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We have a connection to this church since this is where Mama Jane attends and we always hit up their outdoor events in the fall. We got a little respite from the rain (though not enough to have the event at it’s regular location at their sports complex) so we went for it.
We bumped into The Young’s and hung out with them for most of the evening. Things have been busy for all of us (especially them) and they boys have really missed one another. Evan was off with Matt doing a moon bounce and Jake was waiting in line to climb a rock wall.
He must have stood there while waiting in line for a solid full minute with his hands like this. Too funny.
Evan’s first pony ride.
Lucas has been on ponies before, and even got to ride a horse, thanks to our dear friend, Leanne. He’s an old pro. 
Dinner time…winding down from all the excitement. LIstening to some Coffey Anderson and my former student, Robby.
Thank goodness, Mike spotted us. We were starting to worry we wouldn’t run into any Nason’s or Mama Jane! She snuck up behind Lucas and when he turned around to greet her he just couldn’t set his drink down fast enough to “hug her neck.”
In the event you haven’t heard of Coffey Anderson, here are a few links and videos to pique your interest: soul, pop, Christian…you name it. He’s having a good time and he’s talented for sure!
As I mentioned in a Shoot. Post. Repeat Daily, blog entry, Lucas is a fan of The Exterminators and we recenty met them while in Louisiana visiting Granna and Grandpa (my parents). Lucas got a really cool medallion at the flea market and wowed me with his coolness when selecting the ying-yang symbol as his second bottlecap. It’s so cool watching them grow up into their own little people. Of course we stalked their building on the way back to my parent’s house and snapped a quick photo. That log cabin protected by gargoyles belongs to the Vex Con guys. My newly turned professionally employed brother was there for the weekend too and we had ourselves a pretty good time. Mom and Dad’s backyard was in full bloom and awaiting its photoshoot, of course. It’s nice to just throw everything into the car and bust out of town sometimes.
more about “Are you Ready for the Country?“, posted with vodpod
After Lucas’s soccer game this morning we headed over to Depot Square, the Historic District in Arlington. Some of our favorite things about that town are their festivals and community activities that all take place in and around the Depot. Someday I’ll head down there to take pictures just for the sake of taking pictures, but the shots of the building I got in haste will have to do for now.
You can see Evan’s apprehension here, but it didn’t take long for him to be having a great time on the train. For a quick minute before we left, Lucas asked me to take him over to the abandoned gin, where I stumbled upon what I thought to be contraband. I looked it up when I got home and it turns out they have somewhat recently began importing absinthe to The States. Who knew?
We’ve been busy. Isn’t life awesome! After soccer Saturday before last (I’m SO behind!) we went to Lucas’s friend Marlaina’s 6th birthday party. For three years running they’ve had the formalities (cake, gifts) in the Veteran’s park outside the Zoo and culminated the party (with the folks who care to stay) touring the Zoo. Marlaina’s a huge animal lover. We got there early and just looked around. The weather was just too good to pass up. It’s nice to see green.
Lucas was absolutely delighted to see his Mama Jane! We all were, truth be told. Life gets busy and you lose touch with people that are just down the road. We’ll certainly head over to her house for some outside play as the school year comes to a close. Can’t let so much time pass next time.
Lucas beheaded the pinata. Maybe we should strongly urge him to reconsider playing baseball.
Somebody loves his Mama. Forever picking flowers for me. I sincerely hope he does this when he’s thirty. I mean, he can do that for his wife too, but I don’t need store bought flowers. Maybe he’ll draw them for me and send them in the mail. I relish these days.
Lucas with his newly budding teeth and “treasure map,” the zoo map. You can tell this isn’t my shot. Too much head room for me! But still awesome!
I didn’t get a shot of a polar bear last trip because some dude saw my camera and fancy flash and wanted to talk “photography.” I still didn’t get the one I wanted this time because it was too crowded, but at least it was something. This fella was so playful. He kept swatting at the glass, the kids would laugh and then he’d do it again. So fun! The seals were out and about too!
They just love being together. They spent the better part of four years of their lives together at Mama Jane’s. Katia and I have vowed to do anything we can to keep them connected though they’ll be at different schools across town. There’s something to be said about having a history with someone. Sometimes it’s not so good, but most of the time, it’s family.
We got home and put the boys to bed for a few minutes, then Shelby came over to hang out with them so I could check out a student of mine who was playing with some other students I know at a famous venue in town.
