Dear loyal blogreader Jenn Wade

Happy birthday - I hope it was a great one!

I'm listening to an old episode of "All Songs Considered" right now. It's a review of music from 2000-2010, where they talk about the songs, albums, and trends that defined the decade. In it they talk a lot about how digitization and the internet have made music so much easier to access, from subscription music services that give access to practically any song at any time for dollars a month to a computer program that you can type any sentence into and it will find samples of the words from songs and play them back to you (Here it is, but in my opinion it needs some work).

Anyway, this got me thinking about how easy it is to find songs now. It used to be that if you heard a new song for the first time on the radio but missed its introduction, you just had to wait until you heard it again if you ever wanted to know who it was by. Or maybe you heard a song and knew it was a remake, but you might never find out who the original was by.

Well now you can just get on your phone, google a couple of lyrics, and out comes the result. For instance, Beth played a song I really liked a few months ago that was from an unlabeled mix CD and she didn't even know who the artist was. So I got to work and typed in the only words I could remember: "It's far too early in the morning." If you think about it, that isn't the most specific search term, but first on the list was "The Kooks - Tick of Time Lyrics" and next was an actual music video for the song.

Pretty good, but what if you don't really even know the exact lyrics. Say the song came on the radio as you were waking up or you just weren't really paying attention until you realized later that a song was still in your head. Well I was thinking back to an episode of Married... With Children (Oldies but Young 'Uns - 1991) where Al has a song stuck in his head and spends the first 29 minutes of the episode trying to track it down based on the lyric "hmmmmm hmmmmm him." In the last minute, he serendipitously finds the song and buys the album, only to have someone accidentally smash the record after he gets it home. These days, that episode couldn't happen, because if it did, it would go like this:

0:00:00.00 episode starts, Al hears 5 seconds of song
0:00:12.00 Al has his cell phone out and types "hmm hmm him" into Google
0:00:12.08 Google has returned about 62,800 results
0:00:13.08 Al clicks on the first
0:00:15.08 Al reaches the Wikipedia page "Anna (Go to Him)"
0:00:25.08 Al searches for: Amazon "Anna (Go to Him)" arthur alexander
0:00:27.08 Al uses "1-Click Ordering" to buy the CD
0:00:27.28 Al grins smugly
0:00:30.00 Credits

Anyway, I love that its now so easy to find a good song based on just a snippet or even a little echo thats rattling around in your brain. And after listening to this and some other NPR shows (like this, or this), I've got quite a few songs to search for.

too much digging

Back when I first heard the phrase "the world needs ditchdiggers," I didn't think it really applied to me. So I hit the books, kept to my studies and years later found myself knee deep in a trench on a beautiful May weekend in Anchorage.

When we buried insulation around the foundation of our house last year, we only buried it to a depth of about 2 feet. This meant that we got some frost heaving of the blueboards along the back of the house, where the soil is the wettest, which put our precious siding into jeapordy as the insulation crept upwards. So this weekend we buried more insulation, to insulate the insulation that was already there, and hopefully that should solve the problem.

Next winter, here's what things should look like alongside our house. By keeping the soil under the older (vertical) blueboard from freezing, we should prevent any further frost heaving.

Congratulations Mr. & Mrs. Buckley

I flew back to DC this weekend for my friend Joe's wedding. He and his wife Abena started dating just before the last time I was in DC a little over two years ago, so this ended up being the first time I was able to meet the lovely lady. I've got to say, Joe, it looks like you picked a winner. So congratulations to you both!

It was a lovely outdoor ceremony, as the thunderstorms that were predicted held off until later in the evening. The reception was held at a small art gallery and was a lot of fun as well. Lots of people from Wilson were there, so it was great to get to catch up with some folks I haven't seen for probably 5 years at this point.

I also got to spend some time hanging out with my family. The highlight there was checking out the Monte's new house, which they have done an amazing amount of work fixing up in a very short time. It's a really nice house with a great backyard and I imagine that they will be happy there for a long time. Congratulations, Montes!

Now here are a couple of pictures:

Here is the wedding venue - the Spanish Steps (not to be confused with the other, more famous Spanish Steps, which are somewhere else but not in Spain). The ceremony took place on the first landing - about elbow height on Joe's brother, and best man, Matthew (in the blue suit). I was a groomsman, as were Joe's Wilson classmates Mark Jackson (left) and Jeremy Flattau (right)

Here are the newlyweds, getting ready to cut the cake. Joe's mother made the cake with a big assist from his sister Monica, and it was a big success.

Here we are near the end of the reception. That's Joe's grandmother Mary, on the left. She made the trip from Minnesota and was having a ball even before she got coaxed onto the dance floor!

All in all, it was a great trip. I'm very happy for Joe and Abena and I loved getting to be a part of their wedding. It was great to see my family, too, and the best part is that I get to see them all again next month at my own wedding!

The art keeps coming - Unicorn edition

This is why I didn't want to draw a unicorn myself: Unicornelius. A creation of my brilliant fiance, Unicornelius is living proof that just because your a unicorn, it doesn't mean you're cool.
This has me thinking: it's much easier to post other people's art than it is to actually make my own. So if you have any sweet MS Paint drawings, any doodles you've drawn during boring meetings that you can scan and send my way, or if you want to create a Unicornelius fan-fiction graphic novel, please send that stuff my way!

My latest work

A few of you suggested that I rebut Brigit's pony with a unicorn. I have three reasons why I ignored you. First, do you really think I'm going to just slap some extra details on a drawing my sister made and then call that art? Never. That's just not how I roll. Second, Beth has the unicorn-drawing market cornered in my house. I'll have to get a copy and post it here, although I'm not sure I want to drag an innocent person into this battle. Third, I've been tinkering with a little something else for your viewing pleasure, so without further ado.....

...I will describe at length what you are about to witness. First, I want to say that I actually drew this. And when I say drew I mean that I used a photograph from online as a template, then actually drew what you are about to see in Paint with pens and brushes and paint cans. I did not just press some magic button that altered the colors in the original picture. Second, I am actually really proud of this, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.