It takes me so long to get updates out now that they become info-dumps, where the fun, random stuff never quite fits in.

And since I'm massively behind on life news that I keep wanting to post, I'm going to go the other route instead and pre-emptively post the assorted weirdnesses first. ;)

Our son loves absurd humor as much as I do, so these two snippets are courtesy of him. One is mystifying, the other curiously captivating. And of course, there's Meowdy, Partner:





Plus, from the other end of the random spectrum, something Spotify suggested for me. I don't typically like her music or singing (other than a few covers done by other artists), but this recently rediscovered recording of Joni Mitchell singing House Of The Rising Sun offers a haunting folk-ballad sound I never expected and can't seem to let go of.

Oops, I'm out of time already (it's 1:40 am, so late to bed once again. YES!!!)

But in closing, let me just say (appropos of this past weekend) that while the Capital Air Show is generally good fun, when the flyovers are so close to the ground that the people inside the houses yell "Holy shit!" and the vibrations set off car alarms for a good square mile or more... things have gone too far. :O

That is all.

Just a reminder, today is the last day to read and vote for this week's LJ Idol entries! My story is here (and almost sure to make you smile), and there's a link to my partner's entry and to the poll to vote for those stories and any others you like! I have just 3 more to read myself, and there's a lot of great entertainment there. \o/

~*~

So, about a year and a half ago, I was forced to upgrade my work PC from Windows 7 to Windows 10. Two months later, it decided the headphone jack no longer existed. I tried various workarounds, but I could not persuade it to use anything but the USB port (which is where my audio headset for Skype/Zoom meetings plugs in). That meant I could only listen to music on a USB headset, and the one at home only has an ear unit on one side! So when my office sent everyone home to work remotely in early March, guess what I didn't know I needed to take with me? *cries*

I've been music-less up until the last 5-6 weeks, when HalfshellHusband mentioned that he had a USB-to-headphone converter that might allow my earbuds to work again. YESSSSSSSS! So, I'm finally able to listen to Spotify again, and expand my playlists. \o/

I went back through "Liked From Radio" a few weeks ago, and hit a song by Dirty Projectors called Overlord. At first I wondered what I'd been thinking, adding that song, but about halfway through I'd already ear-wormed myself with it again. Such lush, ear-candy harmonies!

Sometimes, I'll listen to huge parts of a specific artist's or group's catalogue, to see how much of their other music I like. Not so productive for Dirty Projectors—a lot of their music seems to explore being deliberately annoying. But it's how I discovered that while I didn't much like the particular Ledfoot or Picturebooks songs Spotify suggested for me, I liked the artists' overall sound, and there were several OTHER songs I did like. And that I don't like Florence and the Machine's lead singer's voice anywhere near as much as she does...

Last week, I was listening to The Lumineers, a group our daughter liked long before they became so popular. And yikes—for their most recent album, the lead singer is either experimenting with 'detuning' or he's just stopped trying to keep songs within his range. Singing on-key is pretty much my hard-limit. /o\

Tuesday, I tried Crosby, Stills, Nash, (and sometimes) Young, to add some of their music to my playlist. I'll regret this later, because it'll skew all my "Discover Weekly" offerings toward a bunch of random folk and 70s stuff, but whatever. Most of what I like is on Deja Vu (which is the album I bought way back in '74 or so), and overall... Neal Young's voice puts a hard, high edge on the group's harmonies that is tolerable in context, but damn, he should never have been allowed to sing lead. Urk. And who knew that the bluesy voice I liked so much on most of their songs was more often Dave Crosby rather than Stephen Stills? And then I listened to their 1977 album and wanted to cry. The late 70s sound ruined SO many bands.

Now it's back to some selective "Liked From Radio" choices, to retrain Spotify's algorithms. Maybe there's an American Gods** playlist? I've Shazamed a lot of bluesy songs from that show, most of which seem to be by the show's main music person, but it's a good sound. :D

**ETA: There IS! \o/

So, while the rest of life seems like a rotating chore chart, there have at least been some entertainment breaks along the way. Here goes:

We finished watching Shetland, which was over all too soon. The story arc grew hard for the character we think of as "comic-relief Tosh", and I kept half expecting Jimmy and Duncan to get together, thanks to Duncan's flirty chemistry with Jimmy (and just about everyone, really). A fourth season has finished filming, which we hope will come to Netflix soon.

Shetland looks as if it was filmed during the summer, in the sunniest and most beautiful part of the year, like a tourist pitch for Scotland. The Welsh series, Hinterland, is just the opposite. It aims for more of a noire effect, set in and around the Cambrian Mountains (which are bleak and sparsely populated) and looking like the tail end of winter—dead grass, glowering skies, and breath-fog temperatures. Wales is a beautiful country, so it's clear that unwelcoming atmosphere is deliberate. Season 3 just went up on Netflix, and we snapped it up. More seasons would be nice, but I don't know if they're planned. The storyline tied up well in S3, so that could be it. :O

The dearth has caused us to sample The Break (I don't much like the main character there) and Death In Paradise (silly fun). We had previously watched Dr. Foster (and wound up hating almost every character in it) and Paranoid (much better). But a Luther re-watch tempts me, just for better quality.

I rat-holed down some Barns Courtney music last week, because I like Fire. The bluesy sound of his music is great, but the choruses often go farther into "pop" than I can generally tolerate. I stumbled across Glitter and Gold, which I did like, and then a video collaboration for it that really grabbed me. It seemed an odd music choice for Marvel, but then I realized it was a fan video, not a Marvel production. Vidders may scoff, but the presentation of the Marvel universe tied in really well with the music, and the video made striking use of all parts of the music (always a huge plus in my book!) So often, 'signature' music themes or moments are ignored in video (and dance choreography), and that drives me nuts. Here, they were used and even highlighted—and tightly so. In a word, from my naive perspective: \o/

Have I mentioned my worthless MP3 player? I bought it last Xmas, after my iPod Nano went from "I will never download new playlists for you again" (which is iTunes' fault) to "What is this on/off button of which you speak? I will not play music at your command! Now go away while I drain your battery..."

The new MP3 player looks pretty, and has lots of memory... but almost no functionality and no firmware updates! \o? So, it's useless for playing music. I've never tried to let it just play its contents in order (alphabetical playlists— kill me now), but on "random" it skips to exactly the same songs every time, in sequence. Plus, once you've paused it or it's gone into sleep mode... when it wakes up, it goes back to the beginning of your playlist and does the whole thing over again. Identically. It's maddening.

I gave up on music, and I'm using it for podcasts instead. So, at our daughter's urging, I started Serial. Wow, I am hooked. I'm in the last episode of Season 1, and desperate to find out what the "truth" is, assuming they find it. I have Within The Wires waiting, and more of The Orbiting Human Circus Of The Air. And of course, Nightvale. So, while I'm not singing during my commute to/from work now, at least I'm entertained. Really, the final straw toward podcasts—apart from the M3 player—was that our local alternative radio station is veering toward pop/rap/reggae, all of which I hate, and another has gone to an "80's as oldies" format (*cries*). I can't change any presets on the car stereo to other stations unless we buy a new dashboard display unit for the Prius, so it's CDs or an auxiliary unit for now. I need to find a different MP3 Player for music. My birthday's coming up, so if I can find a gift for HalfshellHusband to buy me, he'll be pleased.

Will I get Halloween decorations up this year? The thought of NOT doing it is sad, but there are so many endless chores at home on weekends, and I'm there so little on weekdays. *sigh* I need elves. And by that, I mean elves other than HSH sneaking around and doing stuff he shouldn't, while I'm still in bed. :O

I was listening to various Chris Cornell offerings on YouTube last week (as you do), and came across some things I'd never heard before. The first thing I stumbled on really hit me, especially after his recent suicide. It's not the background scoring you'd expect, and I don't really like it, but the song brought such pangs. So heartfelt. The second is one that probably EVERYONE but me knew existed, but nonetheless, I would never have considered interpreting this song with so much bluesy pain. Wow.

