Well, It’s time for a quarterly update… but you’ll have to hear about one of my favorite albums instead!!!

I was first introduced to the Flaming Lips in High School when they had their hit song “She Don’t Use Jelly”… not their best effort in my opinion… and I promptly forgot all about them.  About 8 years later I had a friend I had met on a Pink Floyd fan board that emailed me a disk with a low quality mp3 of all their songs and albums on it, I never really listened to much of it and lost the disk.  About a year ago, I got this album Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots from the library and fell in love with it.  The lead singer, Wayne Coyne, has a unique voice that might get some getting used to.  This album is some what conceptual, and the songs transitions well from one to another, both of these things that I love about albums.  The songs are a bit off the wall, but each tells interesting stories and have odd insights that I like following along with.  One example of this is in the song “Do you Realize?”.  The lyrics go thus-

Do You Realize - that you have the most beautiful face
Do You Realize - we’re floating in space -
Do You Realize - that happiness makes you cry
Do You Realize - that everyone you know someday will die

And instead of saying all of your goodbyes - let them know
You realize that life goes fast
It’s hard to make the good things last
You realize the sun doesn’t go down
It’s just an illusion caused by the world spinning round

Do You Realize - Oh - Oh - Oh
Do You Realize - that everyone you know
Someday will die -

And instead of saying all of your goodbyes - let them know
You realize that life goes fast
It’s hard to make the good things last
You realize the sun doesn’t go down
It’s just an illusion caused by the world spinning round

Do You Realize - that you have the most beautiful face
Do You Realize

——————————————————

I hope you can sense the mix of humor and insight in this little tune.  Anyway that’s my music recommendation. Give it a shot.

A funny little story, when I got this album I ripped it on to my computer through itunes, and in itunes there is this feature where you can maximize the artwork to the album while you listen to it, and for some reason Ryan adopted this album as “his music” and would ask to listen to Yoyoyoyoshimi and the pink robots.  It’s pretty cute.

I have been very busy… and very lazy.  I think that probably the 5 people who even looked at my blog have stopped.  In my defence, I have been a bit quite productive in finishing (almost) the remodeling job and keeping up pretty well on all the family things and goings on.  But I should be able to fit in a little blog time.

I should have some time to put in some posts in the next couple of weeks.  We’ll see, I have all sorts of good intentions that never get acted on.  The probably won’t be very exciting or super informative, but hopefully they are a little insightful and at least a little fun.

So I thought that I’d do a quick music update before I get into the home updates.

Nick Drake is an artist that I was introduced to about five or six years ago by a friend who is a music nut. He put out three albums in the late sixties before dieing of an accidental overdose of anti-depression drugs. At a first listen, his music is pleasing enough. His soft unique voice and incredible acoustic guitar rhythms are the mainstay of all three of his albums. His first album, Five Leaves Left, is a mostly nice album with soft songs with whimsical stories of life and love. His second album, Bryter Lyter, was much more produced and many of the tracks have a full orchestra backing him. Unfortunately, this second album was not commercially successful and led to a lot of depression for the young artist. When he made Pink Moon, he only recorded a bleak 28 minutes of him singing and playing guitar, the only exception being the title track which he dubbed in a bit of piano. The album only took a single session to record and was an even bigger commercial failure than his previous album. Sinking further into depression and borderline psychosis, he passed away a few years later at the age of 26. This last album, Pink Moon has gone on to become a very successful and influential album. It’s one of those albums that every artist you like will mention as an influence.

Anyway, give it a listen. I promise you will not regret it!

Things I’ve come to realize…..
1. I’ve come to realize that my family…. is much more good looking than most.

2. I’ve come to realize that when I talk…. with most people I try to hurry through the conversation.

3. I’ve come to realize that I need…. more snacking self-control.

4. I’ve come to realize that I have lost…. my ability to say “no” to my wife when it comes to buying things (for the most part)

5. I’ve come to realize that I hate it when… there is traffic on my way home from work.

6. I’ve come to realize that when I’m hungry I…. have a hard time focusing.

7. I’ve come to realize that money…. is overrated.

8. I’ve come to realize that people…. don’t drive nearly as well as I do.

9. I’ve come to realize I’ll always be… entertained by childish things.

10. I’ve come to realize that I’m in love with… my little family.

11. I’ve come to realize that my cell phone is… a necessary luxury.

12. I’ve come to realize that when I woke up this morning… I had slept in again and would miss out on the gym again this week.

