A Song for Valentine’s Day

"More Bad Times"

1, 2, 3, 4
You never had rabies
You never gained weight
You never drank poison
You watched what you ate
You never came home with a terrible scar
You never so much as put a scratch on my car
You never got measles
You never got gout
You never got dizzy
And you never fell out
You never suggested we all play charades
You never picked up any live hand grenades

You twisted your ankle
I carried you
You got a divorce
So I married you
You fell off a cliff
So I buried you
I wish there were more bad times to see you through
I wish there were more bad times
Wish there were more bad times [x4]
I wish there were more

You never lost contact
You never leaked oil
You never drank cleanser
And you never ate foil
You never got hurt by sticks and stones
You never choked on any big chicken bones
You never got mauled by a mad baboon
You never lost all the air in your balloon
You never got poked in the eye with a spork
You never got sick from all that leftover pork

You twisted your ankle
I carried you
You got a divorce
So I married you
You fell off a cliff
So I buried you
I wish there were more bad times to see you through
I wish there were more bad times

So many things did go wrong
But the list is not long enough
Not enough bad things to fill up a song

Wish there were more bad times [x4]

I'd rather gather your bones
Than mop up this mess
If I scrub us all spotless
I'll wreck our success
I was holding your hand
When it fell on the floor
When you left you broke the knob on the door
I wish there was more

Beth’s Books: The Return of the Grifter

No, that’s not the title of the book. It’s actually Sarah Palin’s latest “book,” Good Tidings and Great Joy: Protecting the Heart of Christmas. I had to put the word ‘book’ in quotation marks, because I’m not sure this crapfest qualifies as a bona fide book.

Full disclosure: I read this book for the sole purpose of trashing it on here. I generally try to ignore the Half-Gov, because she really is irrelevant, but when she told President Obama on her Facebook page to “stop playing the race card,” I thought, “It’s payback time. You called down the thunder...well, you now you got it! I’m comin’, Half-Gov. And Hell’s comin’ with me, you hear? Hell’s comin’ with me!!”

Ahem. Where was I? Oh yes. Payback. Payback for telling our first African-American President to stop playing the race card. On Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, no less. If that doesn’t deserve a little bit of righteous smackdown, I don’t know what does. And I’m just the gal to do it. So let’s get started, shall we? Kick back, because this is going to be a long one.

First of all, I refused to give this grifter one penny. I was trying to find a free download, and finally saw that it was available as an e-book from my wonderful local library. You know, the socialist one where all the liberal elites hang out. I’m sure she got a few gullible people to fork over some dough for this, but I wasn’t one of them.

It’s difficult to convey just how horrid this thing is, but I’ll try.

Drop the adjectives and walk away. Nothing is simple in the Half-Gov’s world (except for the Half-Gov herself). There can’t just be a Christmas tree...it has to be a fragrant Charlie Brown tree with twinkling lights. There isn’t just snow...there is crisp and crunchy snow. People don’t just sing carols, their pure voices soar to the starry heavens with humble joy, their eyes alight with Christmas cheer. These are not actual examples from the book (I’ll get to that later), but this is the kind of “writing” you’ll find there. Adjectives are helpful in small doses, but not every noun has to be accompanied by one. There are several grammatical errors, too, including apostrophe abuse. It makes me laugh that she was a journalism major. Oh, wait...it makes me utter a jolly laugh, my rosy cheeks flushed with good humor, my twinkling eyes flashing in the mellow glow of my trusty laptop. ::eye roll::

Ditch the delusion of the idyllic family and household. There is plenty of stuff about the Half-Gov gathering her brood around and reading the story of Baby Jeebus to them and getting all choked up over it. There’s also plenty of family and friends gathering in the kitchen to bake Christmas treats. I cracked up over this: “Nothing says Christmas like strapping on an apron, heading to the kitchen with friends and family, and cooking and baking yourself into the Christmas spirit.” This “book” would have been more tolerable if I’d baked myself! There are stories of her wonderful childhood and the special Christmases she had. She tells a story about wanting a Walkman one year and getting a dictionary instead. “...my good parents were teaching me a lesson I would remember forever. Words matter.” I about fell over laughing. Should have spent a little more time with that dictionary, Half-Gov! Although I’m sure you would refudiate that.