It was a big deal for them and I have had numerous connections with his family over the past three years, plus I figured it was a good excuse to get down to Beale Street for one of these:
Easter Sunday was quite nice. We did the Easter Bunny thing and the egg dyeing thing…only problem…not such good pictures. I think the batteries are crapping out on the flash and I didn’t have time with Easter dinner, dyeing eggs and an at home egg hunt to worry about the pictures. Too busy building the natural memories.
I’ve always been a huge fan of Fall. Looks like Spring is giving Fall a run for her money!
It’s kind of a no-brainer, but I think there are a few Mac users out there who feel a little invincible. Really, it’s not very often that one hears of a “bad Apple.” But, they do happen and even a good Apple can start behaving sluggishly without routine maintence. I’m trying to tidy some things of in my digital world and this is my current “State of the Project.”
Back up your iTunes library by copying to an external hard drive.
That’s a good deal of music I’d like to hang on to.
I have all photos uploaded to Snapfish through December of 2008. I still have to select The Best of: October, November and December. This is HUGE, for those of you not following along at home. Just two months ago, I was still working in 2007. I now have all photos printed through February of 2008.
My next goals is to have selected, sorted and printed all photos through 2008 by Evan’s third birthday in April. Remember, my long-term family historian goal for 2009 is a year long project. I’m just now setting my short term goals to paper. By May I should be ready to work full force on Evan’s albums and by December I’d like to have finished year one, at least. I will certainly push myself.
I am really enjoying taking and posting a daily photo, though I do get a day or so behind in the posting of them from time to time. I have to resize each one in Photoshop before uploading it, so it’s a little more labor intensive now. Notice my iPhoto has fewer than 1300 pictures on it, down from over 8,000. For having a brand new camera, that’s not too shabby.
I think I’ll update the iPhone and iPod before turning this little desktop off for the weekend. Talking about getting unplugged a little. The next few weeks will be busy ones. Today, taking a “mental health” day to chill out was well timed and well spent in preparation for it.
Lucas started back to soccer practice yesterday and Matt’s got a weekend camping trip coming up next weekend and I’ll be taking 15 senior high school students to Orlando for a week during Spring Break. Ahem. Very busy. I will keep taking pictures, but I may not post them until Sunday night. Stick with me!
For those of you who choose not to be moved by my tireless efforts at a political, emotional and personal statement about life, love, family and good weather may be appeased by the few photos below. Everyone else, please see the slideshow on my Vodpod to the right or check the February 10th post. I think you’ll enjoy it.
Oh, and the story about the :45 second intro that got cut:
This slide show is shorter than the original (see last post for the explanation of that) and I had to find a short segment of a song to fit. One of my favorite songs of all time is the Leonard Cohen song, “Hallelujah” as sung by Jeff Buckley, the incredible talent that drowned in the Mississippi River here in Memphis the first summer I lived here. At the start of our Zoo trip, while waiting by the tigers for Matt to return from the car,, I discovered the plaque memorializing him that I had never seen before that day in all our years of visiting. The first :45 seconds were originally the start of that favorite song of his. It fit, but , I guess it wasn’t meant to share. My original post about the song is now stripped of its video because WordPress didn’t support transferring the video links from TypePad, but I’ll give them again in case your interest is piqued. It’s truly a gorgeous song and I promise I have found two of the best performances of it around, though it’s totally subjective and I highly recommend you spend some time looking at Kate Voegele and k.d. lang’s renditions just so you can make an informed decision for yourself.
Jeff Buckley’s live (just discovered tonight while looking up the links again!)
And a little commentary about the lyrics.
Now, go look at my slideshow and check out my zoo pictures! I’m so proud!
So, after wringing my hands for hours last night, I watched the pictures in a slideshow on iPhoto once more while, chanting, “there must be a way, there must be a way.” And, my friends, there is. Apple never intended for me to spend hours importing, dragging and dropping 66 photos into iMovie and relentlessly searching for a song that equaled exactly the 4 minutes and 35 seconds that the movie lasted (I wasn’t successful anyway. The song I wanted was about :45 seconds short and of course no other one would do instead, so I cut a clip from another song as an intro~more on that later.) There is a button I discovered that tells iPhoto to adjust the length of each slide to fit the show within the length of the song. See?
