In the middle of the night, I go walking in my sleep

I had an Eeyore afternoon today... that's the best way to describe it. I'm not sure why it happened or what exactly caused it, but I left work and just felt gloomy.

I had a toss-up between swimming and going to a preview of Pride. I elected to swim, in hopes that it would help cheer things up, but only got about 20 minutes in before I was compelled to leave... just wasn't working.


I must be looking for something
Something sacred I lost
But the river is wide
And it's too hard to cross

But that's how it's got to be, It's coming down to nothing more than apathy

Last Friday was bizarre--that's the best way to describe it.

I actually managed to convince myself to leave my place at o-dark-thirty to go swim, and then left the pool parking lot before actually getting in when the coach hadn't shown up to open the pool 5 minutes after we were supposed to have been in the water. I felt guilty about returning home--and going back to sleep--for most of the day.

At work, I basically got reprimanded by a co-worker, but had a productive day.

Post-work, I returned to the pool for the beginning of the Masters Challenge meet, which occupied the whole weekend. On my way there, I ran into massive traffic, that had me worried I'd be later for warm-up than I already was (but which turned out alright).

When I arrived at the pool, I found out morning practice had actually been canceled: the coach woke up late and had called it off (literally called and told some of the people in the neighboring cars that it was canceled--the ones I'd followed out of the parking lot). And of the 2 events that night, one went well and the other was just kinda good.

I guess I can just blame everything on Mercury's retrograde, which I have Joel--one of my fellow Masters swimmers--to thank for pointing out to me. Now if only I could get my tax return site working again...

Let's rearrange
I wish you were a stranger, I could disengage
Just say that we agree and then never change

Baby, you know I ain't the Queen of Sheba

In my book (Midnight's Children), at the moment the developing arch nemesis/pseudo-twin of the main character (Saleem Sinai), is named Shiva. In the book, Shiva is mentioned as the Hindu god of destruction (that's him dancing at left) which matches the personality of the (currently) ten-year-old boy in the story with the name.

However, because the name Shiva sounds similar to Sheba--the ancient, biblical land (and also in the Qur'ān)--I've had today's subject line, with its mention of the Queen of Sheba stuck in my head. Which has also had me singing the rest of Bonnie Raitt's Thing Called Love...

Oh, well, there really are worse songs that could be stuck in my head: not many songwriters would think to rhyme "Sheba" with "amoeba", let alone figure out how to make it a sensible rhyme. And for all you Harry Potter fans out there, one of the other midnight children in the book is named Parvati (in Hinduism, Parvati's Shiva's wife).

I ain't no porcupine, take off your kid gloves
Are you ready for the thing called love

Wish my French were good enough...

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday and Lent will begin its long March, but for now... c'est Mardi gras!

Ainsi, et parce que je voudrais practiquer mon français, j'ecris (mal) en français aujourd'hui.

Je lisais des actualités du natation cette jeudi passe, et j'ai trouvé une histoire d'une piscine en Tunisie (en Afrique du Nord). À une point tout en lisant, j'ai envie de traduire une phrase que j'ai voulu comprendre mieux et j'ai utilisé le Babel Fish pour m'aider.

J'ai copié et collé la phrase, choisi "français á anglais", cliqué "traduire" et voilá: il l'a traduit. Mais, il y a un caprice: il a traduit "vis-a-vis" á "tête-a-tête". Rien significatif, oui: ni l'un ni l'autre n'est pas connaître/utiliser en anglais. Mais, je l'ai pensé c'est amusant qu'il aurais traduit un idiome français á un autre idiome français.

Mais autrefois... c'est la vie.


Wish my French were good enough
I'd tell you so much more
But I hope that you compris...

Instant karma's gonna get you...

Friday morning, on my way to work, I stopped by Dunkin Donuts to grab my usual 2 donuts (chocolate-frosted cake and a coffee roll for $2.04). As I'm entering the parking lot and Gwen Stefani's Sweet Escape (Dude!) is on the radio, the car in front of me--for whatever reason--decides he wants to back up into the space they've found. So, in the process of backing up, he is blocking (I'd describe it as "inadvertently", but I'm not sure it wasn't intended)... he's blocking all traffic flow, so I patiently wait for him to get out of the way and park.

While waiting for the guy to get into the spot, the car behind me gets impatient and decides to pull around next to me. When the car in front has backed in enough to clear the opposite direction of traffic flow, the car now on my left (no longer behind me) shoots through the newly created opening (luckily there weren't any cars there; and amazingly no double-parked cars), snaking ahead of me. So, I wait the 5 more seconds it takes for the back-up guy to get into his spot, and then park right next to the 'snaker'.

We both get out of our cars, and begin walking into the store, bypassing the walk-up line and both at a rather brisk pace--I didn't gain any on the couple (she was driving; he was the passenger) that emerged from the car. So I enter the store and get in line behind them--which I was ok with. There were two people in line ahead of the couple and myself, occupying both registers and order-takers.

