Karaoke Ring of Death: Legendary Singers

A few weeks ago I read a comment on my friend Tabitha's blog about something called the Karaoke Ring of Death, and my curiosity was piqued. Tabitha sent me the link to their main group blog, and I was further intrigued by the concept.

Basically, every month a group of bloggers records themselves doing a song based on that month's particular theme. For February, the theme was "legendary singers". After that, we all get assigned to host someone else's video on our blog, which leads my readers to that person's blog. That person, in turn, hosts yet another blogger, and so on. By the time you follow all the links through the karaoke postings, you will end up back where you started, hence a Karaoke Ring. Neat concept, isn't it?

It sounded like a lot of fun, and since I love doing karaoke both online and offline, I decided to hop on the bandwagon and dust the cobwebs off my trusty Blue Snowball mic.

And, without further ado, I present to you Dave from http://littlearrowshurt.blogspot.com/, doing Ray Charles, whom I agree, is quite the legendary singer!





To hear my song, head on over to Edwin's blog: http://myadultbrain.com/?p=186

And if you want to see the master list, check out the main KROD blog: http://karaokeringofdeath.wordpress.com/2012/02/19/februarys-legendary-master-list/

Enjoy! :-)

What makes a good karaoke experience? Part 3

Earlier this year, I blogged about what I felt was the key ingredient in making a successful karaoke experience (and keeping people coming back to your venue for more): a good karaoke DJ (KJ).

A couple months after that, I added another story that only proved that point further, lamenting about how a poor KJ can really put a damper on a fun karaoke night.

Well, last night, despite a really small turnout of friends and a relatively quiet night at the bar, was probably one of the best karaoke experiences I'd ever had, and it was largely thanks to the KJ. The usual KJ, our beloved G-Man (whose praises I sang in my previous post linked above), was absent that night, and his young protege, Brian, was standing in for him.

I've been to OTT on nights where Brian subbed for G-Man, and always found him a relatively pleasant and unassuming guy. He was still learning the ropes, so we were all patient with him. But now, evidently, he's had enough experience to become more confident and start applying his own style to the KJ-ing. And it's refreshing!

One of the first things I noticed when the singing started was that he was gracious enough, upon seeing a few of us regulars, to immediately put us in the rotation and encourage us to sing, rather than get on stage himself. Now, I think it's perfectly acceptable for a KJ to start the night off with a song, especially when there are so few people in the bar. It's a good way to break the ice and get things going. And Brian tends to be pretty fun and entertaining on stage. But he didn't-- he chose to let us take the lead instead.

The next thing-- and this was really huge-- was that the volume was at a manageable level. Much as I love G-Man, I never go into OTT without earplugs onhand, because he cranks up the volume way too loud! Not Brian. It was loud enough for the entire bar to hear and enjoy, but not so loud that we were overwhelmed. Not once did I have to put on my earplugs that night. My friends and I didn't have to yell at the top of our lungs in order to converse. And best of all, the reasonable volume enabled Allan to actually stay in the bar for over an hour, where he got to hear all of us sing a few songs-- some of which are his favorites :-)

I noticed that every time a new song began, Brian would come out onto the dance floor and stand there for a few seconds, obviously listening to the speakers and gauging the sound level. At first I thought he was seeing if the microphone level was turned up high enough, but it turns out that he was gauging the OVERALL volume and adjusting accordingly-- turning it down for especially loud songs. I thought that was pretty awesome of him, to take the time to adjust the volume on EVERY single song so that it wouldn't overwhelm the bar.

On top of all that, he was just generally a really sweet and friendly person, making small talk when regulars came up to say hi, that sort of thing.

So-- thank you, Brian! For making our karaoke experience one of the best and most enjoyable to date. G-Man picked the perfect guy to sub for him, and I hope we see you around more often-- whether you're managing the karaoke equipment or simply hanging out at the bar, a fun-loving patron like the rest of us :-)

Royal Flatulence?

My friend Tabitha reposted an anecdote that her mom shared, about an amusing typo that showed up on the lyrics screen of a Christmas concert she attended. When the choir sang "Silent Night", the following appeared on the screen:

Silent night, holy night
Son of God, love's pure light
Radiant beans from Thy holy face ...

Which, of course, made her (and readers of that anecdote) giggle!

