Played so much bass during last night's adult program practice that by the last song my left hand and arm cramped and refused to grip the strings. In the grand scheme of things it wasn't *that* much continuous playing time—only a little over 2 hours—but that's more than I've ever done before. (Usually I practice for 30-60 minutes a night, my lessons are 45 minutes long, and at the last adult session I sang half the songs because I...
August 19, 2013
Last summer (I can't believe it's been a year!), I said to the Beaner, "it's time for music lessons. Would you like to do piano, guitar, or vocals?" He replied, "I want to play the drums." This I found interesting, as I, too, had wanted to play the drums as a child. Well, actually I wanted to play the flute when we were offered the opportunity to choose band instruments in fourth grade, but back in the olden days,...
August 2, 2011
Just because I feel like it, I'm going to record the current state of my Moody playlist, which I've mentioned before (when it was Moody II, and again when it was Moody VI). It's now Moody XI, and it contains the same core favorites with a few newer additions. I should really figure out how to share this on last.fm or blip or something, so you can listen to it the way I do: while coding, and on loop....
May 21, 2008
As I mentioned yesterday, Al and I had tickets to see Liam Finn tonight at XPN's World Cafe Live. Showtime on the ticket was 7:30, and even though bands at most venues don't go on until at least 30 minutes after the advertised showtime, and Liam's MySpace page indicated he'd be going on at 8, we decided to be punctual....
January 31, 2008
I've seen this one before, but never when I had access to my complete iTunes library. Today I happened across Myla's version in the notes to one of her Flickr photos, and thought I'd give it a try. Some of the songs seem spot on; others, not so much. I thought it was interesting that the movie of my life opens and closes with Renaissance/Early music... and there's not a Radiohead song to be found anywhere....
January 30, 2008
I've mentioned my Moody playlist here before, most notably in 2003, when I was still on Moody II. As of today, 7 years after I burned the first Moody CD, I'm on Moody VI—and loving the freedom of the iTunes playlist, which doesn't limit me to what will fit on a single CD. The playlist is essentially the same as Moody II, with a few additions; I'm not sure I deleted anything from that original playlist (I don't have...
January 16, 2008
I think I created the first beaner_car playlist over a year ago (maybe even further back than that), using songs from his Music Class CDs mixed in with a few boppy pop favorites of mine that I thought he might like, too. Since then we've been refining his playlist, taking off songs he rejects, adding new ones he's either heard on the radio, on TV, or me humming in the kitchen, and also trying out tunes we like just...
December 4, 2007
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:...
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....
August 13, 2007
Thanks to Mrs. Kennedy, I cannot stop humming Lovecats by the Cure. I may have to download the damn thing off of iTunes if this keeps up....
April 9, 2007
Via Kottke.org: Pearls Before Breakfast, an article about an experiment designed to determine whether anyone would notice if a famous violinist busked at a busy Metro station in Washington, DC. I cried when I got to the part about children being mesmerized by his performance, while their parents tried to hurry them along through the station. Fascinating, heartbreaking, and definitely worth reading....
December 22, 2006
I think I've mentioned here before that The Beaner's favorite Christmas tune is Sleigh Ride (also known as "look at the show"), though he's also fond of Jingle Bells ("jingle all da way"), Let It Snow ("weather outside"), and The Little Drummer Boy ("parum pa pa pum"). He's been singing a few selections at the top of his lungs lately; listening to a song 30 or 40 times in a row is apparently paying off when it comes to...
October 17, 2006
I just visited my friend Valerie's site, where she talked about getting together with some friends to record a piece of music....
July 25, 2006
So as I mentioned in the previous post, we had a busy weekend. I probably should have spent the weekend doing laundry and cleaning the house and bleaching my hair and making packing lists in preparation for BlogHer (I only remembered last night that I'd be IN THE OFFICE on Thursday and not calling into meetings, and that I'd need to have everything washed and ready to be packed on Wednesday in preparation for the 6:20am flight on Thursday), but...
November 19, 2005
My favorite song by far on Mike Doughty's CD Haughty Melodic is the last track, Your Misfortune. It caught me by surprise in the car just now, however, in that it summed up so neatly and so beautifully the sentiments my sister, my parents, and to a lesser extent I have been expressing to my Uncle Bruce for months (or years, really). It goes like this:...
November 3, 2004
I won't try to explain every selection on this list; I'll just say that when I finished the last post, I really needed to hear some music. Some that made me feel better, some that made me feel indignant, some that made me feel resigned... some that just made me feel. Here's the new Post-Election Blues playlist, in no particular order (since I Shuffle Songs anyway). Beyond Belief ~ Elvis Costello One Step Closer ~ Linkin Park In God's...
January 30, 2004
My iPod arrived (via FedEx rather than Airborne Express, for some reason) a couple hours ago. Like the FedEx guy's pen, with which I was asked to sign the receipt, the iPod was frozen. After about 90 minutes of charging in my overly-warm office, however, I was able to copy all my playlists from the borrowed Powerbook to the iPod, and I'm now happily grooving away. Yay!...
The Apple website reports that my iPod has been repaired as of 1/27, and the case is closed. So where the heck is it? Airborne Express guy, please bring it to me! On a related note, my friend Clem sent me a link to a Macworld UK article about how iPods are wrecking marriages. For anyone who was worried, we're fine, thanks....
January 15, 2004
I've sent my iPod in for repair, and I'm hoping Apple can figure out what's wrong with it and get it back to me asap. Of course, I know I'm not getting back the same iPod—I've had a couple days to get used to this idea as I waited for Apple to send me a special shipping box—but I'm hoping that the one I do get back will have my name engraved on it, as the original did. (My...
January 12, 2004
I had almost completed a post on the deep depression I have been plunged into by the inability of my new iPod to hold a charge, when for some reason my attention was captured by a story in my daily NYTimes e-mail, and I clicked on the link. Of course the page opened in my last-used browser window, which contained my post about the iPod. It's all gone now.... Here's the gist: I love my iPod. It's not working....
December 22, 2003
I'm now listening to the CD I used to code to, a CD I dubbed Moody II when I made it back in August of 2001. It's still one of my favorites, full of Radiohead and Moby and a few angsty songs from Bob Mould and Soul Coughing. I think this is the first time I've listened to it since I left my job as a software engineer, and when the first song (Radiohead's "Packt like sardines in a...