A Simon & Garfunkel Sort of Day

This morning I woke up bright and early to meet some friends at a local Denny's. I wore a sweatshirt out the door for the first time in a long time - very satisfying. We're coming up on summer in the heated Southern California, but before 9 or 10 in the morning a sweatshirt is wanted (though not necessarily needed). I stuck in Simon & Garfunkel for the drive... and their CD remained in the player for the rest of the day. It's a "best of" CD, so a combination of Bookends, Sounds of Silence, and Bridge Over Troubled Water. I'd like to get "Graceland" and see how Simon sounds on his own - but something tells me they're better together. The first four tracks were energizingly chill, so perfect for morning driving.

I was the first to Denny's, and glad for it. I love people watching, and a diner in the morning is a great spot for that sort of thing. I ordered a cup of coffee and sat for about 10 minutes, watching groups and couples and families enjoy their breakfast and morning. I think Denny's is underappreciated these days (though their prices have gone way up in the past 5 years). It's such a homey place - I have such good, fond memories from various diner's up and down the Pacific Coast. This time, we were all getting together for a couple of hours while our mutual friend, Annelise, was down from San Luis county. When the others got there, it was a great time of talking and laughing and eating a french toast slam, accompanied by a couple cups of (not very good) coffee. I went to the Cragoe's for a bit after - long enough to blast Switchfoot while sweeping up a storm, and start a mini-water fight with Rach and Gracie. First one of the almost-summer! I have to say, I got them waaay better then they got me; mainly because we all realized what a mess we were making on the wood floor. We called a truce the old fashioned way, by spitting into our palms and sealing it with a hearty handshake. (Rachel: "I've always wanted to do that.")

I drove home (with the company of Simon and his friend) to find my brother home from college!!! Brady'll be down here for all the graduation hubbub, until he and I fly out for Alaska on June 16th. After a bit at home, we drove over to the last 'official' gathering of SNBSATK (Sataurday Night Bible Study at the Kappens). We had a sort of picnic-pool-hang out... very relaxed. A bit later on we went out front and played a combination of SUMMER (another version of HORSE) and some knock-out. Can't say I was very good, but I wasn't half bad either. :) We wanted to make root beer floats, but the only ice cream we had was chocolate - so we made do. The flavor was surprisingly good! It was kind of malt-ish...and very rich. Try it some time!

Tonight we played cards and I read a bit more of the Mark Twain book... mainly a story about two of his childhood schoolmates drowning. He described the emotions that went along with it for a schoolboy - they all thought that it was God's judgement. The boy that drowned must have been bad, so God was punishing him. To confirm their beliefs, a thunderstorm accompanied each night that followed the drowning. It got me to thinking... we can sort of laugh at those beliefs now, knowing that that's not exactly how God "operates". But how many little children really believe that? Do they know a loving God, or one that punishes the bad and rewards the good? I suppose He is a bit of the second, but it seems like such a limiting picture of who God is. Hm.

---

I love the sarcastic truth of this song. The speaker realizes his mistake in the two last lines. We are meant for relationships, not to be lame hermit-like people.

I Am a Rock (Simon/Garfunkel)

A winter's day
In a deep and dark December;
I am alone,
Gazing from my window to the streets below
On a freshly fallen silent shroud of snow.
I am a rock,
I am an island.

I've built walls,
A fortress deep and mighty,
That none may penetrate.
I have no need of friendship; friendship causes pain.
It's laughter and it's loving I disdain.
I am a rock,
I am an island.

Don't talk of love,
But I've heard the words before;
It's sleeping in my memory.
I won't disturb the slumber of feelings that have died.
If I never loved I never would have cried.
I am a rock,
I am an island.

I have my books
And my poetry to protect me;
I am shielded in my armor,
Hiding in my room, safe within my womb.
I touch no one and no one touches me.
I am a rock,
I am an island.

And a rock feels no pain;
And an island never cries.

CDs - remember those?

