What Struck Me

Tim in his school Halloween parade. Turn sound on.

I’ve always had mixed feelings about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. My initial reaction to it was SELL OUT, but I grew up and got over the idea that there was something innocent lost when big business got involved with music. Not to say I don’t wish things were different, I do- but they’re not. I also just thought the idea was kinda lame. I still think that, but a few induction ceremonies later I admit it’s appealing (favorite moments, Bono inducting Springsteen and Springsteen inducting U2… ) And if I ever find myself in Ohio, I think it’s worth making a trip to Cleveland to see the Hall itself.

So the 2006 Hall of Fame nominees are out. Chic, The Dave Clark Five, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, R.E.M., The Ronettes, Patti Smith, The Stooges, Joe Tex and Van Halen. One of my biggest issues with the hall is the nominees each year. I think they try too hard to be all-encompassing and neglect many bands/musicians that truly deserve it.

My thoughts on this year’s nominees after the jump. (more…)

That’s how many US soldiers died in Iraq in October (which still has a day or so left, of course.)

I couldn’t find the number of Iraqis who have died, but it was over 300 police and militia alone during Ramadan. Hundreds of civilians die every week.

We aren’t fixing this.

Updated the look just a bit. Upgraded to WP2.05. Should be good for a month till they change it yet again.

The clocks turned back overnight which reminded me that it’s time to implement my anti-SAD plan of action.

Step one- get a job.

OK, now that I got the PC solution out of the way, lets get to the reality.

I’ve got plenty to keep me busy at least through the new year. A huge list of stuff I want to do around the house, that amazingly gets longer as I check things off. You know how that is. Also, I’d really like to update the look and feel of this blog, and to that end I’m going to do my damndest (dammit the Firefox 2.0 spell check can be annoying! Why is damndest spelled wrong but dammit isn’t? Dictionary.com says damndest is ok. Dammit.)

Where was I? Oh, yeah, I’m going to do my damndest to fully participate in NaBloPoMo. Typically I haven’t really gotten into all stuff the cool kids are into, but I was in fact seriously considering doing NaNoWriMo this year. I even have little index cards full of characters and plot points! But I’m no novelist, and devoting a couple hours a day to reaching an arbitrary word count really goes against everything I believe in.

But blogging once a day? I can do that. I can blog photos, videos, stuff that will embarrass my kids and/or husband… it’ll be fun! Or, I can continue drifting into politically tinged posts that bore the shit out of my loyal readership. I’ll try to balance it out, ‘k?

*Blog More For Fun

I had a post started and got distracted and shut down the browser and poof, not even a draft left to recover with. I’m not going to rewrite it, it was brilliant and insightful and I just don’t think I can repeat the greatness of it.

But in the interest of keeping this thing going again, I’ll show you my weather.

It was very rainy. But the rain has stopped and the sun is out. Now it’s windy.

Let me know if the video works for you! I keep forgetting that my camera has a pretty decent video setting, I’ll try to remember and use it more, especially if it’s this easy to post them here.

I may as well try to get regular again. So, what’s been going on here? Well, the addition is done. It looks damn good, too. Right is a corner of the bedroom after the carpet, but before me. Left is the same corner after me.

It still needs that decorator touch. But before we do much more in there, we need to get some other things around here done. The deck isn’t built yet- probably be early spring before we get to that, but it’s ok, not like we use it in the winter. We just plain ran out of time, and really, who wants to build a deck in the winter. I’d be out there trying to hammer and stuff with mittens on. The hammer might slip out of my mittened hand and injure someone. That would be bad.

So while we wait for mitten weather to come and go so we can get back to that, we’ve moved on to updating the dining room. We had a hand-me-down dining set that once belonged to my sister-in-law’s grandmother. It was in pretty bad shape when we got it but no one else wanted it and the china cabinet, while scratched and pretty ugly, was big. Plus it had interior lighting which thrilled Pat. He liked having company over just because it gave him an excuse to light up the ugly china cabinet.

But the ugly beat up furniture began to fall apart. The china is now in the basement holding stuff I probably won’t ever use again, the chairs are all long ago trashed. We’ve moved the family computer into the den, so the room is down to the table, which sits in the center covered with crap.

We pulled up the nasty, nasty carpet (which still covers the living room floor for now… ) and found the wood floors are in pretty good shape. Yes, I know they need refinishing and if we don’t reseal them now we’ll probably wish we had. But all I want to do is clean & shine them up, throw down an area rug, and get on to the fun part- furniture shopping!