Music

Did I ever mention that I like music? It may be evident since all of the videos I've ever posted have music soundtracks. Actually, it's the music that inspires me when I start thinkingg about making a video. I browse iTunes and Napster looking for the perfect music. I like classical, jazz, rock, country, some pop stuff and more. So, for now, I will be including "music to read the blog by". Just turn up the volume and start the music video. The song on thie "music video", actually a slideshow to accompany the music, is "You Can Close Your Eyes" by James Taylor as sung by his ex-wife, Carly Simon, his daughter Sally and son Ben. It's a beautiful version - my favorite. The photographs are ones that I have taken over the years and they linger for a bit, so don't think something is awry when the picture doesn't change quickly.

.....and speaking of music.

Pandora Radio. If you haven't tried it - do. My daughter recommended it to me and now I'm a big fan. I use the free version which means that every 40-45 minutes they stop the music and ask me if I'm still listening. I just click a key and it resumes. They also throw in a short commercial every once in awhile that I could do without, but hey - it's free. The great part is that you can create your own radio station by typing in the name of a favorite artist or song. They will then setup a station that plays that music and other similar types of music. It works. I have several radio stations. the Loreena McKennitt station (so far my favorite), The Beatles station, the James Taylor station, the John Williams station and so on - you get the idea. I guess you can have as many stations as you like. They also have their own stations you can choose from, all commercial free (except for that one infrequent commercial).

I subscribe to Napster. I also download occasionally from iTunes to my computer for video soundtracks because their player has a WAV converter for the Mp3 songs. I use WAV with Windows Movie Maker. OK. No more technical stuff. Anyway, I have many playlists with Napster. However, there is now one Very Refined Playlist I've compiled that has my most favorite tunes on it. It brings me much happiness to listen to it as I do things around the house. I also haved owned a Samsung Mp3 player for several years now and have no complaints. When we travel, it goes with me. A set of Bose speakers also travels in our little trailer.

In addition to all of the musicalness, I play the piano - not well, but adequately. We have an older piano that I occasionally dust off and play. I'm pretty rusty, though. I used to sing way back when. Now, the only singing I do is with my downloaded songs or the radio and certainly only to myself - well, my grandson, only 7 months old, has heard me but he doesn't know any better...........

For Christmas, I bought Merle a Fender acoustic guitar. He is currently taking lessons. When he comes home from his lesson, he shares the information with me and I also practice so that I can learn to play. We are both working to get callouses on our fingers because without them, it hurts to hold down those strings (more like garrote wires, if you ask me). Merle is ahead of me in the callous department - probably because he practices more than I.

So, in closing, I can gladly say that music is a huge part of my life. I love beautiful songs, funny songs, complicated songs, simple songs, love songs, sad songs, instrumental songs, hymns - just lots of songs. I have some sort of music playing all of the time. Without it my life would feel very strange.

LANNIE

As we venture into 2009.......

Click the arrow in the bottom left hand corner of the picture. It's not a video, but a single picture with music. Listen to the music while you read the rest of the blog. The song is a very pretty one called ,

"Ashokan Farewell" performed by Jay Ungar and Molly Mason.

Above is my interpretation of me entering 2009. Just agog at the fantasticness of it all (yes, fantasticness is a word, albeit one I sort of made up).

Who knows what we will be smacked with this year? At my age, I know better than to try to predict the future. I have learned that you cannot do that, at least beyond the next five minutes and mostly not even then. Generally speaking, I have found that you can expect the most unexpected things to happen and I'm pretty OK with that unless it's something very dire, like death or dismemberment or when the bathtub doesn't drain properly..............