So, lesson learned. iPhoto will EXPORT your slideshow as a movie!
Annnd as long as you have a DRM free song in your iTunes, you can add it and then post it. You can use Digital Rights Management Protected music, but you’ll get a warning that says basically unless a machine is authorized to play the song, the viewer will hear no music. Of course I know this because the one song that will work happens to be from one of the only three albums I have ever purchased through the iTunes store. It figures. So…I tried to pay the .30 cents to get the DRM-free version, but it is not yet available. (Yes! You read correctly, one must pay to get full rights back on the music they have already paid for~I won’t rant much about that as I knew what I was doing when I bought the music in the first place, but some poor saps did not and have large collections of this stuff that they have limited use of, it’s true. A little more on DRM at the end of the post.)
Do not despair. I found a suitable copy. My slideshow is now being uploaded to Vimeo as I write and I shall put it on my Vodpod later on (that’s that little video box on the right hand pane). The slideshow will be up later tonight along with the story of the :45 second intro that ended up on the cutting room floor.
**For those of you who are curious about this DRM stuff: It’s well, you know, that mean thing Apple did (and is now reniging on thanks to Amazon.com’s nudging in the marketplace) that prevented one from using the music on more than 5 machines or burned more than 7 times. You can read more about it here.
I was once struck by a quotation on somebody's fridge, when I was selling educational books door to door sometime in 1993,that said, "Piles are unmade decisions."
I believe that to be true to this day.
I did make plenty of piles today that I felt were laden with unmade decisions that were actually decisions within themselves. Allow me to share a few with you:
No, they might not actually look like "piles," but they are. Collections of like belongings. Trust me when I tell you that just a day ago, there was nothing resembling a collection of anything anywhere in this house. It was a catastrophic mess. So, you see piles of Christmas decorations awaiting boxes. Distinct piles of items on the counters. I feel like I can actually locate something if I needed to do so. Plus it was fun trying to take pictures at night in my vampire den and have them actually turn out like they were taken in my house under such low-light conditions. I'm ready to take a few classes and get this picture-taking thing rolling!
Say Hello.
"Hello in there" is on the iTunes.
We had an apartment in the city,
Me and Loretta liked living there.
Well, it'd been years since the kids had grown,
A life of their own left us alone.
John and Linda live in Omaha,
And Joe is somewhere on the road.
We lost Davy in the Korean war,
And I still don't know what for, don't matter anymore.
Chorus:
Ya' know that old trees just grow stronger,
And old rivers grow wilder ev'ry day.
Old people just grow lonesome
Waiting for someone to say, "Hello in there, hello."
Me and Loretta, we don't talk much more,
She sits and stares through the back door screen.
And all the news just repeats itself
Like some forgotten dream that we've both seen.
Someday I'll go and call up Rudy,
We worked together at the factory.
But what could I say if asks "What's new?"
"Nothing, what's with you? Nothing much to do."
Repeat Chorus:
So if you're walking down the street sometime
And spot some hollow ancient eyes,
Please don't just pass 'em by and stare
As if you didn't care, say, "Hello in there, hello."
For a long time I had never heard the John Prine original, just the 10,000 Maniac's one. Went to Prine today to look for that crazy song he does, "Against All Odds." Actually that song is called "In Spite of Ourselves," but I did find an interesting video to that song by my mis-title. Only watch if you've heard the song before.
I am reminiscing about a lovely day. Today I got to speak, on short notice, on behalf of my late colleague's induction into a Hall of Fame since the designated speaker couldn't be there. I put together a speech to talk about the man that Mark was. I have not spoken in public like that for a number of years.
The entire luncheon was a wonderful time to spend with Mark's family, friends and peers. I felt at ease, just like I did with Mark. I miss that man, that's for sure. I'd like to type my speech the way it felt to deliver it and interact with all these people that Mark might have known. People that knew he deserved the award and that made it happen. But…I can't. I enjoyed the experience and I have grown tremendously from the experience and I am so delighted I got to do it.
Still in that moment.
Hey Ya cover by Mat Weddle of Obadiah Parker (embedding is disabled everywhere!)
I just love this. I think this guy’s part of the group that opened for Bright Eyes here in November. They really were pretty funky! I am not the girl that likes music that mainstream America is into, but I really enjoyed the original. Proves my theory: a good song is a good song is a good song. Doesn’t matter how it’s played!
