After the flurry of NaBloPoMo posts, I really needed a break. But soon after that came my return to the VooDoo, the return of the Saints (WHO DAT!), and a big rush job for myself and Bea, with a deadline of just before the 5th anniversary of Katrina.

So, overall, haven’t been feeling overly post-y. And tonight is no exception, but I actually have some content to write up tomorrow, and I will.

But before then, I have a correction on my last post. While the underlying riff may be similar-ish, I (and Bea) had the wrong song, which we discovered when Bea went back and checked every Opeth track. The track she was whistling was “Porcelain Heart“, but perhaps more specifically a more subdued version called “Mellotron Heart” – Not quite as heavy/metal as ‘Porcelain‘ or The Grand Conjuration, but excellent track(s) still. You can enjoy good quality versions of them here, if you so desire. More on the album via Amazon.

Unfortunately (for me), Mr. Åkerfeldt doesn’t get to do the switch from Cookie Monster to clean style vocals that he does so well, but I feel it’s a haunting song, and I think the video does it justice. And similar to The Grand Conjuration, the video is a full 3 minutes shorter than the song. Both are really worth giving a listen – they’re quite different from the last post, if you couldn’t quite stomach it.

Porcelain Heart:

 
Mellotron Heart:

Slowly, Bea is coming over to the dark side. She likes Slayer, and thanks to Guitar Hero 2, the song Thunderhorse by Dethklok (you know, the fake cartoon death metal band that actually puts out really good metal).

While in the shower, I heard her whistling what I first thought was a track by Opeth. I pretty much wrote it off as her trying to whistle the theme song to Eureka (which we had just watched an episode of) and getting it wrong, when I realized she WAS whistling Opeth’s The Grand Conjuration! \m/

 
The album version of the song is actually twice as long as the radio edit they used for the video. Metal.
 
And yes, I know the phrase from the title is actually “Whistlin’ Dixie”, but the title is the name of the whistling album that my friend Savannah and I want to create. Good old drunken Sunday mornings at Molly’s.

The shutters came back all painted, and were installed today. It’s SO DARK inside!

 

 

Today not only completes my SUCCESSFUL NaBloPoMo experiment, but Peter and Beth’s wedding celebration as well.

While their wedding was a few weeks ago, they decided to pretty much keep it family-only and opting for a friends party later – which happened tonight.

I’m deeply honored to be a part of this for them, and have thoroughly enjoyed the experience as a whole – especially the parts where I got to catch up with family and old family friends.

I’ve only seen 3 photos from the ceremony, but here’s my favorite:

They’re here!

 

 

 

If you couldn’t tell, I’m excited! And now, a NSFW song by my favorite rapping puppet, Lil’ Doogie:

I’m not one who is usually one for giving cards, much less getting them – thank yous, birthdays, etc.

I got one from Bea the other day, attached to a thin gift wrapped in brown paper. The outside of the card is your average run-of-the-mill thank you card (thankfully glitter-free), but it’s the inside of the card that made me laugh:
 

 
The gift was a pack of targets for the shootin’ range. Got a good laugh out of me, and I’m looking forward to going shooting again, it’s been a while.

And out of respect to Pistolette who screens not only her name, but her husband’s and children’s names too, I removed the reference to her daughter at the bottom of the card. What I can’t include unfortunately is the sound of Bea imitating Pistolette’s daughter when she said “You know, like Beeeeeeeeeeeee!”

Many many moons ago ( at least 60, I think ), I built out Molly, a single speed free-wheeled track bike for hauling around town on. I’ve been pretty bored with it lately.

Molly and her flipped and chopped drop bars:

 
Not anymore! I threw some cruiser bars on her, dropped the seat a smidge, and she’s a whole different bike! I love riding it again:

 

 
An unforseen summer-time bonus is that sitting much more upright tends to limit my top speed – in the old config, I think I topped it out at ~32mph on level ground. Not so much now. I still have much higher efficiency than a standard cruiser, so 15mph now doesn’t even come close to breaking a sweat. It didn’t make me sweat on the old setup at that speed, but I tended to just plain ride faster – I couldn’t help it. 15mph or faster on a cruiser takes much more effort.

Tonight, we basically took the night off and had an easy dinner with my parents in their backyard.

In the spirit of taking a breather, goodnight internets, I’ll see you tomorrow. Sometimes you just need to take a break.

I know this post is technically going out on the 27th, but I’m backdating it.

Tonight I had to re-write my recently created DUI.system, because the hard drive it lived on crashed, and I didn’t have a copy of it on a second drive. I don’t know how many times I’ve told people not to trust external drives as the keeper of their primary (or only) copy of something, and somehow, this one slipped by and bit me in the ass.

Derp.

On the upside, the new revision is cleaner and the actual tweet output will be more informative based on the title of the press release. Looking at the old releases, some would have Cancelled or something similar in the title – handy info at a glance, IMHO.

So, the party seemed to go particularly well, and our house is in much better shape than it was 48 hours ago.

On the upside (as if the other parts were a downside), I finally got to see the new Eureka episode. Sweet.

I took some photos of the house, and need to review them before posting them. So, for the meantime, here’s the picture of me balancing on the fence and hopefully committing mosquito genocide yesterday morning: