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pop-up monsters

Monsters.Oh man I’m glad it’s Friday.

Thursdays at work are slammed.  8am to 5pm, every minute of every hour, including lunch, filled with meetings.  Some of them via phone, some face to face.  Got home at 6:30pm, ate some leftovers, went on a long walk with Keaton while Sharaun was at the gym, and by the time I sat down it was already fast on 9pm.

One morning about a week ago Keaton woke up and rambled on and on about “pop-up monsters” in her room.  From what I can figure, piecing together what bits and pieces I can understand, she had a dream about pop-up monsters that hide in her room.  Apparently, the pop-up variety of monsters are good at hiding, and they only pop-up when they hear you singing.  So, of course, singing alone in your room is out of the question, see?  I mean, if you sing the pop-up monsters will come out and scare you.  Each night now before she goes to bed, she asks me to look behind her bed, under her bed, in her closet, behind her dresser, and behind her rocking chair – just to make sure there are no pop-up monsters hiding.  Gotta watch out for those pop-up monsters.

Tonight I was reading a book to Keaton before she went to bed.  One one page there was a painted picture of a mother and her daughter sitting inside a house.  The was a fire on the hearth and through a large picture window you could see outside.  That painted sky was gray, the painted wind was blowing the painted trees, and it was dusk.  It was such a perfect illustration of Fall I wanted to crawl inside the page with Keaton and stay warm by the fire.  I guess it’s just my Fall-fetish… I can almost feel the season coming on and I just love it so much.  Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas… sweaters, hats, open windows and doors.  Man I love Fall.

Rambling now.  Goodnight.

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Luna Alice In Wonderland Princess

Instant love.It’s Tuesday, right?  OK no, you’ll read this on Wednesday… but it’s still Tuesday for us right now.  Sharaun’s at volleyball and Keaton and I are here giving the freshly-leaked Islands record a spin.  We’re withholding our judgment right now; we agreed we need to get through the whole thing at least once before we form any opinions.

Recently, a young girl at church heard about Keaton’s weekend pony ride with Grammy & Grandpa and decided that she’d make a gift to Keaton of a rather large toy pony she had from when she was an even younger girl.  Now, when I say “rather large” I’m meaning the word “rather” plus the word “large.”  Yes, this is a pretty big plastic pony; the thing has heft, a respectable weight to it.  It’s so big, in fact, you could mistake it for an actual ride-able pony (a toy ride-able pony, but a ride-able pony due to its stature alone).

The thing had appeared at the house when I got home from work today, and Keaton couldn’t wait to show it to me.  “Look dad,” she barely contained, “Look at my big pony!”  “Wow,” I said, not having to feign, “She’s beautiful.  What’s her name?”  “Luna Alice In Wonderland Princess,” she replied, matter of factly.  Yes, that’s her name; that’s what Keaton named her.  To clarify, she’ll add “‘Luna’ is her first name, ‘Alice In Wonderland’ is her middle name, and ‘Princess’ is her last name.  Did you hear me dad?  Are you looking?  Look with you eyes please.  Dad.  Dad.  Dad did you hear me?  Are you looking?”  Oh man I wish I could freeze her for a little longer than a year to get a little more than a year with her every year; she’s that fun sometimes.

A confession: We’ve lived here in our modest first-home now for about seven years.  Not once during this time have I ever cleaned our windows; inside, or out.  Never.  To look at the windows, you would surely know this.  The tracks and grooves which they sit in are dusty, dirty, and strung with cobwebs in the corners.  Now, I don’t mean to say our house is the picture of disarray… quite the opposite, I think , if one were to drop-in and perform a quick visual check for cleanliness, we’d pass muster OK; clutter aside.  But upon close inspection, the white-glove kind of inspection, oh the neatness-police would find plenty to fine us for.  I was thinking about washing the windows, inside and out, this weekend.  But… then I thought… “It’s gonna rain soon in this year.”  So I changed my mind.

Ohhh… Sharaun has the Biggest Loser on.  It’s the first episode of some new season, the one where I like to try and guess which of the fatties might be hot once they lose 250lbs.  Gotta run.

Goodnight lurkers, unashamed readers, and unabashed commenters.  Love you.

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we’re all beaters

It's gross when anyone does it.Great weekend with my folks in town; it felt like a nice long drawn-out time together.

We crammed a lot in, too: went up into the hills and wandered around some farms, making a stopover at a brewery; watched football with friends; went out for sushi; and did a picnic lunch (complete with geese-feeding) at the lake. I think Keaton had a good time with her grandparents and, for me, it almost felt like a three-day weekend even though it was only a standard old two-day one.

Switching gears.

Keaton has a new turn of phrase I wanted to write about, for posterity, and all. Whenever she’s doing something with Sharaun or I which can be measured in time (walking somewhere, eating something, etc.) she races us. And, she always begins her race by saying, “I’m gonna be the beater!” To her, this means she’s going to beat us at whatever task we’ve now been cast into competition around. Funnier still, Keaton can never not be the beater. Oh, if she wins, she’s definitely the beater, and she’ll let you know it by chanting as much. If she loses, however, then she’ll say, “We’re all beaters now!” So: she wins, she’s the beater; she loses, she’s still the beater… but we all get to share the crown.

I told my brother about her “beater” method of scoring contests, and he loved it. He in turn told the folks he works with and now they all apparently go around shouting that they’re gonna “be the beater” as they get their graveyard-things done. Oh, yeah, my brother is a gravedigger. No; for real.

Switching gears.

The other day, I was on Sharaun’s Facebook account looking at some pictures she wanted to show me and I saw a post by a friend of a friend where you’re supposed to list fifty concerts you’ve been to. Easy enough, but he put a twist on it and added the name of a friend he’d been to each show with alongside the artist seen live. I thought this sounded fun, but wanted to see if I could make it even more challenging.

My rules: Try to list fifty shows along with fifty friends who I’d been with at each. But, the catch is that you can’t list the same artist twice – even in the legitimate instance when you may have seen them more than once with different people; and you can’t list a single person more than once, which is tough when you do most of your concerttin’ with a small hardcore clique. Anyway, that’s what I set out to do. I told Sharaun, and she (correctly) predicted that the number of friends, not the number of concerts, would be the limiting factor if I did it my way… but I had to try anyway. So, for no real reason at all here’s my list…

  1. Bob Dylan (Kyle)
  2. Ween (Andy)
  3. Van Morrison (Jeremy)
  4. Smashing Pumpkins (Natalie)
  5. Paul McCartney (Sharaun)
  6. Arcade Fire (Cynthia)
  7. Band of Horses (John)
  8. BTO (Tiffiny)
  9. Alien Sex Fiend (Siobhan)
  10. The Strokes (Anthony)
  11. Killers (Suzy)
  12. Subrosa (Scott)
  13. The Bravery (Rob)
  14. Crosby, Stills, & Nash (Mom & Dad)
  15. Radiohead (Ben)
  16. Wallflowers (Robin)
  17. Coldplay (Jeff)
  18. Of Montreal (Colleen)
  19. Hot Hot Heat (Erik)
  20. Modest Mouse (Brontë)
  21. The Advantage (Mika)
  22. The Decemberists (Melissa)
  23. The Shins (Pat)
  24. AK1200 (Chuck)
  25. Donna the Buffalo (Joey)
  26. Gwen Stefani (Michelle)
  27. Doug Martsch (Joe)

Today I went up to the watch store at the outlet mall where I bought my watch so many years ago, as the battery died for only the second time since owning it. Turns out it wasn’t the battery, but the watch itself died somehow… old age gets us all, I guess. They said they could send it in for repair, would cost $30. “How much are the new watches?,” I asked. “About $40” was the reply… so I bought a new watch.

Goodnight friends.

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aside from deemsters and amps

Crickets.Happy Thursday friends.  I’m writing as the clock closes in on midnight; a time when I, arguably, should be in bed.  But no, I has some words come… so I’m gonna make it happen.  Here goes.

Sometimes, when I find out that a friend I didn’t know has a blog keeps a blog I get really excited.  I’ve been known to go and read everything they’ve ever posted in one sitting.  Occasionally, this is impossible because they’ve been posting for a long time or with insane frequency.  More often, they posted a lot for a little while and then dried up.  Still, it’s interested to read what people write… old, new, sparse, thick… interesting either way.

Blogging, in this form at least, feels somewhat antiquated these days.  With the Tweeter and the Facebooks and whatever else the kids are using these days (I mean aside from deemsters and amps), the old page-form long-post kinda blog is becoming a fossil of the Gen-X internet crowd.  The new thing is real-time, always-writing updates.  Bursts, call-and-response volleys, that’s the way to go.  I can see the charm, and excitement, that back-and-forth mini-conversations can offer, particularly if they are enhanced with real-time media like pictures or videos.  And despite being a cooler-than-thou Facebook holdout, I am attracted to the notion of perhaps one day “signing up.”

Even if I do, one day some day, sign up for the Facebooks… I intend to continue posting here.  I love this medium… the long-entry medium, the “blog” medium.  I like writing in paragraph form; like being able to develop thoughts over the course of rambling.  Recently, I installed a fancy statistics plugin looking for some insight into my posting habits.  It tells me that I’ve made 1,191 posts in all.   That’s over the course of about six years.  Apparently, I tend to post most often on Tuesdays, and more in the months of January and October than the others.   And, despite the fact that it seems to me like I go through some significant dry-spells and downtime (as I’ve felt lately), the overall averages say that I’ve pretty much posted with the same frequency all a long (calculated as total posts over total time sounds familiar has been around).

So, the blog remains.  I continue to work at it and continue to want to.  Goodnight.

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studded belt like a vacancy sign

Free HBO; ice.Morning.

It’s Tuesday night internet and, I swear, I had the best of intentions… I swear.

