My baby girl turned 8 years old. Where had the time gone? Seems like just yesterday she was wiggling here way out of the swaddling blanket. I’m not sure what I’ve done right, if anything, to warrant such a beautiful girl.
Iris in the Yard
Spring is my favorite time of year. Too bad it seems so short. Maybe that is why I haven’t updated this blog for 3 months…time just moves too fast. Plus, let’s be honest…who really reads this blog anyway? Well, I guess I would continue to write periodically even if there was only one reader.
Kitty in the Jungle.
One of my favorite parts of spring is watching the flowers bloom. The weeds in the yard are out of control. But the flowers help make up for it. Pictured here is an Iris from the yard. Iris are a new addition this year. The Tulips this year were unbelieveable, every color and shape imaginable.
Every year I like to try to capture the beauty of the flowers with my camera. Every year seems to be a disappointment. Yes, the photos are getting better but there is always room for improvement. What I see in my minds eye, usually doesn’t translate to the picture. Isn’t that how life goes…the beauty we see is often fleeting and hard to capture.
I turned a year older a couple of weeks ago. Aging is such a mysterious and yet inescapable process. Like the peddles of a tulip, the skin turns from perfectly smooth and flawless to withered and dried in the course of it’s lifetime. There is no going back. We should be grateful for our children. When we were their age we didn’t think about the smoothness of our skin, the spring in our step or how easy it was to fall asleep. We didn’t appreciate what we had. We can enjoy our children’s youthfulness, even if they do not.
I guess that is why Spring is my favorite season. each year I get a chance to relive the grandeur and mystery of life just beginning, weeds and all.
Yesterday it snowed a ton…literally. When I finally got around to shoveling, there was at least a foot on the driveway. Here is my first attempt at creating a timelapse movie. I used my iPhone and an application called TimeLapse. Photos were taken at 10 second intervals, totaling something in the range of 250 photos.
Unfortunately, Tigger the cat knocked over the camera before I finished. Enjoy.
Introducing a new podcast by me…jamesb. It’s called microStockU, and it can be found by going to microStockU.com or jamesb.com/microstocku. It’s the podcast that tracks my journey in the land of microstock. Don’t know what microstock it? Tune in and find out.
It’s been a long time since I put out an episode of Face the Music, more than a year in fact. So here one is at long last. Three songs served up, just the way you like them, wrapped in theme. Enjoy!
Featured Songs:
Song 1
Artist: Doug Randle
Album: Songs for the New Industrial State
Song: Coloured Plastics
Label: Light in the Attic
Buy Link: iTunes Music Store
Song 2
Artist: J Tillman
Album: Vacilando Territory Blues
Song: Steel on Steel
Label: Western Vinyl
Buy Link: iTunes Music Store
Song 3
Artist: School of Seven Bells
Album: Alpinisms
Song: Chains
Label: Ghostly International
Buy Link: iTunes Music Store
Mentioned Links:
For years I have gone in and out of journal writing stages, especially when I hit the computer age. I am constantly torn between the old tried and true book journal, or the convenience and speed of the computer. A paper journal is so linear that it is easier to focus ones thought. The computer is powerful with spell checking, searches, formatting. Well now I have found a third option, Memiary.
It’s not meant as a replacement to either method, unless you are satisfied with the level of granularity it provides.
I came across this website (and optional iPhone app) that makes journaling easy and fun. Memiary is a website that allowed the user to enter five items each day. The magic doesn’t happen all at once. It’s easy to think of the most important things that happen to you each day, but imagine looking back a year from now, or five or 50. Wouldn’t it be great to know what you did on this day 10 years ago. It only takes moments a day. I record things throughout the day, and polish them at the end of the day. But each person might have a different way of recording their day.
Signing up with the site is free, and the design is simple and beautifully designed. Go check it out.
Not quite safe for all audiences, but terribly funny! Anyone who has been married for more than, say, 10 years (maybe less maybe more) will understand. This isn’t the version from the album, but pretty close. He tends to improvise .
If you want to find the song to download so that you can listen to is again and again and again, visit this link. Enjoy.
Bob Dylan’s new release this year, Tell Tall Signs, is #8 in his bootleg series. It’s a series ofrare and unreleased songs from his work between 1996 and 2006. He never ceases to amaze me how he can put so much meaning and feeling into song after song.
One example is the song, Most of the Time. The original version is good, but the alternate version on Tell Tale Signs is incredible. What I love about this song is his ability to say one thing but mean another.
It’s an incredible album, one of the best of 2008.
For lunch today, I bought a chicken bowl and a chocolate shake from Hogi Yogi. Why? I don’t know…call it feel good food. It’s food that invokes happy feeling. music does that same thing as feel good food, except that we can invoke more than just happy feeling with music. Of course, food can invoke a lot of different feeling as well, but the range of good feeling is somewhat limited with food. With music we can enjoy a wider range of emotions, even feel negative emotions and still ‘enjoy’ the experience.
For example in You Can’t Always Get What You Want by the Rolling Stones we can experience the liberating realization that sometimes in life we can’t get what we want in life, but somehow things work out and ultimately we get what we need. At least in the midst of trials, it’s nice to hear someone else tell you such sage words of advice.
Who hasn’t felt their spirits rise as the result of hearing the refrain of Bobby McFerrin’s Don’t Worry, Be Happy. The song was worn out in it day, but only because it was so therapeutic to it’s listeners who longed to be uplifted and encouraged.
Weezer’s hit the big time in 1994 with Undone - The Sweater Song. 1994 was a hard year for me, kind of like last year, and that song really hit home. I felt like I was unraveling little by little. Thankfully I’m starting to feel better. But my point is that Weezer really seemed to be able to put into a song the way I was feeling. Here is a case where a song can make one feel good and bad all at the same time. “If you want to destroy my sweater, pull this thread as I walk away, watch me unravel I’ll soon be naked, Lying on the floor, I’ve come undone.” Now those are insightful lyrics. It’s funny to talk about a sweater unraveling, but the imagery is unique.
Finally, James Taylor on his album Sweet Baby James sings about the loss of a friend in his song Fire and Rain. Part of it is a story about a friend, Suzanne, who committed suicide while he was in London. His friends didn’t tell him about the suicide for six months for fear it would shake him up. You can feel the regret in his voice at this loss. “I’ve seen fire, and I’ve seen rain, I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end. I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend, But I always thought that I would see you again.”
Where would we be without music…and where would we be without good food? I’m going to go finish my chocolate shake.
