Music to my ears

One of my hobbies is playing the piano on occasion. I took lessons off and on throughout school, but kind of quit around 17. I never was all that good, but I learned enough to play some of the soundtracks.

Piano arrangments to themes, such as Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, etc., actually sound pretty accurate to the real thing. The only real difference that I have ever noticed is the tempo, which often is slower in the piano music than in the soundtrack. On the other hand, the more accurate they get, the more complicated the hand positions and notes become. A few of the chords in Star Wars; Revenge of the Sith, are actually impossible for me to play. People who know me are aware that I have massive hands and the chords are still out of my reach.

The fun of playing a soundtrack piano arrangment is listening to the notes you play start to line up to the movie you enjoy.

For instance, the main theme of Pirates of the Carribean has some relatively complicated chords, but it is playable. As I played the notes extremely slowly, I slowed down the soundtrack in my mind to match. Eventually, as my playing sped up, I started to hear the movie's theme appear more and more clearly. Today, I play the piece much faster than the tempo written on the sheet music. But when I attempt to play in time with the soundtrack, I am left far behind in the dust.

And you don't have to play piano to enjoy this or just love soundtracks. You can find your favorite songs from almost any age and genre online. Maybe it's time to dust off the guitar, saxaphone, or whatever instrument you played long ago and remember just how much fun it is to play music YOU like.

Personally, most classical music drove me nuts and that was what drove me out of piano lessons. Look around, you never know what you might find.

Predictions, shelf life, and yogurt....

I got an oppurtunity to order everything for dairy/frozen for an entire week at my grocery store. I order fairly often, but an entire week straight was definitely new. Almost everything that we sell. I was in charge of making sure that it was in stock. Fairly easy, right? Just look at what's almost empty and order it. WRONG!

What many people don't realize is that it is incredibly difficult to predict what you, the customer, is going to buy on a given day or week. I found out that on Friday, peach yogurt might sell a case (12 cups) in one afternoon. Then on Saturday, maybe no one would buy it.

And to make matters worse, there are sales. This week, it was our generic brand yogurt at an extremely ridiculous price. I ordered to fill the shelf up, then ordered a few cases for the display, which was completely full at the time. The next day, when the truck came in, I found that the shelf was empty and the display was down to a third of its size. This created an awkward situation where we were out of a sale item (big problem) and had to call other stores in our chain to see if they had some to give. And nobody had any for me at all.

Couple this with the variety of products that customers buy make it very hard to figure out what to order and what will sell. In addition, I am a conservative orderer, which means I tend to run things close to empty before I'll order them. That's becomes a problem when I let a popular item run down. People will buy it up after I order and we are out, without anything coming in to replace it.

And finally, add in the relatively quick shelf life of dairy products and you have a very interesting week. I had quite a few OSs (Out of Stocks), which was only made worse by a mass recall of a certain sour cream. There were holes in the shelves everywhere. And it's all the customer's fault.

I am learning what sells, but still will be extremely happy to hand back control to my manager in a few more days.

I love soundtracks

I don't really know why, but I just do. Even some movies that I have never seen (i.e. James Bond, Mission Impossible, Titanic), I have the soundtracks, thanks to Itunes. For the movies I have seen, the soundtracks relive the moments.

I have the stuff you would expect; Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Carribean. But I also try to find some other stuff; Batman, Chronicles of Narnia, Prince of Egypt, and National Treasure. I probably listen to soundtracks more than anything else. Some people will think that strange, but I simply enjoy listening to a good soundtrack much more than pounding rock tunes, not that I don't listen to a few of those once in a while.

Lately, I have been looking at some different composers and their works. John Williams is most famous for Star Wars. Some of you may know that he also wrote some of the Indiana Jones music. But do you remember Jaws, Superman Returns, and Saving Private Ryan? Another big name is Hans Zimmer from Pirates of the Carribean. He also composed scores for Black Hawk Down and Gladiator.

The next time you watch a movie, try to keep track of the score. A good film score will pull you along with the emotion of the movie. Soundtracks can really add to a movie, as many of the recent films have shown. Try some, and you'll enjoy reliving your favorite movie without having to take your eyes from what you're doing.

Too much BIG PICTURE, so lets write about smoke

When I looked at my blog the other day, I noticed that every post had some big, enormous point to it. And so, I felt the need to create one with something a little less deep. So, I'll talk about my experiences cooking so far.

Living on my own, I've pretty much come to the conclusion that cooking is dangerous and therefore should be left to either a female or a professional chef. I believe that sometime in the future my perceptions will change, but for now, I am firmly grounded in the idea that anything that has something to do with the stove in my apartment involves more risk of bodily injury than I care to take.

After a rocky start for the first few months (pizzas, pot pies, and ramen noodles), which taught me to take the cardboard from underneath the pizza, I decided to make tacos and purchased to neccessary items from the store and drove home. When I unloaded and set everything out, I realized that I had forgotten the lettuce. Undeterred, I put the beef on the stove and put taco shells (for a salad) into the oven. I was very careful to check on the beef and shells periodically until the phone rang.

It was my dad, and I kept stirring the beef as we talked for about ten minutes or so. That's when I realized that I had forgotten all about the taco shells. I said goodbye and cracked open the oven door. I then closed the door, disarmed to smoke alarm, and THEN opened the oven door. The ensuing smoke cloud forced me to open the windows and take in the insulating plastic off to get the place aired out.

