Friday Random Ten

"We Are The Dinosaurs" by Trout Fishing In America* on Big Trouble
"What's In A Name" by Petra on Beyond Belief
"The Me Nobody Knows" by Marilyn McCoo on The Me Nobody Knows
"No Holly For Miss Quinn" by Enya on Shepherd Moons
"Rock 'N Me" by Steve Miller Band on Greatest Hits
"Sweet Little Loving" by White Lion on Pride
"The Joker" by Steve Miller Band on Greatest Hits
"War Child" by The Cranberries on To The Faithful Departed
"Dying Man" by PFR* on Goldie's Last Day
"Famous Last Words" by Jars of Clay* on If I Left The Zoo

This week appears to be an identity week -- we're everything from dinosaurs to unknown to a joker to a child of war to an adult at the end of life. We like rock and loving (okay, I'm stretching here to keep to the theme), but overall we may not be ready for our last words, depending on who we know. Interesting stuff, that iTunes.

Next week, I'm planning on employing Pandora for this space to see what it gives me based on my seed group or song. Should make for some interesting collections of stuff, and some discoveries, and I'm looking forward to seeing what comes of that. Plus, I need to add some new stuff to my iTunes library for future listening.

* Acts I've seen live

Where Ye Be Going?

In a recent perusal of the keywords that have brought unsuspecting people to HIAHS, I found some special selections. These are generally phrases that really make me wonder how search engines work. In the "Go Figure" category, we have:

court martial for heather post -- Currently, I'm wondering if Heather Post is being court martialed, or if someone was looking for a post on the court martial of a more generic Heather. Regardless, there is no past, present or future court martial for this Heather, so you may want to move along.

green jelly -- Apparently, once upon a time, I had a Friday Random Ten that included a song by a group of this name. Never even knew I had such a band reflected in my collection. Clearly from a mish-mash CD of random stuff. Meanwhile, if you are hoping to find out about jelly made from pears or granny smith apples or grapes or jalepenos, you should look elsewhere. At least until I post the recipe for such things.

french bread varieties -- I'm no expert, but I thought there was just the one variety. You know, French bread. For more options, find someone who knows stuff.

derailleur? i hardly knew her! -- People actually put these kinds of things in search engines?

chicken marsala when you are pregnant -- I can vouch for chicken marsala being tasty, but I have no insight into how that might taste when you're pregnant.

Also, in the "Maybe I should Collegify My Vocabulary" category, apparently "um yeah" and "eh" also brought people to my blog. Of course, if that's how they are searching, I assume their expectations of the content here should be similarly low, and that could be a good thing...

Recipes are Good Blog Fodder

Last week I was in North Carolina visiting my sister. I was there to go to her graduation and her commissioning as a Naval officer, and stuck around the whole week, because traveling from one coast to another and back just for a weekend seems silly. I worked from her apartment for the week while she went to work, and then we hung out at night doing various things -- chilling in bars where a guy tried to pick up yours truly, doing karaoke where another guy tried to do the same, sucking at trivia, and just generally drinking too much and being out too late. It was a good week.

Anyway, by Friday night, I was pretty tired. My sister informed me it was my job to plan our evening's festivities, and I was really itching to cook. So I did. And I even had access to recipes from home, just via an internet connection.

Isn't the internet grand?

Tiptoe Through The Tulips: Cymbidium (Boat Orchids)

This homely plant looks remarkably like an iris with its long straight leaves and its clustered appearance.
It just sits in the back against the fence, quietly enjoying life, until the day comes along that it POOF blooms all over the place. That day was recently here at the HIAHS household. Here you can see one of the stems with several flowers on it.

You can also see a closeup of the flowers here:

Gorgeous little orchids that they are, my identification journey took me to find that they are most likely in the Cymbidium genus, and are also known as boat orchids. While I'm likely going to kill this plant with its watering needs (don't let it get dry, but don't let it be too soggy), it appears to thrive with the cool nights we have here. Plus, it is definitely an established plant, so I'm hopeful that with that on my side I won't do so badly. Meanwhile, it's good to know what I should be doing with that little guy.

More to Learn, Eh?

I stole this meme from Niobe. The rules aren't too hard:

1. Click on this link. The title of the page is the name of your band.

2. Click on this link. The last four words of the final quotation on the page are the title of your album.

3. Click on this link this link. The third picture is your album cover.

4. Take the pic, add your band name and album title.

I'm not particularly artistic, but I do like the result I came to:

It's pretty basic, so I'm not too sure why I like the end product so much. I think I like how the album title is almost nestled in the safest part of the flower, just waiting to be pushed out into the crazy world. I feel that way, sometimes, in my more depressed and sentimental moments. And I can imagine that I have enough of those to make a whole album from them, were I able to write music.

I would love to see the results of anyone that does this -- include the link in the comments, or if you just can't add two lines of text to a JPG, include your resulting band and album names in the comments, instead. I hope most of you that read this will participate. What if I say, "Please"? Please?

Friday Random Ten

"We Live" by Superchick on Beauty From Pain
"Overweight" by Blue October on Foiled
"Three Little Pigs" by Green Jelly on Dr. Dememto 25th Anniversary
"You Lord" by PFR* on Pray For Rain
"Sara" by Fleetwood Mac on Greatest Hits
"Pat A Pan" by Mannheim Steamroller on Christmas Live
"Solid As The Rock" by Michael English on Michael English
"The River" by Rich Mullins* on The World As Best As I Remember It, Vol. 1
"Lullaby" by Trout Fishing in America* on Big Trouble
"My Home Town" by Tom Lehrer on Songs & More Songs

This was a nice Friday afternoon mix of stuff that makes me wonder if my iTunes pick different stuff when I'm not at home. It wasn't a particularly Carolina-esque grouping, but it was mellow and very enjoyable.

* Acts I've seen live

Lo5tr0c%$

I recently changed my main password at work, so I can now share what my last one was. The title of my post is the password I used to get into my computer, several tools I use frequently, to get to about 3 other computers that I use regularly, and to get my email over the web. Not surprisingly, I typed it a lot. And every time, it made me smile. I know that's not a password's job. It's supposed to be secure, and I darn well think it succeeded. However, this password is a morphed version of:

LOST ROCKS!!!!!

So that's what I thought everytime I typed it, and that made me happy to think about. That password almost lasted me the full season, and I appreciate that happy spring pick-me-up that I've had.

Season 3 started to drag a bit, but season 4 has made up for it with a vengeance! There is a whole lotta story left, and just two more seasons. Can you tell I'm going to be in Lost withdrawal when I have to wait until the next season starts? Well, I will. Check in on me periodically -- I may have to write some of my posts from the Santa Rosa Mental Hospital if things get too bad!