insomniac, music evangelist, traveler, Random Citizen
A song that is a constant on ye olde iPod is ‘Til Tuesday’s “What about love.” (Aimee Mann is one of my favorite singer-songwriters.)
Despite hearing this song all time time, it hit a nerve on my bus ride home this evening.
Don’t let the critics or naysayers fool you. There’s good music out there. Unfortunately, you have to be more proactive in finding it. Thank goodness for sites like Muxtape where you can discover all kinds of music and buy it.
And then there are the times when the music I end up liking is found in seemingly odd places. For example, the first minute or so of “Makes Me Happy” by the Matt White Band is used on several of the Zencast podcasts. Perhaps it was the repeated listenings of that same minute sample of the song, but I ended up buying it from iTunes a few weeks back. The song is a few years old and falls into a genre I typically don’t like, but it’s an earworm.
Right now, I’m listening to Paul Westerberg’s “49:00,” which is available for download on Amazon.com for the ridiculously cheap price of 49 cents. The best way I can describe the album is Radio Westerberg. It’s as if you were cruising the radio dial and all the songs were by Paul Westerberg. Actually, that’s an awesome idea. Someone should make that happen.
The album is one 43-minute track consisting of different songs segued together, sometimes, it’s odd, other times, it works really well. There are some great foot-tapping songs as well as slower songs. I hope some of these tracks get a more formal, and singular, release in the future.
Another favorite who’s putting out new music — albeit temporarily — for the world to hear is Pete Yorn. Over the course of a few weeks, three new songs appeared on his MySpace page at different times — “Favorite Song,” “Stronger Than,” and “Last Summer.” Of the three, my favorite is probably “Last Summer.” Clocking in at just over six minutes, it’s one of his longer songs and musically, sounds different from his other songs. It sounds promising and I hope it makes it on an album someday.
Last, but not least, my official song of summer 2008 is most likely “Electric Feel” by MGMT. Will I like this song after Labor Day? Maybe, maybe not. But it goes really well with hot weather, sitting outside and drinking vodka and lemonade.
For a long time, I put myself on the backburner. While I may not have always uttered a vocal “Yes” or “Sure, I’ll do that,” my actions said it on my behalf.
Lately, I’ve learned the value of saying “No,” in my actions and vocally. I have to say, it’s a great feeling. Saying no means the risk of disappointing someone, but I’m OK with that. When I look back on the things I’ve done in my life, do I want to look back fondly, or do I want to cringe because I did everything for someone else’s benefit?
Arrgh! Many,many apologies to those who have been leaving comments on recent posts and were caught by the Spam filter. For some reason, I didn’t receive any comment moderation messages lately and didn’t think anything of it. Fortunately, Plunger Girl sent an e-mail, which prompted me to see what was going on.
Yesterday was a long day. I was at the office until 8:30 PM. Because of this, I called a cab to take me home. He showed up within a few minutes. As I opened the door, I heard the music of Elliott Smith coming out of the car. I smiled, threw my bags in the car, buckled up, and slumped down in the backseat.
It was faster to take the highway, and at that hour, there’s little to no traffic. I just closed my eyes, listened to the music and let the wind blow in my face for the ride home.
Due to a crazy schedule, travel and lack of enthusiasm, I stopped cooking and baking for a couple of weeks. I know, that doesn’t seem like a big deal, but when you go from cooking fool to only cooking because you need lunch, it’s a change.
Then, last Tuesday, I baked a batch of chocolate chip cookies for a co-worker, and the inspiration returned. Because I had enough ingredients left over to make more cookies, I opted to make another batch of dough. This time, I added a few tablespoons of Bailey’s to the batter before mixing in the dry ingredients.
Right now, there’s a chicken roasting in the oven. For tonight, it will be paired with roasted potatoes. For the week, I’ll hack away at it for stir-fries with broccoli, green onions, and bok choy.
A return to some normalcy can be a good thing. Perhaps it will go away again, but it’s good to know I haven’t lost my enthusiasm for cooking.
Since attending BlogHer last week (I can’t believe it’s been a week already!!), I’ve read a lot of blogs about motherhood, those who chose not to have kids, and everything in between. There was a session on women without children and blogging during the conference, but it occurred at the same time as another session I wanted to attend.
In any event, I started thinking about my decision, which was made years ago, about not wanting to have children. It’s not that I’m some high-powered career go-getter type. I’m not. There’s absolutely no reason why I couldn’t stop what I’m doing and go off and birth babies. (Oh wait, well, there’s the issue of having a boyfriend, first, I suppose…)
Liz Rizzo wrote a great entry today on what our choices tell us about our wants.
In writing about the choices she has made in her life, I nodded my head in agreement. While I haven’t had the same life experiences, I identified with the idea that our actions and choices speak volumes, regardless of whether we have these dialogues internally or vocally.