I finished with that and turned around to see that the beef was black as night. In my haste to clear the room, I had left the beef untended and burned it to a crisp. I salvaged what I could from the shells and dumped loads of sour cream, salsa,and cheese onto the blackened beef and ate it anyway.

And to add the final crescendo to the evening, I found then that I left the bag of cheese on the burner that I had used to flame the beef. The bag had a circular indentation of melted plastic and cheese.

Melted plastic, melted cheese, black beef, burnt taco shells, no lettuce, and a ton of smoke.

This is why I consider cooking to be an extreme sport, and one far too risky for me. I'll leave it to the professionals.

"I support ________ because ________________......

One thing that has always bothered me about presidential election years is the endorsements. Now, some endorsements I can understand are important; justice departments, judges, high ranking politicians, etc. But why in the world does anyone care about who Bruce Springsteen (or whatever his name is) endorses. Who cares about what ex-politican, what celebrity, or even what sports figure supports Hillary or Obama for presidency. Not only are they not really all that connected with America, their positions in the world, when you get down to it, are not all that important.

I love is ex-politicians. Now, they do have some expertise and knowledge in the world of politics, but they are supposed to be somewhat private citizens now. One extreme example is former president Carter. I have trouble caring about what ex-presidents think in terms of current politics, because I think their thoughts should now have the same weight as every other citizen because they don't hold public office anymore. And with Carter, I have an bigger problem because of his repeated attempts at diplomacy with the STATED ENEMIES of our country and allies. In addition, he has NO diplomatic power behind his 'negotiations'. Why should I care who he endorses for president especially given his ideas right now? An ex-politician is just that, an ex-politician and a private citizen, just like you and me.

Singers. What do they do for a living? They sing, make music videos, etc. What does any of that have to do with the presidency, much less any political subject.

Now granted, they have a perfect right to their opinions, but their opinions matter precisely as much as yours or mine. And do you have reporters hanging out on your doorstep wondering who you're going to endorse?

The presidency is an extremely important position, and we need to vote for who we think will do the job the best. Do we really need Oprah to tell us who we should support? In the end, their votes count just the same as ours do----1.

Interpetations and Horoscopes

During a recent class assignment we were required to do a physc evaluation on a classmate that we had never talked to based off of a drawing by the said classmate.

Her evaluation of me was rather perceptive in many different ways. She mentioned that I was a person who was detail-oriented and driven to acheive. At first thought, that was extremely accurate. I actually tend to get bogged down in the details in the projects that I work on, and I always want to be the best I can be.

Then I noticed that everyone in the class pretty much agreed that their partner had completely nailed their personalities. And I thought about that. Every single person in the class of 16 people had their personalities by the other person--are we really that perceptive?

So I thought about that. And I came up with this-we can apply any mental statement to almost anything. I stated that my partner was a perfectionist, she might be a perfectionist in some areas and really laid back in another. So my statement was true if we thought about it long enough. She stated that I was driven to achieve. I am driven to do well in school and always have been. But I am have a hard time driving myself in my job and cleaning my apartment. Again, the interpetation was both true and false, it simply depended on how I thought about it.

Open up any local newpaper and look up the horoscope page. Read your own horoscope and think about how it is true-and also how it is false. Now pick another sign, way different from your own. Read it. Again, think on how it is both true and false.

Notice anything. If you think about it, any one of those predictions in the local paper could be true. I especially like the ones that read: "If today is your birthday..." In addition to the vagueness of the predictions, those paragraphs have an entire year to occur in some way, shape or form-either real or imagined.

Am I reading too deep into an English assignment? Perhaps. But when you listen to almost any prediction, reading, or other such statement, notice how it could be true and false at the same time. When you think about it you'll probably notice just how vague anything can be.

Sit-coms and Star Wars.

Anybody ever notice just how much people get involved in their sit-coms. They can recite word for word every line from the last two seasons. They can diagnos instantly every plot twist and come up with a complete doctorate-quality thesis. They spend hours per day pondering what will happen in the next episode. They can comment on every single comment that their favorite character makes.


My brother and sister-in-law are hugely into 'Y and R', which I didn't know stands for the Young and the Restless. As I sit here typing this, I listen to "rachel" and her father "joe" discussing every single nuance and possibility. As best as I can understand, someone has either shot and tried to shoot somebody else. I can't really understand this, having never really watched much TV. But I can understand this fanatical devotion to the happenings of a completely fictional universe.


I read Star Wars novels. Actually, I addictively devour Star Wars novels. I can recite many of the ship classes from both the books and the movies. I can give you a quick biography from anyone in the books. I am currently enjoying the Legacy series, which takes place around 50 years after 'Return of the Jedi'. I am anticipating the release of the newest book in May.



The similarities are remarkable. Rachel and Joe can really break down everything. They attempted to explain the plotlines as an episode was running. They were attempting to tell me each character's history was as they appeared and disappeared rapidly on the screen. As anyone who has ever watched Y and R knows, this resulted in a confused blogger very quickly.



I also know, however, that if I try to explain a summary of all the Star Wars books that have been written, I could completely confuse them as well.

We all have our obsessions. Some are healthy, some are bad, and of course, some are just our own preferences. We each have different things we are addicted to, that's what makes us human and unique. It's part of life. On the other hand, trying to explain these things to anyone who doesn't understand in definitely impossible. After all, how does one explain how Luke marries an Imperial assasin who becomes a Jedi and.........