Domestic Geek

I usually avoid MTV and current pop music nonsense, but after seeing so much buzz about this on blogs and message boards, I had to view it for myself.

Wow.

Once upon a time, Britney Spears had it. Marcus was obsessed with her. In fact, he once told me that if he should ever have the chance to be with her, I'd be history. Well, fortunately for me, her total downspiral as of late has made that possibility null. The mere fact she popped out kids turned him off. Couple that with the addictions, the white trash behavior and the irresponsible attitude, is it any wonder she no longer holds appeal for a lot of men?

Anyway, not one to usually kick people when they're down, I was really hoping she'd clean up her act in rehab. If not for her, then at least for the poor children she brought into this world. After that humiliating display on the MTV VMA show the other night, I see that hasn't happened. You'd think if you were going for a comeback, you'd try to sober up. The girl looked drunk, high or both. Clumsily stumbling around on stage lip-syncing poorly to her own music with absolutely no passion whatsoever. Her backup dancers were more into it than she was. People have been knocking on her weight. While I don't think she's fat by any stretch, she definitely had no business on stage in a skimpy bikini.

I was amused by the horror-struck and disbelieving faces in the audience, especially those of her peers and fellow singers. It was most definitely a train wreck of epic proportions. If you haven't seen it for yourself, I'm sure the opening video of Britney over at the MTV VMA page will be available for a bit. If not, there's a low quality YouTube video in the extended.

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It's been a roller coaster weekend.

Yesterday, I put in another few hours at work trying to catch up on some of the file room work that I've fallen behind on being so busy. I was having second thoughts about going, but since I really need the cash right now, I sucked it up and went in. Last night, we (Mike, Nina, Marcus and myself) went to Rodezio Grill downtown to celebrate Mike's and my birthdays. They have some really good food there, not to mention handsome men dressed as Brazilian gauchos bringing you meat carved off of a sword.. I ordered a beer and that thing was HUGE! Way more alcohol than I was used to and all it did was make me really tired and unable to sleep. After we stuffed ourselves with grilled meat, we exchanged gifts. I got some gift certificates and Marcus got me a NAPP membership (National Association of Photoshop Professionals). That was so thoughtful of him! I've been wanting to join that organization for years, but always talk myself out of spending the money.

Except for being totally exhausted, this morning was cool. Marcus and I headed over to LePeeps for breakfast. When we got home, I had a whole list of things I was going to tackle and take care of today. It went downhill from there. We ended up having to have one of our rabbits put down. The vet suspects she broke her back (apparently a common rabbit problem). While trying to drag herself around, we think she either dislocated or broke a leg. We decided it wasn't fair for her to live like that. Poor thing. We got raped financially by the vet. He called beforehand to get a quote on the cost and what they told him was only half of what it really cost. They neglected to mention the cremation cost on the phone. They charged more to put a rabbit down that it did to put our dog down last January. Not cool. The receptionist was kind of thick, too. It's a good thing the vet herself was compassionate and smoothed things over a little. Marcus still will probably write a letter to complain about how it went.

After that, Marcus totally forgot that he needed to run over to work this afternoon to take care of something. After doing that and grabbing some stuff at the store for dinner, the day was pretty much shot. I had hoped to accomplish some blog stuff today, but this is about it. I'm off to bed for rest so work tomorrow doesn't totally suck. Hopefully I'll get something accomplished tomorrow.

OK, I got Expression Engine 1.6 all installed over at my domesticgeek.com. Got the databases and everything set up with the host all by myself. I'm so proud. Everything I set up on this domain database-wise has to be done by Marcus. I just need to finish the darned theme I'm working on and we'll go live over there. w00t!

Back when I was a music student in college in the late '80s, I was introduced to the most fabulous piece of music software called Finale®. Many of the graduate composition students wrote their scores with it. When I was student teaching, my mentor also had it and used it to write practice drills for her students. It was the top of the line music notation program back then and I'm happy to see that they are still the premier software package available for musicians, composers and music educators today.

It truly is an amazing tool and easy to use. It now includes a lot of sound libraries and you can import music clips, as well. It certainly has come a long was since its early midi playback.

I see that the company that produces it, MakeMusic, Inc., also has a piece of software called SmartMusic®. It's a music practice program, even providing accompaniments for the popular Rubank series. I wish that had been available back when I was studying music. Perhaps I would have taken it more seriously and better a better musician through its use. There's a wonderful tour on their website describing how this program works.

So if you're a professional musician or a student, go check out MakeMusic's site and see these and the other wonderful computer software titles they produce. There are free demos available for download. It's making me want to get back into music again.

NOTE: I think this was a paid post at one point, but I'm leaving it because the software really is awesome!

It's starting to feel like fall in the morning. I love it when there is just a tiny cool nip in the air.

After the super busy last two weeks at work where the supervisor realized I could've been more help had I been trained to be an operator already, I finally started learning how to do that yesterday. Wow, there is so much to do to get customer files ready to print. If one doesn't already exist, I'm seriously considering starting a blog to provide tips to designers to make better files. When I first when to a DMG meeting, I couldn't understand why designers and prepress people hated each other so...now I get it. The majority of the fault lies with designers who don't really understand the printing process or how to provide usable files. Just because you can kind of get around a page layout program doesn't make one a good designer. Just sayin'.

Vegas is looking less and less like a reality. I'll wait a couple of weeks to rescind my vacation request at work, but I don't have the money to go and don't see getting it in time either. I also decided that I'm really going to get serious and get the embroidery business I want up and running in the new year (I really want my own business and don't want to be working where I am in 5–10 years). Going to a blogging conference when I'm sick of blogging just isn't making sense. While I'd love to see the gals I've met online there, it's not enough of a motivating factor when I have a goal I want and need to achieve. I still want to go to Vegas, but I want to make sure I have the funds available to do all that I want to do there (i.e. a Blue Man show, a Cirque show, etc.) I also really want to go with Marcus, so that means driving and even more time off from work. I may make plans to go spring or something when I actually get paid vacation time from work.

OK, even though I took a 3 hour nap when I got home from work, I'm tired and have to get up for work in five hours, so I'd better head off to bed.