Day: October 23, 2005

Serious case of “I Want!”

By / October 23, 2005 / 16 Comments

Google led me to this:
http://www.phoenixrecords.org/in3ds_poetry.php

That album was a feature of my childhood. The record belonged to my parents, but we kids literally played it to death. It was my first introduction to many of these classic poems. Before the record gave up the ghost completely one of my siblings made a tape recording of it. The copy was made by putting a tape player next to the stereo, so you can just imagine the sound quality involved. I duplicated a copy of this tape for myself and I still have it. (…somewhere, I’m sure I wouldn’t get rid of it.) Age has fuzzed it, but you can still hear the scrape of the needle across the old record and the skips where the record was scratched. I still treasure that tape and guard it, because I figured there was no other way to have access to that music. Until today. I listened to some of the sound clips online and they made me cry. I’ve NEVER heard the songs sound so good, by the time I was old enough to listen the record was already scratchy. I stumbled while singing along with “vinegar man” because the mp3 didn’t have the skip that I’d learned to adjust for.

Now I want it, but it’s $20 I don’t need to spend. Sigh. Maybe for christmas.

EDIT: I just poked around at phoneix records. They’re LOCAL! The company is run by one of the album’s original singers. Now I’m tempted to jump in my car and drive 10 minutes to his house and knock.

Projects & plans

By / October 23, 2005 / 10 Comments

Some of my online friends have signed up for National Novel Writing Month. Their goal is to write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. I admire thier determination to try whether or not they succeed. I don’t have space in my brain to do that much writing in that short a time span. I do like the idea of setting a challenging goal though, so here is mine. Before the end of November I’ll have my short-story-in-progress ready for editing. (Anyone who is interested in being an editor for me can leave an email below and I’ll send the story along when it is ready.)

In other news, I acquired a childcare job today. Starting in two weeks I’ll be watching a baby for 4 hours every weekday morning. This will definitely impact my life, but hopefully more for good than the reverse. The money will be helpful, it won’t get us out of the financial woods, but it will almost pay for groceries each month. Besides, I think it will be good for Gleek and Patches to learn how to interact with a baby. And this way I get to play with a baby without actually having to be pregnant or get up in the middle of the night for feedings. I’ll have to do some cleaning and arranging so that my house is safe for a crawler again, but with my new toy cupboards that shouldn’t be too hard. The house could stand to be cleaner anyway and maybe I’ll do a better job of keeping it clean if I know that baby’s mom will be coming every week day. I don’t want baby’s mom to feel like her baby is being left in a pigsty. I’m also aware that there will be inconveniences and frustrations. Mostly I feel good to be doing something that allows us to extend the amount of time we have to make cartooning pay all the bills.