ago). one beat is not my favorite album by them; i'd give that honor to all hands on the bad one. i saw sleater kinney live four times - at the aforementioned festival in northampton, at the capitol hill block party, at the showbox, and my personal favorite, in 2001 i saw them play with patti smith. that also happens to have been the first concert i saw in seattle.
here's entertain: