Sarah Made Encouraged Inspired Me to Do It
Ever since I read Sarah's entry for the iTunes Meme, I've been dying to go downstairs and analyze the copy of iTunes to which Al and I sync our iPods, to which I work out on rainy days, and from which I have burned many Beaner-friendly CDs for the car. The Beaner and Aura are down there, however, and I'm supposed to be either working (bugs!) or sleeping (germs!), so I can't get down there until later.
After following the links backward from Sarah's site, however, I'm positively itching to analyze, so I will first do the meme here on my work MacBook, which has a VERY limited subset of the music that's available on the home Mac—it's mostly the kind of stuff I like to listen to while working (duh), and I often supplement it with my iPod docked into a JBL speaker ring. I've been listening to the Favorite Christmas & Classical/Big Band playlist non-stop for the past two days, so that also might skew the results. Let's see!
How many total songs?
1117 songs. 2.6 days worth.
Sort by song title - First and Last…
À part - La Laque (just downloaded as part of a bunch of free MP3s the other day; listening to it for the first time right now)
$300 - Soul Coughing
(Technically the last thing in the list is the 1920s Radio Network stream, but I'm not sure that counts)
Sort by Time - Shortest and Longest…
(Again, excluding the radio streams, which have no time)
Bonus Track - Ani DiFranco, 4 seconds
The Tech Guy Podcast 339 - Leo Laporte, 2:11:23
(Longest actual song is Concerto fatto per la notte di natale - Corelli, 15:38)
Sort by Album - First and Last…
A. Marcello - Alessandro Marcello
1981-Beauty and the Beat - The Go Gos, but that's only because the dorkwad who had the privilege of yelling "FIRST!" when his album information was uploaded to CDDB entered it that way. Dude, the album is called Beauty and the Beat, and it's filed under B. The real last album, alphabetically, is Zooropa - U2.
Sort by Artist - First and Last…
ABC
[Ignoring another dorkwad who entered the song titles in the Artist field] Zero7
Top Five Six Most Played Songs…
Everloving - Moby (15)
Pyramid Song - Radiohead (14)
Planet Telex - Radiohead (14)
Climbing Up The Walls - Radiohead (14)
Running To Stand Still - U2 (14)
In The Waiting Line - Zero 7 (14)
Find the following words. How many songs show up?
Sex: 2, Death: 0, Love: 17, You: 49, Home: 5, Boy: 13, Girl: 48
First five songs that come up on Party Shuffle…
Candy Perfume Girl - Madonna (Pop)
Beautiful - Bill Medley (Blues) [ugh, another free mp3 that I hated]
Mine's Not A High Horse - The Shins (Alternative & Punk)
Adagio for Concerto for Two Harpsichords in C Minor - Various Artists (Holiday)
Kommet, Ihr Hirten - CSSR State Philharmonic Orchestra (Holiday)
Hmmm, looks like it'll be an interesting Christmas party.
Downstairs iTunes to come, hopefully tonight.
iTunes Meme: The "Home" Mac
Finally made it downstairs to the "home" Mac, where the main iTunes account (which I share with Al and the Beaner) is. Here's the scoop:
How many total songs?
5184 songs. 13.7 days worth.
Sort by song title - First and Last…
Abblasen: Fanfare - Chip Davis
. - Stevie Wonder (This isn't the actual song title; it's where the Beaner hit . and Enter on the keyboard once, and we lost the actual song title. I've been too lazy to dig out the Sesame Street CD it came from to see what it really is.)
1999 - Seahorses (The last actual song title.)
Sort by Time - Shortest and Longest…
Bonus Track - Ani DiFranco, 4 seconds
It took me a while to determine this, since Cast, Nirvana, Kula Shaker, and the Stone Roses all have songs with a huge amount of dead air at the end of them. I think the winner for actual longest song is:
St. Robinson In His Cadillac Dreams - Counting Crows, 15:40
Sort by Album - First and Last…
A. Marcello - Alessandro Marcello
1989 Keep On Movin' - Soul II Soul, and here we run into the "FIRST!" dorkwad problem again. Last real album title is 5 - Lenny Kravitz
Sort by Artist - First and Last…
a-Ha
999
Top Five Most Played Songs…
Sleigh Ride - Johnny Mathis With Percy Faith And His Orchestra (211)
Packt like sardines in a crushd tin box - Radiohead (202)
Go to Sleep - Radiohead (194)
True Dreams Of Wichita - Soul Coughing (184)
Destroy This World - Five-Eight (172)
Note that although I do love Sleigh Ride, it wouldn't be in the top five if it weren't also the Beaner's favorite song of all time. We've been known to put it on a single-song loop for him. The remaining four are all on my Moody series of playlists (II-VI), which *I* put loop when I'm coding.
Find the following words. How many songs show up?
Sex: 6, Death: 326*, Love: 83, You: 229, Home: 19, Boy: 64, Girl: 78
*323 of these are Harry Potter audiobook chapters
First five songs that come up on Party Shuffle…
The Guns Of Brixton - The Clash Story of the Clash (Alternative & Punk)
Voices Carry - 'Til Tuesday (Rock)
Glycerine - Bush (Rock)
Southside - Moby (Electronica/Dance)
Begin The Begin - R.E.M. (Rock)
Not a bad mix, actually. As I was doing this, I noted to Al that there are probably some more interesting questions that could be asked that would elicit more hilarity as well as more diversity (Abbey Road seems to be coming up a lot as a first album, a-Ha as an artist, for example). Al thought of two things he'd like to know: Since the "sex" and "death" keywords came up relatively little for me—death was 0 on the work machine, and 3 on the home machine if you exclude all the Harry Potter—he wondered what keywords *did* show up rather frequently. I'd probably have to write a program to determine this. Also not as simple as sorting by column header: Top Five Artists by Number of Tracks. iWantToKnowMore: How about some iTunes analysis tools, Apple?
Wheat Free
I don't intend to eat wheat-free forever (in fact, I ate the three of the croutons off the Beaner's bowl of roasted tomato soup at the Corner Bakery Cafe today), but other than those croutons, I've spent the past two days avoiding wheat and overt sugars. I did it for two reasons: (1) because I seemed to be in a state of sugar shock, where even small amounts of bread or sugar could give me the sugar sweats and make me feel terrible, and (2) in an effort to eat more consciously. I have a habit of just stuffing things in my mouth while I've got my nose an inch away from the computer screen, and then wondering, "did I just eat something? If so, what?"
Anyway, while at the grocery store last night I happened to peruse the "natural foods" section to see if I could spot any wheat-free crackers. I'd just picked up some more drunken goat cheese (yum!), and IMHO, it tastes best on a cracker. I spotted these on the bottom shelf, and after some indecision over whether to get the pecan or the almond variety, I threw a box in my cart:
I actually got the non-Smokehouse almond version (because they were out of the Smokehouse version), and they're delicious. They're a bit like Asian rice crackers, but with a better flavor—and they're perfect under the drunken goat cheese. Highly recommended, even if you aren't on a wheat-free diet.
In addition to the Smokehouse almond flavor, Amazon also carries the cheddar cheese almond and pecan varieties. Your local store may carry the hazelnut flavor as well; Wegmans did.
How About Some REAL Sex Education Now?
From a New York Times article entitled Teenage Birth Rate Rises for First Time Since ’91, in which abstinence-only programs are criticized (rightly, IMHO), comes this hilarious quote:
Robert Rector, a senior research fellow with the Heritage Foundation, said that blaming abstinence-only programs was “stupid.” Mr. Rector said that most young women who became pregnant were highly educated about contraceptives but wanted to have babies.
I find it hard to believe that these young women were "highly educated" about anything, including contraceptives, but especially about how difficult it is to raise a child. Mr. Rector seems to agree with me when he says, later in the article:
Mr. Rector of the Heritage Foundation said that teenage and unmarried birth rates were driven by the same factors: young women with little education who are devoted to mothering but see no great need to be married.
So these women are highly educated about contraceptives but poorly educated in every other way. I can buy the latter, but as I said, not the former.
