Music from my Life

Thought I'd actually post about music, seeing as how that's sort of the theme of my blog. I love music, with two or three exceptions. I don't like rap or heavy metal. Also, not too keen on organ music. Some years ago, probably when I was about 25, so half my life ago, LOL, a friend (Dana, you know who you are!) turned me onto movie soundtracks and electronic music. At that time the local jr. college was doing a Saturday nite show, featuring many cutting edge artists, such as Steve Roach, Vangelis and more. I would tape the program and I got a lot of great music for free that way. What amazes me is how powerful these influences actually were; I just tracked down the music to Western Spaces, an album by Steve Roach, Kevin Braheny and Richard Burmer, that I had listened to way back then. I still remembered the title of the first song on the album, The Breathing Stone. I found that the album had been reissued, but minus Burmer's work. I actually spent a long time online searching for his pieces, so I would have the complete album. The awesome thing about the internet, well, one of them, anyway, is that a lot of the old music is being made available again. I use Pandora.com sometimes and am even able to listen to praise music on their site. They did a lot of research and set up what they called The Music Genome Project and then made it available to everyone. Okay, I can't find Love Song, a group from the very beginning of the Jesus Movement, but hey, it found Karen Lafferty and Keith Green! In this case I actually bought the songs from Amazon.com, an album for $8.99 and then a couple of individual songs for .99 each. Then I downloaded them as MP3's and could listen to them immediately. Very nice! But I do have to get them backed up, or I'll have to buy them again.

The reason I'm worried about getting things backed up is that I just went through a computer crash. Wow, sure found it hard to deal with being without my laptop. But a couple of good things came out of it. I found out why my external drive wasn't working, for free. I also regained a function I'd lost, which allows me to copy pictures more easily. I'm wondering if I got it back because the reload of XP gave me what I think is IE6. If that is the case, Don says IE6 is hackable and I have to upgrade to at least IE7. No one here is upgrading to IE8, it sucks! And, although I had to sacrifice a few documents, I did get back into my Asus EeePC, which I had lost the password to, changing it while traveling caused me to forget what the password was. I also had to reset the connection to our WiFi, which helped me figure out how to connect to it on the Asus as well. The other thing is that Don built an awesome shelving unit and set up the new color printer and my laser printer; the latter is wireless, so I can now print from the living room! I had been emailing documents to Randy or myself, then going online at her computer, opening the darn thing and printing it.

I have a theory. I think cats are secretly IT and computer experts. It started when Tyler was a kitten. She walked over the keyboard and managed to type "TY." Then Skittle typed "puppy." Now here is where it gets really suspicious; one day I was online and had left my computer for a few minutes. I came back as Skittle jumped down and discovered she'd been Googling!

Her results included a number of mathematical equations and a foreign embassy! More recently, she also managed to shrink the browser characters to miniscule, even a magnifying glass wouldn't have helped. It's a plot I tell ya! That's her at Randy's computer, doing who knows what!

New Post for the New Year

Wow, I'm actually doing a post before the first month of the year is over! I've been trying to enforce a decent bedtime for myself, in my quest to overcome fatigue. Not succeeding too well, so far. On Monday I did get to bed by 6:45a, though and rehearsal went better for me.

Skittle has rediscovered the fun of her polyester cube, it has round openings in all but 2 sides and she'll come flying in and leap into it, sometimes skidding it across the floor. Or she'll hide in it and wait for some unsuspecting person to walk by. What's really cute is when she does an 'up periscope' move, popping her head out the top to see where everyone is! I threw my big green kooshie ball at her the other day and she was stalking it from inside the cube, just her paw stuck out to whack it and try to get hold of it. She's not limited to one spot, she takes the cube with, it's hysterical. When she gets bored, we'll put it away for another while, till she finds it fun again. Best $5 investment we ever made!

I have a car again! Well, I paid for it and essentially also paid for the repairs, since I was owed $$ for the septic pumping a couple of months ago. Randy and I will share it. It's old, a '93 Ford Taurus; I don't know how it is that Don & Randy always seem to find Ford Tauruses, but they did again. It wouldn't have been my first choice, but it runs and we got its engine mounts replaced yesterday. What Don was thinking was the transmission clunking was literally the engine sliding back when you started up from a stop! He can do a lot of the minor maintenance on it and eventually we'll get the bad rack and pinion fixed. That's making the steering wheel do some pulling to one side right now, but I've dealt with that sort of problem before and so has Randy. I actually think that Don has replaced a rack and pinion himself before, if memory serves me right, but that is always iffy nowadays. The car is silver and has these weird oriental seat covers on the front seats. If the upholstery isn't shot, I'll be removing those. I am planning to go to the Joyce Meyer Ministries conference in Long Beach in March, so I'm happy that I'll have transportation. I'm a little torn between inviting a friend to go with and taking a vacation for the solitude. I will try to have dinner with my Dad at least one night, while I'm there; he lives there in town.

Being mobile feels so good! I can go to B&N if I want, or the library, and I don't have to arrange to borrow the car for my appts. all the time. One car for three adults was hard to manage! This will also stop the need for renting a car so much. If this car still seems unreliable, though, I may rent a car for the convention. Oh yeah, I just remembered that my aunt wants me to visit her in Phoenix this winter, if I can. And my other aunt is wintering in Apache Junction. Hmmm, maybe a road trip is a possibility? Something to think about, anyway.