Get off the cross, Mary, we need the wood. There is a pervasive tone of personal persecution in her writing. She would be riffing on the joys of Christmas at one moment and toss in a snarky comment about Nancy Pelosi or liberals in general in the next. She often mentions her and McCain’s loss in 2008, and it’s obvious that she is still very bitter about it. She bitches about her treatment by the “lamestream media” (which she later abbreviates as LSM), she mentions the “angry, outraged, and just plain silly and rude responses” that she gets when she posts something on Facebook, and she says she gets “vile tweets.” She chalks this up to “the fringe” commenters. Sorry, Half-Gov, but not liking you doesn’t make people “the fringe.” She says, “The media speaks for itself and not the masses. Ignore it.” I think a more truthful statement would have been, “If the media calls me on my lies, ignore them.” She even mentions the ridiculous “free Obamaphone vouchers” story. When writing about her and some family members volunteering at a Wasilla soup kitchen on Christmas, she can’t stop herself from going on about losing the election and how she was maligned, her family mocked, their privacy lost. She then bitches about the ethics charges with which she was hit in Alaska: “My approval ratings—which had been the highest in the nation—plummeted.” Merry Christmas, poor people! News flash, Half-Gov: your approval ratings didn’t plummet because you had ethics charges brought against you. They plummeted because people saw for themselves that you abused the power of your office and they realized that you weren’t quite the person you had portrayed yourself to be. She equates the Affordable Care Act with “secular leftists” who view “babies as expendable and older Americans as crippling cost centers.” It’s the death panels again! She just can’t stop herself from regurgitating the same old lies.

Scenariopalooza. We are treated to the inner musings of the Half-Gov’s odd little mind as she regales us with constant fictional scenarios. We start with “Joe McScrooge,” an “angry atheist with a lawyer.” Joe listens to NPR (elitist!), and when he goes to the small town where his ex-wife lives with their son, he is disgusted with the public religious displays. When Joe McScrooge gets to the school, he parks “between two pickup trucks, one sporting a red-and-gold Semper Fi window decal, the other a faded, peeling McCain-Palin ‘08 bumper sticker. Joe audibly gagged.” Audibly! I wonder if he sounded like Sheeba coughing up a hairball? I’d like to think so. We get another pair of scenarios set in 2028, with the Half-Gov visiting her grandson Tripp at the University of Alaska. In the first, atheistic version, the communications director she speaks with wears Birkenstocks, there are gender-neutral bathrooms with foot-washing stations for Muslims, and Pagan and Muslim holiday celebrations occur, but Christian ones do not. In the non-atheistic version, all religions are celebrated—except the Christian celebrations are the best because DUH—and to top it all off, we get to hear about President-Elect Romney and his great hair! The Half-Gov Grammy thinks, “I guess sixth time’s the charm.” By the time I got to the “Joe the Student” scenario, I laughed out loud and thought, “Oh boy, another scenario!” Poor Joe the Student feels persecuted by the anti-Christian policies of his public school, and his parents are too busy with work to push back against the persecution. She didn’t specify if Joe’s dad was also a Joe, but it sure seems like there are a lot of Joes in the Half-Gov’s imaginary world! Personally, I was hoping for a story about Joe the Proctologist or Joe the Male Prostitute, but I was disappointed.