My iPod broke awhile back, and I've managed so far to scrape by borrowing my sister's and dad's iPods whenever I "need" it. Recently though, I've rediscovered this old fashioned thing called the CD. Usually on an iPod we listen to songs more randomly - that is, not neccesarily album by album. But there's something about listening to a whole album all the way through that is just so satisfactory. Now I'll keep a disc in my car player until it's run all the way through the track listing, then switch out to another CD. Albums that I've been listening to in the past few weeks:

Nothing is Sound (Switchfoot)
The Very Best of James Taylor
Winter into Spring (George Winston)
Pavarotti in Concert
Simon & Garfunkel's Greatest Hits
No Name Face (Lifehouse)
Windows of Heaven (John Elefante)

Just tonight I borrowed a few more albums from family friends that I look forward to putting through the car stereo over the next couple weeks:

Echoes of London (John Williams)
Grace Like Rain (Christopher Parkening)
Guitar Concertos (Giuliani, Torroba, and Vivaldi)
Happy Anniversary, Charlie Brown

I'm planning on playing that last one, Charlie Brown, tomorrow morning on the way to Mt. Boney. Cheerful music for a cheerful morning. :)

Books

I'm currently reading two very whimsical and pretty downright hilarious books. The first is a bit newer than the second - "Book for Bad Boys and Girls", by Mark Twain. A friend of mine lent it to me, and I'm really enjoying it. Twain didn't actually write a book with that title; it's a collection of speeches, letters, stories, and excerpts from novels that speak to a wide range of topics pertinent to bad (or good) little people. Mark Twain really wasn't a fan of "being good" in the traditional sense. The book is full of little gems like "It is better to take what does not belong to you than to let it lie around neglected", and "Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it". He was also staunchly opposed to the idea that bad people receive bad rewards (or "get what's coming to them"), and good people always get good things. There are more than a couple stories in the book that illustrate that. One in particular wasn't all that funny; it was pretty sad, actually. But, I suppose it reflected the truth of things. That's why I like Mark Twain so much; he isn't an idealist, he's a realist, and approaches things for the most part with the eyes of a child. Anyway, I'm really enjoying the book, currently on the "What Becomes of Bad Children" section. :) If you'd like a good, fun, yet educational read, this is it!

The second is just as whimsical and frank, yet a bit older in it's writing: "Tales from the Decameron". It was originally written between the years 1348 and 1353, by Boccaccio. The particular edition I have was printed in 1948 by Pocket Books, Inc. (a friend of mine picked it up at a thrift store for me) and, according to the introduction by Herbert Alexander, is based upon an anonymous rendering first published in 1741 and subsequently reprenited in 1804, 1822, and 1825. It appeared in Bohn's Library in 1872, edited by W.K. Kelly, and was once again revised in 1896 for Gibbings and Company by S.W. Orson. The book opens with a description of the Bubonic Plague and leads into an introduction of a group of seven young women and three young men who fled from Plague ridden Florence for a villa outside of Naples. To pass the time, each member of the group tells one story for every one of the tens nights spent at the villa. Thus, the rest of the book is a collection of 100 "novellas" divided into ten nights. I'm currenly only on the second night, but all the stories have been great so far. They range from witty to somewhat coarse to tender. In the editor's introduction, he summarizes the range of the passages by saying that the "scope and sweep of the collection are actually as broad as mankind."

Also, because it was printed in the 40s, the smell of the book makes it that much more enjoyable to read. :)

So That's Who I Remind Me Of

I picked up "Good Intentions" today, for my daily dose of the more humorous side of poetry. I'm happy to say Ogden just so happens to be of some relation to me - though I'm not sure exactly how, I'm taking my dad's word for it.

---

When I consider men of golden talents,
I’m delighted, in my introverted way,
To discover, as I’m drawing up the balance,
How much we have in common, I and they.

Like Burns, I have a weakness for the bottle,
Like Shakespeare, little Latin and less Greek;
I bite my fingernails like Aristotle;
Like Thackeray, I have a snobbish streak.

I’m afflicted with the vanity of Byron,
I’ve inherited the spitefulness of Pope;
Like Petrarch, I’m a sucker for a siren,
Like Milton, I’ve a tendency to mope.

My spelling is suggestive of a Chaucer;
Like Johnson, well, I do not wish to die
(I also drink my coffee from the saucer);
And if Goldsmith was a parrot, so am I.

Like Villon, I have debits by the carload,
Like Swinburne, I’m afraid I need a nurse;
By my dicing is Christopher out-Marlowed,
And I dream as much as Coleridge, only worse.

In comparison with men of golden talents,
I am all a man of talent ought to be;
I resemble every genius in his vice, however heinous—
Yet I write so much like me.

