Domestic Geek

As Marcus and I were heading to work yesterday morning, I exited I-25 at University and as we pulled up to the light, we heard something out of the ordinary. I rolled down to get a better listen I'll be darned if the driver of the Lexus in front of us wasn't listening to classical music at full volume. It was delightful and a welcome change to the rap/hip hop crap you usually hear from other vehicles these days. What sucks is, I am so out of the music loop that I knew I had played the piece on several occasions, but couldn't place it from the old memory files. I had planned to look it up at work, but by the time I got there, the usual stupid drama was in full effect and I never got to it. By the time I had time to look it up, the tune had escaped by head.

Later last night, as I was surfing Facebook, I found myself humming it and quickly started looking up pieces on iTunes and found it: Dvorák: Symphony No. 9 - "From the New World" - a piece I had definitely played many times over my earlier music days.

As I was taking that stroll down memory lane and finding other works I had performed, I got terribly sad. I wish I hadn't given up that part of my life so easily. I've really got to find a musical outlet. I miss it so much.

Marcus bought me a Kindle for Christmas this year. I absolutely love it and it has brought back the passion for reading that I once had (when I was young, my nose was always in a book). I've read more books in the first part of this year than I have in the last 5 years combined. It's sad how I've let reading slip, but I totally see how it happened. Being laid off and relatively poor for a while meant cutting books out of the budget, then my recent desire to downsize my life and my clutter left me not wanting physical books around. My obsessive game-playing on Facebook squandered valuable reading time. Then there was my new obsession with knitting. I know that there is the public library, but I really have a moral opposition to them (except for reference material). Authors make their livelihood by selling books and I feel really guilty borrowing novels from living authors there.

Right now, I'm reading a book by Wendy McClure called The Wilder Life: My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie. To say I'm disappointed would be an understatement. I'm not going to go into why, as those thoughts are better kept to myself. It has rekindled my desire to know more about Laura Ingalls Wilder, though. I've visited the Little House site in Independence, Kansas and the Wilder Home in Mansfield, Missouri. I've got plans to go to some of the other sites.

I think I've always been fascinated by Laura Ingalls because she represents a simpler way of life. I'm well aware that "the old days" was not an ideal existence, yet I yearn to get out of the big city. Marcus and I have dreams of one day living on land in South Dakota. I want to raise my own chickens and grow my own food. When I was younger, I loved sewing on my mother's antique Singer because that's how it used to be done (don't get me wrong - I love my computerized sewing and embroidery machines now), but I always felt connected to the past in some small way when I used it. Weird, I know. Sometimes I wish that old machine was close by so I could run it, but it resides with my sister out in California. If Marcus and I ever do get settled someplace permanent, I'd love to find one of those old machines.

*sigh* Well, I'd better wrap this up because it's almost time to head off to work.

I saw some tweets last week about the Google Pac-Man game they had on their homepage to honor the 30th anniversary of the game. Many people were lamenting how much time they had wasted playing it. Fortunately for our company, our department is not allowed to use the Internet during the work day for non-work activities (we have to log in to a firewall to get to the Internet and those logs are reviewed frequently). Other companies were not so lucky. Apparently, more then 4.8 million work hours were wasted by people playing the game.

I finally caved today and bought myself my first eBook. I vowed a few months back that if a digital edition of something I wanted was available, I wasn't going to bother getting the hard copy of it. I'm tired of the dust they collect and the space they take up. I felt like doing to some light, cheesy reading, so I purchased the next book I had yet to read in the knitting mystery series by Maggie Sefton, Fleece Navidad (I'd put one of those Amazon Associates links up like I used to, but I can't thanks to the feud between the state of Colorado and Amazon). The books in this series are corny and predictable, but they're basically set in Ft. Collins and I like reading them.

I downloaded the Kindle app for my iPhone and the application for my Macbook and I'm all set. Reading on the iPhone is a little rough, but will do in a pinch. I totally enjoyed reading with my Macbook in bed. I do that while surfing blogs all the time anyway. Someday, when I've got the funds to get one, I'll enjoy reading on an iPad.