Atheists hate Christmas, the Baby Jeebus, America, and they have no morals. Here we get to the crux of this “book,” which is that “...the ‘war on Christmas’ is the tip of the spear in the larger battle to secularize our culture and make true religious freedom a thing of America’s past.” I call bullshit, Half-Gov. She seems unable to grasp the difference between religious displays on private property and those on public property, as well as the difference between atheists taking offense at the latter as opposed to the former. The vast majority of atheists I know are of the “live and let live” variety. If you want to put up a nativity on your front lawn, knock yourself out. But keep it out of our government offices, okay? She writes, “The atheists are trying to make Nativity scenes such a pain for cities to maintain that the public officials will simply remove all religious displays entirely.” Bingo! Give that Half-Gov a kewpie doll! Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and she got this one right. Until we stop seeing all religious displays in government facilities, I say keep pushing for those Festivus poles. For the record, I don’t know of anyone who sees a Christmas tree (or holiday tree...I don’t care what you want to call it) as a strictly Christian display. The Christians stole it from the Druids, after all. A nativity scene is obviously Christian, however, and if you allow that to be displayed in your county courthouse, you’d better be prepared to allow a Menorah, a Festivus pole, or a pagan display, or any other display that any religious group wants to put up.

As for the “amoral atheists” stuff, I’m going to go into depth here and provide several quotes.

Without God as an objective standard, who’s to say what’s wrong and what’s right? Morality becomes a matter of the human will, as each person decides what’s right and what’s wrong for himself. 

Without faith, I doubt we’d have the love in our hearts that compels one to give, to volunteer, to be kind and loving to our neighbors, and to aspire to live the Golden Rule.

Without faith, we’d be, well, the secular Left—a group that data shows to be notoriously stingy with their time, money, and pleasant attitudes, and that believes ‘compassion’ is best represented by a failed welfare state that traps millions in lifelong poverty and despair.

Left to our own devices, without God in our lives, we drift toward evil.

I call bullshit—again. You DO know that the Golden Rule appears nowhere in the bible, right, Half-Gov? I also find it interesting that you provided no footnote as to your “data” that shows that atheists don’t give their time or money, or that they don’t have pleasant attitudes, or that they have no compassion. You know why? Because that data doesn’t exist. Liar. It strikes me as almost sad that so many people feel that without religion telling them what NOT to do, they would become “evil.” That doesn’t speak very well for you and your pals, does it? So you need to be told not to get all rapey and murdery and junk? Personally, I find that I’m not that way because it’s the right thing to do, both because I value my fellow human beings and because I value a civil society, and want to always try to do what is best for both. I may not always succeed, but I do try, and I somehow manage to keep my vile and amoral impulses in check.
Here are a few more fun quotes and my commentary:

...if you can’t handle protests, then it’s hard to handle other challenges of the job.

Oh, that’s rich! This would be the job that you QUIT halfway through, right? That job? I thought so.

...my friends bobbed their feather-banged heads to “Jessie’s Girl” and “9 to 5” on their headphones (I was more of a Van Halen and Joan Jett-type girl, and to get into a game-day mindset I’d listen to “Back In Black”).

If she listened to Van Halen, Joan Jett, and AC/DC in high school, I’ll eat my hat. I bet she was listening to Debby Boone wailing her way through “You Light Up My Life.”

She mentions her publisher, HarperCollins,

...the same publisher smart enough to publish this book.

That made me laugh.

She writes about the French Revolution and the Jacobins (“radical atheists”) changing street names to remove references to the saints:

We wouldn’t want any Frenchman to be offended and have a totally rotten, ruined day after glancing up at road signs to find his favorite baguette shop.

She really seems to dislike the French. Who can forget the fruit fly research in Paris, France??

I decided to run against good ol’ boy incumbents for mayor, then governor, because I knew the public deserved new energy to get the job done. [Emphasis mine]

Get the job done! That’s a hoot! But you DIDN’T get the job done, did you, HALF-Gov?

