Je ne parle pas français

I was actually going to post something tonight about how hot it is upstairs, when I saw that the last post was still sitting there in DRAFT status.  So, faithful reader (yes, I mean YOU Frank), don’t think that I’m going all cri-zazy and posting 2 entries in one night.  That just doesn’t happen.

BUT, to get back to the point of me coming into this section of the blog-o-sphere was to bitch about how hot it is upstairs.  It’s like New Jersey just hates spring.  We rarely get one.  Either it’s cold or it’s hot.  There is very little in-between.  So we went from having the down comforter on the bed Friday, to having the fan going all night, and sleeping with nothing but the sheet.  I suppose I’ll have to break down and put the A/C in the window this weekend.  Of course it will probably be cold this weekend, thus making me put off the installation of said A/C… which means it will get hot again on Monday.  That’s just the way my luck rolls with things like the weather.

We are having a full audit done of the house on Wednesday to see what it would take to get a new furnace WITH central air installed in the house.  I’m sure it will cost a fortune, but I’m thinking that it may just be worth it.  We’ll see.

We spent the day in the city today.  It was a lovely day to do it too.  Leslie has company from Utah, and they wanted to go in and do some sight-seeing, shopping, souvenirs, and other such touristy-fun things… so we decided to tag along.

We started the day with Frank’s requisite breakfast at McDonald’s on 42nd Street.  He claims this is the best McDonald’s in the world.  I feel it is exactly the same as every other McDonald’s… but I don’t really care enough to have much more of a fight about it… so we just go to his favorite McD’s.

After that, we went to see “Clash of the Titans.”  It wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t great.  I liked it better than the original from 1982.  It was fun, but don’t expect a sweep of any awards next year at the Oscars.

THEN… we decided to go up to the Apple Store.  OK, I decided we were going to the Apple Store.  We went to the one over by Lincoln Center, which is the best one in the city (in my opinion).  To my surprise, they still had plenty of the iPad in stock, even though both SoHo and 5th Avenue had been sold out since earlier in the day.  SO… I got one.  So did Frank.  He’s a copy-cat.    I’ll let you know how they work tomorrow after I’ve had a chance to play with it a little bit.

Les and Heidi had tickets to see “Rock of Ages” but we elected to NOT see that with them.  I do want to see it, but just not enough to want to pay any more than $35 a ticket… and since they didn’t have $35 tickets, we passed.  Instead we went to see “American Idiot” which is a musical centered around the songs of Green Day.  To call it a musical might be a little bit of a stretch.  It’s a musical kind of like “Contact” or “The Look of Love” were musicals.  It was really just the songs of Green Day loosely tied together around a super weak plot.  Don’t get me wrong, the performances were amazing, but sadly, I think I’m no longer a part of this target demographic, and all the hoopla was lost on me.

Then we met back up with Les and Heidi for an early dinner at Junior’s.  If you’ve never been there, please believe me when I say the portions are more than generous.

Then we went our separate ways…

and I saved that in DRAFT for like a month.  lame.  have no idea what my thought was going to be.

oh well.

As my friend Chris would say… “It’s Weekend’s Eve,” and I’m excited for the weekend.  But I’m not excited for the weekend in the way I was excited when I first heard the phrase many moons ago.  Back then I would be excited because Weekend’s Eve was the harbinger of FUN.  And drinking.  And fun.  Now I’m excited about yard work.  Seriously.  My flowers are starting to come up in the yard, and I really can’t wait to get out there and clean out the flower beds, turn over the garden, get the little tiny greenhouse out of the garage, and get my seeds planted.  I also think there may be some laundry drying outside on Saturday (if I can get up early enough to take full advantage of 70° + weather), and if I’m lucky, a trip to Agway.

Also, I WILL be taking the convertible tomorrow, regardless of what Frank has to say about it.  We agreed this morning that I could drive it on Friday… (just because he was still mostly asleep and I was talking to him from the bathroom while brushing my teeth is NO EXCUSE!).

It’s a fact.  I’m old.  And suburban.  I’m a middle-aged suburbanite.  And I think I might just be fine with that.

You know, THOSE days.  The kind that sucks, but you couldn’t say why… Today has been one of those days for me.  Nothing has gone amiss (except that ONE crappy Words With Friends game, thanks a lot jbert21)… everything has been pretty much on track for the day.  I don’t know why I’m feeling glum, but I am.  Maybe I’m just tired of winter.  Maybe I have cabin fever, and I need to go somewhere totally fabulous and warm.  Maybe.

I want to go to the Keys.  Or the Dominican Republic.  Or Puerto Rico.  I’m pretty sure we could get there pretty cheap from Newark.  Really, I don’t care where we go, I think I just need a few days off to relax and do a whole lot of nothing.

It’s not even that work is overly stressful.  Like I said, there is really no reason for my mood.  I’m sure I’ll work through it soon, but for today I’m feeling foul.

And I think I’ll stay that way for the rest of the night.  Thank you very much.

