iPod

Listening to: Wear Your Love Like Heaven - Donovan

Young Jim gave me his iPod, loaded with 800 songs, and I've been having such a good time playing with it. I've added a lot of my own and have been going through the ones already there to see if I like them or not. In the process, I've learned a few things:

• iTunes is so much fun (and I think it could get expensive if I'm not careful)! I've downloaded lots of songs, including the essential Donovan collection and Quinn the Eskimo (the Kinks' version, not the Dylan one). I didn't know you could get that crusty old stuff on iTunes.
  
  
• My newest favorites are Robert Plant & Alison Kraus -- I love Raising Sand (especially Please Read the Letter, Killing the Blues and Gone, Gone, Gone! I can't get over how beautifully their voices blend and I never would have expected it. I'm really in danger of listening until I'm sick of them.
  
  
• In the end, most of my favorite music is the stuff I listened to in my teens and twenties. I've added some new artists I like very much, but Crosby, Stills & Nash (and all their bands before and after) and the Beatles are still the best! I also still like everything Dylan did, but he REALLY can't sing -- his Quinn the Eskimo is painful to listen to!
  
  
• For the most part, everything Elvis Costello does sounds the same. I really only like 3 of his songs.
  
  
• For some reason, most of the music I listen to lately makes me sad -- either because it's inherently so or because it reminds me of the passage of time. The saddest song for me in the entire collection is one of Jim's -- Iron & Wine's "Upward Over the Mountain." I don't think I'll ever listen to it again.
  
  
• It's a funny thing that I'm just now getting an iPod, when the rest of the world is moving on to iPhones. We didn't get a laptop, either, until Charlie gave us his old one. It seems that I always depend on the kindness (and electronics) of family members!
  

Thanks for the iPod, Jim!!!!

Happy Birthday, Danny!

I looked for a good grown-up picture of you, but couldn't top last year's! So here's my favorite little-Danny pic instead. Hope your birthday is a great one!

Finally -- an update

I haven't posted in over a month! I know that the three people who read my blog have been wondering where I've been, so I guess I'll just have to do a bunch of posts to catch up.

I'll start with some pictures from our trip to Florida (in April!) to go to Charlie's graduation from SDGA (San Diego Golf Academy). We had a great time -- the luncheon was lovely (at one of the Disney Resort hotels), we got to meet his friends and then in the evening we had dinner at Ruth's Chris with all the in-town family.

Charlie's graduating class
Charlie & friends after graduation
The graduate
Charlie, Jim & Don at dinner
Cousins at dinner

I got to spend some really quality time with Christy -- an entire day of just the two of us at Epcot's Flower and Garden Festival and then another day with her and Lily hanging out and going to a wonderful fabric shop (sorry, no pictures from the shop).

Cockatiels made of flowers

We rented a convertible for the week and went to Cocoa Beach one day. We had perfect weather and even though we didn't stay long -- just long enough to have a drink out at the end of the pier, sitting in the sun & watching the surfers -- getting there & back was half the fun.

Convertible Unc

Cocoa Beach Pelican at Cocoa Beach
(You should have known I'd get a bird picture in somehow!)

We passed the Red Bug Lake exit every time we drove back to Altamonte Springs, so one day we went there just to hang out. We saw some big carp and some moorhens, but not a single red bug.

Red Bug Lake

Moorhens at Red Bug Lake
(I think they were nesting in the rushes to the right)

Anyway, that's it for the April trip to Florida -- more later on what's going on here in Michigan.