Minor pet peeve

It's definitely pronounced Or-a-gun. (How you pronounce it doesn't diminish its general awesomeness though.)

 

Basic Instructions

Though, speaking of pet peeves, Blogger has a new image posting system and it's not working. So I had to email this post (.jpg file) in and then edit it. Fix it, Blogger, fix it. It's not like you to be troublesome like this.

New favorite

Ever heard of Mumford & Sons? My mom told me about this band after it was mentioned in a podcast she was listening to. I think I have a new favorite band. They're a folk band based in London, and they have a slight Irish sound to their music (probably because of the drums) and it's just amazing! On top of that, they're very good singers as well.
(They're not bad-looking guys either, for that matter...) :D



This one is also very very good: Roll Away Your Stone

Jacket

Here's my dress and jacket combination that I mentioned in my last post:

Also note the cat lurking behind my legs... :P

Gracie wanted her picture taken too, so I obliged:

Doesn't she look happy?

And this is what I meant when I said I thought it looked Jane Austen-esque...like this:

And now I'm going to go clean my room, because I thought it was clean, but I just realized I have nowhere to set anything down on my desk, and the contents of my closet appear to be trying to escape. And the rest of my family is coughing/sniffling/groaning because they all have colds...so...there's really nothing more exciting to do. :/

More than ready for fall

Apparently I managed to completely irritate my mom with my last post, because she doesn't like any of that song, and I got the whole song (complete with its bad grammar) stuck in her head.

On the other hand, I'm going to argue that we're even because later in the week, unable to come up with the name of Lewis Carrol (as part of something we were discussing) she proceeded to quote lyrics from "White Rabbit" by Jefferson Airplane. (Because if you weren't aware, that song is, in a very trippy way, Alice in Wonderland-related. I mean, sort of...er, nevermind.) My brain being what it is, I knew what she meant, but I also got the song in my head. And let me tell you, there is nothing like getting the sound of Grace Slick shrieking "remember! what the dormouse SAID....FEED YOUR HEAD!!" on a nearly constant loop in your mind. It's still not completely gone. Which is why I say we're even, if not more so.

But, that's not what I was intending to blog about. Excuse my digression.

I was intending to blog about the fact that I have birthday money, and needed a few clothes for this fall, so I did some shopping yesterday. At Goodwill, because that's where I find most of my awesome clothes. Especially since I needed jeans. I may have mentioned this before, but it's hard to find jeans, and apparently the only ones that fit me right are expensive brands. :/ So, I get them at Goodwill instead and pay $5 rather than $50. Only problem is that it's rather hit and miss, so sometimes I find several pairs, or I might find nothing at all. I found one pair yesterday, plus a pair of black pants, two pairs of pajama pants, a brown jacket, a green t-shirt, and another green t-shirt that is too big for me, but I intend to alter. Oh, and two t-shirts for Dad and Colin. All for under $30. If I said things like this, I would say "I heart Goodwill". But...I don't, so "I love Goodwill and bargains!" :D

The jacket I will have to take a picture of tomorrow, because I'm going to wear it to church. I was planning on wearing it with jeans and such, but I discovered that it will also go perfectly over a dress a friend gave me some time ago. I don't wear the dress very often because it's not great colors to have near my face (brown and beige pattern on lots of off-white background) but it will work great with the jacket over it, plus it looks very Jane Austen-esque. :) Edwardian, I suppose the style would be, but "Jane Austen-esque" describes it much better.

And the black pants will have to be hemmed, because apparently pants have to be extremely long these days. (Hmm, I noticed that the tag does say "long" on it, so that explains some of the extra length, but they're still awfully long. Hello, extra 5 inches of fabric...)

Anyway, I'm very happy to have found some nice clothes at Goodwill for this fall! If it ever is fall...it's supposed to be in the 80s still this week. :( But I think that's really about right; it cools off around my birthday, but then it really starts getting cool the first week of October, in time for the fair. October is my favorite month. :)

Oh, I bought some boots on sale at Target a couple weeks ago too:

Haha, they look huge in that picture! Ah well, plenty of room if I decide to put my pants legs inside them, and they'll keep my feet warm this winter.

"Even though we ain't got lyrics...

...we've got a hit with this chorus!"

Know what song should be better than it is? Danny's Song by Loggins and Messina. I mean, how obvious is it that they came up with the catchy chorus and then had to come up with verses to go with it? And failed horribly? The music is nice enough, but it sounds like they're making up the words as they go, and it ends up utterly ridiculous apart from the chorus:

"Even though we ain't got money, I'm so in love with ya, honey, and everything will bring a chain of love... And in the morning when I rise, you bring a tear of joy to my eyes and tell me, everything's gonna be alright."



Sorry, I just heard the whole song for the first time today and I'm a bit disappointed. :D

Not quite

Guitar chords always make me wish I could actually play guitar.