I WILL BE IN SCHOOL FOR THE REST OF ALL TIME AND ETERNITY!  Yes, I understand that I have just e-shouted that statement… because if you were within earshot, I would likely have really shouted it.  I have now been in school for 10 terms straight, and I’m having a devil of a time getting motivated to do my schoolwork.  I know that I have to, and I know that I’m almost done, but really… I just want a break from school.  Why can’t I have a summer break?  Why don’t I get to take 3 months off to enjoy the summer sun?  BECAUSE THEN I WILL BE IN SCHOOL EVEN LONGER!  And I can’t have that.

Seriously, I should have finished back when I was supposed to be in college.  Back when I didn’t have to work full time on top of going to school at night.  It is truly my one big regret.  I should have stuck through it, and finished school.  There, I said it.  I hope everyone is happy.

The better part about all of this, is that it’s not making me a better person.  I’m not learning anything that will be of much use to me that I don’t already know.  I’m going through the motions to get a piece of paper that says I went to college.  If I would have done this at 18, I would likely have learned things I didn’t already know.  Or if I were getting a degree in something different, like Pre-Revolutionary American History, or Literature of the Pampas… but instead, I’m getting a degree in Business Administration.  I’m just frustrated.  I want it to be over.  It will be soon.  Just not soon enough.  Boo.

I’m addicted to last.fm.  When I plug my iPod in, like magic, there is a list online of what I have listened to that day.  Some days, it doesn’t work, and you’d think it was the end of the world.  I really genuinely get pissed off when my tracks don’t update to my last.fm page.  Seriously. I understand it’s a sickness.  Or maybe just a silly obsession.  Maybe I just want everyone to know that I LOVE MUSIC MORE THAN YOU DO.  And my last.fm proves it, because I have listened to almost 79,000 songs since I signed up for my account.

I want to hit 100,000.  I only have to listen to 21,000 more songs by the end of the year.  That’s only 1909 songs per month, which averages out to 63.64 songs per day.  Today I listened to 93 songs at work.  OK, I didn’t really LISTEN to them, but they played in the background on my iPod.  I heard them.

So, along with my goal of going to the gym 150 times this year (which I’m SUCKING AT so far), I plan to hit 100,000 songs on last.fm by the end of the year.  Can I do it?

I’ve decided that I’m going to listen to EVERY song that we have in our library. That’s a lot of songs. I’ve been doing it for 5 days now, and I’ve found some great stuff that I didn’t know we had. I suppose I could go through the boxes of CD’s in the basement, but since we’ve gone digital with most everything, I can’t keep track of what we buy as easily.

There was a time when I had to spend half a day alphabetizing CDs after spending the other half of the day cataloging them. Now it’s much easier. I pop the CD in the computer, let iTunes do it’s thing, et voila. It all syncs to CDPedia, which then syncs back to my iPhone, and I have a complete list of what we own at all times. OR, we buy it online, and I don’t even have to worry about the CD part. OR Frank buys it online, and I have no idea that we even have it until I start looking through his iTunes folder…

What I’m getting at, is that I’ve decided to listen to what we already have. To accomplish this, I have set up a genius playlist in iTunes that pulls 100 songs that have a play count = 0 (excluding Christmas music). I have this on in the background at work. There’s some really good stuff… a lot of things I’ve found are songs from CDs that were bought for only a specific track…

I’ve also found some WTF songs in there. There may even be some purging of the library. Seriously, what was I thinking?

So, I decided that I was going to try and make a list of my top 10 favorite songs of all time.  I got it down to 11… and then, as I was listening to it I realized, these may NOT actually be my favorite songs.  Then I started to second guess myself, and rethink the 11 that I had in my top 10.

Then I started adding my REAL top 10 to the 11 I already had.  In the real world, the real top 10 plus the 11 existing choices would be 21… or 34.  I have 34 songs in my top 10.  They all mean something very personal, and I’ve been trying to cut it down, for the last 20 minutes.  I got it down to 39.  Yes, that’s right… take some songs away from the 34 I had, and I’m left with 39.

Doesn’t it make you feel great that I do payroll for a living?

So now I’ve decided to go back to the original 11 in my top 10.  They were the first songs that I thought of for a reason.  They are the songs that I can listen to over and over and never get sick of them.  OK.  I lied.  Back down to 12.  I’ll stop now.

My top 10 (that consists of 12) songs, in no particular order are…

• Older – George Michael
• Mad About You – Hooverphonic
• Constant Craving – kd lang
• The Man With the Child in His Eyes – Kate Bush
• Limits of Our Love – Charlotte Martin
• Summoning of the Muse – Dead Can Dance
• Carolyn’s Fingers – Cocteau Twins
• Be My Hero – October Project
• Good Enough – Sarah McLachlin
• Tear in Your Hand – Tori Amos
• Feels Like I’m Already Flying – Bel Canto
• Let Her Go – Strawberry Switchblade

There.  et fin.

Just testing one of the new features of the updated WordPress.

corryzahn’s Music Profile – Users at Last.fm.

So, I realized that we were using WordPress 2.0.2 on our site, and the most current version is 2.9.1. I’m almost a FULL version behind. Of course, it’s most likely due to the fact that I DON’T EVER POST ANYTHING on here… but that has all been fixed. I have upgraded to the most current version of WordPress, and even installed some nifty new gadgets… or widgets… or something. It’s all supposed to make the site easier for me to still do nothing on. Maybe I should figure out if there is a way to make my blog update my twitter, which in turn updates my facebook…