Blended Paths

As an update to my previous blog, I am not getting a turntable. Our tax money was gone before we got it after planning to pay bills, buy Jess a mattress and go to New Orleans. So. That was that. However, Spotify is still working out just fine and there is zero house clutter involved.

Website update: Be sure to check out the gallery. I've added a new album for my Instagram photos, and I'm actually working on setting up this deal with Flickr where the post automatically post as a blog here at this site. I'm posting TONS of photos via this iPhone app so check it!! I'll be uploading tons of photos soon (when I get them off my phone and onto my computer!)!!

Speaking of Spotify, if you have tried it - YOU SHOULD. I'm not sure how the free version works at this point - I think you can listen to anything but can't make playlists...I've had the paid version for what seems like forever and I LOVE IT. I am <i>tempted</i> to back up my music collection on my laptop and just delete it from the machine at this point, but I don't always have an Internet connection (hey, I'm in Alabama, people!) when I take my laptop with me and I also sync my iPod and my iPhone to keep random music available offline......... Random train of thought: Spotify does allow you to save playlists for offline play.... Hmmm....

Alas, seriously - give Spotify a try. It's awesome and there's a platform for almost any device. If you do try it and like it enough to sign up for the premium service, be sure to also check out two of my favorite pre-made playlist sites: Spotify Playlists and Share My Playlist.  Moving on...

Spring has arrived (actually, it feels more like summer here) and I've started planting things in our raised beds. Last year we didn't do any gardening because we'd just moved in when spring arrived and there was a LOT to clean up. The raised beds weren't a priority at the time. Now, though, Jesse's older and he's a good helper, and I have time to tend the things. We have two fairly large raised beds to use for food, and so far I've planted romaine lettuce, sweet banana pepper plants, and chocolate mint. That's right. Chocolate mint. I love that stuff - especially crushed up (fresh with juices) and put in my coffee. I'm weird, right? Next on the list is to plant my okra seed and get some tomato plants, as well as some bell pepper, squash, zucchini, and cucumber plants. Those are the veggies we eat the most (actually, a tomato is a fruit - just sayin') and other things, like potatoes, onions, and such take a LOT more room than we have to grow. ;-) I hope we find success this year - I'm really working hard and babying the beds - I've even bought and used blood and bone meals. I've never done much more than manure and random fertilizer. LOL

Something else that has been keeping me in happy spirits along with the spring sunshine are all the AMAZING, yet still free!!, books I've been getting for the Kindle app on my iPhone. Wow. It's amazing what you can get for free in the eBook section of the Amazon website. I'm currently reading a book called Live Free or Die, by Jessie Crockett. What an amazing story it is, and I'm only up to chapter four! It's a mystery/drama but it's written in such a fun and sarcastic style from the voice of the main character. I love it - she reminds me a lot of myself, only much more quick witted. So, if you're into reading, Kindle or not, check the web for free eBooks and don't judge them "by the cover," as the old saying goes. It's really amazing what kind of world you can find yourself lost in without spending $10 or $15 for the latest "blockbuster" eBook.

Life in general is pretty cool for us right now. Money is extremely tight and we're still struggling to deal with that second (our first) house we have yet to sell/rent but I'm working hard to at least get someone in it until I can do something else. I'm seriously considering just listing it and taking a small loss just to get rid of the problem of having to deal with it and pay for it. We're just a day to day family and we're really happy. I think that when times are tight and things are quasi-uncertain, we are all much happier because we take the time to appreciate what we have and how blessed/lucky we are to have what we do, even if half of it is more a problem for us than a blessing. For example, how many people don't have a home where we technically have two? How many of those people would like to have that second house of ours, but can't afford even the small amount of rent we are going to be asking? Exactly. A lot more than we might realize... So yeah, we're pretty stoked for life right now. Plus, we'll have free food in our yard soon (the Gods willing).

Hope all is well with everyone out there! Y'all take care!

I have several posts to get up here; a few on video and photo apps, one on parenting, and a random photography craft tutorial from a project I'm planning to do soon. But, I can't help but skip all those partially written posts and/or ideas for the moment and talk about something else I've become obsessed with as of late: VINYL.

I'm a music lover. It's a fact that I can't (nor would I want to) deny. I became addicted to the whole "digital" craze because of space saving and easy backup solutions. It's a lot cheaper in the long run.  You pay less for music, you buy an mp3 player (it doesn't have to be a $300 iPod!) and you plug it in and go. It's a lot more convenient. You store your files on one device that fits in your pocket, and if all your music won't fit on that device, you create playlists or select your current favorites and store it all on your computer and a backup drive for good measure. The biggest plus is the easy travel factor — you can take your music ANYWHERE and listen to it in any number of ways. There's one real drawback. It's a lot LESS FUN.

I don't remember the good old days of turntables and vinyl very vividly. The most I can remember is having one of those cute little box record players, you know, the kind that look like a tiny suitcase, and having a bunch of Walt Disney books with 45's in the back of them that played music and told the story to you as you read along. Yeah. I know. Not much to base my new obsession on, right?

So what's the real story? It's the "real" factor.

I've been spending a lot of time hanging out at this "new" local coffee shop called 318 Coffee & Bands. I haven't been able to make it to one of their Friday night live shows, but I've been to the place on a couple of band-free Friday nights. These restless Fridays are filled with the amazing world of REAL music — as real as it gets without being live -- Vinyl Night. I've noticed three things during these amazing vinyl adventures:

1. Vinyl sounds better (even though I know the gigantic and amazing speakers they have help) because you get ALL the sound. It's not necessarily all cleaned up (even NEW releases by CURRENT bands) so by "sounds better" I don't mean it sounds cleaner. You don't get the sparkly, shiny, brilliant sound of perfection — you get more of the reality of the music and the making of the music. To ME, that's better.

2. Because you get more of the reality of the music and more sounds, you enjoy the music more. It has more personality. It has more feeling. It has more heart. It has more meaning. It not only has the substance of a real and tangible piece of vinyl that you can touch to know it's there, it has the substance of what music was always meant to be — a true, unadulterated expression of self with all the flaws in tact.

3. Vinyl is happening again, so it's not as expensive as one might think. I've learned from the Vinyl Night guru that MANY artists and bands, especially the kind of homegrown bands we all love the most, are going back to vinyl and including digital downloads with the purchase of the vinyl LPs so you get the substance and the expression I mentioned previously, but you get the convenience, too — and all for the price of one. Let's face it: buying a CD or vinyl album is always going to be more expensive in the long run than digital music, namely because people can't just steal whatever they want from the Internet whenever they want to steal it, but also because online music sites that sell full digital albums for $9.99 can't be beat by CD or vinyl sales — hey, there's a cost for material in there somewhere that gets added to what the artist and then the "store" makes. So what's up — get it in your head now: it's not going to be cheap...

But, the point I'm trying to make is that sometimes cheap in the way of cost simply cheapens an experience as a whole, and since my first Vinyl Night experience I've realized how much more real the experience of music can be — much more real than plugging in headphones or my iPod to the dock, or clicking a button on my computer to open an app, and pressing play. That's gotten lost, and I'd like to find it for myself again without the shop on Friday nights being my only chance to experience it.

I don't want to toss out my iPod - I'm all for convenience in the car or on a run or on the train (an experience I'll be having soon). I'm just saying that when I'm home, I want to chill and know —- and I want my son to grow up chilling and learning and knowing — what that true musical experience from that era I cherish so much in my heart (the 60's - for reasons I can't explain because I wasn't alive then, unless I OD'd and was reincarnated) is and that it truly can be an experience where you get up and walk over to the machine to change the record or turn the record over or fix the arm/needle...that being involved in more than pressing play or saying, "go," is much more fun and rewarding in most cases than the convenience (which is generally just laziness) we've all become accustomed to.

Blessings - and enjoy your music!

C~