:-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-)

Today I rode my bike in 45F weather past the frozen reservoir. Glowing red sandstone buttes stood on the other side. I stopped at the river, also frozen, to consider how blessed I am to be able to ride my bike in such a beautiful place. The sun was out, I had on my thick biking pants, fleece, windbreaker, gloves and ear bags. (see below) These are great little "only on your ear" tiny earmuffs. They fit very well under my bike helmet. They are also great because they don't mess up your hair like banded earmuffs or winter hats. However, since I'm generally wearing a bike helmet when wearing earbags, my hair is a mess anyway after stuffing my wiry wig under it. Anyway, I was plenty warm, almost too warm after a period of vigorous pedaling. (Isn't this a cute couple I copied off of Google Images. Just makes you want to go out and buy earbags and be cute too - not.)
Our holiday was a good one. Family visitors from Texas and Florida, other nearby family members for fun, food and games, a trip to a cabin, 3 movies at the theatre, creative endeavors by both myself and hubby. Speaking of, we are preparing to submit photos of our creative endeavors to the Boulder Art Fair and see if one or both of us might be accepted. I did it last year, with some success and hope to repeat that performance with even more success. I'm doing smaller, less expensive paintings considering the current state of the economy. Now if I don't get accepted and he does..................

I've made a couple of softies recently. These are cute little handmade stuffed "things" - animals, dolls, creatures, etc.. Go to this Etsy link to see others people have made that are for sale. I also will be putting softies up for sale on Etsy at some point. Audrey (my daughter) and I plan to make some. Here's a picture of one softie I have constructed. It's rough sewn to give it a more primitive, handmade look. Her name is Rebecca (Merle's name for her) or Myrtle (my Mom's name for her).



Reading report: I'm reading a Connie Willis book called Bellwether. She's a well known science fiction author from our neighboring town. This book is not science fiction, at least so far, but it's good. She's a very good writer and I might try her science fiction next.

In closing, here's a video pan of the "studio" where I do my stuff.

Arrivederci, Baby..

(it's also an old movie)

Sculpture, Art and Other Things

Here is a sculpture Merle made. It's rocks. It's very interesting and cool.

After visiting Santa Fe in the fall and seeing the art of Woods Davy, we both thought it might be good idea to try making our own since we wouldn't be able to fork up the $14,000+ it would take to own one of his. Merle took up the task and if I say so myself, he did a pretty darn good job. It's not as big as a Woods Davy, but we have to be able to move it ourselves and this is about as big as we can go. Now, we have to find a base to mount it to that will hold it upright. It will have to be mighty sturdy. I won't give out the secret for how it is assembled, but suffice to say, it is very sturdy and will not fall apart.

So, we have a new area of interest that may or may not expand depending upon Merle's enthusiasm. I would like to see him make a few more that I can try to sell at an art show along with my paintings. However, it won't be long before he starts a new radio controlled airplane project and at that point, the rock sculpture thing will probably fade into oblivion unless I want to take it up. This one is going to reside somewhere on our home premises. I'd like some more of them to put around our property.

In other creative news. I've learned how to create a very basic GIF animation using my Corel PHOTO-Paint software. Basic being the key word here. It's quite primitive looking. However, I plan to try harder and do better over time. Here it is. I'm going to work this little segment into a bigger video that I plan to give to my nephew (the bouncing underweared dude) for Christmas.

As you can see, we are just busting out with creative creativeness. I'm painting paintings too and struggling with that. They are just not turning out as well as I would like them to - which is perfect or at least almost perfect. I may take a break and design our annual Christmas card. That would be fun, something not so serious.......

Our little grandson, Keir, is turning into a little person that is now aware of cause and effect. Like, scream and someone will pick me up. So, the training begins where he screams and someone doesn't pick him up. This is not as easy as it sounds. Partly because you don't want to listen to him scream or cry and then also because you aren't sure if maybe he really is hurting or something OR if you let him scream, will his psyche might be scarred for life. I guess the clue to that is if you pick him up and he immediately stops crying/screaming and smiles, you probably know you are being duped by the diaper beast.

Being Nana. Fall

I'm besotted by my grandson. There's really no other way to say it. He is just the best and yes, I know most grandmothers feel the same way. But there it is - I'm beside myself with besottedness.

