Monday, July 31, 2006

Getting Out of Dodge

I am heading to New Hampshire tomorrow for a much needed week of downtime with the family. We are staying in a home on the Pemi River owned by some friends of ours- no phones, internet, or TV, just the river and mountains, and the obligatory trip to Storyland with the little ones. It will be good to escape the madness on the Cape for awhile and chill in the mountains. See 'ya all soon.


Listening to: Brad Mehldau- Art of the Trio 4

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Back In the Saddle

Inspired by Fern over at Impervious Surface, I recently tuned up my fourteen year old mountain bike and have set a goal for myself to commute to work on it at least two days a week. I bought my Stumpjumper back in college and it is still as solid as ever, though I rarely ride it off road these days. I looked at some new bikes, and I would love to have this one, or this one, but I just can't justify spending the money right now, plus I still love my old Specialized. The frame and drivetrain are in great shape, but some of the other components were getting tired, and it really needed to be tuned up before I started relying on it to get me to work. I didn't want to spend a ton of money on it, but I did splurge for a nice set of tires, sort of a hybrid trail/road tire that will be perfect for the 12 mile round trip commute. Now if our town would just invest in some decent bike lanes, biking here is sort of like playing Russian roulette.


Listening to: The Be Good Tanyas- Blue Horse

Tuesday, July 04, 2006

New Tunes Tuesday

Is there anything better than free music? I recently received a $50.00 gift certificate for Amazon for completing some educational consulting survey online, took me about 30 minutes. I haven't bought any new music in quite some time so I decided to use it to buy some CD's I've been wanting. I have a list of 20-30 albums I want, but when it comes down to only being able to buy four, the choice isn't so easy. I wanted to get some tunes I wouldn't find in the used bin at my local record shop. So here is what I ended up with:

Destroyer- "Destroyer's Rubies"
Bill Laswell- "Imaginary Cuba"
Neil Young- "Rust Never Sleeps"
Neil Young- "Freedom"

I recently saw Destroyer open up for Magnolia Electric Co. and I was blown away by Dan Bejar, looking forward to digging into his albums, and I figured "Rubies" would be the place to start. I am a big fan of Bill Laswell, I love his interpretations of the music of Miles Davis and his recent journey into the Trojan dub catalog, and I have heard great things about this album, should be a cool album to chill to this summer. The Neil Young albums are ones I have never owned on CD, but have always been meaning to pick up. "Freedom" is the album that turned me on to Neil way back in high school.

What would you buy if someone handed you $50.00?