ITMS Freebies

To celebrate their one year anniversary, the iTunes Music Store is giving away a tune a day for eight days "to broaden your musical horizons" and thank users of the store. I got the first two tunes, and don't have very high hopes:

• My Hero - Foo Fighters. Well, I've heard that the Foo Fighters were a great 'alternarock' band, but by this sample, it sounds pretty pedestrian and same-old-same-old to me. Just another MTV rock band.


• Avril Lavigne. I don't remember the name of the song, it's that memorable. Just another teeny-bopper adrenaline pop number. Some of 'em have caught my fancy in the past, but this is just too annoying to me.

Upcoming songs might offer something better. I have hopes (and some trepidation) for the Courtney Love song, tomorrow, and I feel almost certain that I'll like Saturday's tune, from Annie Lennox. As for the remainder, I'm fearful that they're all just more corporate rock with little distinct personality. We'll see. The remaining freebies are from Jane's Addiction, Counting Crows, Renee Fleming and Nelly Furtado. Anyone like these guys?

Unclear on the Concept

I need a checklist of figures of speech Kelly is familiar with. This evening, I was helping her after her shower.

"Where's your hairbrush?"

"It's probably in the bathroom."

"So go get it," I replied.

"I'm wet and cold, and I just got out of the shower, and I had dance class tonight... So could you please look for it?"

I'm hardly the sympathetic type when confronted with a pathetic list like that, so I answered: "I will go look for it, but do you know what this is?" I held up my thumb and forefinger, rubbing delicately together.

"No, what?"

"It's the world's tiniest violin, playing just for you."

To which Kelly replied: "Yay!"

Betadine

If you're old enough, you remember this stuff, rust brown and murky. My Dad used to apply it on a swab to my throat whenever I got a sore throat. It was an all-purpose antiseptic, going on scrapes and cuts in liberal swathes.

It turns out my dentist is insane. She suggested very strongly that I use a Betadine solution in my Waterpik, which I use to irrigate under the gums as a measure against gingivitis. But I use a product called Peroxyl, which is sort of like Listerine, with Hydrogen Peroxide in it's mix. Apparently that's not toxic enough. "We use Betadine here when we scale teeth. Just mix it four-to-one with water."

So I dutifully got some (after the second check-up, when she insisted again). And tonight I tried it out. That is the most foul substance in the Universe! I was spitting for the next hour, and my mouth still feels unnatural. I won't be doing that every night.

More Coincidences

I bought an iTrip FM transmitter to go with my iPod, so I could listen to it in my car. I wanted to test it out, so I was looking for an FM radio in the house which I could use. The 'retired' clock/radio in my room that I use for a reference (garish red LEDs show up great in the dark) is retired for a reason. The radio gave up the ghost about ten seconds after I tried to use it.

Then I remembered that I had an old Sony Walkman cassette tape/FM radio that I use occasionally for walks. I grabbed it, turned it on, and it was dead. I tried a fresh battery, and no go. The darn thing died sometime after the last time I used it. And I only found out when attempting to test the new portable music box I had just bought.

Spoooookyyyyy!!!!

Ella Enchanted

I forgot to mention that yesterday I was priviledged to take Kelly and her friend Emily to see Ella Enchanted. It's a slight movie, funny, irreverant without being snide, anachronistic in the way that so many television mythology shows have become (Xena, anyone?). Overall, I quite enjoyed it.

Funny thing is, just recently I watched Grosse Pointe Blank, recorded off the telly, and I was remarking to Jean that I hadn't seen Minnie Driver anywhere of late. What happened to her? And there she was, in a middling supporting role in Ella. She looks the same as she did seven years ago in GPB. So I looked her up in IMDB, and she's been in a lot of things. Things, I've never heard of, true, but she's working.

Jean suggested that she may be taking work that doesn't require her to travel, so that she can stay near her family. Makes as much sense as anything else, since I think she's a credible actress, not needing to bottom feed, as it were. Still, interesting coincidence.

Spendy

I made the first of two somewhat pricey purchases today, all part of my nefarious plan! What did I buy? A 15GB iPod. I blame you Tom!

The other purchase is staged over the next couple of weeks. I'm planning on buying a Nikon D70 digital SLR body. I'll use my existing lenses with it, and work on getting familiar enough with it to turn out decent pictures when we go to Disneyland this summer for Kelly's birthday. This is the second time we're doing this, and as last time I used a Olympus Stylus Epic with Disneychrome -- pardon, Fuji Velvia -- I decided to see if I couldn't do something different. True, my old Nikon Coolpix 950 produces images that are adequate to put up on the web. But I want to be able to do that and get some nice-sized prints.

So the plan (a.k.a. rationalization) for this hardware is to take pictures with the D70, download 'em to the iPod while at Disneyland, then process them all back at the ranch. This plan may fall apart at the first sign of trouble, but I have hopes anyway.

Responsible

Jean has embarked on an admirable mission, to supply Kelly with opportunities to exercise her responsibility muscles. This weekend she let Kelly buy her own Happy Meal (long story short, Kelly wanted a particular stuffed dog toy similar to one she got recently), navigate Borders on her own to locate and buy a Calvin & Hobbes book, call me at work on her own to chat ... you get the idea.

So now when Kelly wants to try something, we have to at least pause, and ask ourselves if this is an opportunity for growth. She did good this weekend, so I'm up for more.