<Sunday, July 27th, 2008> [Vincent]
Pricing music...
I had a discussion with coworkers the other day about buying music. Basically it came down to this: people under thirty don't pay for music, people over thirty at least try to.
This made me think that the music promoters need to realize this and segment the market. Music for people over 30? Keep making CDs and actually put a price tag on the electronic versions.
Music aimed at people under 30? The electronic versions should be nothing but promotional materials. Albums are irrelevant. Release songs as you see fit, when they're ready, or when they'll make the most impact. Whatever.
Make other stuff for youngsters to buy. Shirts. Posters. Books (I have a gut feeling there's a market for gorgeous Coffee Table books, as sick as that sounds). I know you can get these things in record stores, but when was the last time you went to a record store? Is there a really good online shop for band paraphernalia?
Charge for the stuff that used to come with the physical discs that nobody wants anymore, but make it better. Some vinyl used to come with posters and photographs, but they were always cheaply made. Why not sell really nice prints either in book form, or loose for putting up in your locker, or in your cubicle? How about schwag? I'd love a Cake mug, and son of a gun, they make one (I wrote that before checking their site).
.:.
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<Monday, July 14th, 2008> [Amy]
We're number six!
On Money Magazine's list of the Best Places to Live, that is. We love Norman, but it's validating to hear that the experts do, too.
Cafe Plaid and OU football are NOT among the reasons I love Norman, however. I question whether the person writing the article actually visited Norman. Instead of Cafe Plaid, I would have plugged The Mont--a historic campus bar with a paradisical patio and potent frozen drinks called "Swirls".
In place of OU football, I would have touted the various free outdoor festivals that draw crowds--Jazz in June, Medieval Fair, Summerwind, etc. Don't get me wrong--I love the rah-rah Sooner spirit. But home games are fun for the fans that descend on Norman--not its residents.
They didn't even use a photo of Norman. That's Oklahoma City pictured in the article. Our town has more trees. And $135k for a starter home? We paid less than that for our house, and while it needed a ton of work, it's on one of the prettiest streets in town.
What I like best about Norman is the University itself, and all it brings to the town--energy, diversity, creativity. I'm looking forward to being a student again this fall.
.:.
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<Saturday, June 28th, 2008> [Vincent]
Go boingo!
I'm sitting at Newark waiting for my plane to board. There is obviously a weather problem somewhere, as I'm surrounded by unhappy people and screaming toddlers. Who needs a nap?
I fired up a browser hoping that one of the free sites offered by the overpriced wireless provider would be weather. Much to my amazement, there was an option to get 15 minutes of free wifi in exchange for watching a 15 second ad. You can only get 4 free blocks, but that's an hour in exchange for watching one minute of ads. That's a better ratio than tv.
update: This only appears to work from the iPod, and I imagine the iPhone. This must be a promotion to try to get iPhone users to sign up for boingo since it's bound to be faster than the phone network. To get it working from a Mac, you have to spoof the User Agent. iPhoney does that handily.
.:.
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<Friday, June 27th, 2008> [Amy]
Hypothetical
Over at their blog, our friends Kelly and Pat ask, "what would you do if you won the lottery?" I can't really answer that, as I would never buy a lottery ticket. Not that I think that there's anything wrong with games of chance. It's just that my experience has been that money creates as many problems as it solves. But I agree with them that I could never get enough of travel. And the way airline ticket prices are rising, it may take winning the lottery to travel in the future.
Here's my hypothetical question: What would your perfect house look like? Some friends of ours are considering custom-building their dream house, and I just read today about a woman in CA who's building hers from a recycled 747. I realized recently that our current home is fast becoming the house of my dreams.
V and I agreed long ago that our perfect home, if we were ever to build it, would have a ground floor consisting entirely of a gigantic open kitchen, with dining, seating, and work areas clustered around it. With the removal of the wall separating the kitchen from the dining room, that is basically what we have.
