Monday, August 27, 2007

pair o' the same

I never seem to find nothing at YouTube, regardless of what I think I'm looking for when I first start looking for that certain song there. And the forces that drive me to YouTube are as varied as the things I end up finding.

Earlier in the evening, The Boy was lying a few feet behind me, doing that four year old kind of thing where he lays in the floor with a pair of Lego people in his hands and sings or quotes some random thing he's learned. Tonight it happened to be him doing the spoken beginning of an instrumental song by English punk legends The Toy Dolls.

"Aaahh, a nice relaxing evening, in the bath," I hear behind me. At first it strikes me as odd, though he likes The Toy Dolls, he hasn't mentioned or even asked to listen to them in some time. I confirmed that was what he said then proceeded to find that cd, so we could listen to the song.

As the song began, The Boy stated that he wanted to see the video.

"I want to watch the video," he said.

"Uuuhh, this is a cd. It's just music," says I, "But after this song we can find a video."

I went ahead while the song played and searched the YouTube for The Toy Dolls. The first song that jumped out at me was Wipeout, that ever popular gem of surf guitar, so of course we watched that. The Boy watching a band on YouTube is basically me watching while he goes off to play and notice if for some reason I minimize the video so that I can do something else since he's not watching anyway.

So we get The Toy Dolls doing Wipeout, but I can't leave it at that. Their video is fun to watch embiggened because it's all pixalated and trippy. There is a second version as well, though a different band. Version number two is The Ventures, also good for the large version so that you can try to keep up with the drummer during his parts. And speaking of parts, part of me feels as though I may once have posted this. Even if I did, I say fuck it, because you could probably stand to hear The Ventures more than you do.



perhaps?

Dark clouds have slowly settled on us, having peered at us from the distance or blown right past us on the edges throughout the day. It was a day filled with promise, but all too often, the rain we need in the valley finds itself falling on the mountains. We in the valley have seen that plenty of times.

We are a ten minute drive to downtown. Momma works downtown. In the past two weeks we have had showers at home that she did not see at work. The showers were quick and torrential, the first being late in the evening and able for just that evening, to cool us down and bring some small respite. The second was mid day, and provided us one of those lovely southern steams. If you ever get to experience a mid day rain steam in Atlanta, by all means do. We don't get it that bad here in TN, but I always fear it.

The clouds are upon us, and in the distance we see more darkness piling on, but also in that distance we hear thunder. It's late in the evening, we really need a good rain, and all signs are leading me to expect rain. I'd love two straight days of showers, but assuming it does not move on into the mountains, I think we can expect something much quicker, something that tempts more than delivers. By morning it will most likely have completely left us, left us so much that even the grass is dry again.

last call

No, not that kind of last call, because this is a happy post, and the thing about the usual last call isn't happy.

I've finally called and verbally communicated with the last parent of my soccer team members finally. It's taken over a week, only part of which was my accidentally not signing the volunteer form. Some of it was just never happening to call at the right time. Considering my own homebound-ness, I have to wonder what all these people are doing.

So, nine U10 families later and five U6, everyone knows. One U10 missed a week of practice already, entirely because I didn't get in touch with the family in time, but I did try. I really use that first week to spend 30 minutes of an hour practice asking kids their names or guessing at their names, often wrongly, so his missing wasn't that big a deal. I will say that Thursday's practice had me getting most names right, but I haven't met the U6's yet. That's five more brand new kids, and I so totally suck at names.

And I'm ever so happy to have finally called all these lovely people. Now my only concerns are getting these kids in shape for their first game in two weeks. Most of my U10's seem excited and ready to learn the game. There's always that one kid that is easily distracted, and usually I get two, only one of which is Big Brother. I also have a kid that I kind of expect to never really like team sports; there's just something about him, demeanor or something, but I could easily just be seeing things that aren't there. Maybe he's just shy. I'll do my best to see that he has a fun and happy season, but I really get a feeling that he's not going to ever grow into a sports fan. And I don't care, just so long as he has fun.