So I roam these open roads

I’m kind of roaming iTunes right now, looking for something new.  Its been 5 or 6 months since an album has blown me away (U-Catastrophe), so I’m getting antsy.  I’m digesting Lijie’s Roam right now (and no, I don’t know how to pronounce Lijie), and downloading Tara MacLean’s Wake and Keane’s Under the Iron Sea.  Tara I found while listening to Pandora (better than the radio for finding music) and Keane comes from a recommendation from my sister-in-law.  I’m pretty much a sucker for music people suggest to me, if someone thinks its worth mentioning to me, its usually worth a look at.  We’ll see how this all turns out.

I don’t want to turn into one of those people who can only listen to a type of music from a certain time period (hi dad).  That being said, I wish there was another Rush or Genesis album coming.  Thank god Tori is releasing one soon.

Ian is crawling now, it surprised us somewhat since for so long he had no interest in moving around.  He was quite willing just to watch his big brother run amok.  His focus was on the talking.  Then he stopped talking for a couple of days.  We should have figured out what was going on, but we can all be oblivious at times.   Needless to say, he got it in his head it was time to start moving, and he focused all his energy on that.  Now he’s all over the place, babbling while he tries to grab everything in sight.

Needless to say, I’ve had to put the staircase gates back up.  Including the one Gavin ripped out of the way a couple years back (Gavin MAD!)

What’s not surprising is his determination to follow Gavin.  During Gavin’s bath time a couple of days ago, I put Ian on the floor and watched him crawl out of the office.  First stop was Gavin’s bedroom.  After circling around the whole area (apparently he was checking if he was hiding), he sped off to the bathroom where he went right up to the tub and gave his big brother a huge grin.

Gavin’s taking it all in pretty good stride, and he doesn’t mind herding him around somewhat.  Its funny to watch him scramble to get his toys out of reach of Ian’s drool covered hands.  So if nothing else, Ian’s crawling will teach Gavin the importance of picking up his toys.

Warm weather this weekend meant we got to take Gavin & Ian to the park for a while.  These trips are always amusing to me as I can watch Gavin interact with any other kid or group of kids.  He somehow becomes instant friends with anyone.  No idea how he does it, he sure as hell didn’t get that from me.  He even charms the parents.

I hope he keeps that skill when he enters school….

And I will smile till my heart stops beating

Well, another year, another DVD of the kids out the door to the extended family.  Took me long enough.  It’s already mid-February.  You’d think with dropping a couple of months would make it easier right?  For those of you who don’t understand, the DVD’s used to take place between Gavin’s birthdays.  With Ian now with us, that only makes sense if we REALLY want to give Ian an inferiority complex.  Now we all know I’ll mess with my kids minds, but that’s a bit much even for me.   Hench, this year’s DVD going from March to December.  Surprisingly that made it a pain the ass.  Everything felt compressed and uneven.  I started over three times. 

I know, its my own fault, I’m a perfectionist.

Anyway, I can say it was a success by my standards (Pam cried).  Not as good as last year, but I have a feeling it will be a while until I put together something as good as last year.  Such is life.  At least the music choices were easy.  With the obvious song for Ian’s birth laying the groundwork for everything else.

What you do you mean it isn’t obvious?  You need to update your music library with the classics.  Here’s a hint, it was on Live in Australia.

Anyway, now that project is over, and work is relaxing its grip somewhat, I’m going to try to be counterproductive for a while.  God knows I’ve skipped enough fencing sessions, its amazing I know which end of the sword is the pointy part.

Maybe I’ll update this blog more than once a @#$#ing month.  That’s right, I said @#$#.  We’re adults, we can handle it.  My writing skills have definitely suffered from the time off.  I’ve deleted about 5 or 6 half written blog entries over the last couple of months because I haven’t been able to keep a coherent thought between sessions.  So this one is going out, even if it is utter crap.  Stream of consciousness time.