We also agreed that we'd like as much of the "guts" of the house exposed as possible. We like the industrial look. In our current home, we've painted the concrete slab downstairs and the plywood subfloor upstairs. Our next step towards making this house the home of our dreams will be to tear out the drywall ceiling in the kitchen to expose the joists and diagonal fir decking of the second floor.
As for exterior aesthetics, we like the look of contemporary mountain cabins. Our house has a steeply sloping roof with an A-frame front porch--very cabin-esque. The siding, however, is an un-cabin-like mix of wood, aluminum, brick and faux-stone. In the future, we may hire a contractor to tear off all the siding and replace it with cedar or redwood, which we would stain.
We will likely build a large deck off the south side of the house, under the trees. We may or may not replace the window in the living room with french doors leading onto this deck. If money were no object, I'd also build a second story balcony off the girls' bedroom and connect the two with a spiral staircase. Then I'd switch bedrooms with them.
We like the blurring of the line between indoor and outdoor space, and it was partly to that end that we replaced the old aluminum single-pane windows with new energy-efficient double-pane vinyl ones. Now we don't have to cover our windows, and we can see our beautiful trees from every room. Which brings me to...
Trees. We agreed that our dream home would be surrounded, and preferably hidden from the street, by mature trees. Guess why we bought this place? It was the dozen enormous blackjack oak trees on the lot. They make all the work we've done, and will continue to do to this house worth it. At night, when I lay in Nev's bed with her and gaze out their window at the stars twinkling through the open canopy of the oak tree, there's no place on Earth I'd rather be.
.:.
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<Sunday, June 22nd, 2008> [Amy]
Life as art
Thanks to everyone who's been complimentary of my artwork and/or supportive of my education plans. It's incredibly validating to hear friends and family say things like "you undervalue your talent". Not only is it a huge boost to my ego, it makes me feel like I'm on the right track.
I couldn't get motivated to do a drawing last night, despite having a great subject picked out--our ukelele. Then I realized that I'd already expressed myself in other ways yesterday. I shopped for perennials for the garden (lamb's ears, stella d'oro daylilies, walker's low nepeta), and created a new recipe for dinner: salmon in a white wine beurre blanc with fresh thyme from our garden. I'd exhausted my creative impulse.
It got me thinking about the various ways V and I express ourselves here at home. Our yard and our house, both inside and out, look like no other on our street--or that I've seen, for that matter. V has really knocked himself out on the kitchen remodel, and the new room has quickly become our favorite in the house. It seems he is constantly tearing out cabinets, installing light fixtures, upgrading plumbing, assembling furniture, and reworking layout and flow.
The garden is my domain, and I've planted over 300 plants, 100+ varieties, in a dozen beds around the yard. We've got a vegetable and herb garden, a butterfly garden, a rose border, a woodland shade garden, and an orchard. The herbs are the most rewarding plants for me, because I also use them in cooking. As vegetarians, we need all the flavor and fresh ingredients we can get.
What I got from my time at FCI was the basic culinary skillset to create good dishes from scratch without recipes. I'm not a health food nazi, by any stretch, but I do "shop the perimeter" of the grocery store, avoiding prepared/preserved/packaged foods. An unexpected side benefit of this approach to meal preparation is that the girls think that cooking is fun, and are always eager to help. More importantly, they're willing to try any dish they've had a hand in preparing.
In short, I'm proud of the fact that we manage to find opportunities for creative self-expression in our daily lives. But I also realize that, at least for me, creativity is a finite resource. If I ever want to make a living doing art, I'll have to ration my creative impulses, and save some for my work.
.:.
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<Monday, June 16th, 2008> [Amy]
Double digits
Until two weeks ago, I hadn't drawn anything in years. Now I've done ten drawings in eleven days. I'm not equally proud of all of them, but I am proud of their number. I'm even more pleased that I've almost managed, thus far, to keep the promise I made to do a drawing a day. I missed Saturday, but that's because we had my brother, sisters, niece and nephew over. Family is more important than art.
Tonight's drawing is a colored pencil of a yellow calla lily from my garden. Not a success, in my mind, but a failed experiment that taught me several things.
