Some Twilight thoughts....

I came upon this video on youtube when I finally gave in to my otherworldly cravings for all things Twilight. Not that I'm sorry, this is a beautiful song, if you are looking for it, it is actually Yiruma - River Flows in You. It has been quite a day, and quite a journey from my hiding-under-a-rock (kidding) existance to my outward love and appreciation for Stephenie Meyer. If she only knew what an exponential rate she made fans since fans DO buy the books for other people THEY love. There is a huge outpouring of creativity I've seen on youtube, from fan trailers and clips to art, music, poetry, you name it.

This song was listed as 'Bella's Lullaby', it isn't the real one, the one Edward plays for her, but in my opinion this would have been perfect. This makes me think a bit ashamedly about all the piano lessons I turned my nose up at... boy did I hate to practice. I can still play, if I want to. There are songs I remember from memory and I can pick out tunes, not play the pieces though. One odd thing about me though is that I don't read music. I play from hearing it, from memory. It still takes me awhile to learn and I make mistakes but it's how I learn.

Back to the whole Twilight subject, I cannot figure out how I didn't manage to see any movie trailers for it, nothing online, no book reviews. The one thing I remember seeing and hearing a lot was 'Edward Cullen' and I passed that off as some adolescent thing. I do watch prime time tv and I'm online all the time! Because of this I am unsure why I didn't pay any attention. The books are BESTSELLERS, everybody is reading them. The movie was a huge deal, I guess people were camping out and waiting for tickets. I have to thank my sister for the nudge, she bought me the first book for Christmas. I didn't even begin reading it right away, since I was reading something else. Well.... I started reading. Then I bought the rest of the books. Edward and Bella are hard to ignore.

To explain a bit for some folks (if you've read the books, you know what I'm talking about) I am completely sure that Bella BELONGS with Edward. There is some odd push for something to happen with Jacob, but Jake is her friend, her best friend. While some friendships do evolve, they usually do that in the absence of a relationship at all. Even though Bella somewhat hides the seriousness of her relationship with Edward for awhile, it doesn't change the fact.

I am actually considering this saga as something like the fairy tales of today, you know how as kids we had the fairy tales about Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty and any manner of princess or maiden who gets rescued by the prince or knight on a white horse - what if today's version is a small town accident-prone girl who gets rescued by a hundred year old vampire who looks 17? I'm a fan of modern fairy tales. It's not a bad way to be rescued since most of us aren't as helpless as the princesses of that time.

Men are crabbier when hungry... and the post office doesn't tape boxes...

This is the secret of life! Ok, I'm kidding. I had two revelations today. First that men are crabbier when they are hungry, and this theory has been proven over time. I'm actually cooking right now while I'm typing this, err... well I'm letting the oil heat up again. We have a wild windstorm raging outside, I am too close to a window so I swear I feel the draft coming through it! Back to the hungry issue. I am fairly domestic and I usually like to cook. I have two 'boys' that live with me, the big one and the small one. Of course the small one is now bigger than me but I call him the small one because he's younger than me. When they are hungry, they are more likely to get snippy about things or ask me about food.

Now I don't get this. When I'm hungry, I go to my kitchen and I fix myself something, OR if I don't feel like cooking, sometimes I will go out and GET myself something. I don't grumble at people that I'm hungry! If you're a man, please advise me why it seems to be this way. This is NOT to say I do not take advantage! I truly do take advantage because it kills two birds with one stone.

On to the post office issue. I found out today that the post office does not tape boxes. They also do not add any packing stuff to your box for you. The guy went as far to say he would sell me a roll of tape but I said - excuse me, do I look like I have a tape dispenser or a pair of scissors in my purse? If you cannot tape the box, it's not going to matter. After that, I asked him if I could just buy my postage label because then I could leave and take my box somewhere else. He refused to sell me a postage label. You know what? I am done with the postal service. I have a mail center a mile from my house. THEY pack boxes. They TAPE boxes. They add extra cushioning or packing material so the stuff I'm sending doesn't break, fall out, etc. They are very nice. They just cost me about five bucks more than USPS. I also have a UPS store close to me and they are just as helpful. I am really just shaking my head about the whole thing.

Coffee. Finally coffee. I love coffee. Especially Starbucks coffee. I grew up where Starbucks started, in the Pacific northwest, near Seattle. However I have noticed something that really bothers me. It's super good coffee - but is it worth almost $4 a cup?? Can we say economic meltdown? I'd sacrifice two Starbucks locations in my town if they'd cut the cost by 50 cents lol. Yes you got it, I think there are 5 Starbucks within a 5 mile radius of my house.

My music box

I often wonder what draws people to their listening preferences... their 'music box'. I hear various people say that their influences are this person or that person, this artist, this band, that sound. I admit I don't always hear whatever they are talking about. What I focus on instead is the feelings invoked for ME, thoughts, memories and yes... questions. I suppose I am a hard sell, most of my favorite songs have much more going on under the surface than meets the eye. I am not a mathmatician, I like words. Of course since I have a little girl this also equates to 'itsy bitsy spider' tossed in with a slice of 'So What'.

My playlist is eclectic, a combination of genres, decades. I have tried without success to create things such as 'driving audio' or something to play when doing distasteful tasks like cleaning my house. I have found lately that it's better just to turn on whatever sounds good to me at the time. I listen to a lot of different things, familiar as well as new just in case something jumps out at me. Is that what you do... or do you stick with tried and true? I do not love everything, I'm not even an artist addict, religiously following someone like Deadheads did or the merchandising nightmares that plague parents of most teenage girls....oh wait, YES I did belong to that group in the early 90s =P These days I guess I am more selective, what speaks to me might not mean anything to the majority of people I rub elbows with but that doesn't matter. I always believe in taking the good in something and leaving whatever doesn't apply - and this makes sense in music and most other parts of life itself. I do believe now more than ever that messages present in music connect people to each other, sometimes beyond this life. At the end of last year someone I hadn't known very long was suddenly gone.... but what he listened to made a difference for me.

As a recent avid watcher of youtube, I have been seeing a lot of user created videos and I'm fantasizing about making some of my own.... but how do you make a tribute of seemingly unrelated things? One of the coolest things I saw lately was a vid done for a contest (long over) combining Peter Petrelli (from Heroes) with 'Godspeed' (a song from my favorite band Anberlin) and I thought it was brilliant. Too bad I didn't think of it... but that's what I get for discovering the draw of youtube so late. Of course if you want to pick things apart even more, that's not the only thing I discovered late.... but that's for another episode.