That story reminded me of something Allan said long ago, about a song that our worship team frequently sings at church during Sunday services. It's called "Mighty to Save" and part of the lyrics go like this:

Shine your light and let the whole world see,
We're singing for the glory of the risen King...

Allan swears that the last line sounds like "lizard king" instead of "risen king". So now, everytime we hear (about) that song, I remind Allan: "Hey, it's the Lizard King song!"

Naturally, these two stories combined inspired me to create a cartoon drawing of a crown-wearing lizard with shining beans emanating from its face. Here is the end result:

So now the bigger question is: do lizard kings get gassy from all those radiant beans??

Ah, (gassy) lizard kings and radiant beans... that's the stuff Christmas is made of! ;-)

Holiday Parade Gone Awry

The annual holiday parade along State Street, the main thoroughfare of downtown Santa Barbara, is an event I normally don't bother with. It's cold, it's crowded, parking is hard to come by, traffic is horrendous, and eating establishments are jam-packed. Not exactly my idea of a fun night out. Still, it's no trouble braving all that when you're actually participating IN the parade, as Todd and I did 2 years ago with his karate class.

This year, his school had a float in the parade, and his class (the 3rd/4th graders) dressed up in cute little tuxes and sat in the float, waving colorful lights and singing Christmas songs they'd learned in choir. They looked so cute and excited at the staging area before the parade began, and they were buzzing about the money the school would get if their float impressed the judges enough to win a prize!

Before the first float took off, Allan and I made our way down the street towards the finish line, since we'd signed up to help with the cleanup efforts afterward. Previous experience had taught us that the streets can be hard to navigate once the parade is underway, so we thought we'd get a head start. So, we didn't actually get to see the float traveling down the street, or hear the kids sing.

Instead, we were greeted at the finish line-- with a float full of unhappy and dejected kids. One of the girls was crying, and the older boys were jumping out, eagerly telling their parents: "They were cussing at us!" The boys, at least, treated it more like an "OMG, can you BELIEVE what they did!?" moment, but they were clearly subdued and no longer the shining, happy faces at the start of the parade.

At first I thought that because it was a Christian school, the hecklers were making fun of that. But evidently, the generator powering the lights and the stereo playing background music cut out a couple times (leaving the kids to sing a cappella in the dark) during the parade, which is what provoked the jeers. According to Todd, one onlooker yelled: "What the [f-word]!? You guys suck!" Another kid told his dad about "the S-word". Admittedly, the float looked a bit ramshackle to begin with. It certainly wasn't going to win any beauty contests. But the kids were happy and excited nonetheless, and looking forward to the event, and my heart breaks when I think of these uncouth punks making fun of them with their foul mouths.

You might say that kids will be exposed to this sort of thing someday anyway, and you may well be right. But that doesn't excuse what happened, nor does it assuage my indignation over the whole thing. It's bad enough to openly jeer at anyone, especially somebody who's struggling to do their best. Even worse when that "somebody" is a group of innocent children. I mean, seriously-- what sort of heartless soul cusses at children!?

Still makes me mad when I think about it.... 

Friday Five: Brrrrrr!

NaBloPoMo 2011 may be officially over, but I'm hoping to continue the trend of blogging a bit more frequently, now that I'm more inspired and have gotten into the habit. It actually felt strange last night, knowing I didn't have to sit at the computer and churn out a post before the day was over. Of course, I say this same thing every year, and then I wind up petering out, posting MAYBE once a month (if that) before gearing up for another 30-day flurry. Ah well. New Year's resolution, perhaps? (not that I believe in them)

So let's start things off easy with another round of Friday Five! Today's theme? The cold weather!

1. What’s your favorite thing about cold weather?
2. Soups and hot beverages seem to be everyone’s favorite cold-weather culinary combatant, but what’s another food that seems to take the bite out of the cold?
3. When the weather is just starting to turn cold but is not yet in full frigidity, what do you add to your bed until it’s time to break out the heavy artillery? (I said what, not whom!)
4. What household chore seems especially unkind in these colder months?
5. Among people you know, who seems most oblivious to cold weather?

