The Musical Baton

Judi passed the baton along on this blogging relay, and I’m “it.” I don’t mind getting these prompts, generally, but this one really makes me think what a low priority music has been in my life lately. Odd, considering that as a teen I dreamed of becoming a musician.


Total size of music files on my computer:

3.37 GB, though very few are mine. Most are my husband’s; we definitely do not share the same taste in music. I’d transferred them to our other PC, and when the hard disk in that one crashed he nearly cried over all of that music vanishing into thin bits and bytes. He didn’t know I still had it. Now it’s safe on MP3 CD’s.

The last CD bought was:

Very tough question, because I can’t remember. Since Judi says downloaded CD’s count too, I’ll have to say it’s the soundtrack to “O Brother Where Art Thou.” I love that movie, and the music too.

I think the last “real” CD I bought was Tom Petty’s Wildflowers, a few years ago. My nine-year-old daughter loves it. I almost bought a Rush Greatest Hits CD today in Wal-Mart while waiting for an oil change, but I decided to download my own compilation instead.

Song playing right now in iTunes:

I do not have an iPod. I don’t have an MP3 player, either. My husband has a Memorex MP3 player; I gave it to him for Christmas and he loves it. But if you do not have an iPod, all you can do in iTunes is listen, though that’s not a bad thing in itself. We found that out when we tried to use those Pepsi bottle cap codes.

I do listen to Netscape Radio sometimes, but my PC speakers aren’t very good and I’m better off just turning on the TV with a cable music channel, or popping a CD into the DVD player. But I’m one of those weirdos that focus on work better when it’s quiet, so I usually only listen to music in the car or when I’m doing something mindless like data entry for record keeping or stuffing envelopes for marketing myself.

Five songs I listen to a lot, or mean a lot to me:

I tend to pick fairly obscure favorites for anything. Some are my favorites just because I like the way they sound. Others have messages or sentimental value. And just because I like a song doesn’t mean I’d listen to the whole album, know what I mean? Well, except for Rush.

• Trees (Rush)
• The Rain Song (Led Zeppelin)
• Just The Way You Are (Billy Joel)
• You’ve Got A Friend (James Taylor)
• Man of Constant Sorrow (lots of artists, most recently Dan Tyminski on O Brother Where Art Thou Soundtrack)

Five people to whom I’m passing the baton

Nope…I don’t know five people who blog. I’ll pass it on to Shelley Haggert, okay?

A Wilderness Challenge?

It’s the perfect season for camping – not too hot, nights not too cold, bugs not too invasive yet. We decided, only this past week, we want to go on Memorial Day weekend. But everything good is already booked. Our favorite campground, 40 minutes away, has non-electric sites available still. This would be fine with me several years ago. Even now I feel that camping beside an electric outlet isn’t really camping. I used to laugh at the other girls on camping trips that insisted on bringing blow dryers and curling irons, wouldn’t camp unless there were flush toilets nearby and took showers twice a day. These little puffballs would order pizza deliveries to the campsite – and this was before everyone had cell phones. I prided myself on being a “hardcore camper” – all I needed was a tent and sleeping bag, some clothes, cookware, and a cooler of food and drinks. I’d pee in the woods.

Ah, but those days have changed. We have two kids now, and so we purchased a “pop-up” camper. It’s an older model – 1985, I think, small, and nowhere near as luxurious as new pop-ups. Ours has a full size and two twin beds, except that the table’s broken, and since the table converted into one of those twin beds, there’s only one now. It has a sink that can be used with a water hose hookup or with a gallon water jug and a hand pump. It also has a stove that can be hooked up to a propane tank.

I don’t understand the sink and stove at all, and eventually we’ll probably get rid of them and just use the space for storage and countertops. For one thing, why would you cook inside a tent with an open flame? That’s just asking for trouble. If the popup is equipped with electric, wouldn’t it be more logical to use electric burners on the stove? No open flame, no exhaust fumes! And as for the sink, given its tiny size, wouldn’t it be easier to wash your hands at an outside faucet, and to wash your dishes in a plastic dishpan? Why pump water from a jug when you can just pour it into the dishpan?

Ah, logic.

