So, I’m listening to Rusted Root now. I think there’s an umlaut in there somewhere… And the song that strikes my fancy enough to write an LJ for tonight is “Send Me On My Way.” But, you see, the lead singer of Rusted Root isn’t terribly good at diction. And I always thought he was singing “Simian the Whale.” Very strange, naming your whale after an adjective meaning ape-like. (If I had a pet whale, I’d probably name him Tiny, just for laughs. As long as the other whales didn’t make fun of him, that is.)

The 1st period chemistry class had their final today. Haven’t looked at ’em yet, but no one left crying – always a positive sign. The other chemistry class and the physics class have theirs on Friday. I decided that I liked last year’s physics midterm so much, I used the same thing for this year’s. Now I have 2 periods yet to meet with the physics kids to teach them how to answer the multiple guess questions. (Some of these are real stinkers – but if you understand the concepts, you can answer them correctly.) Tomorrow I get to spend most of the day doing tech stuff since I only have the one period with physics. I have things I think I can get done, but knowing tech work, I’ll probably end up even more behind when I’m done than when I started. That’s the nature of the game.

Let’s see if I have any takers:
“Knock knock!”

the_ladylark and shebit recently did a meme that I found rather fun, so I’m doing it too.

Take the last sentence from the first ten posts on your friends list (right now) and post them.

1. So I now have a lovely 20Gig MP3 player, and I’m currently transferring my MP3 collection to it.

2. Today I took a few shots of my kitchen.

3. …I can certainly identify with this. 🙂

4. On the plus side, they’re much easier to watch here at work what with the high bandwith and all…

5. http://public.fotki.com/indefatigable/shineys/

6. But just a moderate amount of snow.

7. This is a ‘good thing’.

8. Maybe the little buggers have finally gotten the hint?

9. What do you all think?

10. Now that I have a free afternoon to go shopping and banking and whatnot, it’s -11 C again.

Hmmm, some interesting things. (And why did I do it? Dunno, really.)

In other news – tomorrow begins Midterm Exams at school – booga booga! The chemistry exam is done, but since physics won’t take there until Friday, I have a bit of time to go on that one yet.

So, as I go through my entire MP3 collection, which is based upon my entire CD collection, I hear some songs that I just don’t recognize at all. Indeed, I can’t even identify the artist… I happened to be in the living room chatting with dad, who’d just showed up to invite me out to supper (it was craft night for mom), so I went into the den to first check who the artist was and second turn off the music (hey, I was going out for supper – didn’t need it playing any more).

Turns out the musician in question was Robyn Hitchcock. Ah yes, I remember now. Several years back I’d heard “Uncorrected Personality Traits” and liked the song. I remembered the artist name well enough to find CDs at stores, but not the song title. So I bought CDs hoping they were the ones with the right song. None of ’em were. Years afterwards, I became an online presence and asked folks on IRC one evening. I got both the song title *and* the album title. So I was able to order the CD finally.

Flip forward to a few years later. I hear a song that I rather like, but don’t know the title or artist. I ask in IRC and someone tells me the title. And *then* I go to one of the many sites available for downloading music at 79-99 cents a piece. Rather than buy several CDs to find one song, I buy the one song. It saves me money and having music in my collection that I’m not terribly interested in listening to. And that’s cool. (The second scenario, btw, was “Cleanin’ Out My Closet” by Eminem, which I bought from Rhapsody for $.79.)

So I’m happy that things are conspiring to make music purchasing even easier for listeners like myself. If only the RIAA could see the possibilities of the Internet rather than suing prepubescents and octogenarians.

Some links to places to buy music legally:

• eMusic.com I preferred them when they were 99 cents a song or $9.99 an album rather than the “download as much as you want for $30” or whatever their current pricing is now.
• Rhapsody You can get to the Rhapsody service through a number of outlets, but this link is for listen.com. It’s a streaming audio site, which has a monthly fee for as low as $9 a month. But you can also buy songs for download for 79 cents each.
• MusicMatch My MP3 player (software) of choice now sells downloadable music for the same prices that eMusic used to. However, they come as .wma files. Thankfully most of my MP3 players (hardware) can handle .wma.
• iTunes Not just for Apple anymore… They sell songs for 99 cents each, however I think they are proprietary files. Ever since I got screwed on a Liquid Music purchase a few years ago, I steer clear of all proprietary music files.

I know there are more dowloadable music sites out there – please share your favorite sites with me! I’m always on the lookout for more obscure songs for my collection and the more sources, the better chances I have of finding stuff. (I’d love to find Nat King Cole & Stubby Kaye singing “The Ballad of Cat Ballou” somewhere!)

Yesterday, I invited mom over for popcorn and a movie for Sunday afternoon. So today, she came over and we popped REAL popcorn – not that microwave stuff. Thanks to Elsa’s birthday gift, I now have 4 types of organically grown popcorn to try. My cheap-o sauce pan was just big enough (with some popcorn pushing up the lid and showing over the edge at the end) and the bowl which came with the popcorns was the perfect size. Mother and I marveled at the magic of popcorn – just 1/2 cup of kernels made all of that popcorn! We sprinkled on the popcorn salt and settled down on my sofa to watch a DVD. We picked Billy Elliot to watch since she’d never seen it and I haven’t seen it in awhile. The popcorn (we picked Savanna Gold – with a smooth, sweet flavor) was good, the movie was good, and the company was good. Afterwards, I showed mom most of the photos that we took on our trip. (It was getting late and she had to go home before I could finish the slide show.) It was just cool using my laptop to show off the photos.