Now, because I frequent said Dunkin probably too often, and have been semi-regular in my morning stop-ins for probably a year now, some of the workers know what I get. One of them happened to be working that morning, and as she was finishing up with the person she had at her register, she pulled my order and bagged it. This made it so that right as both registers cleared (at the same time) and the snakers went to begin ordering, I was paid (the worker had already rung up my order) and out the door....

The karma-tic icing: not only did I leave the parking lot before the snakers left the store, but I passed them in the line to pay right as they were starting to order. ;-)


Well we all shine on
Like the moon and the stars and the sun

Damn, wish I was you lover...

Two Sophies today...

The first, Ms. B. Hawkins, was in concert tonight in town, somewhere (I heard an ad for her concert about 10 minutes before it started, where they took snippets of her two big songs--Damn, I Wish I Was You Lover and As I Lay Me Down--and intermixed them I think in an attempt to make them sound like more than two).


For the second, Ms. Ellis Bextor, I re-found her Murder on the Dancefloor the other day on YouTube, after listening to Dido's Hunter. (And apparently made Erin really happy by forwarding her the link--tho I've still not figured out if she'd heard the song before the other day, or just really likes the ballroom-dancing-competition themed video...)


And in other news: the Texas high school State meet (swimming) is today and tomorrow in Austin (go Casey)...


Shucks, for me there is no other

Jenny's got a job, a cat named Jake, 31 candles on her birthday cake... next year

What a difference "a" letter can make: Grimmy
(there's an 'i' in this word--unlike team; the above is from Monday, btw ).

Time for a little Valentine's Day edition of the association game...

• Today's title is from Something's Gotta Give by LeAnn Rimes, that was up for an award Sunday (Best Female Country Vocal Performance, I believe), but didn't win. However, Madonna's Confessions on a Dance Floor did win (Best Dance/Electronic Album).
• For Madonna's sole other nomination this year (somewhat controversial--apparently--that she only had 2, or that Hung Up wasn't nominated), in Best Dance Recording, she did not win. However, that did lead me to find out that Britney Spears' Toxic won this category in 2005.
• With Britney, I temporarily got side-tracked by the cleverness that I'm a Slave 4 U samples Do You Think I'm a Nasty Girl (which, in my opinion, is far too overlooked). Anyways, Toxic's excellent chart performance globally lead me to the United World Chart.
• The United World Chart caused me to find Dido's Life for Rent making for a possible replacement for music exposure. And I like that the video has part of the lyric written out in it.
• Finding a new Dido song, reminded me of an older one, Hunter, that's been in my head of late because it's also the name of one of the kids (I'm getting old, remember) on the swim team. (I was doing dive 50s next to him the other Saturday--and he wasn't keeping up; he also got a Sectional cut on Sunday.)

And while not completely circular, I'll stop there--Circle isn't today's song anyways (it was 11.29.05--and the quote there is just kinda ironic)... although, now that I think about it, Dido's Hunter came out about the time I stopped watching those awards that I really don't pay attention to anymore (except now, apparently, when I blog about them).

I don't know where it is
But something's gotta give

I'm not ready to make nice, I'm not ready to back down

A few years ago I purposely stopped watching the Grammys on t.v.; and forced myself to not read anything directly about them. As the music fan that I am, this was a loss, because I could count on the people at the RIAA (the Recording Industry Association of America--the people behind the Grammys) to expose me to some good music during their annual broadcast--Diana Krall, Shakira and Ricky Martin come to mind. And don't laugh: if you saw Ricky perform La Copa de la Vida on the broadcast, you understand.

Anyways, sometime after Diana sang I Can't Give You Anything But Love with Erika Badu, the RIAA decided to start suing people over file sharing. This pissed me off to no end, because in my view the RIAA took away a valuable way for me to become exposed to music. When MTV stops playing music, one tires of the 5 songs on the radio, and where all other avenues for new exposure don't exist, file sharing was a way for me to find new music AND to hear it enough to want to buy it. I know that I ended up buying more CDs because of the files I found... but, thanks to the RIAA and their suits, I no longer allow myself the avenue. Consequently, I've become less of a music consumer: I buy less music because I am exposed to less music, and the stuff I do hear on the radio I don't like enough to buy (I still don't understand how Lips of an Angel is popular--a scratchy, growly, about-to-go-off-pitch voice is a good thing? The country version is better sung, but it's now tainted in my mind by the original... I guess I'm just getting old: I don't understand Beyoncé either...).

Anyways, to fight back at the loss blown to me by the RIAA, I retaliated with the most direct attack I could: I stopped giving the Grammys my attention (I even know how to freaking spell the awards correctly! for Pete's sake). I no longer got excited for the announcement, nor bemoaned my missing favorites. I do not visit the RIAA's website nor the one devoted to their awards, and I've not seen the show in a years.

