He Had Plans to Take Over my Music Library

A while back, I was in my college's production of Twelfth Night. Now, this was great fun and I made lots of new friends. And one of these friends I grew particularly fond of. His name is Damian.

On a regular basis, Damian would tell me that my taste in music sucked (he's a Kanye fan, so I don't put a lot of stock in his opinoin of good music) and that he was going to show me what real music was. One of the many bands he talked about over and over was this British band called Mumford and Sons.

Everyday, he would ask me if I had listened to them yet, and everyday I would have to go "Um, no. It's not really my top priority right now." Finally, he must've gotten sick of waiting. One day he told me to bring my computer to rehearsal. The plan was that he would bring a flash drive with Mumford and Sons on it and I could finally hear them.

That night in rehearsal, I opened my laptop and called for the flash drive. Damian told me to just copy the music folder to my music folder. I said "Okay" and hit copy. The next thing I know, there is a dialogue box popping up, asking me if I'm sure that I want to copy 256 songs to my music library.

"256 songs? Damian?! I thought this was Mumford and Sons!"

"Yeah, that's how it started out, but I was going through my library and I kept coming across songs that I thought you would like. And I put in some that I hope you'll like."

"Aw, thanks. That's actually really sweet."

And thus was born the longest, most awkward mixtape of all time. Thank you, technology.

Also, I think my music library is evenly split between songs that Damian told me about and songs that Tristan told me about.

The Feeling of Something Coming

I sit by the window in my bedroom, listening to records and waiting for the rain.

There is something terrifying about a thunderstorm. Especially right before it starts. I hear the news reports--the baseball-sized hail, the 100mph wind, the flooding. I help my mom gather up candles and flashlights, crackers and water, blankets and shoes (just in case.) I make sure there is a clear path to the storm shelter while she brings in the dog. I take a deep breath because I've been dealing with storms for 21 years and it still gets to me. Still makes my heart beat faster.

Still, it can be so beautiful. The clouds above our heads swirl together, creating patterns that change as often as I blink. The sky is shades of grey and brown and green and the colors of the grass and the trees and even the asphalt seem to be so much more vivid and real. It gets darker outside and the streetlights come on early, giving the neighborhood an unusual, almost supernatural glow. The wind picks up and the trees sway and bend--a dance of foreboding. I look at the trees and understand that something is coming.

I open the window so that I can hear and smell the storm as well as see it. A gust of wind blows in, rustling the papers on my desk and bringing in the smell of rain about to fall. I shiver in the cool air, thinking about earlier when the sun was shining and I was sweating in the heat. The smell permeates my room, making everything smell fresh and clean. The world smells like it is getting ready to start over. Right now, thunder is rumbling in the distance, loud even over the music I've got playing. My record stops and in the sudden silence I realize that I can hear tornado sirens. It reminds me that even though it may not be storming here quite yet, somewhere out there the storm is showing it's power and possibly gathering strength. I feel a thrill.

I lay back on my bed and close my eyes. My heart is beating and there is a smile on my face as I lay still, hearing the first drops of rain begin to pound on the roof.

The Night is Better When it's Spent With Friends

Take this as proof that I had a good night. I'll explain more later.

This is Why I'll Never Own a Robot

There are times when I really just hate technology. Why, you ask? Let me tell you about my evening.

It's a well-known fact that I live for music. Seriously, the only time I don't have my mp3 player on me is when I'm in the shower. Even then it's playing over the speakers.

Well, earlier this evening, I decided that I wanted to put some new songs on the stupid thing. Apparently, that was a big mistake. The entire thing froze up! So, I reset my mp3 player and tried it again. The same thing happened! So I tried again. And again. And again.

I've never claimed to be some kind of computer genius, and I'm not going to start now. There may be many solutions to the particular problem I was having, but I only knew of one. The only thing to do was to delete all of my music from my mp3 player. Now, I'm not completely stupid--I had to delete it, but I didn't want to lose any songs. After going through and double-checking that all of the albums were also in my music library on my computer, I hit the button. Delete.

Since I re-formatted my mp3 player, I had to redo all of the settings I had for how it syncs when I hook it up to my computer. That was fun. Then to the best part.

I am all for conserving space in my mp3 player, so I usually don't put a whole album on it. I'll have the whole album in my music library, but not my player. Because I'm a stickler about this--really. I get kinda obsessive--I had to go through each individual song in my library and put it in the sync list.

I finished that part about an hour ago. I clicked that "Start Sync" button and I waited. And waited. And I'm still waiting. As we speak, it's only about 75% complete. I really hope this works because I'd hate to go through all this work for nothing. Also, because if it doesn't, then I'm out of solutions. Except buy a new player. Which just isn't going to (can't) happen.

I hate technology.

If I ever have to do this again, I'm going to throw something.

On an unrelated note: I have on these fake fingernails and damn, it's hard to type.