Music Makes the World Go Round

Some of my favorite quotes are from songs.  After all, aren't lyrics just poetry set to music?  I think so.  And because I'm being lazy, I'm crediting the singer and not necessarily the songwriter because I am lazy.

'Take your records, take your freedom, take your memories I don't need them.  Take your space and all your reason, but you'll think of me.'  -Keith Urban, You'll Think of Me

'I've thrown away everything I've written you.  Anything just to keep my mind from thinking how I had you once, oh I can't forget that.  Sometimes I wish I could lose you again.'  -Jimmy Eat World, Your House

'See I'm all about them words, over numbers, unencumbered, numbered words.  Hundreds of pages, pages, pages more words, more words than I have ever heard and I feel so alive.  'Cause you and I both loved what I spoke of and others just read of, others just read of.'  -Jason Mraz, You & I Both

'I will meet you in some place where the light lends itself to soft repose.  I will let you undress me, but I warn you I have thorns like any rose.  And you could hurt me with your bare hands.  You could hurt me using the sharp end of what you say.  I am lost to you now.  There's no amount of reason to save me.'  -Jewel, Break Me

'Her feelings she hides.  Her dreams she can't find.  She's losing her mind.  She's falling behind.  She can't find her place.  She's losing her faith.  She's fallen from grace.  She's all over the place.'  -Avril Lavigne, Nobody's Home

'And I see you fogging up the mirror, vapor round your body glistens in the shower and I wanna stay right here and go down on you for an hour.'  -Third Eye Blind, Blinded

'I don't wanna waste another moment saying things we never meant to say.'  -Michelle Branch, Breathe

'Home is a feeling I buried in you.  I'm all right.  It only hurts when I breathe.'  -Melissa Etheridge, Breathe

'I've been everybody else now I wanna be something closer to myself.'  -Kendall Payne, Closer to Myself

'I'll get past what was if I live long enough.'  -LeAnn Rimes, One of These Days

'You hurt me more than I ever would have imagined.  You made my world stand still and in that stillness there was a freedome I never felt before.'  -Sarah McLachlan, Fumbling Towards Ecstasy

'What will it do to me knowing we'll always be under one sun.'  -Zoppi, One Sun

'If I am another waste of everything you dreamed of I will let you down.'  -Nine Days, If I Am

''Cause you can't make somebody see with the simple words you say.  All the beauty from within, sometimes they just look away.'  -Martina McBride, Good Bye

'Oh God, if you're out there won't you hear me?  I know that we've never talked before.  Oh God, the man I love is leaving.  Won't you take him when he comes to your door?'  -Sarah McLachlan, Hold On

'There it was there, baby you peed my name in the snow.'  -Bif Naked, Anything

So I'm going to start doing these every other week instead of every week.  I don't want to run out of quotes, you know?

Project 365, Week 9

I stuck by my ‘no editing’ rule this week and I think I’ve done pretty well!  I think it makes me work on taking better pictures because I know I’m not going to try to tweak it at all.  I’m going to keep it up for awhile I think and then maybe I’ll do a month or a week where I do big time editing.  We’ll see!  So here’s the week!

2.28.11 – Ray’s working on something that requires all these little doodads and junk.  I took a picture of the almost-finished product through his magnifying glass.

3.1.11 – Wasn’t really in the picture taking mood.  I take this picture for my sidebar of the books I’m planning on reading this month.  I love my books.

3.2.11 – We’ve got one rose on the bunches of rose bushes we have.  It got rained on big time, wasn’t perky at all, but it sure is pretty.

3.3.11 – On our evening walk I took a picture of these.  I don’t know what they are, but they were interesting and I liked the way the picture came out.

3.4.11 – Another day, another walk.  Barely caught a glimpse of this guy when I was walking by.

3.5.11 – I just really love the way this picture came out.

3.6.11 – Another rainy day, just riding in the car on the way home from my parents’ house.

Hope everyone had a fantastic week!

Daytripping

It was a beautiful day in Monterey today.

We spent most of the time at Dennis the Menace Park.  When I was a kid we used to go there a lot.  One of my favorite memories of the park is my Uncle Richard taking my sister, brother and I out to the park and then for ice cream afterwards.  I still love going there.

Get ready for some super Emma time.

After we went to the park we headed over to the aquarium.

There’s a little exhibit where you pledge to do something that will help the environment.  Use reusable bags, ride a bike instead of driving, etc.  You get your picture taken and then the big screen above shows you doing your activity.

When I was going through the photos I found the picture we took of Emma in the train at Dennis the Menace Park when we went with my sister & Dave back in 2007.  Emma was just over a year old!

Awww, my little baby is so grown up!

What did you do this fine Saturday?  Anything fun?

Evening Photo Safari

Just before the sun set completely Emma and I grabbed our cameras and headed outside for a little evening photo safari.

Mostly I took pictures of the stuff in the neighborhood that interested me. 

We each took a picture of our neighbor’s garage door because the lights on either side were shining through the high bushes they have on both sides creating this really cool pattern.  Of course, this is the crappiest picture ever, but you get the idea.

Emma had fun, I had fun & we got a little walk in before dinnertime.  How cool is that?  Pat us on the backs please!

As you can tell I’m boycotting editing my photos.  I used Picnik’s rounded edge frames because I love ‘em and I cropped a couple of pictures to get rid of some nonsense.  This week (at least) I’m not editing any pictures I upload for my 365 project because I’m lazy … but also, I want to see what kind of pictures I really take, not what pictures I can make you see.  Hopefully they’re still nice to look at.  I don’t think they’re so bad!

