ambient buzz

For about a month, six weeks maybe, I've been incredibly sensitive to ambient noise. This is a new phenomenon, as I'm usually a little too good at blocking out the world around me and focusing on what's happening in my own interior world. Now I'm hyper-aware of a whole medley of high-pitched whirrings and buzzings but am most disrupted by two particulars: the buzz of my computer trying to cool itself off, and the whirring of the fan next door. You see, my studio is next to a laundry room in the building. The washers and dryers have never bothered me and still don't, but the fan started making a bizarre two-tone whirring sound from 7am to 11pm about a month ago and all I could hear was its percussive throbbing. Both high pitched, the two sounds alternated between the interval of a minor third--not only was the fan unredeemably loud, but it just had to have a melancholy tone to it as well.

For about a month, I called the building manager on a bi-weekly basis to ask him to look into it, even stomping over to his office and dragging him out to look at the fan and hear its jackhammer-like effects. I would ask people who came over to my house to listen for the whining and would not let the conversation continue until they admitted to how very annoying the sound truly was. I was a woman obsessed. The fan has been replaced, but I swear to god, I'm still hearing the buzz.

Ringing in my ears this morning instead, is the sound of Michael's wheezy laughter next to me and both of us surrounded by huge, engulfing laughter of the house at Kristina (née Sheryl) Wong's show last night. Her show, Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. It's wonderful, discomfiting, sad, and she organizes and guides the audience's understanding and emotional reaction beautifully.

Two forms of ambient buzz, but only one is making me crazy.

THE LISTS

done class! Finalized the midterm.

done work! Updated résumés. Tidied up c2 and sent it off to advisor!

done! Scuffed the oil stain off of the garage floor with kitty litter. I had openly mocked a video I'd googled of an older lady demonstrating how to grind the kitty litter into the concrete and when I went down to try to make some progress, I'd poke at the pile of kitty litter with a pushbroom. And earlier, I just poked at it with my flip-flopped foot and it's like magic! So I'll be doing little twisty dance down there for the next few days to scuff the oil stain right out of my floor.

done blitz! marinn: we talked forever because she made the long-distance call. so no need to blitz, but a responsibility to give this skyping another go.

Netflixed: The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. Nice movie. The Tibby character--the rough-edged rebel, as telegraphed by the nose ring and blue-streaked hair, whose encounter with an annoying 12-year-old dying of leukemia softens her hard edge--was certainly the weakest link in the daisy chain. Moreover, America Ferrer carried that shit.