To sum up, this was yet another rendering of how the Half-Gov was persecuted and maligned and just plain bullied, gosh darn it. Not only in her brief political life, but those mean ol’ atheists are picking on her and her religion, too. She cherry-picks the words of the founders concerning a religious society, because taking the time to read more about how they felt is just too hard. Check out what Thomas Jefferson had to say about it sometime, Half-Gov, if you can tear yourself away from eating moose chili. Oh, and she includes a few recipes at the end of the book, including one for moose chili, and another recipe for something that I found rather exotic and experimental. Has anyone ever heard of these things called “Rice Krispie Treats”? Sounds really strange to me, but the Half-Gov swears by ‘em. Thank science she included the recipe, because I’m sure I never would have heard about this treat otherwise.

I’m not sure when I’ve read such a steaming pile of literary malfeasance. The Half-Gov is self-serving, self-centered, and completely narcissistic. Her portrayal of her magical, idyllic life (except for that bad spell where her teenage daughter somehow found herself preggers and her and Todd had a fight about it, and then all that losing and quitting and ethics charges junk) reminded me very much of someone we dealt with for quite a while, but no longer have to, thank science. When I was describing some of this to Ken and asked him who it made him think of, he knew exactly who I was talking about, and some of you will, too. There was definitely a feel of the “cozy country cottage” and “little cottage kitchen” (which was actually a small house in a suburb of a small city) in this “book.”

I’ll leave you with one final quote from the “book”:

And yet I’m pegged the idiot by the LSM?

Beth’s Books: Fever Season

Whoops! I didn’t mean to let this many days go by without an entry, but I’ve been battling a cold as well as dealing with lots of wintry weather (piss off, Polar Vortex), so I’ve just been hunkering down and doing some reading.

Today I finished Fever Season by Jeannette Keith, a book about the 1878 yellow fever outbreak in Memphis (as of this posting, the book is only $1.99 for Kindle). Anyone who has been reading my blog for a while knows that I’m fascinated by how disease affects history, and this book didn’t disappoint. Some infectious disease books are about the hunt for the microbial culprit; this is more about the psychological and social effects on the city. (For the record, I like both types of books.) This doesn’t go into any lengthy scientific explanations of the virus or its epidemiology, so it would be easily understandable for a layperson.

Many aspects of dealing with an epidemic are addressed. Sanitation, quarantine, food and water supplies, care for the sick, burial of the dead...so many people were dying each day that individual graves and funerals simply weren’t possible, and mass graves had to be dug. In a Victorian society that placed great emphasis on proper burial and mourning, this was an additional psychological blow.

At the time of this epidemic, the cause of yellow fever and the way it was spread was not known. (It’s a virus spread by mosquitoes.) Much ado was made about proper sanitation and how filthy the city was at the time. Efforts at sanitation and a new sewer system after the outbreak didn’t address the cause of yellow fever, but it certainly would have an impact on general public health and helped to make Memphis an important southern city once again.

One thing I found especially fascinating was the social and racial aspects of post-Civil War Memphis. Black citizens and troops helped to maintain order and were credited with being a big part of keeping things together. Memphis was not a segregated city at this time, and black and white relief workers ate and worked side by side. It wasn’t until the early 1900s that the Jim Crow laws came into being and segregation was instituted in Memphis. Histories of the epidemic written by whites eliminated the important role that blacks played in dealing with this outbreak. It was as though they wanted to deny reality. I guess some things never change! (I’m thinking of that Duck guy saying that he was around blacks when he was growing up, and they were happy and singing songs.)

The book throws in some fairly gory details of the disease (One tell-tale symptom is black vomit, or vomito negro, which consists of digested blood—yellow fever is a hemorrhagic virus, like Ebola. When that starts, the patient isn’t long for this world. One nurse wrote about how a patient’s bed looked like someone had tossed black ink all over it. That’s going to stick with me for a while.), but the main focus is the social and psychological devastation the epidemic brought to the city. It’s hard to imagine the impact that massive die-offs of family, friends, and neighbors would have, even today. Our epidemiology and quarantine capabilities are much better now, but an extremely virulent and transmissible agent would still be hard to contain.

Yellow fever, AKA Yellow Jack, still occurs in Africa and South America.

