Hi, I'm Kara Shallenberg, a.k.a Kayray. I knit and make free audiobooks for LibriVox. Find me on Mastodon, if you like: https://zirk.us/@Kayray.
New video from Ok GO and it’s as good as you’d expect. Youtube won’t allow me to embed it, so just hit the link and go watch, and then watch again and again because there’s a lot to see. It’s a beautiful piece of performance art.
I hope someday we get to see a “making of” video!
Perhaps you have listened to and enjoyed my recording of C.S. Forester’s out-of-print children’s book “Poo-Poo and the Dragons”? Well! A commenter has just let me know that you can now purchase an ebook of “Poo-Poo and the Dragons” with the original illustrations! So if you enjoyed my recording, please support this publisher and buy your own copy of this wonderful classic.
http://enetpress.com/books/Poo_Poo_and_the_Dragons.html
(Yeah, I wish it had been reprinted in paper as well as digitally, but we have to take what we can get, eh?)
My sister and her husband and their almost-one-year-old drove all the way from the Bay Area to San Diego, stayed for two days, then drove back up to LA for the little one’s first birthday party at the in-laws’ house. It’s too tiring for me to make that journey for the party, so I’m extremely grateful to them for making the extra journey to see us SD folks!
We spent one day just hanging out and chatting and trying the make the baby EAT something, lol. She was very distracted by the cat (so soft and fascinating) and all the unfamiliar people. She has just learned to walk, so naturally she walked non-stop around and around and around the living room! And tried to eat the cat’s dry food whenever we stopped watching her for a split second. Yum? Sweet girl! Here she is in the cotton lace dress I knit for her:
The next day we went to the fair. First we looked at the big Beatles exhibit and posed on the life-size Abbey Road crosswalk:
Then we ate (Roxy!) and looked at the woodworking and the animals and the slicer-dicers and watched the Swifty Swine pig races. It was a long and tiring day, but very very fun!
It’s hard to believe we have to wait until April of 2015 for more Mad Men. ARGH. And even then, it’s the end of Mad Men. Peggy knows how I feel:
So, back to the beginning and watch it All. Over. Again. (and again, and again, and again. I can’t count how many times I’ve watched the whole thing. Henry and I are near the end of Season 2 at the moment.)
Henry started watching Mad Men over from the very beginning so of course I’ve watched a few eps with him! Lol. Tonight we watched “Red in the Face”, “The Hobo Code” and “Shoot”. So good, so good. I’ve always loved the outro song in “Red in the Face” and tonight I finally googled to find out what it is. It’s Rosemary Clooney singing a saucy little song called Botch-a-Me, (anglicization of Italian “baciami” = “kiss me”). I found several recordings on youtube but I like this live (!) version best:
Rosemary Clooney singing “Botch-a-me” on the Colgate Comedy Hour in 1952.
Start at 2:54:
How adorable and charismatic is she? My goodness, I can’t take my eyes off her. Henry googled: she’s George’s aunt. We think we see a resemblance around the eyes and cheekbones.
Lyrics:
Botch-a-me, I’ll-botcha you and ev’rything goes crazy
Bah-bah, botch-a-me, bambino
Bah-bah-bo, bo, boca piccolino
When you kiss me and I’m a-kissa you
Tra la la la la la la la la loo
Bah-bah, botch-a-me, my baby
Bah-bah-bo, bo, just say “Yes” and maybe
If-a you squeeze me and I’m a-squeeza you
Tra la la la la la la la la loo
Bee-oo, bye-oh, bee-oo, boo
Won’t you botch-a-, botch-a-me?
Bee-oo, bye-oh, bee-oo, boo
When you botch-a-me, I a-botcha you and ev’rything goes crazy
Bah-bah, botch-a-me, bambino
Bah-bah-bo, bo, boca piccolino
And then we will raise a great big family
Tra la la la la la la la la lee
Botch-a-me, I’ll-botcha you and ev’rything goes crazy
Bah-bah, botch-a-me, my baby
Bah-bah-bo, bo, just say “Yes” and maybe
If-a you squeeze me and I’m a-squeeza you
Tra la la la la la la la la loo
Bee-oo, bye-oh, bee-oo, boo
Won’t you botch-a, botch-a-me? SPOKEN: Kiss me!!
Bee-oo, bye-oh, bee-oo, boo
When you botch-a-me, I a-botcha you SPOKEN: C’mon a-you, kissa me, eh?!!
Bah-bah, botch-a-me, bambino
Bah-bah-bo, bo, boca piccolino
And then we will raise a great big family
Tra la la la la la la la la
Bee-oo, bye-oh, bee-oo, boo
Botch-a-me, bambino, botch-a-me
SPOKEN: That’s nice!!
The Two Towers, Book 2, Chapter 10 (the last chapter!)
Two Towers Bk 2: 10 The Choices of Master Samwise
Tonight I am feeling a great sense of relief because I have extricated myself from a relationship that wasn’t working for me. Instead of freaking out and doing something rash and then second-guessing myself into misery, I gave it careful thought for a full week before making a decision. SB is a sweet, kind, loving person but he’s just not the right man for me.