1.Um... nothing?? That's why I live in Southern California, and in particular, Santa Barbara, with its Mediterranean climate yielding nice, mild temperatures all year round. It's especially satisfying when I read the FB statuses of friends who live in less gentle climes, fretting about snow and ice and sub-zero temperatures, and I can serenely look out the window at the beach and the sun-kissed palm trees ;-)

2. The reason soup and hot chocolate or tea works so well is precisely BECAUSE it's heat in liquid form, and therefore spreads the warmth faster! I can't really think of anything else that would do the trick quite as well or as efficiently. Maybe piping-hot fresh bread?

3. I don't add anything to the bed (since I use the same medium-thick comforter all year round-- like I said, stable, mild temperatures!) but when there's a chill in the air, I will switch out pajamas. In summer I wear short-sleeve/short-pant pajamas, in cooler weather I'll wear flannel pajamas, and in winter? Time to break out the fleece pajamas!

4. Gardening. I enjoy working under the sun, tending to my garden. But overcast weather makes that less enjoyable. Not to mention, it's harder to dig weeds out without uprooting my whole garden when the ground is moist.

5. My husband :-P Seriously. The guy will wear shorts on all but the coldest of days. If I see him wearing his jeans, socks and shoes, and his light jacket, I know I'd better bundle up in multiple layers, scarves, gloves and maybe a balaclava hood

How about you?

On Friendship and Traveling Pants

I just finished reading the "Traveling Pants" series-- a set of 4 books that began with "Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants", and follows 4 friends and their summer adventures throughout high school and the first year of college. I will admit that by the 4th book, the story line is pretty predictable: girl wrestles with something tumultuous, doubts herself, and then figures it out and all is well with the world again by the end of the story. Still, since they are sequels, it's nice to see the characters develop and some of the original story lines continue.

Anyway, the thing that struck me the most about this book was the enduring friendship of the 4 main characters-- girls who were all born around the same time, and who have been friends their whole lives. No matter what happened with their lives, no matter what they did, that friendship always transcended everything, and served as their lifeline when they were adrift. Your friends are always there for you, willing to drop everything to come to your aid when you most need it.

It struck me that I'd never HAD that kind of friendship before. These days, my husband is my best friend, of course, and we relate to each other as best friends do. But... that's sort of the way it's supposed to be. Yet for me, such close friendships outside of my marriage simply do not exist. Oh sure, I've had plenty of friends that know me reasonably well and that I have fun hanging out with. But I've never really had a close girlfriend. One that I could confide the deepest recesses of my soul in, one that I could just feel comfortable being myself with-- the good, the bad, and the ugly.

It makes me a bit wistful when I read books or see movies where such close friendships are a prevalent part of the story. I guess, in a way, it's romanticizing something I've never had, something I sometimes long for. And it's a big part of why I enjoyed the Traveling Pants books-- the bond these girls had was something I had never experienced firsthand, so I liked reading about it. It's almost as if I was experiencing it, vicariously, through them. I don't know if I'll ever experience a friendship like that in real life. But if I don't, I guess I can always enjoy reading about it! :-)

On a side note, I went on Netflix to see if they had the movie version of the book (it's in my DVD queue now). However, I can't believe they cast Alexis Bledel in the role of Lena. She is soooo not what I pictured Lena to be! I mean, she's pretty, but Lena is supposed to be breathtakingly gorgeous. Well, maybe her acting will make up for it. We'll see...

Singing

As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, I like to plan ahead when it comes to karaoke. And I don't mean just jotting down some ideas of songs that would be good to sing, and taking that list with me. No, I take it a few steps further: first, I find the song online and figure out how close it is to my own range, so I can tell the KJ how high or low to adjust the key. Then I try it out, see how well I know it. If I'm close, I practice it a bit. And if the song is something I'm still a bit unsure of, or is maybe a slower song that won't go over well when it's crowded, I pick that song as my first one. Get it out of the way with while there aren't that many people there.

Anyway, I usually stick to picking songs that I know I can do reasonably well. Either ones I've done before, or ones that I know so well I can make a go of it. The few times I've gone up on stage to do a song I wasn't 100% comfortable with, I dragged someone else with me (usually Tabitha, who's a better singer than I am) for courage and to help mask out the uncertain parts.

