I'm a little bit country...

Growing up, I was very particular about my music, and music in genres that were not "cool" was forbidden, especially in high school. Especially anything top 40, anything trendy, and anything country was not to be listened to. There were a few songs that I secretly liked, that I listened to when I was alone and at least 50 miles from any living thing. One of those songs was the "I love you always forever" song. Don't laugh, you liked it too.

During college, I started to realize I needed to give more music a chance, as my own music was starting to bore me. Most of this music was acquired in iTunes library swaps, when you take at least 10 GBs of music from your buddy. My iTunes became this huge mess of songs I'd never heard and didn't have time to listen to. I spent hours trying to organize it but couldn't really make a dent in it until I started working.

Now that I spend at leas 8 hours every day working at my computer, I have plenty o' time to listen to music. I've become extremely anal about my music organization, making sure there is no junk in there that I never listen to, making sure everything has a title and a band associated with it, and rating everything:

5 stars: All time favorite songs that I never tire of
4 stars: Great songs that I really enjoy
3 stars: Good songs that I like to hear every so often
2 stars: Novelty songs that I don't really like, but I keep if the occasion ever arises that I need to play "Thriller" (like at a Halloween party or something)
1 star: Songs that I should probably trash, but haven't got the heart to do it quite yet.

I trimmed my iTunes library down from 23 GBs to just under 16 gigs. Most of the trash contained songs that I had "given a fair shake", that is, I've listened to it at least twice, or I just knew that I wouldn't like it from the get go. I inherited quite a lot of Country from this guy Kyle at BYU. While I was going through my entire library with the sole purpose of trashing songs, I decided to keep all the country and really give it a try. I'd been bagging on Country my whole life and enough people had told me they liked it, so I decided that I should really give it a try.

So this last time through the library my purpose was to "rate" everything. The songs I was less familiar with I listened to a number of times in a row to give it a rating. This included a lot of country songs. Probably about 100, I would guess, which is quite a lot of Country for a beginner like me. So, I put my time in. I listened to them all, multiple times.

I think I've given Country a fair shake. In general, I don't much care for it. There were a couple songs I kept, but most of them I trashed. I knew all along I really wouldn't like it, therefore I never gave it a chance. So I finally gave it a chance and I was right, I didn't like it. So do I feel like I wasted my time? Yes, yes I do.

Are there things that I thought I wouldn't like but I tried and ended up liking them? Yes, I'm sure there are. But I can't think of any of those right now. Probably because I didn't know if I would like it or not. The next time somebody's trying to convince you to do something that you KNOW you wouldn't like, go ahead and say no. If they insist, tell them to call me.

Catch-up

I'm trying to catch up on my posts since the beginning of July. So this should knock out a little bit.

We had a family reunion in the beginning of July. Since that's Mel's busiest time at work, she couldn't get work off to attend, so I went by myself. This was our first "official" reunion as a family. Growing up, my mom's side had pretty extravagant reunions every 2 years, and those were always very memorable occasions, so we're trying to do those as well. My family is very large with 11 kids in all and something like 27 grandchildren already.

Since we're the furthest away in Boston, it's nice to have a reunion to see everybody in one fell swoop, instead of going over Christmas and only getting to see 7 or 8 of them. So we went down to Pine Valley, north of St. George by about an hour, close to the Nevada border.

It was good times, but a little crowded and short. [pics] I got to sleep in the minivan, which doesn't seem that great, but if you compare it to the floors of the crowded cabins, I enjoyed it.

My brother Brian and I performed "Modern Major General" from "Pirates of Penzance", which required a lot of memorization and practice. We also had a sizable family trivia contest, which seemed to be a big hit. Thanks to Kristie for coming up with the idea, and to me for executing it so wonderfully.

Jo and that Michelle making some delicious food. All the meals were very good, considering 50 people had to be served.

Me reading the trivia answers. David, Alice, and Felicity are in the background.

This is a nice sample of what the reunion was like. This is only a third of us.

Ralph looks stoked to be here.

The traditional relay races that Michelle leads are always a hit.

Felicity giving overly complicated and thorough explanations of the names, personalities, and likes/dislikes of EVERY SINGLE ONE of the rock animals they made at craft time. This took about 2 hours.

The young chumps holding up the animals they made.

The "main" house.

The other cabin

Clyn at the mountain meadows massacre memorial.

Big Tex making a huge mess, as per usual. Eli looks on.

Pine Valley

Back in Orem, I put out the Slip N' Slide for some old school fun sliding through the sprinkler. Suzy is the top pic, and Leez had the best picture by far.

Mid to the end o' July was spent packing and moving and unpacking.

The first weekend of August we were invited to spend a few days in a vacation home near Conway, NH, in the midst of the White Mountains. I love that general area, although I haven't spent a lot of time there in the summer. The town was a lot more crowded than in the winter, but it was a great getaway. It rained most of the time, but we did get out on the lake for some kayaking and jumping off the dock. There are, sadly, no pictures of the lake, only on the trail to the waterfalls. We are bad about remember to take pictures of stuff. I blame Mel for that.