~~Ogden Nash

Saturday

Beautiful things from today -

Grande Iced Tea Passion Lemonade (w/ two pumps of rasberry syrup)
A foot flying down the freeway at 75 miles an hour
Half a pumpkin in the middle of a field
The Very Best of James Taylor (Golden Moments and Carolina in My Mind)
Customary Digorno saturday night pizza
Supermarket shopping at 11 PM for cool whip, pecans, pudding, pie crust, and condensed milk
Switchfoot's "Nothing is Sound"
Watching life through a moving window
Hostess' Fruit Pie with "real fruit filling" (my payment for the supermarket run)
Blasting Pavarotti and others during chores
"Brad is sad...he has no plaid."
Watching the way water works... in reference to the law of discontinuous matter
Learning Russian from a Russian

:)

---

Today was great. :) All those things above, plus bible study with the guys tonight. It was our last "official" study until at least next September - next week is an end of the year BBQ ish. We were in Matthew 18, talking about the parable of the Lord and the debtor. If you don't know what I'm talking about, look it up for sure! Like most things in God's word, it's really applicable. It was sort of a bittersweet moment when we all realized how pathetically hypocritical our lives are. God has forgiven us SO much... yet when someone we know or even love needs forgiveness, we hesitate. Somehow we feel justified. Stop for a moment and think through that... it's bull. ;-)

Tea

I took inventory of my tea stash today... the outcome tells me I'm going to have to raid Trader Joe's soon again. The saddest discovery is that I only have 6 Darjeeling tea bags left; that's only a 2 or 3 day's supply. The rest of the collection includes plenty of English Breakfast, about 15 or so more chai bags (ruby red or other), and some miscellaneous spice teas and oolongs. Oh, and speaking of oolong I just remembered I have about half a tin of loose leaf citron oolong left. yay. Also, if I run completely out and get desperate, I have quite a bit of chammomile and green teas waiting to be consumed.

I was at Teavana again last week-ish, coveting the loose leaf and browsing some of the books there. In addition to the teas there, now I have "The Tea Companion" on my wishlist. I read through a bit, and it has everything from the history of different teas to some tips on how to prepare different teas. Of course, it's much cheaper on Amazon. Click here to see.

Pandora ++

I have a musical wishlist a mile long; some of it is more well known stuff, like U2's new album "No Line on the Horizon", and the rest of the "Across the Universe" soundtrack. But a lot of the names and songs I have written down are more obscure, and not commonly known. How did I find them? Why, through the magical web genious of Pandora, of course. I know Pandora's been around for awhile, but not very many people seem to use it. I *highly* suggest you do... it's amazing. You enter a band, artist, or song that you like, and it matches that with other artists and puts together a personalized "radio" playlist for you. I don't have the moolah to buy the music yet, so I listen on Pandora. Try it out! It's simple, free, and great for school work. www.pandora.com

Some of the artists or groups on my wishlist (let me know if you know them!):

Punch
Armando Trovajoll
Sean Lennon
Wilco
Badly Drawn Boy
Opa
The Easybeats
Belle & Sebastian
Anders Parker
Ron Sexsmith
Josh Rouse
Amos Lee
The Reindeer Section
Tracy Chapman
Kings of Convienience
Dan Reeder

These are all either jazz artists or indie... if you like either of those, check out those artists! Try making a Pandora station out of them. :)

On another musical note, try to find Dave Matthew's new single "Funny the Way it Is". If you can't find it on Pandora, I'm sure there's somewhere on the web you can listen. It's very, very good. I'm excited for their new album coming out in June!

---

This weekend was *amazing*...spent up in the Mojave at the Horton's lake for Tucker's graduation party. Four-wheeling, innertubbing, cards, Bill and Ted's, swimming, laughing. It was greatness. I figured out how to work a manual 350 all on my own! ^^

Dancing Joys

Colourful dancing. :) This is from Genna's 16th birthday party... swing dancing with the lights like that was amazing. Birthday girl far right, unknown in the middle... and me dipping Annelise on the left. Dancing is just an all around great thing to know how to do... it's *always* fun to get together with friends and dance, whether it's in class, at a dance, or just for fun. Anybody can dance with anybody, and it doesn't take that long to learn the basics. I love it, love it, love it.

---
Some dancing goodness to share...
The last one is from "Riverdance", and has been my favourite dancing performance for a long time. I don't tap dance, but I sure wish I could. =P I'll stick with swing and ballroom for now, and see how that turns out. :)

Take the time to watch all these! If not all of them, at least the last one. It'll brighten your day. :)