Beer here!

My immune system is occupied with trying to fight off a cold, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to do an entry. I’ll busy my brain with this while my immune response kicks in. Do your thing, immune system! You rock!

Last night we went to the newly renovated and renamed LaSalle Kitchen & Tavern (née Club LaSalle) for a beer dinner featuring Boulevard Brewing Co. out of Kansas City, Missouri. We had been to one of these before and really enjoyed it, so when Ken get the email that another one was coming up, we thought we’d do another one! This was also our first opportunity to see the renovations at the place. I really didn’t notice much in the way of changed decor, although the sectional couch seems to have been replaced with tables. I’m guessing it’s more about revamping the menu then the decor.

It was a cold and blustery night, and the snow was really flying by the window of the third-floor restaurant, but the place is warm and inviting, and we were happy to enjoy a four-course dinner of yummy food paired with various Boulevard brews. The area rep for Boulevard was there and came around to talk about the brewery and the different beers. Really enjoyed talking to him, even though he didn’t know who the Rainmakers are. (Yes, we asked.)

We started with appetizers, paired with the 80 Acre Hoppy Wheat Beer and the Bully Porter. I’m a big fan of wheat beers, so I really liked that one. The appetizers were grilled ham/provolone/Swiss sandwiches, mashed potato balls, and macaroni and cheese. The mashed potato balls sound weird, but they were pretty tasty, with some earthy mushrooms in there, and a good flavor. The sandwiches were also good, but I stuck with one, because I didn’t want to eat too many appetizers! I made an exception for the mac and cheese, which was the standout for me. Nice and creamy, with a hint of garlic. Delicious! I would eat that for a main course.

The first course was Jerked Shrimp & Scallop with a black bean empanada and mango & papaya salsa. This was paired with Pop-Up Session IPA, a nice smooth, low alcohol IPA. The scallop was wonderful and tender, and the salsa was a fresh, sweet addition to the spiciness of the seafood. The empanada was also very tasty.

The second course was Smoked Rainbow Trout with grilled brioche, fennel & apple horseradish jam, and Bull’s Blood micros. I wasn’t sure what that latter thing was, either, but turned out it was microgreens on top of the other stuff. We had Tank 7 Farmhouse Ale, which was a little heavier than the previous beer. I loved this trout...it was moist and flaky, and the horseradish jam wasn’t spicy at all. It all combined really nicely for a great flavor.

Third course was Braised Short Rib with parsnip purée, thumbelina carrots, and mustard & raisin jus. The beer served was Sixth Class Quadrupel Ale, and yes, that is the way it was originally spelled, so they kept the spelling. Of course, I had to make jokes about quadruped ale and quadriplegic ale. Inppropriate? I don’t know, but I amused myself, if not Ken. I thought this was the weakest course, but maybe I was just getting “fooded out.” The short rib was nice and tender, but I’ve never been a fan of short ribs...I find them overly fatty, and I can’t abide blobs of fat on my meat. [shudder] We both thought the parsnip purée was bland, and the carrots were nothing to speak of. The flavors just weren’t as interesting as the shrimp and scallop, or the trout, in my opinion. However, it was perfectly cooked, not dry at all. The Quadrupel was also a little heavier, but I didn’t find it as one that stood out for me.

The fourth course was dessert, and oh MAN, was it ever good!! It was a chocolate & stout flan with a coffee candy chard. I don’t know if that was a typo and it was supposed to be “shard,” because I know of chard as the leafy greens. This was a chunk of what was basically rock candy, with apparently a little coffee in it. This dessert was absolutely delicious...smooth and creamy, almost mousse-like in texture, with a nice chocolatey-coffee flavor. The beer served was a 2013 Special Limited Release Imperial Stout, and it was perfect with the dessert. Some stouts have a definite mocha flavor to them, and it went well with this. Mmm, thinking back to that flan, I wish I had some more right now!

