I got nothin.

I've recently come to the conclusion that with nearly a year down on this blog venture that I really should be efficient enough to be posting something every day. Whether that's a song every day or just content, I don't know, but today I got nothin. Just so you know. Back tomorrow with a very nice song though!

Paint the ceiling, part 1

First of a series, hopefully, and hopefully one which doesn't end in tears.

We've been needing to repaint the ceiling in our living room for the longest time. Towards the front of the room, there are a constellation of ceiling cracks that have gotten progressively worse over time. They've long since driven Amy to distraction, whereas I've been pretty good at ignoring them (in part because I figured I would be the one to have to fix them. I was right).

With Google, a paint store down the block, some able friends and relatives, my resources are actually pretty good. Good enough to overcome my ineptitude? (We'll leave that question unanswered for the time being.)

Today we started our project in earnest. First I investigated. I climbed up onto a chair and felt one of the cracks. Snap! Is paint supposed to snap off in big tiles like that? This is going to be a mess. So after staring at the ceiling a while longer, Martin and I took one of the chips down to the paint store to find out what we'd need to fix the ceiling and to match colors.

So we walked into the store and found a salesmen. "What do I do about this?" I asked, handing him my chip. "Well you'll have to peel back all that paint, spackle it, sand it, prime it, and paint it." "Yeah I guess so huh." (I didn't promise there would be anything remotely interesting about this project, by the way, which is why it's hidden below the fold.) I looked through some paint colors (it's "true white"), browsed around the store a little bit, and didn't buy anything. Real effective.

Now I'm back home blogging instead of painting. This will probably end up being a 46 part series if every installment is as incremental as this one!

"Let us be frank about it: most of our people have never had it so good"

I was going through the archives of the blog last night looking for something and noticed that I used to post a little bit more than just a song every Monday-Wednesday-Friday. I got away from it once I started wedding blogging, but I don't have an excuse now.

Sometimes I wrote a little bit about sports. During the first couple of months of this year, when Arsenal were playing really well, there were quite a few posts. Then Arsenal lost the Carling Cup final, Henry and Van Persie got hurt, the season petered out, so that stopped. But now, well, now we've never had it so good! Apart from winning a trophy, have we ever had such a good week? We crushed three teams, including Spurs, quite convincingly, and went top of the league for the first time since 2004. Cesc Fabregas has come of age much like Ronaldo did last year. We announced that we are now the "richest" club in England and have loads of money in the bank. Not to mention the oft-predicted and much-anticipated Chelsea implosion may have finally begun! Beauty!

Things change quickly, so the saying goes, and that's true, but who cares about tomorrow, let's enjoy it while it lasts, etc etc.

The other football team is ticking over nicely too, coping pretty well with a tricky Tulsa team and solidifying its place as the best of the "other" undefeated teams after USC and LSU. As a bonus, OSU's coach has made himself an international Youtube laughingstock by losing his cool over some stupid newspaper article. (Personally, I think "laughingstock" is a little generous. Yes, he looks completely ludicrous stalking the podium like he's Howard Beale. But it's no surprise, and a little creepy, that the target of his mad as hell grandstanding happens to be a childless woman. That'll show her, eh Mike?)

Anyway, another thing we were doing on the blog is noting births among our crew. As many of you know, Nick, a very-pregnant Kim, and Sabina were at the wedding last month, and now it's Nick, Kim, Sabina... and Ramona! Here's Ramona and her sister. Too cute!

I'm heading home for a little bit next week so I picked out the next series of tunes last night. I like them, but they aren't too hip. So enjoy this week's hipness while it lasts, don't worry about tomorrow, etc. etc.

HIT AND RUN LOVER

HIT AND RUN LOVER by Tommie Young.

Man it's a pleasure to post these tracks. I started writing this post about ten minutes ago, but instead of typing, I just tapped on the desk for a few runs through the track.

Hit and Run Lover is totally unknown to the public at large, but it's quite a staple among rare groove fans. It's even been reissued on vinyl as a 7" on Jazzman records (and even more to the point, on a Jazzman CD compilation, which is how it comes to me).

But, being relatively unknown, I can't tell you much about Tommie Young, except she's from Dallas. That's the sort of detail I wouldn't know if Ms. Young was from, say, Idaho, but if I find out a singer, author, public figure is from my part of the world, I don't forget it as easily.

Anyway, enough about me, listen to this tune!

LISTEN.

Photo: Late afternoon on Islesford.

Just great

First things first: Amy's done with the kids for this year! (Just about.) They say teaching gets easier by the fourth year, and from my perspective, it seems like it has, but I'm still amazed at how much work she puts into it every day. Legend.

Speaking of legends, the other day on NY1 they had a little segment on a photo exhibit on Muhammad Ali over in the West Village. So Martin and I decided to pop over and have a look! Here's one of the photos we saw:



So that was nice. Having finished as much reading as I'm going to do about Maine (probably), I am back on non-wedding stuff. Yesterday I finished "Falling Man," by Don DeLillo. I shouldn't say I was disappointed, because I wasn't. More disengaged. I found the book easy to read and even easier to finish. It simply passed by me. Writing a "September 11" novel must be a very difficult thing to do. Since I have (everybody has) such a strong feeling of what it was like to live through 9/11, I found myself not particularly interested in how the characters in the novel reacted. Their experience was singular, not much to tell me about mine or anything. Some of my reaction, though, must be controlled by DeLillo, because the style of the novel is so clipped, elliptical. It encourages the reader to pass over it lightly. Anyway, enough about that.

Our friend John is now a blogger! He just started this week, looks like. Go say HI THERE.

More songs Friday.

I am the greatest.

I just realized something nice, that iTunes lets you convert different audio formats to mp3. I'll be doing that from now on because I know some of you have trouble opening up the m4a/mp4/aac formats. Back tomorrow with songs!

New friend for pops

Another addition to the burgeoning Okie Arsenal ranks here. I never blogged the match with Boro because it was blaaahg. Boring match. We looked tired. But still undefeated in 2007! Plus I've been spending so much time on the other website lately I needed to get away from the computer just a little bit. Now I have to decide what song we're posting tomorrow morning and about a million other things at work. Toodles!