13. I’ve come to realize that right before I go to sleep at night… I need to roll on to either of my sides.

14. I’ve come to realize that right now I’m thinking about… Ryan hopefully understanding that after the new flooring is in, he can’t hammer on it.

15. I’ve come to realize that babies… Are a lot of work for my wife.

16. I’ve come to realize that when I blog… I am a very disjointed writer.

17. I’ve come to realize that today I will… not see Jenn until probably 9pm.

18. I’ve come to realize that tonight I will…work on my house till midnight for the third time this week.

19. I’ve come to realize tomorrow I will… probably not get enough done at work to get Friday off.

20. I’ve come to realize that I really want to… go on a trip with my wife.

21. I’ve come to realize everyone I tag to do this will…. probably not read it until this post is month old.

Tag: My brothers of the blog - Tyler and Scott

Well, I think that everyone that peeks in on my blog reads Jenn’s too, so I won’t go into too many details on the progress on the house. First, we removed a portion of wall. The previous owners had removed a small portion of the wall at one time, and put in a very homemade rail. The rail didn’t really bug me when we were first looking at the house, but Jenn and I have both grown to hate it. Now that the wall is out, the only things I really have to do on it is to take out the base plates (they’ll have to be cut out) and frame one end of the wall and re-sheetrock all of the edges so they will be ready for texturing and painting. Other than that, There is a bit of re-wiring that has to be done. There was a light switch on the wall and also the doorbell. I hope that wire length won’t be a problem, I can’t have a splice anywhere thats not accessible… I suppose that if I needed to put a junction box up in the attic, that would be ok, but I’d just as soon not have to do that.

Thats all the hard stuff that has been done since the last post. Since we decided that we would just hire out the fireplace, that was super easy. We really liked the work that the fireplace people did. The guy that came and gave us a quote and installed it for us was really nice, and very open about pricing and worked to get us what we wanted for a price that we could afford.

Next up… I have a lot of stuff that can happen now. I need to get our patio door ordered, that shouldn’t be too bad to put in. I am a bit nervous about taking the measurements myself… I’m hoping that they will come and do their own measurements. There is a lot of miscellaneous sheetrocking to do. There is also another wall that needs to have the sheetrock stripped off and have switches and plugs placed better.

Anyway, be sure to stay tuned for all the latest enthralling updates.

Well, I’ve had this new album playing for awhile, I thought that it was time to do a little blurb on why I like it so much. My first exposure to Radiohead was in high school with their first single “creep” off of their debut album Pablo Honey. I liked that song very much, but it isn’t really a good indicator of what was to come. Personally, I didn’t really hear much else from them until a few years later after my mission. They had come out with the albums: The Bends, OK Computer, Kid A, Amnesiac, and Hail to Thief. Most people have heard songs from all of these albums, and there are a lot of great songs there, but the reason I like Radiohead is because of their ability to make an album that has a great concept and flows great from start to end. Kid A is my favorite album of theirs and I love the ebb and flow that is constant throughout. The playlist here has a couple of missing songs, but if you like it at all, you should definitely check them out!

So here is the hole in the wall.  The fireplace guy should be by tomorrow to take the final measurements, then hopefully the new surround and hearth will be installed the first of next week.  Once the final measurements are taken, I’ll be able to sheetrock right up to the fireplace.  We are hoping that it won’t be too hard to match the textures at the seems.  I had to cut quite a bit of sheetrock off in order to get back to a stud, so the edges have plenty of support.  The good news is that the new mantle should cover most of the top seem, all but the sides.

So… I moved.  Jenn did the template for me, didn’t she do a great job?  I told her that I love it when she talks css to me!

Hilarity has come back to TV.

For a long time, I have not really found anything worth watching on TV. We mainly had cable for the kid stations and Jenn liked to watch ER. But in the last few months (right before the blasted writer’s strike) both Jenn and I have discovered NBC’s series The Office. I’m not going to go on and on about it, but lets just say that in one episode you will probably: feel a bit awkward… no, make that extremely awkward, have a good hearty laugh, and most importantly, think to yourself, “this is actually kind of realistic”.

Nbc.com has some of the latest episodes available to watch for free. Check it out!