Yesterday I ended it with him, and this afternoon we did the Exchange of Personal Belongings, so now it is well and truly over. I feel as if a cloud of stress has evaporated. I even feel somewhat less depressed than usual. Heh.
I think you can probably look forward to another chapter of Tolkien tomorrow, unless it turns out to be a Random Tired Day. :)
The Fair is almost here!
Last week I dropped off my entries for the Home and Hobby show. The shawl is a Jared Flood pattern: Girasole, which I knit once before in blue worsted to make a sofa-blanket for my mom, but the flowered hat is my own design. Fingers crossed for a blue ribbon!
After a little hiatus due to ill health (ruptured ovarian cyst, OUCH) I’m back with another chapter for you. Enjoy!
The Two Towers, Book 2, Chapter 8
Two Towers Bk 2: 08 The Stairs of Cirith Ungol
Another chapter! I’m really going to town, here.
The Two Towers, Book 2, Chapter 7
Two Towers Bk 2: 07 Journey to the Crossroads
Golly, Faramir is great. So truly noble! This is my first reading of The Two Towers in over ten years, so a lot of it is unfamiliar, i.e. I can’t recite it, like I can The Fellowship. So all this Faramir-being-awesome stuff is really fun to read!
The Two Towers, Book 2, Chapter 6
Two Towers Bk 2: 06 The Forbidden Pool
I think I have a crush on Faramir.
The Two Towers, Book 2, Chapter 5
Two Towers Bk 2: 05 The Window on the West
Sam finally gets to see an Oliphaunt! :)
The Two Towers, Book 2, Chapter 4
Two Towers Bk 2: 04 Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit
Last Saturday was International Tabletop Game Day (or something) and there was a big event at Game Empire, my local game store. SB picked me up in the morning and we zipped over there on his little Honda and played board games with STRANGERS for a couple hours (but I survived because they were board game nerds and board game nerds are my people). First we played King of Tokyo, which I had never played before and which was quite fun, and then Carcassonne, which I own but had never played with five people! Everyone was nice and I had a good time. I would have liked to stay all day but I am trying really hard not to get overtired and freak out like I did a couple weeks ago.
Yeah my self-inflicted emotional turmoil is all resolved. Long story, but I figured out why I freaked out (which had nothing to do with SB, really) and explained and apologized and I think SB understood and he seems to have forgiven me for being a psycho idiot that night and everything is good and I am very happy to be with him :)
Yesterday was a beautiful warm sunny day, up in the 80s, so SB picked me up in the afternoon and we rode his Honda down through PB and up to La Jolla and found a beautiful grassy spot on a cliff and watched the birds and the surfers and skimboarders and even saw a sea lion making her way up the coast! It’s sooo much fun riding on the back of the little Honda. We rode down all these narrow little back streets in La Jolla and looked at the fancy houses.
And today I spent mainly lying on the couch, recovering from going out yesterday. It’s very very frustrating to know that I will pay for a couple hours of fun with, potentially, a few days of being so tired I can barely move, but oh well, that’s how it is. At least I have a comfy couch to rest on. And QuizUp to amuse me. If you have an i-device or an android device and you enjoy quiz games, install QuizUp (it’s free) and play with me! Search for “kayray” and, from among the multiple kayrays, choose the one with the same picture that’s on the top right corner of my blog here.
Oh, here’s a hat I knit a couple months ago:
I’m taking this super-great class on coursera, “Music’s Big Bang: The Genesis of Rock ‘n Roll” and I’m learning so much! I don’t usually do the peer-reviewed assignments for coursera classes, because in my experience my peers tend not to understand how to grade things fairly, but the assignment for this class is to make a timeline, which not only sounds like fun but will also really help me to retain the things I’ve learned.
So while looking around for free online timeline tools, I bumped into someone else’s timeline of memes. I managed not to get too distracted, but I did notice the entry for “literal videos”, which I had forgotten about. Remember those? Most of them have been taken down from youtube for copyright infringement, but I did find the first one ever made, “Take Me On”, which is pretty great, and an old favorite, “Under the Bridge”.
“Sometimes I sing under lights that are purple. Sometimes I’m shirtless, and I tilt my head…”
I managed to stop looking for Literal Videos and worked on my timeline a bunch today. By the way, there’s plenty of time for you to catch up if you want to join me in the class. We’re only three weeks in and the deadline for the weekly quizzes isn’t till the class ends in May.
Regular readers might notice that I’ve taken down a few recent posts. I’m going through some personal problems and it was really helping me to write about my feelings here, but I was starting to have difficulty in deciding how much to share and how much to keep to myself. I need to make all those posts private so I can keep writing about my Difficult Situation without editing myself too much.
Many thanks to all of you who messaged, commented, and emailed. Your emotional support really helped.
“Dream a Little Dream”, played a bit shakily on the ukulele. Not perfect but good enough to share :)
The chords are here: http://www.alligatorboogaloo.com/uke/tabs/050811.html
(I skip the A6 chord in the bridge; it’s difficult and unnecessary.)