I hope that more reading material becomes available digitally (magazines, etc.). I know some people just love the feel of turning pages, but I'll gladly give that up to rid myself of the clutter.

As seen on the CBSnews.com: Mo Rocca eats some crow and learns to knit.

I just found out on Facebook that soon you will be able to stream Netflix instant content to the Wii. From the press release on the Netflix site:

Jan. 13, 2010 ?V Nintendo of America Inc. and Netflix, Inc. [Nasdaq: NFLX] today announced an agreement that will allow Netflix members who are also owners of Nintendo??s Wii™ home console to instantly watch thousands of movies and TV episodes streamed from Netflix directly to their TVs. Netflix is scheduled to go live on the Wii console this spring in the United States at no additional cost to Netflix members who have a plan starting at $8.99 a month, a Wii console and a broadband Internet connection.

This makes me happy on so many levels. Marcus got me a PS3 to be able to do this, but it's hard to do when he is playing Tiger Woods Wii golf (it's better to play that on the big TV). Since we have a 2nd Wii, I can just stream on that one. I know you can watch on your computer (and I used to), but it's just not practical if you're also surfing on it.

I've already ordered my disk. It will ship just as soon as it is available. Very cool!

Not much to report this week. I started working on some knit Christmas stockings for Marcus and me. I decided last year that I can no longer use my old ones. I made matching quilted/cross-stitch stockings for Marcus, myself, Ursa and Skippy many years ago. It hurts now to pull them out and not be able to hang the dog ones (I'm teary as I type this), so I retired them. I purchased the Knit Christmas Stockings book and asked Marcus to pick out which one he wanted. Of course he picks the most basic one and then picked red/green as the color he wanted. Not original, but that is OK. I asked for his input and I'm going to make what he wants. When they are done, I'll post a link to the completed project post on the craft blog.

Marcus and I are celebrating our 17 year anniversary this week (10/28). We continued our tradition of getting Endless Shrimp at Red Lobster to celebrate last evening. We had a really awesome server, it was cold and snowy outside (just the way Marcus likes it). We had a really nice time.

I realized last night that Mayor Tortimer never gave me my golden fishing rod for catching all the species of fish in the Animal Crossing: City Folk game on our Wii. Grrrrr. To say I was upset was an understatement. I searched forum and cheat sites trying to figure out why I hadn't received it. I kept trying to tell myself that it is only a game and not that big of a deal, but I was genuinely disappointed. I open the game this morning and ta-dah!...he's outside my house with my fishing rod. D'oh!

I started my Netflix membership back up, so I've been on a movie watching kick. I'm also really pissed off at network television at the moment. At the start of the season, I picked which shows I would DVR and which shows I could watch online and which shows I would just have to give in and watch live if I wanted to see them. I had a schedule with all of my bases covered...or so I thought. The stupid networks keep changing when their programs air and a couple of shows I thought had online episodes do not. Then you throw in a hour episode here that screws up the schedule or a season premiere weeks after the other shows start that I hadn't calculated into the fray. It's maddening. I understand why they do it, but it still infuriates me to no end. You can't even do like you used to — watch one show the first half of the season and then watch another show during repeats — because there is no repeat season anymore. Show a few episodes, a couple of weeks of repeats, a few new episodes. Never coinciding with any other show's schedule. Annoying.

Marcus rented Scribblenauts for my Nintendo DS from Gamefly, so I played that this past week. Interesting little game. I'll have to get that one day. I went ahead and sent it back for now, though. I've got other stuff I need to be doing instead of being addicted to yet another video game!

Well, it's that time of year to get the wishlists in order. I guess I'll start tackling that later today. The weather is supposed to be halfway decent today, so I guess I had better get the oil changed in my car before it snows again. Lots to do today, so I'd better get to it.

10/27/09 - ETA: CBS had repeats on last night — showing shows from last season. WTF is up with that? Why do I want them to show stuff that I may now already own on DVD? Lame! Network television sucks!

I saw this video on Facebook last week and just had to blog it. I love this (especially the little tiny ipod the passenger hamster is holding).