When she walked away 29 October 2009

Hallelujah, praise the Lord, and pass the ammunition!  I have found that which I was looking for!!  Of course, it took me placing an order over at Amazon.com before I found it, but that’s how the cookie crumbles sometimes.

Did I mention I have a new iPod Touch?  Well, I do.  My husband bought it for me for our eight-year anniversary back on the 12th.  I love love love this thing.  I could whip it out and check my email while I was staying at Beanie’s without starting up my entire computer (yes, I ultimately took the laptop, mainly for ease of photo uploading while I was in San Diego — not that I actually had time to do that), and I even snuck onto a hotel’s WiFi connection while I was at dinner with my best friend from high school so I could show her what my brother looks like now.  The last time she saw him, he was still in elementary school.  Now he’s almost 21, so there was a bit of a change.

He doesn’t even look 21, which is the problem.  The last photo I have of him online is from two years ago, so he was only 18.  Yet he looks at least 25 and could easily pass for my older brother, since I only look about 20 years old myself.

I bet he never ever ever gets carded.

Anyhoo, I was searching high and low for my Dave Matthews Band CD, my copy of Under the Table and Dreaming, as that is one of my all-time favorite albums.  I cannot tell you which song is my favorite because I love them all.  Technically my absolute favorite is “Satellite,” but there isn’t one bad song on that album, not even “Ants Marching,” which radio stations (XM included) have played into the ground.

It’s played at least once every couple of hours on XM.  I kid you not.  And this is a song that came out in 1994, or thereabouts, so it’s not even worthy of overplaying at this point in time.

Alas, I could not locate that album before I left for San Diego, so it was up to Metallica and Apocalyptica and the Dixie Chicks and the Black Eyed Peas and Los Lonely  Boys and Mika and the Dresden Dolls and the Beatles and the Barenaked Ladies to keep me entertained.  Yes, I have a very eclectic taste in music.  That’s one of the reasons I was so drawn to Kurt.  Who else, besides me, would have Paula Abdul and Metallica in the same CD case?

He did.

Anyhow, that CD is, as I have mentioned, one of my ultimate favorites, and one I want to have a hard copy of.  So Kurt finally told me I should buy a new copy.  I checked the Best Buy near my house (yes, yes, I know, it’s the Evil Blue Empire, but it’s literally around the corner from my house) — no dice, though I did manage to pick up a 2009 remastered digital copy of The Beatles’ White Album for just $13.  SCORE!  I looked at Target earlier this week.  I even had plans to make my way down to the record store in Newport.  Finally I gave up and put in an order to Amazon, along with a copy of an album by the band The Hours.

But then today I remembered I wanted more Los Lonely Boys on my iPod, and I recalled there was a bunch of loose CDs under our tv.  So I dove under there, only to find not only my Los Lonely Boys CD but also Under the Table and Dreaming.  WOO HOO!!  Fortunately my order hadn’t yet shipped from Amazon, and I was able to cancel it.  That means I still do not own The Hours.

But I will.  Oh I am sure I will.

I’ve had my iPod on shuffle pretty much all day today, with my little mini speaker plugged in so I can hear it.  A few moments ago, Bon Jovi’s “Ride Cowboy Ride” just came on as Dave Matthews Band was ending, and my ears perked up.  See, the beginning of “Ride Cowboy Ride” includes the sound of a phonograph needle hitting the record, along with the pregnant pause just before the song begins.  I hadn’t realized how much I missed that sound until that song came on — and it came through in such clarity on my digital iPod.

My real mom had a slew of records when I was growing up, so listening to records wasn’t an unusual thing for us.  I even have some of my own, though during my foraging for CDs to rip to my iPod, I found my LP of Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet broken in half.  I wanted to weep.  It must have happened during one of the moves.  I’m sure one of the packers just shoved it into a box instead of packing it gently.

I guess it shouldn’t matter.  I don’t have a record player anyhow, though I keep wanting to bring one home from the thrift store.  Maybe one day I’ll have one.  There’s just something about listening to music on vinyl.  It’s not quite as portable as an iPod, but it sure has more of an aesthetic quality about it.

I guess I really am an old fuddy-duddy.

Please don’t find it alarming 28 October 2009

Oh, it’s so hard to be home after such a lovely week away!  And it doesn’t help that the weather was absolutely gorgeous over in San Diego.  Sun, sun, and more sun, followed by warm temperatures (almost too warm!) and compelling blue skies, with some sea air thrown in for good measure.  And today it was cold and windy and blustery, with loads of rain, and now all the gorgeous fall leaves have fallen to the ground.  I completely missed the height of the fall colors by being in San Diego for six days.  Go figure.

And it was just one of those days.  You know the ones, where nothing ever goes right.  Grace, for whatever reason, is deciding to be as contrary as she could possibly be.  Maybe I should have named her Mary — you know, “Mary Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow?”

Then I look back at my photos from the Javelina Hunt (and I am still uploading the damn things; I took at least 100 each day I was there, so I had to pick and choose which to upload.  Even still I’m only up to Saturday afternoon.  I still have to post the lovely photos from Beanie’s and my trip down to La Jolla to see the seals), and I remember what a great time I had.  And I see a lovely photo like this:

and I remember what a lovely time we all had.  This was at Major’s Diner during the road rally.  I guess Heinous decided it was time to cause a ruckus, so he tried sticking his cocktail sword into poor Peggy’s mouth while Terri collapsed into giggles.  We’d gone in there to get a quick bite to eat, but it took a while for the waitress to come over to take our order after we’d told her what drinks we’d like.  Then it took us another hour after placing our order to get our food!  I’d gotten a guacamole burger, and it was overcooked, well into the well-done category when I had asked for medium, and the guacamole was just meh.  Which it shouldn’t be, not in the land of the avocado.  That’s why we ultimately gave up on the road rally and instead made our way through the Cleveland National Forest.

I love Peggy’s shirt as well.  It reads, “Horses leave hoofprints on our hearts.”  Is that her or what??

But at least I have been reading some excellent books to keep my mind off of everything.  Just before I left on the Hunt, I finished Peace Like a River by Leif Enger, part of KitchenLogic’s monthly bookclub.  If you are not a member, go sign up!  It doesn’t cost anything, and none of us are Judgey McJudgeyPants.  If you like that month’s book, great!  If you don’t, that’s fine too!  The only requirement is that you are to share a recipe you enjoy, and even that seems to be rather optional.  Anyhow, that’s how I got to read Peace Like a River, and it’s really a fantastic book.  It was one where I kept thinking about the book, even when I was doing something else.  I love it when that happens!

Then on the plane I started reading The Sixteen Pleasures by Robert Hellenga.  All the reviews on the back cover and the first few pages made it sound like it was going to be a dirty novel — not that I really have anything against those sorts of things; I just normally don’t go for such things.  The novel follows a girl of 29 who decided to head to Italy after the flood of the Arno in 1966 to help try to save the nation’s fragile treasures, as she is a book conservator.  And of course, she finds herself while in Italy, through many twists and turns and false starts.  Yet it was a gripping tale, though I didn’t really know where it was going for the first few chapters.  I just stuck with it because I really enjoyed the writing, and I started rooting for Margot and her journey through life.  Plus I used to work in the Manuscripts & Rare Books Department, and later in Preservation & Conservation, when I was in college, so I am rather familiar with old and fragile books.  I’ve done a wee bit of conservation in my life, though nothing to the extent that Margot performed on her found copy of The Sixteen Pleasures, however.

Now I’m onto Philippa Gregory’s The White Queen, a book that takes place during England’s War of the Roses, an extremely tumultuous time in that nation’s history.  And now with a sinking heart I realize that Elizabeth Woodville’s two sons from her first marriage are the two princes in the Tower, the ones they never found, and whose fate has never been revealed to this day.  Yeesh.  I’m only eighty pages into it, so Elizabeth has just married King Edward, of the House of York, though her family has been Lancasterians for years, and she’s managed to marry off all her relatives to people in high places to secure her place as Queen.  It’s quite enjoyable, though, and I look forward to going to bed so I can read some more!  I know Terri loved it, and what Terri loves, I usually do as well.

Hopefully tomorrow’s weather will be better, though considering how much housework I’ve accomplished, I’ve more than earned a day off to lay on the couch and read — as much as a fussy one-year-old will allow me, of course.  Everything I do, I do with ME’s indulgence.  Gotta love being a mother!

Scavenger hunt! 27 October 2009

So now I am back in the land of fall foliage and grey skies.  The tree in my front yard went from some red leaves against mostly green to being covered in orange-yellow leaves.  I think I missed the height of the fall beauty during the six days I was in San Diego.  But oh, was it worth it!

I have posted some of my photos from the scavenger hunt in my earlier post, but for ease of judging by our own SJAT, I shall repost all my photos here in this entry.  If you’d like to see any of them larger, click on the photo to be taken to Flickr.

Ready??

GO!

Surprised wild animal:

Red plant:

Pirate flag:

Something fluffy:

(Doesn’t Meg look lovely in her boa??)

Unusually colored food:

Person waving:

Three fruit together:

Something on fire:

Clown trousers:

A bagel:

Someone dancing:

Sealions playing:

A figure of authority:

Tacky statue (I actually have two submissions over at Flickr):

Garish colors:

A Princess!

Someone asleep:

Aircraft in flight:

Wool:

And last but certainly not least, a (pirate) javelina!