In TV viewing, we're near the end of S5 of Homeland. I've been watching with one foot on the brakes for a while this season. S4 made me ache over a character in a way I never would have imagined. Then his life got darker and lonelier, and I'm pretty sure S5 won't end well for him. It all seems so unfair. :(

Bookwise, I think I'm about to abandon Metrophage. I'm more than a third into it, and the characters are still farting around in service of exposition-y world-building. Too much! People, Jasper Fforde pulled that off in the two opening pages of Shades of Grey. Lay out your shiny new context naturally and concisely, and then augment it as you go— by showing it via components of the plot, not in place of it. :(

I just finished A Cast of Vultures, which was an entertaining mystery. Before that, The Fall of Lisa Bellow. That was mostly YA-genre, but the POVs include the main character's mother and show her with depth and with details that sometimes hit painfully close to home. Loved the brother.

Fake Plastic Love was one of the most interesting things I've read recently. People are calling it Gatsby-esque. It features young, earnest millennials finding their way in a soulless world, with a few unusual thinkers who reject modern values and search for the beauty of earlier times. You might expect it to be insufferable, but the narrator is a pragmatic young woman who really fit into either camp, and sees the attraction and folly of both. The first chapter is a little bit of work, but it sets up the framework for the rest of the story and launches the question of why you would wind up excluding your onetime best friend from your wedding. After that, it's hard to put down!

And now, a different "reading" pleasure: Funny Messages Left On The Windshields Of Terrible Parkers. Snark, rage, passive-aggression, and the occasional outbreak of random OCD. What's not to like?

Remember a post from around the summer, where I found a bird's nest in my gardening hat and was thinking that The Boy might have put it in there as a prank?

I pulled that same hat off the peg in the garage last weekend, and it was again occupied by a bird's nest. Except this time I knew for sure I had put it away the weekend before—no chance of leaving it out unguarded. There's also the matter of an artificial flower display I have outside, where fricasseed bits of it wind up on the ground or a table top in the breezeway. For a while, I thought the cat was getting up on the fence next to it at night and going nuts. Or maybe the raccoon that gets into the yard. But last fall, I kept catching glimpses of movement over there, and a tiny bird would fly out of the flowers. I checked to see if it was trying a nest in there, and it wasn't. However... one of the flowers wound up as nesting material in the hat inside the garage.

I cannot fathom why a bird would want to build a vertical nest inside something it has to sneak into—and can only get to when the side door to the garage is open (which, okay, is most of the time, but still). Nevertheless, it appears that is not an accident but a plot. I put the nest in the crotch of a tree by the patio, hoping someone might reuse it.

The rain here has worn me down to the point of, "Could you STAHP? I mean it!" We will be at 8 consecutive days of it by the time this round ends, after the previous stint of 5 days, and then 6 before that. My legs are tired and cramped from biking in the garage, and running is still out due to the plantar fasciitis. Boy, do I wish I could do some running right now!

Some random recs: Movie-wise, The Skiptrace is streaming now on Netflix. It's a basic Jackie Chan flick, silly but entertaining, and with a lot of extended "found object" fight scenes (this is Chan's genius, for us). Parts are a little strained and ridiculous, but there is a also lot of gorgeous Mongolian and Chinese scenery, which balances that out.

Book-wise, I'm finishing up Neal Shusterman's Challenger Deep. This an "unreliable narrator" extravaganza, told in short sections which alternate parts of a strange sea voyage (with a pirate captain and his crew) with a teenager's life in suburban America. At some point, it becomes apparent that many events in both stories are the same, but wildly abstracted. The reason becomes clear as you continue to read, but that bleed and resolution are just fascinating throughout. Almost finished, and then I'll start a Pascoe and Dalziel mystery. :)

In fan fiction, I've been reading Band of Brothers slash (just finished a gorgeous pre-series arc called Lancaster County yesterday). This is in between writing my Idol entry, of course, and then soon I'll be reading Idol entries and back at work, wondering why these 3-day weekends don't come up more often.

For music, it's more Rag 'N Bone Man: Lay My Body Down, and Hard Came The Rain. Yowza.

So, is everyone else ready for winter to be over? Or summer for those in Australia, which is probably just past its worst point now?