One: florals are infinitely more compelling subject matter when larger than life. The drawing's two feet tall, while the actual flower and leaf's less than a foot.
Two: colored pencil doesn't lend itself to two foot tall drawings of a single flower and leaf. The hatch marks are distracting, and I had to keep stopping to sharpen the pencils. I will go back to Michael's tomorrow and buy my favorite medium--pastels!
Three: colored pencil doesn't ERASE. The calla leaf is spotted white. I was counting on being able to erase spots from the leaf after I colored it. Oh, well.
Did I mention that I GREW that flower?
.:.
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<Friday, June 6th, 2008> [Amy]
Starving artist
The prospect of taking Foundation Drawing this fall when I haven't drawn in years is intimidating. All those 18 year old art prodigies accustomed to juried shows. I need to get my drawing skills up to speed, but I lack motivation and discipline. A friend turned me on to fat cyclist, a blog by a guy who thought he'd humiliate himself into shape by posting his weight loss online. That gave me an idea. I'll do one drawing a day between now and the start of the fall semester, and I'll post the results here. If my math is right, that's 80 drawings. In honor of fat cyclist, I hereby dub my project "starving artist". I just finished and posted my first drawing, a still life of my beloved Sennheiser headphones, done in a small sketchbook with a standard #2 pencil. With a little planning and foresight, I might have gotten the big newsprint sketchpad out of the back of my car and used charcoal instead. And next time I'll certainly take the finished drawing outside to photograph it in sunlight. But the important thing is, I did it. I drew something. I kept the promise I made to myself. No excuses. I think it's a respectable first effort. And more importantly, I discovered that I still love to draw. Expect to see many more drawings, and hopefully some improvement. I've got a lot of catching up to do.
.:.
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<Thursday, June 5th, 2008> [Vincent]
That was stupid
While working on the kitchen, I broke one of the many rules of dealing with a blade -- never point it at yourself. I cut a nice clean cut in the meaty part of my hand below the thumb with a box knife. I cleaned it out, then nearly passed out. Once I got through the shock, I drove myself to the urgent care facility clutching a kitchen towel.
Ten stitches, a tetanus shot, and two prescriptions later, I'm home feeling stupid.
.:.
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<Sunday, June 1st, 2008> [Amy]
His, hers and... yours!
Anyone in the market for a pair of road bikes? We've listed our his-and-hers Trek Pilot 1.2s on Craigslist, but I'll post them here as well:
Two Trek Pilot 1.2 road bikes for sale:
2006 Trek Pilot 1.2 54 cm woman's road bike in Lava Red. Aluminum frame with carbon fork and seatpost. Bontrager Race Lite aero wheels, red Hutchinson Top Speed Kevlar folding bead tires, Terry woman's Butterfly CroMo saddle, Crank Bros. Egg Beater C clipless pedals, wireless computer, two nylon bottle cages.
2007 Trek Pilot 1.2 58 cm man's road bike in Silver/Black. Aluminum frame with carbon fork and seatpost. Bontrager Race wheels, Terry man's Falcon leather saddle, Crank Bros. Mxr clipless pedals, two aluminum bottle cages, pannier rack, mirror.
These bikes would be great for a couple looking to get into cycling together. Each cost $1,000 new, with upgrades. We'll sell them for $700 each or $1300 for the pair.
Vincent's more comfortable on his Rans V-Rex recumbent, and I'm upgrading to a Terry Isis, a lighter bike with better components and racing geometry. But I owe my passion for cycling to this little red Trek. Anyone else want to fall in love with a sport?
.:.
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<Sunday, June 1st, 2008> [Amy]
Sprechen Sie Deutsch?
Overheard in the Bumgarner household this evening:
Vincent, installing cabinet hardware in the kitchen: *Unintelligible exclamation*
Amy, upstairs in her office: "What? Don't yell something unintelligible when you're drilling into our brand-new cabinets!"
Vincent: "I said 'BEAUT!'"
Tori, playing computer games in the living room: "I'm intelligible!"
Tori: "I'm also German."
.:.
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More rambling...
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