Well, during our trip to OTT last week, I discovered something else. It's a no-brainer that I can sing a song well if I'm really familiar with it. But what I didn't realize is that if I'm a bit UNfamiliar with a song, that works to my advantage as well. Because I'm familiar enough with it to get the general gist of the song, but unfamiliar enough that I can actually improvise the parts I don't know. Contrast this to a song that I'm familiar with yet don't know the nuances in pitch well enough to successfully sing on my own. I don't get all the notes correctly, yet the song is "too familiar" for me to improvise. So... in this case, greater ignorance (if you can call it that) is actually a good thing.

One of the karaoke regulars that Tabitha and I used to see at Zodo's was at OTT last week, and he wanted to do "Love Shack" with Caroline and me. Unfortunately, Caroline had to leave before we got to our turn, so it was just me and him. I was a bit apprehensive, because the girl part in "Love Shack" fit well into "familiar yet unfamiliar" territory. But, it was a silly song, and my partner was having all sorts of fun with it, so I figured-- what the heck. And, to my surprise, we actually rocked it! I have no doubt that I sang some parts differently from the original, but it didn't sound too awful, and we had a lot of fun with it. It was also the first time I actually danced a bit while on stage.

I think it's pretty neat that the one song I've enjoyed singing the most out of all my times on stage was the one I was the least prepared for. And really, isn't that the essence of karaoke? Get up there and just have FUN.

So I've decided that for our next trip in December, I'm not going to come armed with my usual long list. I mean, yes, there's a couple of tunes I already have in mind, but this time I think I'll wing it some more and see what comes. See what songs I get suckered into joining in with by my friends :-)

Only One

When couples get married, it usually isn't long before they start getting pestered with the "when are you having kids?" question. And when they eventually have a kid, their respite is brief. It isn't long before they're peppered with the next question: "when are you having another one?"

Well, for us it's pretty much always been straightforward: never. And when Todd was 4 years old, we sealed the deal. So unless the highly-experienced urologist didn't do his job correctly, this is it for us.

Don't get me wrong-- we considered it when Todd was younger. And even now, I sometimes get pangs of wishing that Todd had a playmate near his own age, so that he doesn't always have to substitute stuffed animals for friends. Case in point, a recent morning when I awoke to find Todd in the midst of a riveting Monopoly game with a skunk, a dog and an octopus:

Poor kid!

But we realized early on that one was going to be enough for us. A two-working-parent-home is hard enough, and we have a LOT of help from my parents! What other parents get to foist off their kid on the grandparents for 3-4 months out of the year? I couldn't imagine how we'd handle more than one kid.

Not to mention that this kid is a handful. I've slowly come to realize that compared to a lot of other kids out there, he's relatively mellow, and I should be grateful. But he's still a whirlwind on his own. Everyone seems to think he's this nice, pleasant, obedient kid, but no, he's got everyone fooled :-P I firmly believe that the reason little kids seem to have boundless energy is because they suck it all up, through the air, from surrounding grownups, i.e. their parents. This explains why a kid will be jumping up and down at bedtime while Mom and Dad can barely lift themselves off the couch to get him TO bed.

And finally, kids are EXPENSIVE! I've done some figuring, and he costs us about $1500-$2000 a month. Can you imagine a second set of such expenses!? We'd be driven to the poorhouse in no time! :-P I mean, okay, yes, the large majority of that expense comes from his school and his extracurriculars, but honestly? He's really blossoming and thriving where he is, something he wouldn't do in a school with a larger class size. So... it's worth the money. But it also leaves us cautious about watching our resources, and a second child would only upset that balance.

Besides, I always maintain that while Allan only has one child, I am a single mother of two boys. Why would I want to deal with a third one? ;-)

Chocolate

As I type this, I am crunching on a bag of peanut M&Ms that Allan sneaked out of the pantry after I tucked Todd into bed. They are delicious, and certainly satisfy this chocolate lover's sweet tooth when nothing else is available, but... it's still American chocolate. And hence, not all that great.

I never realized what I was missing until I went to Germany after college. There, I was exposed to chocolates made in Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Belgium. Even the cheap Milka bars at the local German grocery were far more divine and came in many more interesting flavors than anything you'd ever find in American chocolate.

Here, pretty much all you'll find are milk, dark or white chocolate. "Fillings" consist of standard fare such as nuts. Not very imaginative.

