how to tell if you're too drunk to paint

well, in my defense, i only had one twisted tea. but it was "light" and it had artificial sweetener in it, so i didn't really like it, so i drank it pretty fast. it made the daily show & the colbert report really pretty funny :)

but when i went downstairs, i saw that the floor that i'd just primered was 99.4% dry, so i decided to go ahead & apply the final coat of grey paint. i didn't feel inebriated. just nice and happy. and i had music that i knew all the words to, so how could it be bad? :) plus, if i hadn't finished the floor, i wouldn't have opened the door to the garage & realized that the garage door was open. that would have sucked.

clue #1: my early edging wasn't the best. but i corrected that on the 2nd wall. unfortunately, now there's grey paint on the white walls in a couple of spots. but it's just at the bottom.
clue #2: my jazz scatting was really good & flowed really naturally.
clue #3: i couldn't remember where i'd put the lid to the paint. i found it eventually, but...
clue #4: i almost painted myself into a small circle on the floor. it was close, but thankfully i realized my mistake before i completed the 4th side of the circle.
clue #5: circles don't have sides :)
clue #6: i stepped on the lid. luckily that was at the end & any footprints will dry the same color as the floor. thankfully i realized it before i stepped on anything that SHOULDN'T be grey, like our beige carpet. :)

i was really amazed at how much easier painting was after a nice adult beverage. and i'm proud of myself for finishing the project. i just started celebrating a little early :) hopefully christopher will notice the finish & not the mistakes :)

joining the 21st century

well, my mp3 player died a bit ago. and then while we were on vacation earlier this summer, i killed my husband's as well. so i've been in need of a new mp3 player, and i've had my eye on an ipod. i'm a mac user, so ipods just made sense. i have a dell as well, but the only reason it's still connected to anything is for music downloading and mp3 player syncing.

so my brother has recently found not one, but 2 ipods -- a nano & a touch. i totally covet the touch, but could only manage to get him to sell me the nano. really, the nano is more than acceptable for my needs. and it's the color i wanted, so it's even better :) . but in order to add all of my music to this ipod, i need to transfer everything from wma format to aac format. i'd had the brilliant idea a bit ago to simply upload all of my music from the dell to a thumb drive and then transfer it to the mac. that worked partially, but on my mac, anything that wasn't in mp3 format at least was ignored. and i couldn't figure out how to change the settings in itunes to get it to recognize anything else. so now i'm faced with the option of downloading itunes to the dell & converting everything from there. unfortunately that'll take another 6 or 7 HOURS! i have about 95 hours of music on my computer & i've converted 9.5 hours so far... what a process! i hope it's worth it. :)

but i'm excited to have a working mp3 player again. i've committed to going to the gym every day. i have to get up every morning to take alexander to school, so isabelle & i will go straight from there to the gym and get in a nice workout. i've managed to drag my friend kellie along with me for the past week, but there will be days (like tomorrow) that she can't go. and working out without conversation or music is really difficult. and my favorite fabric artist is making a custom qpouch for me with an armband so i can wear it while i work out. i'm hoping she gives me a discount since i gave her the idea for the armband (hint, hint *smile*).

ok, maybe i'm misunderstanding some of the numbers my computer's telling me. it's still gonna take forever, cuz this computer is about 8 years old, which is about 250 years old in computer years :) . i'm hoping that i'll be able to get to bed sometime before tomorrow :)

now that i have a new ipod, i need to get a new computer that will allow me to upload photos and be on the internet at the same time, and a new camera that will let me take photos indoors. it seems that all of my electronics have issues :)

sleepytime songs

i'm a singer, so when i put the kids to bed, i sing songs i know, and they just happen to be in multiple languages. i didn't really think that was odd until i realized that my kids sing along with me in my multiple languages. and they have names for everything:
the daddy song: "can't help lovin' that man of mine", from showboat
the mommy song: "adieu" and "prison" by faure
the isabelle song is made up by me, but sung to the tune of "silver bells"
the alexander song is also made up by me, but sung to the tune of "top of the world" by the carpenters
the german song: "gretchen am spinnrade" by schubert
ninghe: "cancion de cuna para dormir a un negrito" by montsalvatge
the new song: "someone to watch over me" by gershwin
the summertime song: "summertime" by gershwin

i've also sung random songs from shows that i'm working on. i've done bits from carmen jones, and most recently "uzh kak po mostu mostchku, pa kalina vim da sochkam, vainu, vainu, vainu, vainu!" from eugene onegin. they never actually asked for that one, but... :)

now christopher, he has a completely different idea of what sleepytime songs should be, and they tend to be more participatory in nature, which i totally don't think is the point. and his songs tend to me more camp-song in nature. oh well. we can't both be musical snobs :)

alexander is incredibly musical and can already match pitch and sing along in the right key, an octave higher (especially when he's singing with daddy). i have visions of marketing us as a mother/son duo for "amahl & the night visitors" soon. i love the mother's role, and he'd be an awesome amahl. at least until his voice changes :)

isabelle, on the other hand, doesn't do as well. i can't remember alexander at this age, cuz it seems like he's always been musical and sang well. i feel bad for her, becuz there are times when alexander won't let her sing along with him cuz "she's bad" he says. i keep trying to tell him that she's still little & singing with him will make her better, but he's not buying it. oh well. it would really be a shame for her to be the only completly unmusical member of an incredibly musical family. i can't really say she's getting better, though. just louder :) but just becuz she doesn't sing well doesn't mean she doesn't enjoy it. she doesn't realize how bad she is. i just hope there isn't a music teacher somewhere down the road who decides to burst her bubble in a really mean way. not everyone can be the fabulous mr. laret :)

RIP *sniff*

well, my creative microphoto mp3 player died. i did what i could on line to try to revive it. creative has a resuscitation program, but nothing worked. i'm very sad. i really loved my little mp3 player. and now i don't know what i want to do. i have all the accessories for it, but i don't know if i want to get another one. they're a little old and they don't make them anymore, so they don't sell *new* ones. i looked on ebay and there's actually several available, but they're all used, and do i really wanna pay $80 for a used mp3 player?

but we had some good times, divazen and i. it was perfect for travelling, since i like gospel and showtunes and christopher likes bluegrass and johnny cash. and while traveling through the barren flats of western ohio on our way to columbus, it was great, cuz the only radio stations seem to be country. bleh! *smile* and with my nifty speaker system it was perfect for labor with isabelle. especially since there was a remote that i could use from my bed. my labor & delivery playlist was my favorite :).

so now, i have the delimma of what to do. should i just abscond with my husband's mp3 player that i got him for his birthday last year? or should i just buy myself a new one for Christmas? my Christmas gift is actually being delivered today, but it's not really a gift for me -- it's an oven and curling iron set for work -- so i don't think it really counts. but do i want another creative zen, which i really like, or do i want an ipod since we're a mac family anyway? the only reason i still have my dell computer up and running is to rip cd's and upload music onto our mp3 players. it would be nice to be able to do everything on the same operating system. but 8mb ipod's are expensive. i can get a 8mb zen for much less than an 8mb ipod. bleh.

let me finish mourning my divazen before i commit to replacing her. she was a good friend :)