More Than Good Enough

Me, Sarah McLachlan, and the bestie, Sara (no "h") And yep, that is the real Sarah McLachlan with her arms around us!

I will be doing a whole lengthy post over here in the next few days, so stay tuned for all the juicy details!

Endless Summer

The last few days (and nights) I've been lost in a sea of human anatomy.  I was supposed to take my final on Saturday, but do not the testing center's incompetency,  they overbooked the spots and had to send three of us home.  I had gotten myself all psyched up to take the exam and be done with it, only to have the wind knocked out of my sails in the form of "an extra two days to study."  That was how the testing center tried to positively spin their screw up: it did not spin me.

I have this problem with details- when there are too many, I start to miss the big picture and focus on the minutiae.  But I know this about myself and that's why I like to write a paper the night before it's due- if I give myself too many days, I'll just keep over thinking and re-writing it until the last minute.  So with these two extra days to study, on top of the last few days before that I'd spent studying, I started to go to the "bad place."  The cards were just not in my favor to avoid it.  We had over 350 slides and another hundred pages of labeling diagrams that were fair game for the final with NO study guide!  Not even an outline of things "to know."  With that much information, I really need some kind of reference to keep me from obsessing about everything that I don't know, especially if it's not even going to be mentioned on the test.

Can you tell that I feeling kinda "all work and no play makes " Katie a dull girl? haha! But I'm very happy that it's over now and I can relax for at least a day or two.  I think I would have done better if I'd taken it on Saturday, but there's nothing I can do about that- hopefully I did okay.  I have my sociology final next Monday night and then I'm done.

One of my favorite things about going to school is that it makes summer so much sweeter.  Whenever I think about the summers of my teenage and college years, the soundtrack in my mind is always "These Are the Days" by Van Morrison.  My favorite lyrics are:
 

These are the days of the endless summer
These are the days, the time is now
There is no past, there's only future
There's only here, there's only now...

These are the days now that we must savour
And we must enjoy as we can
These are the days that will last forever
You've got to hold them in your heart.

The old feelings of anticipations are starting to come back- it makes me feel young again.  I am ready for my endless summer.

Hope For Haiti Now

Justin Timberlake and Matt Morris singing the most amazing version of Hallelujah I've ever heard.

Music Taste, or the Lack Thereof

Over the course of my life I have acquired quite an extensive CD collection. I haven't purchased one recently because of iTunes, but also because it's rare for me to like an entire album. I usually bought the CD if I liked the radio hit (in the days before Napster changed life).

Yes, I guess I could have purchased the singles rather than the entire albums, but that always seemed like a huge waste of money- two songs for $5 or 12 songs for $15? I chose option number two more often then not, unfortunately, I now have a ridiculously large collection of CD's that only have one or two songs on them that I like.


Thank goodness for iTunes and having the option to purchase only the songs you like. The only problem with that is now I never buy an entire album. I could be missing out on my new favorite song because it's not a popular download. Many of my favorite songs were not radio hits, the only reason I listened to them was I heard it when I was playing the CD (also in the days before CD burning was commonplace).


Should Have Bought the Single, NOT the Album

• Crash Test Dummies
• Spin Doctors
• Lisa Loeb
• The Proclaimers
• The Verve
• Keith Sweat
• The Cardigans

The list of my bad taste in music goes on and on and on, but that's enough embarrassment. Noting that my taste in music is somewhat questionable, I can listen to certain albums in their entirety over and over again.

I spent a summer studying in Florence, Italy and the only CD my roommate and I brought was Lost and Gone Forever, by Guster (No iPods then) We must have listened to that CD over 200 times. At night I would take one side of the head phones and she would take the other, or we would just turn the volume up REALLY loudly and listen to it from the headphones, but not on our head. More than any other album in my life, this one truly got even better with time. I never got sick of listening to it and when I play it today I am right back in Florence.

These are the CD's that I can listen to from start to finish, on repeat, for days at a time. My only rule when making this list was that I could only choose one soundtrack and one compilation/best hits. So what albums can you listen to from start to finish? Has iTunes been good for "discovering" hidden gems or has it hurt the concept of an album?

1. Guster- Lost and Gone Forever

2. Billy Joel- The Stranger

3. Sarah McLachlan- Surfacing

4. Red Hot Chili Peppers- By the Way

5. Alanis Morrisette- Jagged Little Pill
6. Weezer- The Blue Album
7. Britney Spears- Oops... I Did It Again
8. Bon Jovi- New Jersey and Slippery When Wet
9. Sublime- Sublime
10. Coldplay- A Rush of Blood to the Head

Favorite Soundtrack- Almost Famous

Runners Up:

1. Elton John- Honky Chateau

2. Carole King- Tapestry

3. ABBA- GOLD- Greatest Hits

4. Lauryn Hill- The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill

5. Empire Records- Soundtrack

I Think Spencer is an Apple Fan

I have been a fan of the PC since I knew the difference between Apple and Bill Gates. Like most children in public school however, we used Apples, big floppy discs, and played mass quantities of Oregon Trail. My family's first computer was the Macintosh LCII, purchased in 1991. When the PC became affordable my dad went out and bought one and I haven't looked back since. By the time I got to high school all the computers were PC and Apple was nowhere to be found. I briefly considered going to the dark side when they came out with colored computers, the iMac, but even the idea of a pink or red one couldn't convince me to leave my Windows.

Years later there was a Spencer who entered my life around the same time Apple stared airing commercials with new songs. If she's crying all I have to do is put on one of those songs and she stops wailing and starts dancing. There hasn't been one song that she hasn't liked. Her favorite was "New Soul" by Naim Yael for the MacAir. She also likes "Shut Up and Let Me Go" by the Ting Tings and Fiest's "1234." I am hoping she won't be seduced by their "hip" advertising campaigns, but it seems almost unavoidable. I hope an ipod will be the extent of her Apple devotion!