But European chocolate? There are unique fillings such as yogurt (and different flavors thereof), hazelnuts, pralines, truffles, milk (yes, think powdered milk in creamy form) and best of all, marzipan. Flavors include various coffees and even vanilla. Yes, you might say that these varieties are also available in specialty chocolates here, but that's my point-- these were the big, flat $1 bars stocked in your local grocery aisle. Even the plain milk chocolate bars taste far superior to your standard Hershey bar.

You can bet that when it was time to leave Germany, I stocked a couple of copy-paper boxes with chocolates and coffees you could only find in Europe, and let the Army ship them back along with the rest of my household goods. Most of these were doled out to friends and family, so I stretched out my enjoyment of what remained.

When I returned to the States, I discovered that Ritter Sport was now readily available-- but only in 3 measly flavors, and not the hearty variety I was used to. And certainly more expensive than I was used to! Better than nothing, and good for an occasional treat, I suppose, but I missed my coffee-flavored or marzipan-filled chocolates!

Ah well. Now that I've been back for 10 years, I've resigned myself to the fact that my chocolate cravings will have to be satisfied with bland American chocolate. Now hand over that Mr. Goodbar before anyone gets hurt :-P

My Little Family

Earlier this week, as I was preparing my Thanksgiving post (come on-- with NaBloPoMo occurring in November, the holidays during this month-- Veteran's Day and Thanksgiving-- more or less provide freebies in terms of blog topics for those days!) I went into my blog archives to see what I'd previously written about the holiday, so I wouldn't repeat myself unnecessarily.

One of the posts talked about Thanksgiving 2009, which is the only time we broke away from the tradition of getting together with Allan's family at his sister's house. In the post, I wrote about how the "little Knight family" stayed home and had a small celebration. As I re-read the post, I smiled at the "little family" designation. We do have a little family. It's just the 3 of us. Even the extended family is quite small-- Todd may have 5 grandparents, but he only has one aunt and uncle. And no first cousins. At least, not human ones ;-)

We inevitably get the "are you having more kids?" question. I will admit that the thought still crosses my mind once in a while, especially when it's obvious that my little boy longs for someone his age to play with. But we're done, and our family shall remain little.

It's quite cozy, actually. With a 3-bedroom house, each family members gets their own room. It's fun to be able to all crowd into the big bed and have a snuggle-in. It's comparatively quiet and peaceful at home. Emphasis on "comparative", because there is nothing quiet or peaceful about a rambunctious, active 7-year-old boy!!

I like my little family. I like that it's so little. It feels very compact and efficient, and though the amount of energy and money it takes to raise one single little boy never ceases to amaze me, I like it this way. Just the three of us. Just the right size! :-)

Friday Five: Shopping

In honor of Black Friday, I thought I'd do a shopping-themed Friday Five. So here goes:

1. Do you participate in Black Friday shopping?
2. What is your favorite thing to shop for?
3. What store do you have a weakness for?
4. What's the biggest purchase you've ever made?
5. If you had $1000 to do with as you pleased, what would you spend it on?

1. Maybe if there are online deals to take advantage of on things I already need, but other than that-- no. I don't understand the craze that surrounds saving a few bucks. It's just not worth getting up at the crack of dawn and dealing with unruly mobs. I also feel sorry for the poor retail workers that have to give up their Thanksgiving to come in at midnight (or other ungodly early morning hours) and deal with the mad crowds. They already deal with enough sucky customers as is, I know that Black Friday multiplies that number tenfold... even more.

2. Books! I can spend hours in a bookstore, browsing and browsing.

3. The 99-cent store :-) Usually I'm good about not buying things unless I absolutely need them (and even then I scour out the best price), but in a dollar store, that impulse control goes right out the window. Likely because I figure "it's only $1!" Thankfully, it's usually on items we need, anyway. I'll never need to buy glue sticks for Todd again, but he uses them plenty at school!

4. Well, aside from the house (which doesn't really fall under the realm of "shopping" anyway) and things for the house (such as flooring), I'd say our big-screen TV. It was a luxury gift to ourselves now that we finally have the room for it :-)

5. I'd probably first stick in savings to earn a little interest while I figured out what to do with it! Honestly, I can't think of anything that I really need other than things around the house: new memory foam mattress, probably. Or else paying a gardener to remove the plants bordering our house and a neighbor's, replacing it with a fence instead.

How about you?

