If you'd like to play along, reply to this post and I'll assign you a letter.
You then list (and upload or link to the video, if you feel like it) 5 (6, 7) songs that start with that letter.
Then, as I'm doing here, you'll post the list to your journal with the instructions. Easy peasy!

semioticwarrior gave me the letter P. Which made me go UGH until I started to think about it for half a second.

• Paint it Black


• Papa Don't Preach


• Parents Just Don't Understand


• Paparazzi


• Peace Train


• People are Strange


• Perhaps Love


• Pink Moon


• Pocketful of Kryptonite


• Possession


• Praise You


• Protection

Like professional baseball players, people in my profession don't succeed every time we step up to the plate. In fact, what's considered a good batting average in baseball (.300) would be a great result for me.

The economy is still in the dumper. Clients are scarce. Competition is fierce. We need to keep our people employed, so we chase a lot of work. This means a lot of failure.

I used to be at peace with this. I could work hard and produce good material, and the end result was irrelevant.

I'm struggling with it these days.

But then, I'm struggling with a lot of things.

In June of 2009, #2 put several coins in the CD slot of the car stereo.

The CD player worked for a day or two, and then stopped.

Several months later, the whole stereo stopped working.

I kept thinking I'd find the time to open up the dashboard, disassemble the stereo and remove the coins.

Hahahahah.

So we've been driving around in radio silence for months and months.

Last week the spousage read about a new car stereo that not only has no CD player (why ask for trouble?), but has a flip-down front panel that cleverly conceals a little drawer where you can put your iPod. No cable clutter, no iPod in the cup holder.

I ordered it immediately, and it was installed today. Hooray, music in the car!

Now I need to load up my old pod with the boys favorite music (and some suitable for grownups) and pop it in.

Though mainly I'm looking forward to having NPR in the car.

Entering the final weekend of my summer vacation, I can honestly say that I am in no way ready to go back to work.

I barely feel rested, and I only scratched the surface of the household projects I wanted to accomplish.

I did make decent progress decluttering the kitchen and hallway, and I also managed to disassemble our old bed (just picked up by a freecycler) and assemble the new one, in the process getting four full bags of trash out of there. But there is still a mountain of laundry, and piles of books, and I remain tempted to put a dumpster on the sidewalk and just toss everying out the window. It's possible that I can make another effort this weekend, but we've got a variety of activities planned that may fill the time right up.

I nearly had a thing-throwing, pill-popping meltdown this morning when, five minutes after confirming that the plumber and tiler were on for Monday, I learned that the porcelain tile ordered for the master bathroom was backordered til August 15th. The nice fellow who took my order had never even called the vendor, or I'd have had enough notice to take my time in choosing something else. Fortunately my father-in-law knew of a local place with a decent selection in stock, and he took me there this afternoon. We found porcelain tiles quite similar to the ones I'd originally ordered, dark grey 1x3s in a running bond for the floor, and paler, larger ones for the walls. Slightly higher prices mean we'll only be tiling two walls, but that's probably enough, anyway. We both fell in love with stainless steel penny rounds, but they were a) special order and b) $45/sf. Sigh.

This afternoon's storms have made it pleasantly cool, and there's a breeze, and there's World Cup this weekend, and birthdays, and babies. So it'll be a good one, my last gasp before getting back to the grindstone Monday morning.

When his preschool class goes outside to play with water, #2 sings Singin' in the Rain.

Today, my last day before departing on vacation staycation til July 12th, I had not one but two proposals due.

I completed the first one by 11 AM, and the second one was ready to be bound by 4 PM.

Since then I've been tidying up my desk and my desktop, and have filed away all recent project-related e-mail.

This should not be as satisfying as it is.

Soon I will walk down to the nearby square and sit on a bench with a book until it's time for our reservation at the pop-up version of Talula's Table. There will be cheese.

And enough wine so that I can truly feel the freedom I'm about to experience.

Sitting on my bed, I can see the moon out my window.

I feel like Harold.

I want to draw myself a boat.

And pies.