Tonight is our first overnight babysitting. It's about 8:30 and he is asleep in the next room after entertaining Merle and I with his bright smiling face for a bit. I'm afraid that we are both besotted.

Besotted. I just looked it up and it says, using it in this type of context, that I am stupefied or infatuated. I'm good with that...............

Since we returned from vacation, we have not been doing anything particularly exciting. Last weekend we camped, probably for the last time this season, but who knows..... I saw a couple of campers headed up to the high country today, so if this mild weather keeps up, we or just me, with maybe a sister, will go again.

It was an uplifting experience that made us thankful that we live in this wonderful state of Colorado and especially because we live in close proximity to the mountains. Our campsite was situated looking over a little valley of golden aspen and buttery colored grasses with tassels. These were staged artfully in front of an evergreen covered hillside. Wherever we turned our eyes, we saw something beautiful. The first evening, we built a big campfire and just sat, huddled toward it's warmth, giving it the occasional stir with our fire stick and staring into it. Those coals that live at the bottom of a jumble of burning wood look like nuggets of hot gold. As we watched them, they seemed alive with fiery pulsing hearts. The second evening, we also built a big campfire, but to our consternation, the wind came up and just as we would get settled, the smoke would find us and we would have to move. This is the camper's cross to bear - wind that blows the smoke in your eyes, nose, throat. We decided that if someone could invent a lazy susan type seating arrangement for a campfire, it would be very nice. - you could just rotate to a different position instead of having to stand up, move your chair and sit back down. A bit ridiculous, perhaps, but nevertheless handy.

We hiked to the top of Kruger Rock about 2.5 miles (5 round trip). From it's pinnacle we were able to see our mountain ranges from this new perspective. It was impressive. Long's Peak seemed very close. Neither of us has ever climbed that 14er and don't really have the urge to do it. It's a very strenuous hike that I'm sure we could do, but at 16 miles round trip, it's probably more than we should try to bite off. There are so many beautiful and invigorating hikes in our Rocky Mountains, that I'm sure we won't suffer much for not trying to scale this popular peak.

I am reading Centennial by James Michener - again. I think this is about the 3rd time. It's been awhile, though, so I'm totally enjoying it - again. It is particularly interesting because he wrote about this area, actually farther east from where we live, but nevertheless, it's locales are familiar. I think I read one other book of his - The Covenant. If I remember correctly, it was also a good read. However, because his books are very thick, I haven't tackled all of them and there are several. Maybe some day...

That's all for tonight. I'm going to checked on my grandson - the one that I'm stupefied over and infatuated with.

Oh. The grandson's parents went to a Halloween party. Mario and Princess Peach. Mario and Princess Peach are video game characters, in case you do not know. I knew about Mario and was only vaguely aware of Princess Peach.

VACATION - FALL '08'

We've been back for over a week and it's taken me this long to get a keepsake video made of our trip (it's down the page). I take lots of digital footage and have to first download it, then look through and sort it, then convert it to a format that can be used in Windows Movie Maker and then proceed to find the music to accompany it and finally put it all together. I love doing it, though. So, not only am I able to create some digital memories, but also have fun.
This vacation was 1-1/2 weeks long. We traveled around 2,000 miles total and that was probably too much. Especially when you consider that gas was the biggest ticket item by far. It's also too much time spent, well, driving. I think for future driving trips we'll see if we can stick to a 500 +/- miles radius from home. There's lots to see in this area and surrounding states within those miles - Yellowstone (550 miles), Grand Canyon (690 miles, but worth it), Mt. Rushmore, Devil's Tower, too much to mention in southern Utah, the same for Colorado. I think we are ideally situated to be able to have driving vacations that won't break the bank - at least at this point. If gas prices continue to spiral out of control, who knows.................
Enjoy the video. The music soundtrack starts a couple of frames into the video and it has a couple of spots where I transitioned the subject matter and soundtrack, so don't think it's over when you come to those quieter segments. It's 6 minutes and 11 seconds long.