This was a very pleasant experience for the middle of the week, and we both enjoyed it a lot. I’m sure we’ll do more in the future, when we’re in the mood for a special treat. Club LaSalle may have changed its name, but as LaSalle Kitchen & Tavern, it will remain one of our favorite places in downtown South Bend. It’s a great place to go for a drink after a show, and they usually have musicians on the weekends. I think we’ll keep it in mind for dinners before the show, too. It’s a little more reasonably priced than its downstairs sibling, LaSalle Grill, but the food is also very good. Approved!

Beth’s Books: It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis

I decided to read this book because it was referenced in the previous book I read (and reviewed here), Christian Nation: A Novel. A quote from the Lewis book was used in Christian Nation, and I was intrigued enough that I thought I should read the Sinclair Lewis book.

Boy, am I glad I did.

While the premise of Christian Nation was that the Christian right dominionists take over our government and make America a theocracy, the premise of Lewis’s book is that the far right gains a toehold and fascists take over America. This book was originally published in 1935, when the Nazis were coming to power in Germany, so the timeline makes sense. What is frightening is that both results are eerily similar. In fact, it struck me that Christian Nation drew quite a bit on this book, modeling its theocracy on Lewis’s fascist dictatorship.

In this book, we get everything in fascist America that Nazi Germany had: rapid erosions of freedom, including free speech and freedom of assembly; roving bands of government-sanctioned militia thugs (they’re even called Minute Men...I’m looking at YOU, Arizona!); persecution of seditionists, “intellectuals,” Jews, and Negroes; execution of real and imagined political enemies, or anyone who dares to question the regime; concentration and labor camps; book confiscations and burnings; takeover of the press as part of the propaganda machine.

As in Christian Nation, I was very disturbed at how plausible it all seemed. Check out some of these passages from the book:

Why are you so afraid of the word ‘Fascism,’ Doremus? Just a word—just a word! And might not be so bad, with all the lazy bums we got panhandling relief nowadays, and living on my income tax and yours… [from one of the leaders in the new regime] 

All women now employed shall, as rapidly as possible, except in such peculiarly feminine spheres of activity as nursing and beauty parlors, be assisted to return to their incomparably sacred duties as home-makers and as mothers of strong, honorable future Citizens of the Commonwealth. [from the platform of the new president, Berzelius ‘Buzz’ Windrip] 

...one tenth of 1 per cent of the population at the top have an aggregate income equal to 42 per cent at the bottom. [from a character in the book who is a Communist] 

In the little towns, ah, there is the abiding peace that I love, and that can never be disturbed by even the noisiest Smart Alecks from these haughty megalopolises like Washington, New York, & etc. [from Buzz Windrip’s book—gee, who does that remind you of?]

Any of that sound familiar? If you’ve been paying attention to our current atmosphere in politics, it should. Remember, this was written in 1935.

All is not lost in this alternate reality America. There is a committed Underground group who works to smuggle people across to Canada and to get out the truth about what the fascist regime is doing to its citizens. The main character in the book, Doremus Jessup, begins the book as the editor of the local paper in a small Vermont town. After tragedies in his own family and eventual imprisonment, he wonders:

I am convinced that everything that is worth while in the world has been accomplished by the free, inquiring, critical spirit, and that the preservation of this spirit is more important than any social system whatsoever. But the men of ritual and the men of barbarism are capable of shutting up the men of science and of silencing them forever.

This book is very much worth reading. You might find it a little slow at the beginning, as I did, but once I got about a third of the way into it, the shit really hit the fan, and I tore through the rest of it. If you’re like me, it will make you resolved that such reactionary thinking will never be allowed to flourish in our country, at least beyond a small but vocal minority, and it will make you wonder which side you would be on. Would you go along to get along, or would you work to put an end to such obviously unconstitutional acts? Would you stand by as your colleagues are taken into “protective custody” because you fear for yourself or for your family, or would you fight such tactics in whatever way you could? Would you risk your own life to save others from death or imprisonment? What if members of your own family joined the oppressive regime?