We had some 5 1/2 days without rain, but now another week of storms lies ahead. We aren't in the danger range below the Oroville Dam, which got very hairy for a lot of people a couple of days ago. Never have I thought about a dam in the same way as a would-be jumper on a ledge: "Don't give up now! Keep fighting, you can do it!" People have been allowed to return to their homes, and the hope is that enough water was let out of the dam to at least get through the upcoming storm without risk of the dam breaching. *fingers crossed*

In my area, the twist was hitting a sunny stretch and looking forward to getting out on the bike path again, only to discover that the majority of it is underwater because more water was released from Folsom Dam in preparatory panic. People who live above the dam say the water level is still so low that they can see extended dirt patches revealed over the five-year drought. And that it's ugly and they would like more lake again. ;) Downriver, I worry the bike path will be damaged by being under water for so long (possibly washing out in areas), plus that river (the American) will back up already when it rains because it's a tributary to the Sacramento River, and that will rise quite a bit. In the meantime... it is hard to get miles in on surface streets near my house, with so many lights and stop signs. Who would have thought it would be my office-route cycling that would save me?

Also, I have entered Season 5 of Chuck in garage-biking viewing. I started S1 sometime in November of this year. \o?

Surprises: About 2-3 weeks ago, I spotted three teenage boys on the soccer field at our neighborhood park. One of them was a dwarf with a wave board, and he and another kid were in swimsuits. It was probably 52^o at best. Were they maybe taking pictures? In the dead of winter? It was one of those, "Wait, am I really seeing this?" moments, with such an unexpected combination of unusual people and things.

Not a surprise: While warming down in my neighborhood after a bike ride, I came across two people in banana suits driving around in a white SUV. They waved and I waved, but if they hoped to give me a jolt, well, Hah! I live with the original banana boy! I did briefly think our son should organize a banana-suit flash-mob event, but I have no idea how he would go about that...

Listening to: Still kind of ensnared by Bob Moses' Tearing Me Up, even though it's more pop than I usually like, But the longing! The inability to walk away! I don't recommend the official video—the actors are way too young for the mood of the song—and I haven't found anything else by that group that I like, but that song? Yes. Then I was hooked all last week on Rag 'n' Bone Man because of Human, which has one of the single most annoying openings ever, and after 60 seconds settles down into, "This man should sing the blues forEVER. Damn." He doesn't look what you'd expect, and he's British, but he has the voice for that genre and he knows how to use it. Wow.

Work awaits, though I'm sure I had more weirdness I meant to share. Maybe it'll come to me later? \o?

ETA: My crack-inspired Idol entry, in case you missed it...

I drove to the hairdresser's last Thursday night, at the tail end of six consecutive days of rain. I took an old back road (it was 5:00 pm and the route to the Interstate is slowwww then), and it got darker and darker as I went. Everyone else knew the road better and wanted to go faster, so I felt pressured and it was two lanes with a ditch on either side and oncoming cars stuck in a traffic jam and occasionally nosing over the center line. There were several spots where, Eeeee... I hope those are rice paddies. I mean, there was a sawhorse at one point with a "flooded" warning, where the road had since dried up, but a lot of it looked as if I was venturing out toward the middle of a lake with reduced after-dark visibility and nowhere to turn around. I was SO glad to finally meet up with Highway 99.

The next day's bike ride—so anticipated, the first outdoor trip in FOREVER, thanks to the rain and cold—was a little eerie as well. The river was within 30 feet of the bike path in places where I have never seen water, not in 25+ years of biking along there. I didn't know the river could be that close—if there are sloughs nearby, they're down below the grass and treeline. One part that has always been dry was flooded with mud, so I had to take an unplanned detour and got a little lost for awhile. Fortunately, the river and a major street bound two sides of a triangle there, so you have a general sense of where you are. The flooding is because the state is letting water out of the dams, to reduce the future load in the spring. BUT... snow-melt is months from now, and I remember they did this as a safety measure one winter and then it stopped raining altogether. So, overall there was a continued water deficit instead. Shasta Lake is around 65% capacity right now, but it has gotten so low over the last 5-6 years that they should probably let it fill up a little more.