I had sex education in fifth grade. Real sex education. I don't think I ever participated in one of the classes where you had to carry a sack of flour around everywhere or keep an egg healthy and whole for a week, but I remember watching others do it, and just watching was educational. It was the kind of assignment everyone talked about, not just those doing it.
We need to educate kids about STDs, pregnancy, and the impact on their lives of having a child young. Telling them to say "no" is not enough. I'm not sure what Mr. Rector wants to tell them will do the trick either, frankly.
“We should be telling them that for the well-being of any child, it’s critically important that you be over the age of 20 and that you be married,” he said. “That message is not given at all.”
Ugh, The Goo!
I've been really sick for the past few days with what I at first took for strep throat, but which I now think was probably a major sinus infection. The latter makes more sense, as the Beaner had all the same symptoms *except* for the sore throat, and the icky green goo was coming out of his nose instead of going down the back of his throat, as it was in my case.
Aren't you glad you asked? No? Then you'll probably want to skip the next paragraph, too. [Just scroll down (or click this link) until you see the cute photo of the Beaner all bundled up on top of his jammies for a quick trip to Whole Foods for the soy yogurt he wanted to eat for dinner, and you'll miss the ickiest bits.]
In any case, I took my feverish, nauseated, weak-from-not-being-able-to-eat-or-drink self to the doctor on Wednesday afternoon and got a prescription for a humongous dose of Amoxicillin, plus one for an anti-nausea drug when I puked in the doctor's sink after the throat swab. Because I hadn't been eating, all that came up was bile and globs of goo, which was probably the reason for the nausea in the first place.
gratuitous photo of the Beaner bundled up, because he's cute
I could feel the antibiotics kick in about 5 hours after I took the first dose, and I woke up 13 hours after that dose (at 5:24am) knowing that it was essential that I take the next dose RIGHT THEN instead of waiting for an hour that would make it easier to get the pills into me at regular 12-hour intervals. I've been steadily improving since then, thank god; I only needed one nap yesterday, not three, and though I didn't take my temperature to confirm it, I knew that my fever was gone. I even ate a yogurt for breakfast (after taking an anti-nausea pill)—or rather, breakfast and lunch, as it took me 3 hours to actually finish it—and an almost-normal dinner (I had to push away anything remotely spicy because my throat couldn't take it).
Needless to say, while I was down with the Sinus Infection That Invaded My Throat, my blog and Flickr stream were sadly neglected. Well, by me, anyway. The blog was apparently attended to by hackers. A big thanks to S. for e-mailing me to let me know, and apologies to anyone who had to endure the spam links that broke the blog layout in my absence. Apologies also to followers of my My Every Day set on Flickr, who will be treated to fuzzy iPhone photos of my socks for two days in a row because I didn't have the energy or the inclination to photograph anything else. (Members of the Sock It To Me! group, on the other hand, will likely be thrilled.)
The good news is that today I felt well enough to go on my morning walk (yay!) and well enough to work (which also means I had a chance to download al the photos I took of the Beaner last night), so you won't have to endure fuzzy sock photos in my photo stream for long. In fact, I also managed to pick up the roll of film I'd dropped off at CVS on Sunday when I picked up my prescriptions Wednesday afternoon, so there are some new Vivitar pictures to see already.
The fact that I'm feeling better also means that I shouldn't have any trouble playing in my hockey game tomorrow night in Harrisburg. On the way we're going to make a stop that might involve some secret presents for a couple of colleagues, if I can afford the shipping of the items.
This Calls For a Cars Bandage!
The Beaner woke up with a giant zit in the middle of his chin the other morning, most likely from not wiping his face after dribbling toothpaste (he likes to look at himself in the mirror while spitting, which is not conducive to getting the spit into the sink) and then sleeping on a somewhat scratchy pillowcase. (He loves the design of the case, but actually complained about the scratchiness after acquiring the zit. Why they make kids' sheets with such low threadcounts I'll never understand—kids' skin is *more* sensitive than adults'!)