So, thanks Elsa for the fun birthday present! I’m hoping next weekend we can do this again – this time with Bend It Like Beckham and one of the other types of popcorn. 🙂

You can check out elsaf‘s and judiang‘s LJs to see how things are going in McGannland. Sounds like they’re having fun. 🙂 (I suspect I’ll be getting a fwap or two from my choice of topic…)

As for me, I’ve updated my Science Page. You can check it out here. I managed to combine 3 collections of science links and I think I’ve weeded out the dead sites. I think my brain is dead from all of that. Probably should go undecorate the house in the meantime. I’m sure Leo’s ready and eager to help.

Oh, I have a new LJ icon as well. I liked the picture of Sylv so much that I needed to icon it. Dunno if the saying on it works, but hey, I was listening to Queen at the time.

I know, it’s funny to see a McCoy fan like myself post about Paul McGann, but I’m just reporting (as Elsa will soon do, I’m sure) that the PMEBers who went to London to see Paul in Mourning Becomes Electra were able to meet the man himself afterwards. He even bought them drinks and invited them for tea the next day. Sounds like a successful venture to me. 🙂

Way to go gurls! Have a blast! Say “Hi” to McGann for me! 😉

I wore my snow boots today hoping to get to walk in the snow. I bought a pair of “all weather shoes” from Land’s End (though I bought them at Sears) and really haven’t had a chance to “break them in” yet. It seems to be snowing a bit more now, but I doubt there will be much more than a dusting tomorrow.

We were jinxed out of getting 4 inches of snow today. Yesterday in the announcements, the home ec teacher informed everyone that in the event of a snow day, the mock wedding would be rescheduled for Friday. Well, gee, as soon as you make an announcement like that, you’ve scuppered any chance of there being a snow day! Tsk tsk! So we didn’t have any snow on the ground today, and very little on the ground by the time I walked home from school.

Our other curse is the I-70 curse. I-70 (one of the country’s east-west interstate highways) seems to be a weather line in Ohio. “People living north of I-70 should expect to see 1-2″ of snow, those south should see 3-4″” etc. Well, when I lived south of I-70, it was the folks north of I-70 who seemed to get all the nice snow. Well, now that I’m living north of I-70 (again – I grew up here) the snow’s gone south. *sigh* I think it’s all waiting until March.

Tomorrow’s Friday, so I’ll probably dress casually. And wear my snow boots again. Just in case, see…

When the Christmas season was upon us, I decided that I wanted eggnog every night before bedtime. And that was a fun little tradition. And it may well have helped me sleep. So now that we’re in the cold, dark, days of winter, I’ve decided upon a new nightly tradition. I’m going to see about having a cup of hot cocoa each night before bedtime.

Currently, I’m sipping a cup of hot peppermint cocoa, one of the 3 types of cocoa that Rachel gave me for Christmas. It’s very tasty. And as with the Starbucks peppermint cocoa that I had while in MN, I’m still amazed by the cold/hot feeling you get with hot peppermint drinks. The minty flavor makes you cool, but the heat from the cocoa makes you hot. A fascinating sensation.

(Poor Leo’s sitting on and jealously watching. No hot cocoa for kitties!)

One thing that I forgot to mention in yesterday’s journal was about my latest Birthday present. I received a package in a plain brown wrapper in the mail. It was from my sister. It was The Muppets Monopoly! YAY!!!!!! The note explained that now I no longer had to covet my sister’s Monopoly. 🙂 Awwwww!

So, what does one do when one lives alone with one’s cat? Why, one challenges one’s cat to a game, of course!

Leo picked Miss Piggy as his character piece (and are we surprised?) and so I took Kermit. Leo wanted to eat his piece, but I kept putting it back in place. I let Leo go first and rolled for him. And then he wandered off for awhile, bored. So I watched The Vicar of Dibley and played Monopoly for the pair of us. Leo returned occasionally to see how the game was progressing (and to lay down on the game board). And eventually he knocked the pieces off the board and took up residence himself. So I figured we were done for the night. Which is a shame since I was in the lead. (Leo landed himself in Jail once, poor kitty.)

Yeah, yeah, I know… I need a friend who lives nearby… 😉

I only ever seem to update my main page at pagefillers.com whenever the new year rolls around. The main thing I need to do is change the year in my ACME Page Fillers, Inc. logo, but I also change the page text. Well, this year, I’ve come up with the perfect solution to my rarely updated page. I made the page for the entire year. Yes, each month of 2004, you can return to ACME Page Fillers, Inc. and see the content specific for that month. Or you can read it all in one go, if you’d ruther.

I shall also be updating my “About Me” page and “trinalinks” page. And if I’m really good, I’ll work on the Science Page. I have a HUGE collection of URLs at school for cool science pages. Just need to spend a bit of time making the page viable.