It was too cold to bike outside the next two days, but I got out yesterday. Today was supposed to work out too, but the fog is keeping the temps way down, so apparently not. Then days and days of rain ahead. I've lost a LOT of speed, because I've been getting outside about once a week since the beginning of December, and garage-biking helps but isn't quite the same.

Speaking of which, I'm in the middle of season 4 of Chuck out there. None of this really looks familiar anymore. Maybe I didn't see anything beyond early S4 in the original run? I'm also belatedly watching season 3 of Z Nation. With the first episode, it felt as if there was an interim one I might have missed, but apparently not. I'm mid-season now, and I still have no idea who The Man is, or what his vengeance arc is all about. (Oh, crap! Apparently, there was a pre-S3 TV movie that didn't get picked up by the Tivo, which is where all those missing pieces came from. Argh.) 10K seems to have grown up a bit, though. I'm getting a distinct Murphy/10K hate-sex vibe that is both intriguing and disturbing. If those two had a song, it might be this Incubus one I discovered last week. I just finished watching "They Grow Up So Fast," with the cracktastic and highly fictional re-enactment of the story of Murphy And The Baby-Mama. In summary, I still love Doc. He's my favorite.

Weekend-wise, I did not get enough done. There is too much reading for Idol right now—some 80-90 entries to get through in just a few days—and I have projects I need to be working on! The outdoor Xmas lights are put away, though, and most of the inside stuff is packed up.

Now, yardwork? Ugh. Many of the leaves have become one with the mud now, and nothing dries out! Pruning isn't going to go well, either. :(

At least we're living in a relatively high part of town, up above the levee-line...

I promised some music links a couple of days ago, so I'm back. :D

Someone linked me to an Adele "Tiny Desk Concert," and I poked around in other Tiny Desk Concerts and ran across Hozier. I first encountered his music when Angel Of Small Death And The Codeine Scene was featured on The Blacklist, since I don't really listen to the radio much. Here is the Hozier Tiny Desk Concert, which has surprisingly good sound quality. It's his blues influence that I really like (his dad was a blues musician), much as the blues covers by Led Zeppelin tend to be my favorites of their songs. Also notable is Hozier's cover of Illinois Blues. There are several live performances of it, but again—the sound quality on that one is pretty good.

yachiru pointed me toward the Gay Pirates song, which then led to listening to some other songs by Cosmo Jarvis, namely Maxine and She's Got You. Surprisingly catchy.

Our daughter was thrilled to discover that someone made a musical about Alexander Hamilton, who is her favorite founding father. This is not a recommendation! The music is pretty terrible, lots of mediocre rap and then very vanilla generic-type show tunes. Still, she loves it (yes, even though she hates rap) because it speaks to her geek. The show apparently is coming to San Francisco, so she might actually get a chance to go see it.

Courtesy of the S.F. Chronicle telling the above, I think I should also link this great story on the PB & J Bot installed in a San Francisco market. I swear, people probably feed money into it hoping for it to have one of its "meltdowns," as that apparently is a sight worth seeing!

And referencing our daughter again... the Bundesliga has created new videos for 2016 of the BunDucksLiga Qualifying Rounds and Finals. A brave move to take it outdoors this year, but I see the "crowd" has grown, so perhaps they needed a bigger venue. ;)

My Idol entry has barely started. Too sleepy to get very far last night, and I'v been doing work stuff late into the night since Monday. Suckage! I'll have to poke at it when I get home. Meanwhile... finally Thursday. That extra work makes the week seem like it has gone on For.Ev.Er. :(

Despite ambitions for last weekend, involving more Xmas shopping and Lego verification and possibly putting up some Xmas lights, I actually... wrote my Idol entry, did SOME Lego work, did minor Xmas shopping, and tried to cram alllll the leaves into containers before Sunday's rain (every freakin' weekend goes like this).