All of which is probably ok... I'm still not really over viewing the popularity contest that it is: Smooth over I Want It That Way, "When the Pawn..." not being best alternative album, come to mind.... And a new atrocity from last night: My Humps is a Grammy winner?!? (And, ironically, Is It Any Wonder? just started playing on my iTunes....)

I am happy about the Dixie Chicks winning tho :)
(I do wish Beyoncé had won "Best New Artist" a few years ago, tho... [grin])

I'm still mad as hell
And I don't have time
To go round and round and round
It's too late to make it right
I probably wouldn't if I could
Cause I'm mad as hell
Can't bring myself to do what it is
You think I should

Party in the city where the heat is on, all night on the beach 'till the break of dawn

So the weekend ends... and I feel like I don't really have anything to report. I spent most of this weekend helping run the timing system at a Florida Senior Circuit meet at the pool; and training one of the parents to do said job. All went fine; I even managed to remember to get a bell out for the mile (a subtle, minor victory; you probably need to be a distance swimmer to really care--the starter beep just is not the same).

The weather was beautiful, and, thankfully, the meet got me outside, or otherwise, I'd have probably just bummed around inside most of the weekend. I did manage to read a good chunk of Midnight's Children (50-75 pages), which is good but hasn't enthralled me (nor has it lost me, either).... All terrible excitement, I know.

I guess my excitement for the weekend happened on Friday when I got to drive to northern Miami to deliver some master tapes for work. It managed to take all of an hour, but I was out-and-about playing in I-95 traffic. I watched Idiocracy on Friday night, and enjoyed that, as well.


Party in the city where the heat is on
All night on the beach till the break of dawn
I'm going to Miami (bienvenidos a Miami)

Mamma mia, here I go again...

Have... you met Ted?

Since the rainy-day Super Bowl Sunday, I've been on a t.v. kick: I watched two episode of Psych, and have now been watching season 1 of How I Met Your Mother. (Ted's the one front & center. Periodically, friends of him play "Have you met Ted" as a way to introduce him to various women--Ted's the one married to "Mother" .)

Anyways, I'm enjoying it, and the fact that there's connections with actors formerly in Buffy/Angel/Firefly, doesn't hurt.

Hasta...

Mamma mia, here I go again
My, my, how can I resist you?
Mamma mia, does it show again

Sunday morning, rain is falling...

Well, it is Sunday morning, and it's raining (as viewed through my screened front window at left).... But my condo has officially been warmed.

Yesterday, after a frantic cleaning of my place and a quick dash out to pick up some wings (and a bad cell-phone signal caused me to be late returning home), I held a housewarming party, which went well--although I apparently over-bought on the drink front.

I even managed to get a few people to come, after my purposely short-notice invitation--the invites went out late Thursday night (and they almost went out Friday, due to my confusion over where I was in the week). Now if only I'd remembered "to drink a Big Red instead", to invite the out-of-state friends, or not gotten so panicky... that, and I need to keep the place clean until I can get some pics of its tidiness--proof that it can look clean.

Oh, and congrats to Casey who qualified for State yesterday at Regionals, despite a pesky reorganization by the UIL of the Regions that moved Austin in with the San Antonio area...


That may be all I need
In darkness she is all I see
Come and rest your bones with me
Driving slow on Sunday morning
And I never want to leave

You better, straighten up and fly right... cool down, Papa, don't you blow your top

On Thursday night during practice, I was swimming next to one of my teammates who was doing backstroke. We were going along when suddenly I notice her surge forward, coinciding with her hand closest to the lane line entering the water--a tell-tell sign of her hand having pulled on the underside of the lane line upon entry.

Now there is a lane-line drill, but generally speaking pulling on the lane lines is frowned upon. One, because it's not legal to do in a meet: it turns the stroke into a who can pull more effectively rather than a swimming stroke. Two, the lane lines aren't really constructed to take the pulling--they're there to stop waves and help confine us swimmers who'd go all over the place otherwise--and break from relatively low numbers of repeated tugs (one in some types of lane lines). And three, because people can move down the pool faster by doing it, it's frowned upon (it's equivalent to cheating).

So, after we finish up the swim and we're both sitting on the wall, I ask her how the lane line was. She confirmed that she had been caught, offered a token excuse for the behavior, and then said (jokingly) that she "better straighten up and fly right". This line caused the song of the same title to come into head, and I mistakenly assumed she was referring to the song.

I then proceeded to start singing about the buzzard and monkey, which prompted a question from Ms. Lane-Line about my crazy-speak. When I explained I was reciting the lyrics to Straighten Up and Fly Right, she said she didn't know the song....

Anyways, I should go: must get to tidying up my place prior to my housewarming this afternoon. Hasta...

The buzzard told the monkey, "You are choking me.
"Release your hold, and I will set you free."
The monkey looked the buzzard right dead in the eye
And said "You're story's so touching, but it sounds like a lie."