I Really Do Have Friends ... I Swear

I think I mentioned before that I do not make friends easily.  I'm standoffish and constantly afraid of whatever vitriol will spew forth from my mouth at any given time.  Somehow I have accrued friends who are sweet and nice.  I have no idea why they are friends with me.  A few of them are religious.  I wonder if maybe they think they can covert me.  Maybe I'm a project?

Well, better if I don't question it, right?

Anyhoo ... since Emma started preschool I have actually made friends.  They are these hilarious women whose kids play with my kid and now we all go play together.  Over the winter break we thought we'd take the kids to Pump-It-Up, but having no foresight whatsoever we didn't think about it being the last day of vacation and rainy and completely full.  The best thing about Morgan Hill is the Centennial Recreation Center or the CRC.  It has everything, including an indoor pool with a shallow play area.  The kids love it.  So we took them all there since we're members and JeNae decided (as the last holdout) to give in and get a membership.  (The best perk is the discount we get at the preschool for being CRC members)

Of course, I thought, this is awesome!  Work out buddies!  But really, I just figured it would be great to sit and gab with some friends while the kids swim.

JeNae has had other ideas.  We took a step class on Tuesday.  It was not fun.  Apparently, they don't need to advertise in the class schedule that something is an intermediate/advance class.  So there we were.  And at first I thought, well really, how difficult can stepping be?  Oh, I found out it can be extremely difficult.  Extremely.  This wasn't stepping!  This was dancing around and on a platform that constantly wanted to move out of my way.  Like I am so scary it did not want me to step on it.  I swear I almost fell 176 times.  And once, my shoe scraped so loudly off the side that everyone in the class turned around thinking someone had died.  And I pretty much was.  Dead, I mean.

Today we decided to workout on the machines since there weren't any 'fun' classes.  JeNae seems to have much more coordination than I do.  She thinks Zumba might be fun.  Julie & Kim say it is and it kicks your butt, which I'm okay with.  But fun?  If my coordination efforts in step class are any indication I don't think Zumba is going to be fun for me.  But I'll try it out.  Give everyone a good laugh. 

So anyway, my legs are like rubber from jogging for a half hour on the treadmill wondering how in the hell the couple next to me are sprinting whilst discussing how so-and-sos from their wedding are going through financial difficulties.  Sprinting.  And discussing.  Freaks.

But really, it's nice to get out of the house in the evening and do something.  Emma and Autumn get to go do fun crafts and play around at the Kid's Zone and I get to sweat and maybe lose some of this baby fat I've been carrying around for 5 years.  I'm sure Ray appreciates having the house to himself for an hour or so too.  So I guess I'll keep going.  If anything it's fun to watch the elderly run laps around me.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention.  The woman who was the star of the step class and was much easier to watch and follow than the instructor?  She was about eleventy-hundred years old.  Pretty much everyone in the class had about 30 years on JeNae and I.  I want to be them when I grow up.  Which means I'm going to have to do more step.  Ugh.

I've Been Saying ...

Today my notie Natalie was featured at For The Love of Blogs!

Her blog is HILARIOUS even tho she thinks it's boring.  It's not.  You should read it because you will learn things, I swear.  In fact, today I even used a tidbit I learned from Natalie.  My sister was discussing how much someone was bugging her today.  She said that due to this person's interference she was way behind on crap she needed to do.  Amy was trying to decide how she should spell biatch (I don't even think that spelling is correct).  I told her she should just skip it and call her a whore because that's less difficult to spell.  I then told her she should tell this person to 'shut her whore mouth.'  That is my favorite phrase I learned from Natalie that I have been dying to use and I so graciously gave it to my sister to use in my stead.  Yes, I love her that much.

So Natalie, my notie, my sister and I thank you!  And congratulations on your feature!  You deserve it!

Now go forth and read her blog people!

The Power of the Internet

I honestly think that one of the best things to happen to new authors was the internet, especially places like GoodReads or Shelfari.  It gives authors a place to really connect with their readers and reach out to new ones.  There are plenty of authors out there who are finding their niche in basically publishing online.  Or gathering a fan base before taking their novels to Barnes & Noble for the big time.

Jason Ancona contacted one of the book bloggers who hosts the YA Challenge offering his book, C.Y.A.: Covert Youth Agency: The Case of Tangled Love to participants in the challenge.  Our fearless host Jamie in turn contacted us to let us know.  Jason was lovely and emailed me an epub version of the book and I got to reading.

C.Y.A. is a story about Agents Pi, Lightman & Tollhouse who head up a secret group dedicated to helping any student in need, as long as they know how to contact them.  No one knows who C.Y.A. really is and their secret way of communicating to students only adds to the intrigue.  Enter Vera, beautiful, kind and the object of Pi's secret longing for years.  She thinks her boyfriend JackO might have cheated on her and she wants to know if he did and it turns out that the C.Y.A. is just the group to help her out.

But how far will they, or really, Pi go to prove this case?  Is integrity worth the girl of his dreams?

I was taken by surprise by the book.  The characters were fun and complex, each a story within the story.  Funny, suspenseful and uplifting.  It was surely set up as the beginning of hopefully a long series.  The writing was great and at times I had to force myself to put the book down so I wouldn't tear through it quite so fast.  In fact, I liked it so much I immediately purchased Jason's other book Debugging Tori Redding for my Nook! 

Thank you so much Jason for taking the time to reach out to us!  I can't wait to see what else you have in store!