nextstepz

The NYT review of this example of absolute, total perfection in automaking was the first thing I read this morning:

http://www.autointell.com/News-2006/December-2006/Dec-1/Dec-06-06-p5.htm

I would do practically ANYTHING to have a white retractable hardtop convertible of this baby. Yeah, you heard me. I'll diet just to live up to this vehicle's appearance. I must have it. I will have it.

Gaaaaaaaaaaah.

Posted by nextstepz at 4:39 PM | Permalink | Comments

I'm not so good at this diary-keeping; there seems to be too much going on to do it lately.

Drum corps camp was really good this weekend. I hope they'll make a move this year; that'd really be good, plus it would mix up the top 12. The DH was extremely pleased with the number of kids returning from the summer.

I think the kid may have a chance to audition for the youth brass band at the Dozier Centre, and we're all very enthusiastic about that.

Time to get going on Christmas shopping. I like to track down gifts that are inexpensive but clever and unusual, so it's a real scavenger hunt. Boy, is online shopping better than doing the drive-and-shlep routine.

This is a dull blog :-(

Posted by nextstepz at 10:21 PM | Permalink | Comments

Wooooo, a week of good days in a ROW. It's awesome! And my jeans are getting baggier by the day, yaaaay!

Got all the outside lights and the Christmas tree up today, the kid got a 96 on a physics project which gives him an A in that class, and his new trumpet mouthpiece came in the mail today (not much time to test drive it, but he loves it), and we went to a swell concert by the Georgia Brass Band at the new Dozier Center for the Arts tonight. All in all, just a great day all around. I'd never heard a brass band before-- very unique sound, and they played Saint-Saens' Marche Francaise which I hadn't heard since we played it for festival in symphonic band in nineteen seventy-cough-cough-cough. There were some moodier special arrangements I absolutely adored (especially the one inspired by an island off the coast of Scotland) and they finished up with one of my favorite pieces of music for this season, the oh-so-British The Holly and the Ivy. "and the running of the dee-ahh" - I can just hear it being sung. Saw our friends Scott and Jerry, who were performing. The Dozier Center is a PALACE, and the minute we win the lottery, we are SO having it duplicated in Jacksonville, Alabama! Seriously, the Dozier Center is MUCH swankier than Marietta CC, which is just across the street from it.

Okay, so here's some feelgood stuff for the weekend:

My all-time fave 60's song, "Be My Baby" by Ronnie Spector and the Ronettes, lip-synched (ya can't have everything) on a 1965 B&W tape of the old National Bandstand clone, "Shivaree": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDwDdA8wVa0

Sisters Veronica (before she became Mrs. Phil Spector) and Estelle Bennett and their cousin, Nedra Talley, look so darling with that fabulous 60's big hair and sweet sheath dresses. They look cute and classy, and happy that they've got a hit.

Cool article I found on a back-dated online Salon magazine, about what makes "Be My Baby" such a pop music masterpiece:

http://archive.salon.com/ent/masterpiece/2002/01/28/be_my_baby/

(I'm sorry about the lack of hotlinks... this version of the Blogger software is still in Beta, and it shows.)

I love 60's *anything*.

Have a great weekend, whoever finds this...

Posted by nextstepz at 12:58 AM | Permalink | Comments

What an awesome thing to do -- props to my distant cousin Ted Paris (two grandparents were siblings, however that works out) for his part in making sure almost 11 square miles of Paulding County, Georgia are preserved as green space!!! Thumbs up for Janice's boy (his mom is also 10,000 kinds of terrific):

http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/stories/2006/12/01/1202metforest.html

Posted by nextstepz at 1:39 PM | Permalink | Comments

Two *really* fascinating things:

1. http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/space/11/30/astronomy.calculator.reut/index.html

2. http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,72199-0.html?tw=wn_technology_3

CERN got a plum role in Dan Brown's "Angels and Demons". Say Dan, when's that next book due out, anyway?

I'd better go tackle that pile of stuff on the desk. It multiplies when no one's looking, y'know.

Posted by nextstepz at 12:14 PM | Permalink | Comments