Someday it would be interesting to chart the frequency of my posts here on sounds familiar against the density of my work calendar for a given week.  I’d be willing to be there’s a high correlation between days and weeks when I’m absolutely slammed at work and those which go void of writing here.  Not because I write at work, but more because my brain gets overwrought during the day and isn’t readily available for writing at night.  If I had I had it my way I’d still be posting every day.

I did write some over this extended weekend, so I’ll go ahead recycle that as content now first:

Monday morning and I’m not at work.  The weather outside is unbelievable, and I’ve already been productive enough with the weekend and general, and my scant waking hours today, that I’m deserved a tiny break.  So the house is wide open and Jesse Colin Young’s “Song for Juli” shuffled up on the iPod (I had to take a break from my marathon Beatles tear, read more about that below).

I wrote last week about the Beatles’ albums leaking in their new remastered format, and since then I’ve been listening non-stop, analyzing and enjoying (but mostly enjoying).  The remasters came down in FLAC (as any self-respecting lossless files would), but in order to get them on the iPod they needed to be transcoded to ALAC (Apple lossless) format – the only lossless codec the iPod understands.  Since transcoding removes all the song metadata, I have to re-tag all the resultant files.  After all that, I was finally able to load the lossless files on the iPod, in their full sonic glory, and lock myself away in an imaginary room with headphone walls and a nice wide stereo image painted across my brainscape.  And, no sooner had I got the stereo remasters loaded on the iPod then did the mono remasters leak.

So there I was, Saturday, home by myself (well, Keaton is napping).  I’d just converted and loaded the entire mono and stereo boxsets onto the iPod, and it was time to play them loud.  I started with Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in it’s original mono.  How the bass didn’t wake up Keaton I have no idea… but the plodding bottom-end of “Fixing A Hole” has never sounded more in-the-room.  I can hear nuances in the double-tracked vocals on the White Album moreso than ever before.  Makes me want to hear it on an audiophile rig (which my setup is not).  In the forums online, there are already fierce (for online forums, at least) debates ongoing about what sounds better and what sounds worse.  But, for me, one listen to “I Saw Her Standing There” at top-volume seals the deal… I swear I could be hearing a studio playback.

Monday this past three-day weekend Sharaun took Keaton for the morning so I decided to go for a bike ride.  I did a short five mile loop and made a stop at the local REI to pickup some supplies for the month’s-end backpacking trip in the Columbia River Gorge.  It was supposed to be just a ten mile loop there and back, but while there I got a text from some friends saying there were headed into town for a ride and wondered if I’d want to join them.  After a texting volley I found out they’d be arriving about four miles from where I was in about twenty minutes – perfect.  I rode to meet them, then did a ten mile loop around a local lake (this area is so fantastic for riding… trails everywhere and you hardly ever have to be on the road).  Home again after that and before I knew it I’d been gone for three and a half hours and ridden twenty-eight miles.  The day was so fantastic weather-wise, I felt like I could just go forever and ever.

I guess I’m outta here now.  Nothing more has come in the 40min I’ve stared at this page.  Goodnight y’allz.

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waiting on music again

Loose lips...Man I’m glad it’s Thursday night.  Tomorrow (today as you’re reading) is Friday; three-day weekend come on.

Today after work I ran around like a newly-headless chicken, running an errand downtown for a buddy and then trying to get back in time to join some friends for the evening… but traffic and frustration and general lateness made me forgo that friend time.  I rolled into the garage around 8pm and decided that, having had a burrito as big as my arm for lunch today, I probably didn’t need any dinner.

With no dinner and no friends and just Keaton and I at the crib, I decided to put on some music and hang out.  Fired up the internet and discovered that, lo and behold, the Beatles stereo remasters had leaked in pristine FLAC and the torrent was marked for freeleech.  There goes 3+ gigs on the iPod.  I’m fifteen hours late to the swarm; but amazingly there’s only two seeds.  No sooner had I jumped into the fray than was I at the top of leech pack (glacial seed so closing in on 5,000-strong now).  This is the Titanic of torrents… smashing all records.   Hopefully I can have them all converted to ALAC and loaded on the iPod for some work listening tomorrow.  Woohoo.

And now the songs are just dribbling in… one by one I’m getting to hear the remasters.  I started with the ones that’ve hit 100%.  “I Am the Walrus” was one of the first.  Oh man this sounds good.  I hope it all sounds like this.  Holy crap I just put “All You Need Is Love” on… the separation and clarity is amazing.  Strings.  John.  Drums.   For kicks, I spun the 80s CD mix in pieces alongside… no comparison.  I can’t wait to listen to Pepper once all the way through.  I don’t have the patience to tolerate the audiophile rantings about the horn being too “up front” or “bright” in the new mix of so-and-so-whatever… this sounds way better than the ’87 stuff to me; limited, compressed, whatever.  Sounds spectacular.

Getting late and I have nothing to do aside from wait for this album to finish.  Guess I’ll queue up an episode of History Detectives and practice my patience.

Goodnight.