Finally, I leave you with a funny little shopping cart fail:

Happy Thanksgiving 2011

I think I covered the usual list of "things to be thankful for" last year. Not a lot has changed since then, in terms of what we're thankful for. I've also written about our Thanksgiving traditions, and how grateful I am that ours are very uncomplicated: meet at my sister-in-law's house every year. Small family, very low-key and intimate and all-around relaxing.

So I thought I'd write about the Thanksgiving food.

Every year I look forward to my father-in-law's delightful creamed spinach. The mashed potatoes are always light and moist, and the bread rolls (even if they're just from a Pillsbury can) soft and fluffy. Next to the spinach, the ham is my favorite part of the meal, especially since we don't get to a lot of it during the year.

Ordinary, simple food. But so delicious!

However, it turns out I'm not such a huge fan of the two things that are most iconic about Thanksgiving: the turkey and the pies.

I'm not a fan of turkey for the same reason I'm not a fan of the white meat in chicken: it's too dry. Even the dark meat can sometimes be dry. I mean, I like it enough and will eat it, but it definitely does not rank amongst my favorite foods, especially compared to the ham.

And I've never been a big fan of pies, period. I've always found them too sweet for my liking. And even if they aren't overly sweet, what is up with pie crusts? They're like... hard cookies, except with less-pleasant texture and taste. I once mentioned to Allan that I'd never had chocolate pie, and would like to try some. He pointed out that we could do it ourselves: make up some pudding from powder, and throw it on a pre-made pie crust. To which I replied: well then, what's the point? If it's just chocolate pudding on a pie crust, I'll just eat the pudding on its own, thank you. Of course, that being said, we ARE bringing a frozen chocolate silk pie from Claim Jumper to the Thanksgiving get-together today, so... we'll see how it tastes! :-)

How about you? What are your favorite holiday traditional foods?

Planning Ahead

I can be somewhat obsessive about planning ahead. For instance, I'm going out to karaoke tonight, something that has been a somewhat regular outing for me and a core group of karaoke-loving friends for the past year and a half. Every time I've gone, I've come prepared with a list of songs that I can choose from, making the selection process that much quicker once I arrive at the bar. I can't help it-- I don't like going in there unprepared. I'm the antithesis of one of my "karaoke buddies", Nick, who *prefers* going into the bar without a set agenda. He even let us pick a song for him once. You can guess what he ended up having to do: "Barbie Girl" by Aqua ;-) Anyway, I look upon my planning ahead with practicality in mind:

1) It saves time, not having to flip through an enormous song book to find something that catches my fancy.
2) I know I'm sticking to songs I CAN do (there are some songs that span such a huge vocal range that I simply cannot do them, knowing which ones to avoid helps me avoid embarrassment on stage)
3) Likes and dislikes are fleeting. I might not even FEEL like singing the song I really wanted to do last week. Having a current list ensures that I have a list of possibilities that I actually *want* to do.

I even go a step further and try to plan out WHEN I'll sing songs. Slower songs, or songs that I'm not 100% confident about, I'll tend to request earlier in the evening, when it's not as crowded. Songs I know I can rock, or just plain faster songs that get people moving, are better later in the evening, when there's more people to kick up a storm on the dance floor.

Karaoke isn't the only thing I plan for, though. Spreadsheets are my friend :-) When I was in the Army, I was nicknamed the "PowerPoint Ranger" because of my extensive use of PowerPoint (well, I had to, it was part of my job!), but these days, I think "Excel Ranger" is more apt.

Spreadsheets come in very handy when it comes to managing the family budget-- a pretty common use of them, I would imagine. They also came in very handy when it came to buying our house. Knowing the interest rate, I worked out several different mortgage scenarios, based on potential purchase price and available down payment. This gave me an idea of how high we could comfortably afford to go with our offer price, and enabled us to give our realtor a set figure from which we couldn't go much higher. Makes negotiations easier when you know what your maximum is.

I even plan out our vacations on spreadsheets. In summer of 2007, we all flew up to Vancouver for a conference that Allan was attending through the university. After the conference, we rented a car and drove down along the West Coast back home, stopping by cities along the way to see family and friends: Seattle, Portland, San Francisco. I had the entire trip mapped out, to the hour, on spreadsheets. Even though I got very sick during the trip and had to forego much of the sightseeing myself, we managed to stay remarkably on track with the plan. Whenever we go to Vegas, I map out our itinerary on Excel, too. Helps work out how much the hotel, food and activities will cost us in sum.

