My daughter turns 14 years old today.
I’d complain that this makes me feel ancient, but I’ve been saying that for years now. Luckily, Erica’s such a sweetheart that she still insists that I’m not an old geezer. (Yet.)
She’s done a lot of growing up in the last 12 months and has had to learn a few tough lessons. Okay, so she’s still working on some of them… but at least she’s trying, and there are noticeable results. I’m quite proud of her!
Happy Birthday, kiddo!
This would seem to be the year during which I resurrect departed forum communities. First I created AEIOU to give former ABM denizens a new home. Now, in the spirit of Pool, I present Pond.
One of them is populated by anime geeks. The other is just run by an anime geek. I apply the same standards of behavior to both, however: Comport yourself respectfully, communicate in complete words and sentences. That’s all I really ask…
Don over at The Kawaii Menace decided to take my little idea and run with it. His set is still nine songs long, but clocks in at only twenty-two minutes. How can you refuse?
Most of the happiness we enjoy in life comes from wringing the best out of a less-than-ideal situation, because life hands out ideal situations very, very rarely.
If you go through life waiting for ideal situations in order to be happy, then you’re going to spend most of your life very, very unhappy.
Also keep in mind that happiness is an event, not a state of being.
(This has been a public service announcement from, and to, Yours Truly. To anyone else who gains benefit from it: You’re welcome.)
This post is part challenge, part present to you, my faithful readers. (The rest of you schmucks are just getting lucky. Hah!)
Several times during the last few weeks I’ve answered the question, “What kind of music do you like?” Rattling off a list of musical artists provides a clue, perhaps, but I think the only way to make sense out of the mish-mash of names is to hear what kind of sound puts a tap in my foot and a smile on my face. And so, I’ve carefully assembled what amounts to a broadcast hour of solid music. No commercials, no chatter, just tunes I love by some of my favorite musicians.
It’s up to you to a) see if you can stand listening to every song and b) try to discern who, if not what, you’re hearing. Ready? Steady? Go!
[audio:FortyEightOhSeven.mp3]Good stuff, eh?
Okay, so I blew off doing the cleanup I’d planned yesterday. Today, however, I believe I’ve made up for that lack. I dragooned Kyla into making a trip out to that new Ikea store (with a follow-up stop at Best Buy) and we came home with a few nice-and-cheap storage solutions that I spent the next few hours putting to good use.
There’s a new hanging-shelf piece in my closet, consisting of some Velcro and a collapsible set of fabric shelves. Into those shelves went the various cold-weather pieces I had piled up hither and yon, along with a couple pairs of jeans that used to be wadded up on the closet floor. To make room for the shelving, I weeded out some of the clothing and bedding I’d thrown into the closet over the years. Yes, I actually threw stuff away. Amazing!
I’m also in the middle of migrating my burned-CDs collection from those clunky, hard-to-sort binders into dual-disc sleeves which I’m filing into my new paperboard CD drawers. At $13 per set of two drawers with enclosure, it was too good a solution to pass up. As a side benefit, I’m culling lots of anime that I downloaded entirely for the kids’ sake. That will all go into one of the binders and sent to them for safe-keeping. I’m also burning some DVD-ROM discs to finish out a few series that I managed to botch up the organization of the first time around, or that I simply never got around to tidying up. That aspect of the cleanup project, of course, directly benefits the available disk space on my main computer and the network storage drive. Everybody wins!
To round out the shopping trip I picked up a small, cheap external mouse for the laptop (touchpads annoy me, and a full-sized desktop mouse is a nuisance for mobile use) and a couple of cheap 2GB USB memory sticks. I don’t like the idea of feeding batteries into a wireless device, so my new mouse sports a retractable USB cord instead.
I’m not done yet, of course. I have some laundry to do, more CDs to file and DVDs to burn, and I need to tidy up the explosion of fabric outside of my closet. My sense of accomplishment, however, is quite high. Hooray for organization and cleaning!