I ran out of containers, daylight, and dry weather long before getting at more than just some of the leaves. In Sacramento, they come down in earnest in December, just when you have a ton of other things to do. I'm trying to get them out of the flowerbeds and off the lawn areas where I put up Xmas lights, or they will merge into the mud and become disgusting. I would say the leaves won the battle last weekend—my back paid for that attempt for two days!

I've made more headway into Breaking Bad, and I'm at about episode 5x04. Skler is annoying me no end, and yet I'm not sure she's wrong. Mike continues to be awesome. Walter... god, at the end of Season 4, I'm so horrified by his ruthlessness. All around good television, really.

Also listening to more Led Zeppelin on youtube. The Celebration Day 2012 concert is really pretty good (decent recording quality on the live performance of "In My Time Of Dying," which is one of my favorite Zepp songs and the only video I've seen of Jimmy Page working that guitar). HalfshellHusband pointed our son and me to Rolling Stone's Review of Led Zeppelin's debut album, which is kind of maddening in a lot of ways. Unnecessarily racist, seems to think that John Bonham is a terrible drummer and Jimmy Page worthless as a songwriter, and that the whole album is just overall "blah." Zeppelin did a lot of blues covers, but some of their best just transform the material. I've listened to other versions of IMTOD, where there is practically no recognizable melody, and the original of "When The Levee Breaks" is... unimpressive, to say the least. And who listens to the musical effects in "Dazed and Confused" in 1969 and says, "Boy, that's ordinary"?? Our son says the Rolling Stone has never liked Led Zeppelin, and I guess he has a point.

Other links: Back In Black as you've never seen it before. It works altogether too well. And from a few years ago on the Jimmy Fallon show, A Game of Desks. Lots of people didn't find it particularly funny, but as a sendup, I really liked it. Plus, excellent fake opening credits.

All right. Our daughter comes home for winter break tonight (YAYYYYY!), and my husband is encouraging focusing on indoor Xmas decorations more than outdoor. We have a lot of both, and I feel tired just thinking about it all. I'm pretty sure I'll have to start some of the holiday baking, though, to handle coworkers I need to get stuff to by next Friday and for the Bay Area relatives (because who knows when that handoff is happening? Usually when I least expect it, like mid-week or something).

How is Hannukah going for those who celebrate it? And Christmas prep?

I saw a car yesterday with a decal across its rear window, made up of flowers, curlicues, and a dragonfly adorning the word Sassenach Now, I realize that word means "English person" in Scottish Gaelic, but there are a lot of pejorative connotations associated with it—as with the Irish Gaelic version of it, and the Welsh version (saesneg). That's not something you'd call yourself. It'd be kind of like putting up a decal that says "Asshole" and festooning that. \o?

I'm back to assembling and putting away my son's LEGOs to sell. I'm trying to complete and hopefully sell as many sets at Amazon as possible before the holiday box-out occurs on November 1. I'm done with Star Wars, and have moved into the Castle/Kingdom sets and the LOTR sets. My son actually played with those as action sets, and I can't help noticing that both of the women from the Medieval Market are holding daggers. Were they borrowed to be Eowyn and other LOTR women? Or was there a raid on the Medieval Village and they had to help defend it?

Music: For the Shostakovich Piano Concerto No.2, I went with a performance by the Hobbit (Samwise). I've been listening to the Khachaturian Piano Concerto, this week. So many performances I don't like, right from the first movement. I'd prefer something less poinky in the piano line—more Rachmaninoff than Bartok. I was initially distracted by the soloist's bling, but this performance is pretty good, and the artist clearly loves the piece. The Mindru Katz version is also very good, though the weird instrument in the second movement (the flexatone) is perhaps too loud. I played this piece when I was a violinist in the Peoria Symphony, and while I remember the first movement... you'd think those skittery high-pitched violin trills in the second movement would be unforgettable, too. Nope. I have no memory of ever playing that, to the point where I didn't recognize what the sound was without watching the video! Those trills sound kind of like frozen winter leaves jangling together. Eerie, and a little bit sad. Will I go with the bling-meister? Or the Katz? Decisions, decisions...

Tomrrow is Friday! It's been a very long week, with a lot of staying late and IM-ing engineers in other geographies to solve problems. Ugh. Any weekend plans?