Now, that's not to say that there's no room for flexibility in there. Some of the activities I throw in are more like "placeholders"-- things we can do if we feel like it or find nothing else interesting to do, but it's not the end of the world if we don't do it. It's the best of both worlds, actually-- room for spontaneity, yet still with a backup plan. There are, of course, some things I will not leave to chance-- like booking our hotel room. And I prefer planning out where we're going to eat so that we can keep costs in check. But other than that-- having a plan makes me feel better about having some sort of structure to guide us during our trip.

How about you? What sorts of things do you like to plan ahead for?

New Girl

One of the shows I've really gotten into on Hulu is "New Girl", starring Zooey Deschanel. It started off a bit slow (but still good) and each episode just keeps getting progressively better and funnier. I guess that's what happens when you start to establish the central characters, their personalities, their quirks, their foibles.

I will admit that the primary reason I even began to check out the show was *because* it starred goofy Zooey. You know how you and your friends always discuss celebrity crushes, and then you list the one same-sex crush you would have if you swung that way (or, I guess, opposite-sex if you're gay). Mine was always Zooey. She's cute and quirky, and most of all, she's classy. She exemplifies the notion that you can be sexy without having to show off as much skin as is legally possible. And she's a terrific singer, to boot! People say she looks like Katy Perry, but I think it's the other way around-- Katy Perry looks like a trashier version of Zooey Deschanel :-P

Zooey's character, Jess, is much like her in those respects. Jess is goofy, she's quirky, she's adorable and cute without wearing skin-tight, revealing clothing, and she has a heart of gold.

When it comes to guys I find attractive, I'm never drawn to the stereotypical "hot" hunk, as evidenced by my celeb list (linked above). I prefer the classic, clean-cut gentleman. The same, apparently, goes for my taste in women. I'm not gay, but the more I watch Zooey, the more I "fall in love" with her, for lack of a better expression. I'm sure you know what I mean.

Anyway, if you haven't seen "New Girl", I highly encourage you to check it out. It is, after all, available on Hulu!

The Little Things

You know how they say that it's the little things in life that you really appreciate? Well, I didn't really understand that until I got older (read: busier, especially due to a kid).

What are some of the little things that make me happy?

Knowing that I don't have to make my son's lunch for the next day. I would have to say that this tops the list. Silvergreens delivers lunch to Todd's school some days of the week, and I usually order at least one meal a week from them. I keep the monthly at-a-glance calendar on the fridge for easy reference, and I literally (yes, literally!) jump for joy and do a little happy dance when I look at the calendar and see that lunch is being delivered tomorrow. Especially on days when I'm especially frazzled already. I later discovered that I wasn't the only parent who does this happy dance, so I'm glad there are others out there who understand :-)

Being able to go to bed early. Todd isn't yet dry at night, so I usually have to stay up until at least 11:00pm in order to haul him out of bed and make sure he goes to the bathroom, before diapering him and putting him back to bed for the rest of the night. Of course, by the time that chore is done, I'm wide awake and will take time to settle back down to enough sleepiness to climb into bed-- and by then it's already midnight. So when he's out of town (as he is this week), I can take full advantage of going to bed as early as I like, without any worries!

Enjoying holidays that most private companies do not. Veteran's Day a couple weeks ago is a prime example. You see, when I left Citrix, I exchanged 16 days of PTO per year for 10 days of vacation per year at UCSB. However, sick days are counted separately from bona fide vacation days, and I get 12 of those every year. So, for true vacation days, it about evens out, time-wise. Plus the added bonus of 3 extra holidays that places like Citrix don't observe. It's kind of nice knowing you have a day off when everyone else has to work :-D

Unexpected free food at work. At Citrix this was a little more prevalent than it is here (and I'm not talking about the regular things like Bagel Wednesdays and free snacks/drinks perpetually available). Nothing is quite as nice as wondering what you're going to do for lunch, and getting ready to shell out some $$ to eat at the cafe, only to discover leftovers from a lunchtime meeting in the kitchen. But you have to act fast! Those things disappear fast! Here, a co-worker will occasionally bring in baked goods, which makes a nice breakfast treat, but that's really about it.

How about you? What are the little things in life that bring you enjoyment and pleasure?