I usually don’t talk about work, but I do have to mention that I successfully fought off being given a blackberry for the time being.  I see what those things do to good people.  It isn’t pretty.  When you are waiting for your ball to be returned to you in bowling, and you are typing into your blackberry, it is a sign.  I’m not a big fan of texting either.  I’ve received about 2 text messages from my brother in my life, and sent none so far.  I like talky talky.  If it isn’t urgent, I’ll live with an email communication, but texting just sets my teeth on edge for some reason.  Maybe its the belief people seem to have that the act of texting while in a conversation with you isn’t rude since they aren’t actually talking on the phone.  I’m not casting judgment on you people who use it, its just not for me OK?

Time for some calming thoughts.  I got Pam Rock Band for XMas, and I have to say it was much more fun than I anticipated. I’ve re-kindled my love for drumming.  After a stressful day, I find it to be very therapeutic.  Gavin enjoys playing along as well, either running through all the possible drum sounds in freestyle mode, or playing along with his toy guitar while I drum.  It seems to suck in others as well.  P&A complete a regular foursome at the household.  Pam usually takes guitar, I’m on drums, P is on bass, and A is on vocals.  We have a pretty good time, and with A singing I actually understand some of the lyrics for some of these songs.   We had A&A over today and I think we addicted them as well, and I learned I wasn’t as bad on vocals as I thought I would be.

Anyway, its fun, come by if you want to rock.

But back to drumming for a minute, I want to shout out to my old college drum teacher, who knew what the hell he was talking about.  When I first graduated to a drum set from the little snare drum I started on in college, his first question to me was “Do you dance?”.  When I admitted I was not what you would call a dancer type, he just smiled and said “You are now”. 

When he asked me what I thought my biggest problem was going to be at the end of the first day on the set, I told him it was obviously going to be my feet.  He told me it was going to be my left hand.  Since I am a violinist, who’s left hand is quite dexterous, I voiced my disagreement.

He was right about everything.  When I’ve got a piece, I feel like I am dancing with the kit.  My foot has become like an extra hand, and complex rhythms using the bass petal don’t throw me anymore.  My left hand has revealed itself to be a control freak and doesn’t like to relax when I have to do even triples or quads.  My right hand, which has never been called on to do the complex finger work on the violin, does the finger movements to control the drumstick perfectly.  Just like he said.

He taught me to get more efficient movement by relaxing and stop getting in the way of myself.  How hitting the drum sooner was better than faster.  A lot of how I listen and feel music today came out of those lessons.  I wish I would have been able to keep on drumming after graduating, but I don’t think the people in my apartment building would have appreciated it.  Or my roommate.

But I am glad to be doing it again, even if its on a fake drum set that wasn’t as fake as I thought it was going to be.

I do feel like a bad husband for getting so much enjoyment out of my wife’s present though :)

On a final note, I am on facebook now.  I really don’t know why.  OK, I know why, its because A kept nagging me on the phone to do it, and since it has been proven (and published) that I will spend $100 dollars to shut him up (he’s proud of that), it was pretty much a given I was going to just do it.

Wow, there were WAY too many commas in that last sentence.  SL is probably writing a nasty comment about that right now.

Anyway, it was a little freaky how the initial friend selection list found so many people I actually knew, but hadn’t seen in a long long long time.  Either all the people on facebook who went to Wash U. were APO people, or facebook is just freaky. 

I’m not complaining mind you, its actually quite nice to see (figuratively) again.  Its just a little freaky how good it was at picking those people from the ether.  And even more so since it didn’t even bother suggesting anyone from my high school except one person.  That’s a good thing, I can think of only a very few people I’d want to see from there.

Its also a little out of my comfort level. Yes, I have a blog, but let’s be honest, there’s like 10 people who read it.  I don’t count the people who came and read the Limelight album review, I don’t think they stuck around (if you did, cool).  But there’s a lot of people on facebook.  As Gavin would say, a lot a lot.

Maybe I’m just getting old….young whipper-snappers and their technologies these days.