My Bucket of Parts

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Ooo Nigra Upbeat.wma (997 KB)

To Learn the music software I've been playing with, I improvised a little song about Nigra.

And it's kind of addicting.

  Like, I can see it becoming meth-like addicting, like Intervention-is-going-to-find-my-story-and-interview-my-family addicting. It won't be so, "please, Evan, please just stop!" or "you'll lose everything!" Instead, perhaps it'll gain me something? Maybe Gavin Degraw-like fame?

  Or not.

  I'm not picky. But let me tell you my story.

  I was meandering around the over-conjested mess that's also known as the Internet, and somehow I popped across this new program created by Microsoft in their research labs called "Songsmith." I tagged it on my hyper-active Delicious account, hoping I wouldn't lose it in the mound of other random links I'm always posting there, and moved on with my life. I didn't download the program right away, because I would only get 6 hours of actual play time with it, and what if I liked it? I would have to pay for it, and I wanted to wait and be completely sure before I jumped on that bandwagon.

  I couldn't fight the feelings. I tried downloading it on my "old" laptop (I have since bought my brothers much newer laptop off of him) and it didn't budge. I Googled to find out why I wasn't able to download it, and in my searching, I was excited to find that teachers could download "Songsmith" for free.

  Yup, a small perk for being in education.

  The program writes the chords as you sing into a microphone. You just need to make sure you have your melody down, because as you sing, there's only the beat in your ears.

  So, now that I write random bits of "poetry" places, and I tend to break out into song ALL the time around the house, I'm hoping I can start putting the two things together.

  Let's see where it takes me...

Every year Steph and I are in charge of the sweet potatoes for my side of the family's Thanksgiving. It's a fairly simple recipe that doesn't take too much prep. Steph and I cook some complicated things every-once-in-a-while, so you would think we could put together a sweet potato souffle.

  For some reason, something is always off about them.

  One year, we made two of them, thinking the large family event would need two. One of them turned out OK, while we left out the egg in the other one. We had to quickly put it in and mix it up, but it was haphazard.

  Luckily, they turned out fine.

  This year, as I was mixing up the ingredients to make the pecan crumble that goes on top, the topping became more of a dough-like paste, instead of a light crumble. I did the cup of flour, the cup of brown sugar. I thought I had just a stick of butter, but apparently, I put a few tablespoons of butter too many in. Instead of the topping being crumbly and on top, it was a thick gooey mess that sank to the bottom.

  The 30-minute baking time turned into an hour.

  We were late ot my family's Thanksgiving, and again, we weren't so sure how the sweet potatoes were going to turn out.

  Luckily, they turned out fine.

I know that my writing in the blog-o-sphere isn't widely read. I don't update it enough on a regular basis, and although I have big dreams of one day taking this blog national, I do enjoy when someone stumbles upon my blog and comments on writings. 

I just walked Steph to the threshhold where she is a passenger on a vacation and I'm a faux-bachelor for 5 days or so. This is something people do all the time, but you don't realize how weird it is to say goodbye to someone you are so used to seeing everyday. I know that I will be doing a lot of talking to myself as I roam around the house these following nights. Nigra and Raible are going to get an earful, I'm sure.

When I worked a journalism workshop for a week a few years ago, Steph spent the week alone. We were also only 30 minutes away from each other, so if need be I could jet home. I think she even came up and met me for dinner one of the nights. I lived alone in a dorm room, but the other 16 hours during those days was spent with high school kids and journalism teachers. So, that doesn't really count in my book.

I tend to rely on Steph with decisions, since there's always two of us. Especially when driving on 465. Hopefully, I make it home.

Here I go! Living alone for the first time in my own house! Let the adventure BEGIN!

We went through a corn maze at Tuttle's apple orchard. It was a bit muddy that day, but we conquered it. Hannah also found a few prizes.

I go from "Harry Potter" so something, well, different. We've been shopping in the $1 section of Half Priced Books, because when teachers get 20% (or more) and you're buying books for $1, well, you do the math...

My journey started in July and ended this past Tuesday. I have just soared through 4,100 pages of a seven-book series that I'm sad to see over. I don't normally read that much during a school year, but it helps that I had the audio versions for the last four books and listened for 30 minutes in the morning and 40 minutes in the afternoon, as well as other random times when I washed dishes, rode the elliptical, did yard work and mowed the lawn. 

I'm about 300 pages into the last installment of the book, and it's heartbreaking. The bad guys are gaining ground, Hogwarts is under the rule of hook-nosed Snape, and Hermione, Harry and Ron aren't there.