Just wondering if I am the only person that tends to eat more when they are sick. It's like, I feel bad, so I go around the house eating whatever I can get my hands on hoping that it will be the magical thing that will make me feel better. In the end, I'm still sick and now my pants are tight too.
It was a big day for Penny yesterday as she completed and graduated from her Family Dog I class. For the past month and a half or so, we’ve been working on sitting and staying and heeling and coming when called – all the things that are needed to be a good dog citizen.
Good job, Penny!
Xkcd is usually pretty good -- but this is genius.
Happy Friday!
So, one of the things I’ve gotten to spend some more time with during my – err – sabbatical from gainful employment – is my piano.
For those who’ve been around here a while, you might recall that a couple of years ago, I was stressing about and then actually enjoying learning a little music theory in the last piano class I had before I started taking private lessons.
So, last year, after I’d settled in and developed a bit of rapport with my teacher, I’d described the things I’d liked and not-liked about the classes I had taken. One thing I’d said I’d appreciated (and that maybe it was my analytical-science side coming out) was the introduction to music theory that I’d had – how it helped shaped the way I heard and learned new pieces. She suggested that I start a series of workbooks on music theory for the piano.
I think this series is pretty good, and after a year or so I’m right in the middle of the set. I’ve really enjoyed learning the hows and whys of how a musical composition is put together. We’ve covered meter, scales, keys, intervals, chords, ornaments, motifs and have begun to analyze different compositions for melodic phrase structure. There are also sections for ear training and sight-reading. Altogether, I think they’ve really helped me be a better (and I use this word very generously) musician.
So, of course, reading and dissecting music naturally began to make me curious about how it gets created. Do you start from a motif and build? Do you start with a feeling and go? What are the “rules” that make something sound “good”? And so on…
And so, last month, I started another series: “The Craft of Music Composition”. This also has several levels and naturally I’m starting at the entry level, since I’ve never written music in my life. The first book has a sort of a lead-you-by-the-hand way that takes some of the intimidation out of the idea of putting notes to paper (or notes into Finale’ as the 21st century equivalent might be…) – while learning some of the common techniques used by composers.
I’ve never really considered myself a “creative” person. Insightful, maybe. Analytical, for sure. So composition is way out of my comfort zone – and maybe that’s good. I don’t know that there will be any critical successes coming from my brain, but it sure is fun to sit and plink-plunk-plink at the keys and decide what you think sounds good.
Wish me luck!
Sure, I've been sick for a week and a half now with a cold that is holding on like a pit bull. And swine flu has hit the kids' school (not my kids luckily). But there are the graces in life that make it all ok.
I’m still bummed, so I’ll keep this short. Great season. Good playoff run and lost to a very good team that got more clutch pitching and better clutch pitching in this Series.
Hideki Matsui (who had SIX RBIs tonight – holy crap -- and who hit the cover off the ball all Series) and Andy Pettitte were great examples of both of those tonight as the Yankees closed out the World Series at home, winning 7-3. Pedro Martinez was fair but really it was the Durbin-Happ tagteam that couldn’t stop the bloodletting.
Anyway – good job from the Yankees, they got it done when they had to. And at least as a silver lining, Noelle still owes me lunch for the NLCS…
Received from: Thomas Nelson.
Rating: 7 out of 10 (might have been higher had I read the first book -- this is the second)
Synopsis: The more than four hundred thousand readers stirred by the story of Ron Hall and Denver Moore will resonate with the all new, stand-alone true stories of hope and healing offered in this intimate, authentic follow-up to the New York Times bestseller Same Kind of Different as Me. With new "Denverisms" and reflections from Denver on his personal dealings with homelessness and disrespect from others, additional insights from Ron on what we can learn from people not like us and from those dealing with a terminal illness, and the stories of readers who have been impacted by the book's central themes, this inspirational reader will generate a host of new fans.
My review: I really wish that I'd read the first book, Same Kind of Different as Me, before I read this one. I have it coming to me from the library, so I'll review it soon. This book says it's standalone, but I really think I would have benefited from reading Same Kind first, just so I could have known the background of the three people What Difference focuses on -- Ron, Denver, and Deborah. Half of the chapters of the book are written by Ron, and half by Denver. Both had a lot of interesting things to say on the subject of homelessness and Christians. There are also stories of people around the country who were inspired by the first book. There was even a woman from West Sacramento mentioned -- her story hit very close to home. Needless to say, I really got a lot out of this book. It shifted my views of homeless people quite a bit, and it challenged me to think differently about the people I pass every day on the street. I don't have enough space to quote all of the different passages that affected me, but this one that really stood out (it was written by Denver, in his own voice):
"Since I been visitin a lotta churches, I hear people talkin 'bout how, after readin our story, they felt "led" to help the homeless, to come alongside the down-and-out. But when it comes to helpin people that ain't got much, God didn't leave no room for feelin led. Jesus said God gon' separate us based on what we did for folks that is hungry and thirsty, fells that is prisoners in jail and folks that ain't got no clothes and no place to live. What you gon' do when you get to heaven and you ain't done none a' that? Stand in front a' God and tell Him, "I didn't feel led"? You know what He gon' say? He gon' say, "You didn't need to feel led 'cause I had done wrote it down in the Instruction Book."
Hello conviction, I'm Cori.
