Danger: High Memory

Once you first get a mp3 with an obnoxious amount of memory, the temptation is to upload every song you can possibly imagine ever wanting to listen to. This is a great habit to get into if you're a city mouse stuck on a train for the daily commute, but when you're a county mouse who likes to take long walks it can be downright dangerous.

Yesterday I was concentrating on fast forwarding through some slow Norah Jones songs and almost stepped on some roadkill. I think it was a squirrel. Maybe a chipmunk. It was too flattened to be sure.

About fifteen minutes later I was browsing for a U2 song and walked straight into a tree branch. Acer rubra, a red maple, to be exact. But when you're moving at high speeds it's no time for botanizing. Tree limbs can be dangerous. When I was 10 or so, I was running around outside and accidentally rammed a tree limb in my ear. It drew blood!

My recommendation: create a workout playlist.

You might just avoid getting squirrel guts on your new running shoes.

Bonnie Raitt in concert

I wasn't very familiar with Bonnie Raitt's music before last night; we were invited by my husband's parents (thank you "out-laws"!) and so I was along for the ride. Wow, I was pleasantly surprised.

Some things that really struck me about the concert:
- The variety of styles; she was drawing on her 30+ years of music, and every song was distinct
- Raitt's sense of humor and spontaniety on stage
- "Nick of Time", dedicated to Raitt's father in honor of father's day, which I'm sure left few dry eyes in the audience
- Old blues tunes, like "Papa Come Quick"
- The encore performance of "I Can't Make you Love me" which was so heartfelt and beautiful it brought cold shivers even in a "Hotlanta" amplitheatre.
- And in every song, just the quality of the musicianship and her powerful voice

My husband and I agreed it was one of the best concerts we've ever attended. The baby was also kicking up her heels, so I think she enjoyed it too.

Shopping for Digital Music

Lately I've been buying and playing music on my laptop through iTunes, and I've been very happy with the software. In fact, I'm addicted.

I also have a great mp3 player, a NOMAD MuVo . I chose this mp3 player over an iPod since I tend to pound the pavement when I jog, which would probably abuse the harddrive components on the old school iPods. The NOMAD has a flash-based memory which takes jolts better. (By the way, I'm not a techo-guru, just married to one. ) All and all, I've been very happy with my choice of mp3 player.

But have you ever had two great friends that just can't stand each other? Such is my situation with iTunes and my mp3 player. My mp3 player only reads WMA files, and just doesn't get the iTunes.

This is bringing back flashbacks from college when I owned an Apple laptop, while ever single one of the computers on campus were IBM's since some trustee was a big wig in IBM. If my printer gave out at 2 in the morning the day a paper was due, I had to roam the hallway looking for a sympathetic Mac user who was still awake. I'm all for competition and free enterprise, but sometimes it's a pain in the ass.

So I've been considering other places to buy digital music. Yahoo, MSN, and Napster seem to be popular options with the largest selections. Check out this Comparison of Music Download Services . Has anyone tried any of these services?

My Pagan Baby Shower

I just returned from Daniel Boone National Forest in KY, where we met up with some of my college friends, and my parents also came down to camp and visit later in the week. It was a beautiful place to relax! My camping buddies also surprised me with a Pagan Baby Shower.

The ritual included decorating my chair with balloons, and donning a Burger King crown, which aided optimum cooking of s'mores for baby. Then I was urged to attack the zebra pinata, nicknamed "Sancho", with a pie iron. After he rained out all the goodies, he went up in a blaze of glory in the campfire. The stork decoration also got sacrificed like some sort of grinning pink phoenix .

I was really tickled that they were excited about the baby, and I guess as the first member of our group to start a family it's a good reason to celebrate. It's might be hard to believe that I'd be the first, at age 29, but my friends share a passion for staying in school as long as possible, while working endlessly various graduate degrees, or a B.S. in a subject entirely different than the previous B.A. degree. "Day care for big kids" is what one friend calls his 8-yr stint (and still going...) in grad school. In contrast, some of my South Carolina friends are younger than me and already have pre-schoolers, so I was starting to feel like an aged parent-to-be. I guess it's all relative.

My friends also showered us with presents, and it's fun to have a few cute outfits and toys ready for baby now:) It's tempting to go out and buy more cute baby stuff, but I'm saving the bulk of the shopping for August when 1) I'm done with teaching summer school 2) We're done paying the painter and interior decorator who should start any day now on the living room (Yippee!) 3) My mom visits to help shop. She volunteers at a place where they supply clothes, strollers, and such for needy moms, so she is forming an expertise on baby stuff.

Confessions of a disabled mind

While commenting about the Beatles in a previous post, an embarrassing memory surfaced. I have a confession to make.

I've probably seen the name of the band printed half a million times, starting at about age 10 when I first raided my parents record collection. Yet I was well into my twenties when I realized "Beatles" was a pun.

Um, yeah, despite a higher degree in communications, I certainly have some sort of learning disorder when it comes to language . It started at about age 3, when I switched "F" sounds for my "TR" , so while riding down the highway I would point and shout "F@@K " all the time.

At about age 7, my parents let me go around saying "g- nomes" for at least a week because they thought it was funny.

About age 15 I realized that "ethereal" was not pronounced "earth-or-real".

At age 18 I realized that "Chopin" was pronounced quite unlike the action of a knife.

Well I could go on, but you get the point.

Note: Only 3 words were corrected by the spell check in this post. That's pretty good for me.

The Netflix addiction

I think Netflix must put some sort of dopamine transport blocker (aka in the general drug class with cocaine) in those little red packages. Just when my husband finally broke down and got us a DVD-R and I thought I would be able to give up my Netflix subscription cold turkey, I’ve discovered a new addiction- watching DVD's of musical performances.

In search of the identity of my mystery bassist, I recently ordered "Norman Granz’ Jazz in Montreux: Ella and Basie ‘79".

One of my favorite parts was when Ella scat sang a duet with a trombonist. He got up to solo next to her, and at first she went back and forth mimicing him, even throwing in the sliding hand gestures. Priceless.

I got a good look at a younger Ketter Betts, and I don't think he's the mystery bass man. (Sigh). But he was strumming out some great basslines so he well deserved the previous post in his honor.

When you're watching concerts on DVD, you do miss the experience of a live concert in some ways. It's like the difference between live theater and watching a movie. When you are watching a live performance, you are the director/producer calling the screen shots. I never realized how much I ignored lead singers and focused on the other instrumentalists, especially the bassist, until I was watching a concert through a camera that was stubbornly stuck on Ella.

I saw the Count Basie orchestra live a about a year ago, and a couple of the original members were still swinging, well into their 80's. But there was still something more miraculous about watching this recorded concert. Many of the true jazz legends, like Ella and Basie, are no longer with us. I felt awestruck to be able to watch them in action.