This is a very thought-provoking and disturbing book that will make you realize that its title is a fallacy. I highly recommend it.

Sensory overload

I’m feeling slightly overwhelmed, but in a very good way.

I have so many interesting books I want to read, so much great music to listen to, and so many fun movies and shows to watch that I’m not sure how I’ll ever find the time to do everything that I want to do. I’ve got six months of Rolling Stone issues to catch up on...but that’s okay, because I like saving those for the summer when I’m sitting out on the deck and catching some sun.

It’s a dilemma. First world problems, right?

I find myself wishing that I didn’t need eight hours of sleep to feel my best. If I could get by with six, or even four, think of all the extra time I’d have! I also found myself speculating today that if I had the chance to become a vampire, I just might go for it, because think of all the time I’d have then! Too bad they’re fictional. Lestat, if you’re real, call me!

I’m enjoying the book I’m reading at the moment, but I find myself wanting to finish it as soon as possible so I can move on to the next one. I feel like some sort of intellectual sponge, wanting to suck up as much as I can before I join the choir invisible. It’s not really possible to multi-task with stuff like this, either, not if you want to give things your full attention. I’ll listen to music while I’m reading, but if it’s new music, I want to pay attention to it and listen to the lyrics; I can read while I’m watching TV, but then I’m paying more attention to the book than I am the movie or show.

I feel very fortunate that I have the time to do all of these things and even try some new ones, and none of this is a complaint. Just a happy conundrum! Like the saying goes, “So many books, so little time.”

But how will I ever get to all the stuff I want to do?!

Keys of happiness

I recently mentioned that along with wanting to learn to play a little guitar (that “little” is both literal and figurative!), I also wanted get back into playing the piano.

When I was on Amazon recently, I somehow came across a couple of sheet music books published by Rolling Stone, with some of their 500 best rock songs. It was for easy piano, and I thought it would be a fun way to dip my toe back into the piano pool. Well, I got one of them today, and man, was that ever fun! The first song I played was “Lola,” and then “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” I had to laugh when I saw “Iron Man” in there...that should sound interesting on the piano! I’m also looking forward to putting on some shades and playing “What’d I Say.” Ha!

I’m glad these are super easy, because it’s been quite a while since I played, and I need to ease back into it. It’s not that easy for me, because I never had lessons. I taught myself to play. I’m happy that I had music classes in grade school, and I think I had some in high school, too. Even though I didn’t play in the band, I learned how to read music. I’ve enjoyed playing throughout the years, and I’m happy to have the piano that Mom and Dad gave me. It eases my mind to go downstairs and play for a bit. Sometimes I want to play really loud, but other times I like a slow, quiet song.

I’ve always played mostly classical music, but I can remember buying sheet music for popular songs when I was in high school. I think it will be fun to learn to play some of the songs in this Rolling Stone collection. I know that I’m not very good, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t have fun doing it! I suspect it will be the same with the guitar. When I first manage to play a chord, I’ll probably be like, “This is AWESOME!” Haha!

One thing I’ve tried to break away from is feeling like I have to be some kind of expert at something in order to do it. Very few people are experts at anything, and we shouldn’t let that hold us back from trying and enjoying something. Would people want to hear me play? Probably not! But I know that I have fun doing it, and it makes me happy. I think it’s okay for some things to be just for you, do you know what I mean? Play a tune, sing a song, draw a picture, write a poem, do a little dance, get down tonight! You might surprise yourself, and this extremely rational and scientific person has enjoyed stepping outside my usual boundaries to be a little adventurous and creative. It doesn’t come easy to me, but I like trying.

I see so many people who are afraid to do new things. It’s okay to be cautious about certain things (you won’t see me surfing or whitewater rafting anytime soon—hey, I can’t swim!), but don’t be afraid to take a chance and do something out of your realm. You might have a lot of fun!