(Finished 10/30/09)
Borrowed from: the Sacramento library
Rating: 8 out of 10
Synopsis: This sequel brings back the young wizard-in-training to face suspicious adults, hostile classmates, fretful ghosts, rambunctious spells, giant spiders, and even an avatar of Lord Voldemort, the evil sorcerer who killed his parents, while saving the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry from a deadly, mysterious menace. Ignoring a most peculiar warning, Harry kicks off his second year at Hogwarts after a dreadful summer with his hateful guardians, the Dursleys, and is instantly cast into a whirlwind of magical pranks and misadventures, culminating in a visit to the hidden cavern where his friend Ron's little sister Ginny lies, barely alive, in a trap set by his worst enemy. Surrounded by a grand mix of wise and inept faculty, sneering or loyal peersplus an array of supernatural creatures including Nearly Headless Nick and a huge, serpentine basiliskHarry steadily rises to every challenge, and though he plays but one match of the gloriously chaotic field game Quidditch, he does get in plenty of magic and a bit of swordplay on his way to becoming a hero again.
My review: Ah, the adventures of the young Harry Potter continue. Again, I listened on audio book and fell in love all over again with Jim Dale's reading. He just brings everything to life. Also, he sounds exactly like Maggie Smith. Which is weird and awesome. This book is a little more intense than the first, especially toward the end. The characters are expanded more in this book, as are the growing mysteries surrounding Voldemort and Hogwarts. It's was also really well-paced -- unlike some of the others in the series, this one doesn't really get bogged down in the middle (I'm talking to you, Deathly Hallows). Plus, we get to see more of Ginny. And I just adore her. (Finished 10/13/09)
- I was opening a can of cream of celery soup on Sunday and sliced the absolute hell out of my pinkie. Went-to-the-hospital sort of slice. Almost fainted sort of slice. Bloooood sort of slice.
- Barf.
- Would have thought it would have been a knife that would have done me in. But no, apparently I cannot work a can.
- I knew I couldn't be trusted in the kitchen.
- No stitches for the cut. Mostly because I didn't want to wait around in an emergency room full of the swine flu for three hours.
- The cut is healing better than I would have guessed, though. It's only moderately gross now.
- Because I cut my hand, I had to get a tetanus shot.
- The shot didn't hurt. But GOODNESS GRACIOUS, my whole arm is killing me now! It feels like someone is trying to yank my arm from my body. Pain pain pain!
- I am SUCH a wimp. And a complainer.
- I'm stopping now.
- I have been writing about my New Zealand trip, so I'll hopefully get that posted soon. Needless to say, I had an incredible time! Amazing! Phenomenal! If you'd like to see one of the many, many, many photos, visit my flickr.
- I want to go back! There was so much that I didn't get to see!
- I'm reading this really great book right now called Angry Conversations with God. It's so good!
- I miss Amy (my coworker) -- she's in Denmark. Work is just not the same without her happy face around.
- We are apparently world travelers around my office.
- Remember back when we complained because Thanksgiving was barely over and Christmas decorations started going up? Yeah, there's already trees and santas and candy canes EVERYWHERE.
- I had other things to hodgepodge, but the Motrin has made me all la-di-da.
- La-di-da.
Today, the NIH announced that they are spending $27MM of your Recovery money on creating a social network for scientists in the biomedical research community. You can read about it here.
The goal is summed up as follows:
These Web-based initiatives will bring the power of Internet-based tools, as exemplified by social networking, to biomedical research. Modern technologies for communication and collaboration have the potential to enhance interdisciplinary research, enabling individuals to connect with each other and with resources — irrespective of location — to address challenges in new ways.
That’s very nice – but I wonder if this is really necessary? Frankly, most of the social networks among scientists that I know involve a couple of pints. And though I don’t want to be a Luddite, I wonder if it can be successful. Do I really need a social network to help me solve scientific problems of a common sort (Hey peeps, I’m out of ammonium sulfate, anyone in 92121 got any in da house?)?
Because I’ll tell you, the first thing that popped into my mind when I heard about this was two little letters: “I” and “P” as in Intellectual Property. The who “owns” what question is always a contentious issue that plagues researchers from the --- whose name gets to go on a paper, or whose name gets to go first on the paper questions on the academic side – to the industry ones of who had an intellectual contribution worthy to be on a patent to which organization owns the rights to this new discovery and can license it out to the highest bidder(s)? Can you imagine “Hey peeps, I’m looking to cure Parkinson’s Disease with this new compound I made, anyone got a validated preclinical animal model in da house?” Somehow I don’t think so.
I think this also raises the question of how many social networking sites do you really need? I have three that I can think of – Facebook, Vox and LinkedIn – which seem to adequately cover the personal and professional sides of life. I’ve eschewed Twitter because I think it only enforces America’s short-attention span problem. Though I did just get a GoogleWave test-account (thanks, DeWitte!) – and I’m not really sure how to classify that. So – is this new endeavor supposed to be a less “career networking” and more a "work networking" site than LinkedIn? Perhaps.
I’m sure being supported by the government, they’ll come up with some terrible name out of committee – NerdNet, Science Communication And Networking Tool (SCANT), Fritter? Maybe the social network itself should organize and name itself.
What do you guys think? Good idea, bad idea, I'm not a scientist so who the heck cares and I want my $27 mil back?
