Obsession Confession

It all started last week. I promised Ms. G if she would cooperate in all her morning activities to get ready that we could listen to her princess songs CD on the way to day care. You know the hit songs from Aladdin, Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast. Yes, this is what our listening habits have disintegrated to as of late. We listen to the songs over and over and when we are not listening to them, they are still playing in my head.

Well we get in the car and I insert the disk, but instead of feeding in smoothly, it goes in sluggishly and then the last little bit doesn’t go in. Now in hindsight I know I should have blessed that small bit sticking out and pulled it out right then and there, but no, I shoved it the rest of the way in. Would this have changed the outcome, probably not. Anyway it wouldn’t play, it wouldn’t switch to any other of the 5 cds also inserted in the player, it wouldn't do anything.

Later the hubby looks this issue up on the internet and we find this is a common problem with Troopers with CD changers after about 4 years. My car just hit the 4 year mark about two months ago. There is a trick with a credit card that you can use to try and ease your cd’s out of the player. Some have had luck with this and others haven’t. We didn’t. So here we are riding around without being able to play princess songs. Maybe a blessing in disguise, but really if it keeps Ms. G entertained it’s a good thing, plus she is so cute when she sings along.

So we haul ourselves down to Circuit City to buy a new car stereo. This is a good thing, I can get rid of the CD changer and have a little storage pocket put in, plus the new stereo has an iPod hook up. The only problem is that my iPod is the old shuffle version with a USB connector. So guess what I am getting for Christmas, a new iPod! I am really making out in this deal.

Now to the obsession. While at the hairdresser the other day we got to talking about iPods and CDs and Roger said he had all his CDs burned into iTunes. It got me thinking we have a bunch of CDs burned in but not all of them. Now that I am getting a new iPod, I decided I should burn them all in, except for few losers.

So I started gathering up the CDs, checking to see which ones are already burned in and which ones aren’t. I’ve got three piles going. The pile of ones needing to be burned in is growing. The pile of ones to be checked is out of control. I realize about halfway through this process which has been going on for days, that we have about 400 CDs and probably only 20 or so had been burned in before I started this process. We started out with about 11 gigs of music between what was burned in and also iTunes purchases and now we are up to 20 gigs with another 120 or so CDs to be burned in. So anyway I am obsessed about getting these songs in. I will not rest until every last CD is in my nice neat library.

Some stuff I may never listen to again, especially some of the hubby’s CDs, our musical taste is quite different. In fact out of 400 hundred CDs there are only three duplicates that we brought to the house when we moved in together. No Doubt “Tragic Kingdom”, Wallflowers “Bringing Down the Horse” and Soundgarden “Superunknown”. What is really cool is that I have found a lot of music that is great and that I never listen to anymore because disks are so cumbersome, wow can you believe I just said that! Remember records! Anyway yes, cumbersome.

Being an ex-diva I have some favorites, at the top of the list are Chris Cornell and Ella Fitzgerald. Prior to this obsessive population of my library, their presence was nil in iTunes. Now I have dozens and dozens of songs at my fingertips by these two greats. Yesterday I played Soundgarden’s “Power Trip” and wow I remember what I loved about music and singing, before princess songs ever entered the picture.

Some favorites added include:

Parliament “Tear the Roof Off 1974-1980”
New Order “Substance”
Ella Fitzgerald “Ella in Berlin”, The Best of the Songbooks” “The Legendary Decca Recordings”
Slickee Boys “Cybernetic dreams of Pi”
Fugazi “Repeater”, “In on the Kill Taker”
Ricardo Lemvo “Mambo Yo Yo”
The English Beat “Special Beat Service”
John Coltrane “Mainstream 1958”
Nirvana “Bleach”
Squirrel Nut Zippers “The Inevitable”
Soundgarden “Louder Than Love”
PJ Harvey “Rid of Me”, “To Bring you my Love”
Blackgirls “Procedure”
Black Flag “In my Head”

I could go on but won’t because I am getting behind on sorting out what needs to be burned in, so I have to go and continue with my obsession… And then burn an MP3 disk for the car to listen to until I get the new iPod!

Two Princesses

Our friends Rich and Michelle came for a quick visit in between business and Thanksgiving. They moved to Colorado three years ago so we haven't seen them since both of our little girls were babies. Gigi and Mackenzie took an immediate liking to each other. They found out that they are both very very into the Disney princesses. So they played dress up for the night. It was really cute. And it was really nice to see our friends.



 

Pictures from Gran Jan's Visit

 

Brookside Gardens

Wow! yesterday the weather was FABULOUS! I think it hit around 75 degrees. Yesterday when Gigi went down for her nap, I knew I needed to go to the gym. The weather was so great I decided to get my exercise in somewhere outdoors. So I headed over to Brookside Gardens, what a great move. I forget how close this is to our house and what great place it is. As soon as I got there I realized that Paul and Gigi were missing out. So after my workout, I went home, and we we all went back over. I thought it would be a great photo opportunity but Ms. G did not, she was not into getting her picture taken, fortunately we managed to get a few good shots anyway.

Sleep Tight Mr. Boo

Yesterday was a hard day. I had to take Mr. Boo in the be put to sleep. He was eighteen and a half, so pretty old for a cat. But it was hard to make the decision. You want to make sure they don't suffer too much, but you don't want to cut a life short. Mr. Boo (also known as Lexter) had a few reprisals in past few months but over the weekend I knew his chances of enjoying life were over. This shot was taken a few years ago when he liked to come up stairs and hang out in the main part of the house. He was good kitty and we will miss him.

Halloween, California and other cute shots

I just pulled a bunch of pictures off my camera and realized I haven't posted Gigi shots for a while. This shot is the dress rehearsal for Halloween, just to make sure the costume fit.


Here is cute Tootie, squeezing herself into a basket way to small for her. She slept in there for a while.

Daddy and G playing around...

Paul went to LA for a conference and this is one of the few pictures he brought back. This is shot from his hotel window.

Gran Jan came down for a visit, and so did Karen and Rupert and the kids. Jan, please send the group shot so I can post it here...

Halloween was quite the success. Gigi trick or treated with Saskia and Ben. They had a blast. it took an hour to go up our street and back, good thing Tommy was smart enough to bring the wagon.

Eating some of the loot afterwards...

Now the costume is in the dress up selection...