w00t w00t booyah

I'll be blunt. Yesterday sucked so hard, we all gained a few pounds by gravity. Seriously.

Then the day ended. Night began - and everything got a whole lot better. (At least for me. You guys?)

My kid took his nap at daycare. Small potatoes, maybe. But it was an immediate difference on the arrival home, getting up this morning - everything. You just don't function well on no sleep - and for a wee man of four years, getting those two hours in the afternoon is just critical. He may not think so - but with the transition load on him right now, the emotional fragility just ramps up enough to catch in my throat when he doesn't sleep. And he doesn't sleep because he's worried. Maybe even a little scared. So yeah, I went to daycare at naptime yesterday and talked to the teachers...but didn't actually interact with kiddo. Helicopter Parent R Us, mebbe. But he slept - and slept again last night more normally - and headed in this morning in a better place. Total win.

That Idiot from South Carolina (really, who's paying attention to names right now) has done something I'm sure he hadn't intended. His challenger for his seat in the next election is fund raising LIKE WHOA overnight. Even better - said worthy is an Iraq War veteran to boot. YOU LIE has a whole 'nother connotation to those guys, lemme tellya. And people who really weren't all that interested in party unity? Uh, right. They're plenty interested Right Now, baby.

If you have a healthy sense of gallows humor (and I do) - this is just popcorn and ticket selling time. AH-mazing.

Someone I found while being Cliff's caregiver was Jennifer Louden - a self-care maven. For me, some times she gets too focused on the inner life for my comfort level - but she's on Twitter, and this morning, found some gold I think everyone needs - This is where you save me - ...there are these moments when we are revealed. There are these moments where our face powder and our deodorant and our hip red glasses and our clean counters and our eating salad one bite at a time all go flying out the window.

What I really want to say is that when people break, it happens by surprise.

Go take a look.

For me, candy corn is in my immediate future (like right after I hit the post button) - so it's all good here. Giddy good. I'm enjoying it, believe me.

I got this album when I was down sick with the Expensive Mystery Poo Disease middle of the summer - matter of fact, I ended up using it almost entirely to keep myself from passing out behind the wheel on the trips I made up and down the 405 to see the Amazing Poo Doctor of Beverly Hills, nearly every day for a week, when I was at my sickest.

The Album? cadhla's Stars Fall Home.

Probably the first thing I should tell you is that I ordered three more copies as soon it was possible to do so.

The second thing I should tell you is this is the only way I've ever heard Seannan sing. I bought the first album, the one-time live performance from OVFF, Pretty Little Dead Girl because, well, too many people on my FL who had actually been there were about frothing at the mouth over the performance.

The disc did not disappoint - except to whet the appetite for what might come out of the same material, if it could be done in a studio, controlled under those circumstances and given the loving care a talented producer could give it.

Heh.

When I imported the new disc into iTunes, it showed up as "Folk." Well, it's filk - and about things I'm not immediately familiar with and in some case, not interested in at all. No matter.

It's a very mixed bag of style, instruments, arrangements - with an intricate lyrical style. She includes the lyrics in the liner notes. You won't need them. You can read them, of course, when you're aren't listening to the CD - but you won't be guessing at what's being sung. She's just that good at getting the words threaded through the notes - she knows the words matter.

One of the best parts of the album? How well the last track leads into the first one. No kidding. This album can loop forever. Track #15 leads into Track #1 flawlessly - and you feel like you're listening to it again for the first time without noticing that - oh - you're not.

There's the review. Now - onto the critique. ( Gloves=OFF )

*whew*

I got this album when I was down sick with the Expensive Mystery Poo Disease middle of the summer - matter of fact, I ended up using it almost entirely to keep myself from passing out behind the wheel on the trips I made up and down the 405 to see the Amazing Poo Doctor of Beverly Hills, nearly every day for a week, when I was at my sickest.

The Album? cadhla's Stars Fall Home.

Probably the first thing I should tell you is that I ordered three more copies as soon it was possible to do so.

The second thing I should tell you is this is the only way I've ever heard Seannan sing. I bought the first album, the one-time live performance from OVFF, Pretty Little Dead Girl because, well, too many people on my FL who had actually been there were about frothing at the mouth over the performance.

The disc did not disappoint - except to whet the appetite for what might come out of the same material, if it could be done in a studio, controlled under those circumstances and given the loving care a talented producer could give it.

Heh.

When I imported the new disc into iTunes, it showed up as "Folk." Well, it's filk - and about things I'm not immediately familiar with and in some case, not interested in at all. No matter.

It's a very mixed bag of style, instruments, arrangements - with an intricate lyrical style. She includes the lyrics in the liner notes. You won't need them. You can read them, of course, when you're aren't listening to the CD - but you won't be guessing at what's being sung. She's just that good at getting the words threaded through the notes - she knows the words matter.

One of the best parts of the album? How well the last track leads into the first one. No kidding. This album can loop forever. Track #15 leads into Track #1 flawlessly - and you feel like you're listening to it again for the first time without noticing that - oh - you're not.

There's the review. Now - onto the critique. ( Gloves=OFF )

*whew*

Gods, I don't time to do this justice.

Suffice it to say, some of the circles I travel in don't intersect the ones where the filkers on my FL live - and this is as good a time as any to rectify the situation.

Folks, you gotta give this a try. Seriously. There aren't many better times - someone needs your help.

From cadhla:

A fire sale is what you have when the house is on fire and you need to get things out of it, right? 'Here, buy my stuff before it gets smoke-damaged'. Well, a very good friend of mine has a house that's on fire right now, and that means I'm having a fire sale to try to help her put it out.

For the next week, all proceeds of sales from my first album, Pretty Little Dead Girl, will be going straight to her and her family, to help them get through a rather nasty financial crunch -- basically, she starts her new job in two weeks, but until then, there's no money to do fun things like 'feed the resident small child' and 'keep the electricity running'. If we can manage to sell forty copies of the album, at $15 a pop, we'll raise six hundred dollars, and get them through this stupid speed bump.

To order Pretty Little Dead Girl and donate the proceeds, go to:

https://www.seananmcguire.com/secure_order.php

Put 'fire sale' in the comments field. We still have to charge postage (and the international order surcharge, for people outside the US), since I don't have any money either, but all actual sale-of-CD proceeds will go straight to the donation pool. I'm probably going to do a few art sales or auctions to help this along, later in the week.

Please, feel free to repost this entry, modified as necessary, especially if you have a reading list that differs substantially from mine. The fire sale will run from Thursday, June 28, through Thursday, July 5.

I'm going to mention something - read very carefully. She apologizing because she can't comp the postage because she doesn't have the money either.

I love her pieces for being honest - and for not doing anything less that what she possibly can for a friend.

This is her first album - I reviewed it some moons ago, so I can vouch for the Good this is -

I'll have this album and the new one, Stars Fall Home at AX this weekend, if anyone wants a listen. I will write the review for SFH as soon as I can do it justice - and that's more than the fifteen minutes I'm taking for this, yo. ^_^