So, on a whim I picked up a guitar and tried again, because it's been something over a year (or two, or three...) since I last gave it a shot. Well...mixed results.

Negatives:
My fingertips still don't want to cooperate and prefer to drag on all the strings and not switch chords very fast. Switching takes practice; getting my fingertips off the strings...I don't know what the answer for that is.

I still can't quite come up with an appropriate strumming rhythm.

On the plus side:
I can actually hear the sound I should be getting...muddled greatly by the awful strumming and my fingers slipping, but I can hear something, which I couldn't before.

I can't get exactly the right rhythm, but I do feel like I have a better sense of what it should be.

So I'm wondering what's changed? Perhaps listening to more folk music helped? Or dancing? As clueless as I thought I was about rhythm, something's managed to slip in and plant itself in my brain?

I was happy to find that "Down To the River To Pray" has very easy chords.
I also attempted "I Would Be Sad" and "Swept Away" by The Avett Brothers, but I think they must pick the strings, and not so much strum, because I was having a lot more trouble with those. Not to mention their sound is very unique, so I'm not sure I'd get it anyway.

So, it gave me hope that maybe five years from now or something, I might be able to finally figure out how to play. It just irks me, because it's not supposed to be hard to just play a little bit.

My fingertips are gonna hate me tomorrow.

Labor Day/ Birthday Weekend

Well, I finally got some sleep last night and a chance to sleep in this morning, so I'm back on track after this long weekend! However, I keep forgetting what day it is, so maybe I'm only back on track as far as sleep goes. And it was a busy weekend.

Kyle came up here for the weekend and during the course of the weekend we watched the original Star Wars trilogy, because I had sadly never watched any of them and something had to be done about that. :) I liked them a lot! And they were funny too! Paisley also liked them...no, actually she liked there being people sitting in the living room who obviously had nothing better to do than pet her. R2-D2's noises made her a little jumpy though. (Incidentally: Han Solo's much better than Luke Skywalker. Luke's a whiny little boy. Granted, he did get a little better by the third movie.)

Saturday we went hiking at Hanging Rock, and I discovered that Kyle is apparently the one person I know who will go even closer to the edge of a mountain than I will anymore. Plus it was very windy up there, so he was really scaring me. :P

I stayed a bit further from the edge, though you can't really tell in this photo:

How sad is it that I don't really know how to do anything crazy or make funny faces in a photo? My reaction to being told "Do something crazy!" is "Uhhh.......I dunno what to do...". Comes from being a photographer's daughter, I guess. When you're getting your photo taken, you look photogenic, not crazy. Or, not purposely crazy at least.

That was Saturday, which of course was my birthday, so that night Mom made tacos (my favorite!), Grandma and Grandpa came over, and I opened presents and the 20 bazillion cards that I got. Okay, I exaggerate, but it seemed like I got a lot of birthday cards this year! I don't have any birthday pictures on my camera, but Dad took a few, so I got them off their computer.

Cake (and I blew out all the candles at once, which I haven't done for a long time!)

Hehe, Grandma got me Hello Kitty pajamas. I'm not really a Hello Kitty kind of girl, if you didn't know that. But they are warm and fuzzy... :)

I got a telephoto lens for my camera!

Let's see, the next day was Sunday. (Really, Sunday came after Saturday?! Whaaat?) We went to the same church we visited last week, and this week the regular pastor was back in town. It was a really great sermon and great music! We sang a few choruses I'd never sung before, and some that I'd forgotten that I knew and loved.

Sunday afternoon consisted of wandering around Reynolda Gardens and Old Salem, and making plans for Monday.

There's usually Ultimate Frisbee on Monday nights, but some of the frisbee crowd were planning on hiking Monday morning...at Hanging Rock. Ha! So, more hiking up there! :D We went on a different trail though, one I actually hadn't ever been on at all, so that was cool for a change.

Not quite as close to the edge...

Then, despite all the hiking we all went and played frisbee that evening, and as usual got hot and sweaty and slightly beat up and injured (er, well, I did anyway). It was a good game; really, the ones that involve a bit of injury seem to end up being the best. Unfortunately...?

I don't feel 21. Apart from feeling a bit stiff and sore the past few days anyway, but that's from hiking & frisbee and that would've happened last year too. :P It's really weird too, it doesn't feel like it was very long ago at all that I turned 20. Wow. What a crazy year it's been. 21...that's going to take a while to sink in. I really should go and drink something sometime, just because. (Did have wine for communion on Sunday...and wished I hadn't. That was not a pleasant red wine.)

One last photo from hiking:

All in all it was a simply awesome weekend. :)

Distraction #74

Since I just mentioned listening to The Avett Brothers, I wanted to share this song I found that cracks me up every time I hear it. It reminds of "Whose Line Is It Anyway" when they do a hoedown or Irish drinking song sketch. :D