I do welcome electricity, though, these days. For one thing, it means the kids can watch TV. Did I just type that? At first, I had a serious problem with the idea of watching TV on a camping trip. I’m still not thrilled, but there does come a time when it makes the trip a lot more pleasant, especially at night. They watch a kids’ video while we parents relax by the campfire – and if we’re lucky, they fall asleep in the process. It’s not like I’m gonna let them watch TV all day in the camper when there are frogs to catch and leaves to collect. Electric hookups also mean we can keep our cell phones charged all weekend without running the car, have easy lighting inside the camper, and…well, that’s about all we use it for.

Other “campers” take this hookup thing seriously. They use air conditioners, TV’s, video game systems (and sometimes satellites!), stereos, computers with Internet access (available as dialup or Wi-Fi), microwaves, coffeemakers, and anything else they’d use at home. I think that’s pretty cool, really, if your goal isn’t getting away from it all, but taking it all with you.

If I could have all that stuff with me, I might not want to leave the camper. In effect, you get a hotel room on wheels, minus the maid service. If it’s just an alternative place to sleep while you travel, that’s fine. But that’s not why I camp.

I like camping because it pushes my creativity. I like having to invent new ways of doing things – cooking, cleaning up, passing the time. It’s good training for life, really. Everyone should know at least two ways of doing anything. Electric goes out? Light candles and play cards. Stove isn’t working? Roast weenies and bake potatoes in the backyard fire pit. And learn to live without the curling iron. That’s what camping teaches you.

Camping, when you get right down to it, is about self-imposed hardship. If something goes wrong, that means you’re doing it right. You’re going to take home more than a set of mosquito bites – you’ll take a sense of resiliency and a feeling of competence under trial.

Can you get that with a full utility hookup? I don’t know, but I’d like to book a spot that has them Memorial Day weekend and find out!

Bouncing

I bought a laptop PC a couple of years ago. It’s a Dell Latitude, and I bought it used on eBay. I didn’t need “top of the line”, didn’t pay for that, and certainly didn’t get it. What I wanted was a basic PC that would run MS Office and do e-mail and the Web. It does those things nicely, sometimes faster than this desktop PC (which isn’t saying much, considering I bought my desktop PC in 1998. Really.)

There are two problems with my laptop. One, the CD drive doesn’t work. I had it replaced shortly after I bought the PC, but the replacement doesn’t work either and I’ve just decided it’s not worth the effort to have it fixed. It works sometimes, and if I’m really persistent I can get it to load new software, but I don’t mess with it if I don’t have to. If I switch the CD with the floppy drive (it’s modular – slides right out and can also be replaced with a 2nd battery), the 3.5” floppy works fine. But I usually transfer files via e-mail. And that’s the second problem – I can’t get the wireless network card to work. My USB wireless adapter, the one I use on the desktop PC, does work. So I switch the adapter as needed.

Fascinating, no? Anyway, I got the laptop for two main reasons. One, I wanted to be able to work other places than my computer desk if I have to go elsewhere. Two, I wanted to work comfortably elsewhere. Okay, that sounds like the same reason twice, but it’s not.

Let’s say the kids are riding bikes in the front yard and I want to sit out and watch them. I can take the laptop and work there. Problem is, I can’t see the screen in the sunlight. I hadn’t thought about that. But I can take the PC and work, albeit offline, at the playground or skating rink or wherever else I may be. I really hate writing longhand.

The other reason is this: I’m mobile and can escape distracting situations or go somewhere it’s just more comfortable.

You may remember that I had my “office,” for a while, in the bedroom. Problem was, if hubby wanted to go to bed, I was done for the night. I moved it to the dining room, and he promised not to hang out in the neighboring living room if I was working. But he always does, anyway. I get sick of sitting in this desk chair if I’m going to just be reading websites, say, blogs or helpful informational articles. So I’ve been going back up to the bedroom. Then he comes up there and I have to leave again. Which is just as well, really, because there are only so many comfortable positions for sitting on your bed with a laptop – and I’ve yet to find any of them.

Here’s the good news, though: I’ve started writing fiction again.

I have another idea for a novel. I don’t know if it’ll work, but I do know that I’ve stopped trying to write a certain kind of book and am instead just writing the story and worrying about the genre later. That’s got to be a step in the right direction.