We spotted a tiger about halfway down. He seemed poised and ready to attack, but he was subdued by a candy bar.

All in all, it was a very relaxing time and the company was superb. So thanks to the Faustino's for the invite, and the Schmedgars for letting us use their nice cabin, and the Benson's for the entertainment.

The next weekend, my dear older brother Brian came for a visit. We love visitors, especially now that we have space for them, and we did our best to make sure everything was peachy for Brian, so he could go back to Utah and tell all to come visit us.

Brian came in late Thursday night. On Friday we went to Plymouth, which was the first time I'd been there as well. Now that we're 20 minutes away from where the Pilgrims landed, I really have no excuse. Plymouth was a cool little town with lots of old buildings and houses that are centuries old. Plus, there's the rock, which was literally "under" construction, so it was hard to see.

The Mayflower II: Revenge of the Pilgrims: This time there will be Thanksgiving


Ms. Vanna White modeling the big monument that is undergoing construction. Underneath that thing is the Rock. Not the actor, the actual rock.


These houses are almost 400 years old. The Red Sox flag dates from the 1200s.

We drove out to Newport, RI, for a drive around the mansions and a jaunt around the cliff walk. I was dead tired by then, so I laid in the grass of one of the mansions and fell asleep whilst Mel and Brian walked all the way to the end of the cliff walk, something I have yet to do. The cliff walk is very pretty and scenic, the ocean on one side, huge turn-o'-the century mansions on the other. It starts out as a paved, easy walk, but then it turns into rocks, and then it turns into a dirt path. I found this out the hard way back in 2004, when I was watching Felicity and Katrina while Heidi and Jo were in the Breakers. The cliff walk was NOT designed for strollers.

My favorite part about Newport is not the cliff walk or the mansions, it's the harbor and the old town. I like to drive around the peninsula and look at the fishing boats and the small streets that have so much history.

The park next to Newport harbor

Saturday we did the typical Boston tourist thing: a trip into town to walk around the Freedom Trail and look at stuff. We made it to Fenway about 6:30 pm for the 7 pm game, but the scalpers were wanting 75 bucks a ticket and we only had 100 bucks cash between the 2 of us. So Brian just went by himself, and I went to a movie down the street. The timing was perfect, as the game ended just as the movie did.

Sunday was church and relaxation. That evening, we had a fire in my homemade fire pit out back and the neighbors came out and we had s'mores. It was a very good time. The fire pit is now past all the new grass, and I don't want to walk on my new grass, so it will be a while before we have another fire, but we certainly do have plenty of wood.

Brian had an early flight on Monday, so we only had time to check out the Old North Bridge in Concord and Harvard Square. I got the history bug at the Visitor's Center in Concord when I saw that the American troops "Citadel" for their seige of Boston was on Prospect Hill, which is where I lived in Somerville. 2 years there and I had no idea! So now I'm doing research to learn a lot more about the revolutionary war.

Paul Revere's house. He had a big 50 inch Plasma flat screen with all the hookups

Some big ol' Destroyer from WWII. I forget its name.

As you can see here, Old Ironsides does not, in fact, have sides of iron. It's just wood, painted black.

Ode to Tiny Little Mother

Kurt, Tiny, and me cooking on our little propane stove whilst camping. Note the sleeping bags laid out to dry on our station wagon in the background. Those who know me well will have a good laugh. Especially my wife.

Today is my mother's 60-something birthday. My parents call each other "Tiny Little Mother" and "Tiny Little Father" depending on who is addressing whom, of course. Thanks to the prodding of my sister Jo, I will relate my favorite anecdote of my mom.

It was a crisp autumn day. School had just started, and I had made a new friend in the 2nd grade, Jeff V. He invited me over to his house, which was very close to school, and we made designs to go buy candy from the Fruit Stand, the little store across the busy road of 8th north. I've mentioned this before in my candy post a while back.

Jeff grabbed his sizable allowance from his generous and lenient mom and told her straight up that we were off to the Fruit Stand, which obviously had not been banned like it was in my family. We then went over to my house so I could report back and scrounge up some money and lie about going to play at Jeff's. When we got to my house, my mom was in the kitchen, in a particularly unapproachable mood. We stood about 20 feet away at the edge of the dining room whispering to each other about our plan.

Jeff asked quietly, "How much money do you have?"

I responded in the most silent but still audible whisper I could muster: "About 50 cents."

Just then, from the deep recesses of the kitchen came this booming voice. "WHAT'S ALL THIS ABOUT FIFTY CENTS?!?!?!"

And the trip to the Fruit Stand was foiled.

As the years went past, I had forgotten that incident, but as I spent more time with Jeff in high school, he reminded me of it, as it was his only memory of my mom.

With that, I will say that I do love my mother so, and she is one of the most kind-hearted people of all time. I look forward to her visit in 3 weeks.