Thursday, 09 December 2010
Today, Owen said he wanted to count how many books we owned. He just randomly picked a spot on the bookshelf and began counting. After a couple minutes of counting, he lost track of both the spot on the shelf where he was and the number he was at. So I offered to give him a hand.
I pointed out to him that there were stacks of books above the bookshelf. From his vantage point, those are really hard to see, so I took the lead in counting those. Then we counted everything in the shelf, then we moved over to the other, smaller shelf. Then I showed him there were a few books hidden away in the cabinet above the refrigerator. He didn’t know about these (they don’t get much use: one’s a home repair book, another features drink recipes). Then I told him Mama had some books on her nightstand, and I told him I keep a book in my car. We added all this stuff together and came to 326.
He asked me to write this number down and said he wanted to count the rest another time. I presume he means the books in his room. I’ll keep you posted.
Friday, 10 December 2010
This evening, I had a few hours to myself, so I worked on some of my projects. While doing that, I turned on iTunes and listened to some U2.
U2 always makes me think of the person who first introduced me to U2. Of course, I had heard the name of the band before, but I didn’t know anything they sang back then. Then, one day, I went to a friend’s house, and he was positively surprised that I didn’t know anything about them. He promptly set about changing this by playing Rattle and Hum for me, which I agreed was a pretty good album. In time, I actually became the bigger fan, even inviting him to a U2 concert in 1997 (his mother-in-law wouldn’t let him go) and supplying him with a copy of How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb in 2004. Even so, when U2’s music comes on, particularly if it’s not one of the five or six U2 songs that gets continuous radio play, I recall the days when my old friend first introduced the band to me.
I could tell a similar story about Billy Joel, but I’ll spare you the tedious nostalgia.
My point is, I was thinking how nearly every musical act I listen to was originally introduced to me by a friend. So I began thinking of every musician of band that I like and tried to think back to how I first came into contact with their music. The only time I could recall having ‘discovered’ the music myself was Paul Simon – who also happens to be my favorite musician…
Back in the early 1990s, I was trying to view every film that had any sort of historical, cultural or even financial merit. This of course brought me to The Graduate, a film I rented while staying at a friend’s house (since I assumed my parents wouldn’t let me rent it). The movie pretty much sucks, but the soundtrack was great! When I returned home a few days later, I immediately dug through my dad’s music collection and found that he had Simon and Garfunkel’s Greatest Hits on 8-track, as well as “I am a Rock” on vinyl. I listened to these until I had them memorized and, eventually, I scored a copy of their Greatest Hits album on CD.
Then, one day, whilst thumbing through my latest copy of The Guinness Book of World Records, I came upon a list of Grammy winners, and was surprised to see Paul Simon had not only won Album of the Year in 1970 for his work with Garfunkel (Bridge Over Troubled Waters), but had also won Album of the Year twice as a soloist. I immediately set about trying to secure these albums. And that pretty much cemented my Simon fandom.
And I did it without anyone else’s help.
Saturday, 11 December 2010
Happy half-birthday to me!
Mother nature decided to celebrate the midpoint by bringing a blizzard. When Owen first looked out the window this morning, he saw the bottom 9 inches of the window was covered in snow and asked, “Is that how high the snow is?” I explained that, no, that was just the snow piled up on the ledge, but that there was still quite a load of snow.
We went outside and played in the snow today. Or, at least, we tried to. The wind was blowing so hard I couldn’t see anything – it kept whipping around the snow and pelting our faces with it. It was also really cold. So, we spent the rest of the day indoors.
From our windows (when they were cleanly scraped by Owen), we could see several cars stuck in the snow during the course of the day. One car even got stuck in a snow bank while trying to leave the parking lot (of the neighboring apartment building, not ours). Man, they certainly didn’t make it very far.
Oh – and the mail didn’t come, either, which was just fine with me, because Saturday’s mail pretty much goes straight into recycling.
One of my friends works at the Mall of America and he had to go to work today. I think keeping the Mall open on a day like today was a great way for the Mall to let everyone know that they don’t care about their employees. Wow. I’m so shocked.
Let me introduce you to a musician you may not know about. His name is Michael Monroe, he lives near Grand Marais, sings beautiful songs about wild places. Go here: http://www.michaelmonroe.info/home.html
He has played many times at Century College, you may have heard him there. He does concerts in his log cabin, and I attended one a couple weeks ago.
Thanks for the link!
Nope, I never saw him in concert, though I would like to. I’ve heard his name before – probably because he was advertised in posters around the halls when I was at Century.
The only concert I saw there was Serwan Serini, on May 2, 2002. He happened to be holding a performance right after classes were done that day, so I stayed late and attended. (The price was just what I like.)