I noticed the zit, of course, when he woke up, but I didn't have time to attend to it until he went to bed either that night or the next, I can't remember which. I told him we'd put a Band-Aid with some Neosporin on it on the zit, and by morning it would be on its way to healing completely. As soon as I said this, he said, "we can use my car band-aids!"
I'd been thinking of the little clear dot Band-Aids I keep around for the express purpose of dealing with infected zits, but of course the Beaner thought of the plastic Hot Wheels bandages my Aunt Jancy gave him as a Christmas gift when she stopped by on Sunday. She also gave him a box of tattoo-type bandages with Cars characters on them, and ever since, the Beaner has been seeing boo-boos EVERYWHERE. "Look, there's a spot on your arm where I scratched you. You need a band-aid. [Applies Hot Wheels bandage to my arm, then invents an injury to himself and applies another Hot Wheels bandage.] Now, who else has a boo-boo?"
"That's a good idea!" I exclaimed at his suggestion, thinking not of the Hot Wheels bandages, but of the Cars ones. I actually prefer the tattoo-type bandages for overnight infected-zit fighting because they form a better air-tight seal, but I've been using the dots because (a) they're cheaper, and (b) I can leave them on during the day if I need to (whereas a giant whale or peace sign or Mater would tend to draw attention to the spot I was trying to get rid of).
We ended up having a long debate about whether to use the Cars ones or the Hot Wheels ones (he prefers the latter because the Cars ones require assistance to apply, and he is all about DOING IT HIMSELF these days—complete with running commentary on *how* he's doing it, with helpful pointers for us clueless adults. Now that I think about it, he might have a career on the DIY channel someday...), which I eventually won because I'M MOM.
Also because he approved when he looked at the result in the mirror. (You *know* that if he'd cried and said he hated it and wanted a Hot Wheels band-aid, I would have sighed dramatically, gotten grumpy and annoyed, and then given him his damn Hot Wheels band-aid, even though it would have fallen off five seconds later because it wasn't as sticky and was too big for his chin. I'm like that. And for those of you who don't know me well, that's about as accurate a portrait as you'll ever get.)
It Was Strep
For any of you who were curious, the doctor just called: It was indeed strep throat. Luckily the antibiotics did the trick, and I'm fine now. Just a little lingering goo from the cold/sinus infection that preceded the strep, but that's manageable.
Recent Beanerisms
Beaner, to me: "Where's my macaroni and cheese? Where's my corn?"
Me, to Al: "All I want is what I have coming to me. All I want is my fair share."
Al, to me: "That's exactly the quote that popped into my head, too."
"Boys like Mommies and sisters like Daddies. That means you need to drive and Daddy nees to sit in the passenger seat."
I think his logic is faulty and he's been watching to many Berenstein Bears episodes. (Al, while watching the Berenstein Bears with the Beaner in our hotel room in Harrisburg: "Are these bears Mormon?") I've no idea why the Beaner prefers me to drive; it's taken a while for me to come to terms with this, but Al is the better driver. I've become more nervous and paranoid behind the wheel over the years. I am a heck of a navigator, though (more reliable than the GPS, even. :)
Beaner: "Why are your sunglasses there?"
Me: "Because they were in my hockey bag and I took them out."
Beaner: "But why are they there?"
Me, exasperated that he still hasn't taken his jacket off after being asked three times: "Because I put them there. You know, sometimes things just ARE."
Beaner: "Oh, right, like a pirate. [pause] Arrrr!"
Guess Where Philly
In the tradition of other Guess Where? groups on Flickr (most notably Guess Where SF, to which my friend Kristin is an occasional contributor), I've started a group called Guess Where Philadelphia (Center City/West Philly). I'm sort of bummed about the long name, but Greater Philadelphia is rather large and encompasses places like Manayunk, Chestnut Hill, and NE Philly—places I'm not nearly as familiar with—and I wanted to limit the group to my stomping grounds. (I'm selfish that way.)
Anyway, if you want to play, please do read the group rules, submit a photo, or just guess where one of the existing photos in the pool was taken. Currently there's only this one up for guessing, but there will be more coming soon (from me, if from no one else!).
