My hands are cold. The rest of me is quite warm. But as I sit here at my computer (I’ve been here awhile) my fingers always seem to get cold. Perhaps I should wear gloves while I type, but that doesn’t sound conducive to good typing. I could turn up the heat, but then the rest of the house will be too warm (central air). I could have Leo sit on my fingers while I type, but he usually doesn’t like that. And tends to hit keys that I don’t want him to hit. So instead, I simply type with cold fingers.

I had a nice day off today. Slept in until 9am and then Leo insisted that I get up. Watched last Friday’s episode of Monk while I paid bills. Had lunch (left overs). Went into the school to show the new principal how to use his network account and Pegasus and stuff like that. The old principal was also present. After that, I went to Walmart and saw the old principal’s predecessor. Weird, saw 3/5ths of the principals I’ve worked for today.

The rest of my afternoon has been spent playing around on the computer (as you might gather from my starting paragraph) and trying to get all of my playlists and MP3 folders sorted. Found a few albums that didn’t have playlists saved, so I did those (and am listening to them now.)

Well, that’s enough blather for today. I apologize to anyone reading. I promise that after January, I’ll just post only when I’ve got something to say. (Well, maybe I’d better not promise that at all… I tend to say a lot of nothing even when I have something to say.)

Never did finish my “knock knock” joke in an earlier post, so I’ll go ahead and stick it all here. (It’s inspired by one of Dawn French’s jokes from The Vicar of Dibley.)

Knock Knock!
Who’s there?
Martha Stewart.
Martha Stewart Who?
OK, you can be on the jury…

Heh – sorry about that!

Thanks to elsaf, I found this cool program for determining your Flesch-Kincaid level of writing.

trinalin’s Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 6
Average number of words per sentence:	13.85
Average number of syllables per word:	1.36
Total words in sample:	5109
Analyze your journal! Username:
Another fun meme brought to you by rfreebern

Now, back when I was in teacher training, I had to do these tests myself. You’d randomly flip through a textbook and then start counting words and letters and paragraphs, etc. Now, of course, I can simply use Word to do the same thing, only quicker. (You’d be surprised at what level many high school science text books are written at.)

In other interesting news, Elsa’s writing level was 5th grade and judiang‘s was 6th like mine. I figured out why. Elsa has to write for the general public since she’s a newspaper employee. I, on the other hand, write for juniors and seniors, so can write a bit more sophisticated. Judi has to write for judges, who probably have a similar mindset to juniors and seniors.

Or it could simply be because of the various journal entries we’ve recently written. 🙂

So I decided to check out some of my other writings to see what sorts of Flesch-Kincaid scores that I get. My 40th Anniversary Doctor Who article, for example, scores at 7.9. My short story, Tee Time, however, had a score of 3.5. Quite a contrast, eh?

Last night during my MP3 listening, I heard my new Songs from the Street: 35 Years of Music tunes (ta Wemb!) and was transported back nearly 30 years. The Street in this CD collection’s case, is Sesame Street. I watched Sesame Street as a child and it’s one of the reasons that I adore Muppets today. It also explains a lot more about me. (Ernie, for example, is definitely my inner Muppet.)

Some of the songs I haven’t heard in years. The one that really tugged at my nostalgia cells was “Five People in my Family.” As the song continued, I remembered listening to it (possibly on a 45) and singing along. But it has to have been 25 years since I’d heard it. Then there was “The King of Eight” and “Ladybug’s Picnic.” Later on, “I’ve Got Two” which I must have had on 45. Of the new pieces, the one I liked best was probably Ladysmith Black Mambazo (one of my favorite groups as it is) and Kermit the Frog singing their ABCs. And probably the funniest was R.E.M. singing “Furry Happy Monsters.”

If they came out with DVDs of classic Sesame Street sketches, I’d definitely have to buy it. It was a joy to listen to the tunes and remember sitting on the floor & watching the show, or dancing around my little white plastic record player listening & singing along to the music.

One of the IRC folks last night asked if I was going through my second childhood while listening to the music. I have to admit that this wasn’t the case. How can you have a second childhood if you never left the first one? 🙂

I decided that I wanted January to be the first month that I have an LJ entry for every day. However, tonight I’m stuck on what to write about. So, I have my friends on IRC come up with topics to write about. DrFaust suggested that I write about the Smurfista Revolution. gordon_r_d suggested “Why Chuck Austen Should Never Be Allowed To Write A Comic Again.” So, here goes!

Why Chuck Austen Should Never Be Allowed To Write A Comic Again: Well, I for one am opposed to Chuck Austen (whoever the hell he is) writing comics. And I blame the Smurfista Revolution. (I had to ask Faust what Smurfista meant and he wasn’t sure. Something like barista, he thought. But he didn’t know what that was either. Gordon thinks it’s a Mexican spice.)

Ah, I know what you’re thinking, why are the Smurfistas responsible? Well, it goes like this… Chuck would be a better comic book writer if only he didn’t eat spicy Smurfs. And there wouldn’t be spicy Smurfs around for him to eat if it weren’t for the Smurfista Revolution. (And the thought of blue food anyway… Bleh. Food shouldn’t be blue. Unless it’s blueberries. I wonder if Smurfs taste like blueberries – never had one myself. Smurfs that is – I love blueberries and have had lots.)

Well, the conversation on IRC has switched to scientist’s laws. Almost had ’em fooled with Cole’s law. (Cole’s law is great with fried chicken & mashed taters.)

I think I’ve rambled on enough. So I’ll just listen to my Sesame Street music and chat more on IRC.

So tonight I went to the farewell gathering for our retiring principal and was also able to meet the new guy. And discovered that I taught him! He took physics at Wright State when dad was teaching the physics for elementary education majors. So dad was his teacher – but that was the one quarter when I subbed for dad during one week. And now this guy is going to be my principal! Very funny stuff. 🙂 He was really impressed with dad as a teacher (which is no surprise – dad’s the best science teacher in the state of Ohio, IMO) and said that I was good too (but only as an afterthought, hmmm…)

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.