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Posts from the “Music” Category

The NaNoWriMo 2012 Playlist

Posted on November 12th, 2012

By popular request (or lawgeekgirl’s, which counts as popular for me), here it is. So the novel is set in 1987. My methodology was like this: I went through and picked everything that was from 1987 and about ten years before. Since the years are inaccurate for a lot of music in iTunes (reissues, Greatest Hits, etc.), I ended up having to go through and pick things manually, too. If something came out in the 80s but I wasn’t particularly into it at the time and it wasn’t part of the zeitgeist, I deleted it. If something was a little outside the time window (say, 1988) but really reminded me of that particular time, I put it in. (It’s an alternate history. Who cares?)…

Categories: Music, Writing

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Friday Frippery: OMSI, Bach, and Puncture Wound Edition

Posted on October 12th, 2012

OMSI playdate today with two of Pea’s school friends. (Yes, teacher hand-wringing aside, she has a couple. Seeing one of them run up and hug her when we arrived melted my smug, icy heart.) OMSI on a Portland Public Schools day off is INSANE. I fell asleep during the planetarium show. I am really, really loving these Bach Cantatas. (Available through iTunes.) But I can’t find a recording of Salieri’s La Contessa to save my life. And that annoys me greatly. My hand was doing much better until I did…something, I have no idea what. I can tolerate crazy amounts of back pain and headache pain, but this stupid puncture wound has turned me into a huge baby…especially since I have two healing second-degree…

Categories: General Parenting, Good day, Music, Sick Mom

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She’s here!

Posted on March 26th, 2012

…And I think her name will be Caroline. If M hadn’t used his fatherly veto power, Pea would have been named Caroline. I am struggling with guilt (yes, again) because I spent what was, for us, a lot of money buying and moving her. I’m trying to focus on the positive: I have a piano. Pea has a piano and can start learning. I learned that even as lean as I thought our budget is, I can squeeze more out of it, which can go into savings. If you hadn’t noticed, guilt really is my default state. I blame my Calvinist genetics and/or my personality disordered parents. It is a little weird to see what looks like my childhood piano in my house. Most…

Categories: Music, Not crazy...yet

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I did something rash.

Posted on March 22nd, 2012

I bought a piano. Well, technically, I already have a piano. My parents gave me my childhood piano (also my mother’s childhood piano) as a graduation gift. Except they thought I should pay freight for it to get to me, and it wasn’t much of a gift, given that no one had played the thing in almost twenty years. As much as I wanted the piano, it made me so angry they wanted me to effectively buy my own present (when I was flat broke) that I said, in essence, screw that. But I was listening to the Goldberg Variations* this morning and I pulled out the music to read them as I listened and I just…I just had to have a piano again.…

Categories: Good day, Music

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Opera! Art! Tax refund!

Posted on February 6th, 2012

I’m in my study listening to Cecilia Bartoli and writing (well, now I’m blogging). M is working from home and Pea is watching TV. This never could have happened in the loft: M hates opera and would have sung along with an improvised, possibly rude libretto; M’s phone calls to work would drive me to distraction, and Pea’s TV makes me stabby. The man who repaired the glass in the condo last week popped by to give me a piece of glass to replace the smashed glass for one of my brass rubbings (the only glass casualty of the move, pleasantly enough). It was so very nice of him, and I was thrilled to be able to hang it on the wall! I did…

Categories: Good day, Music, Writing

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Thank you, universe!

Posted on January 6th, 2012

Lease signed. Rent paid. Keys handed over. This is what I expected to happen this morning. The pleasant surprises: The deposit was the same amount that I’d put down as a (refundable) deposit when we applied for the place. I was expecting it to be an additional $700. A storage unit comes with the unit. (I had no idea!) Hopefully this means we’ll be able to eliminate another $80 each month in storage costs! We found a potting shed in the back terrace, and hooks for bird feeders. We’ll have a small area to garden in (ornamental). I’ve really missed gardening and having birds around. When we first looked at the place, it hadn’t even occurred to me to look out the back door,…

Categories: Good day, Music

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This is how I am repaid

Posted on December 14th, 2011

One of Pea’s favorite songs is The Wanting Comes in Waves/Repaid by the Decemberists. (I like it, too.) But when I was so very, very sick on Sunday, all I could think between bouts of being sick was “the barfing comes in waves,” to the tune of the above song. Which kind of ruins things, don’t you think? Also, I couldn’t get this version out of my head. Today, I’ve been listening to the real version of the song, over and over, as a reset mechanism (it is helping, or at least WAS until I started this post). So that is all I’m going to say on the subject.

Categories: Music, Not crazy...yet, WTF

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The great glad tidings tell

Posted on December 5th, 2011

The best part of Christmas is music. When I was a child, it was sacred music, exquisitely executed by professional musicians and choirs with paid soloists — and enthusiastic, off-tune hymns belted out by parishioners. I loved both. I still love both. I have a 19 hour 22 hour* holiday music playlist, and I’ll listen to it non-stop until Christmas. And I will enthusiastically belt out, off-tune, those hymns to Pea, too. (Fortunately for Pea, M has an incredible baritone and ear, so she’ll get a few in-tune hymns, too.) Here’s my Christmas Playlist. If I had to pick an absolute favorite, it’d be O Come, O Come, Emmanuel (but that’s with one arm tied behind my back; I love so many of them).…

Categories: Music

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Holiday cheer

Posted on December 4th, 2011

A few nights ago, the sounds of a brass band playing holiday songs drifted up to the loft. I took Pea down to the street to see if we could locate the band.  We did, one block over. She was not impressed. (I was, because as cold as it was, it had to be really, really difficult to keep those instruments in tune. And they were so festive.) I explained to Pea that whenever we encounter live music in the world, we need to stop and savor it, that it’s a gift.  A present. Pea said: “I would like another present.”

Categories: Music, Portlandia

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Thanksgiving Playlist

Posted on November 23rd, 2011

I made a Thanksgiving playlist. I was pretty much out of it last night when I made it, so some of the selections only make sense to me. (Actually, some of them don’t make any sense even to me, but I’ll leave them alone. I’m listening to it now, and it works.) My theme is…well. Not much of a theme. Kind of a cross between songs about autumn, God, and rain, songs that are (very) roughly the right period (that the Pilgrims would have hated), and songs designed to jolt people out of turkey comas.

Categories: Music

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