The Jack Noodle Journal

Michael Jackson died today. He was 50.

I thought it was important to make note of it here in the journal as the future Noodle would look back at this post and remember the date.

It was a weird day. I watched the news unfold on the internet while at work like I did on September 11th, 2001. It was kind of creepy watching all the different sites proclaim him dead when actual official confirmation didn’t come until later in the day. It makes you wonder how accurate our news sources are these days. There was minute by minute updates. Live video feeds from a helicopter above the hospital. My Twitter feeds seemed to have second by second updates and rumors.

Yeah, I know. Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, blah blah, YAWN. Enough already. I am about done with the whole lot of them, but I’m saving that topic for another post. YAWN to the whole internet I say!

I was pretty sad that Michael passed. Before it became official news I was really hoping that it was just a rumor and he was going to jump out and say tah dah!

Everybody loved the “Thriller” years of course. As a kid we were definitely wowed by his moves. I think it’s a shame that all the coverage so far today in what I’ve seen in the media of his life is focusing heavily on his troubled freaky years. The man was a genius folks!

I’m not going to any memorial services and don’t think that I have any of his albums anymore, so I’m not weirding out about it. I’m not playing “Billy Jean” and crying as I type this. I just thought it seemed like an important moment to make note of.

Oh yeah. Farrah Fawcett died today as well. Cancer. So bizarre how she started the day as the top news story and is now bumped to page 2. That’s strange. We’ll forever remember her now dying on the same day that Michael died. Maybe we’ll remember Michael dying on the day Farrah died?

Mr. Baptist, K and G are still at the beach. I am at home alone with the dogs and cat.

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Hello! Yes, one of these days I will start posting more blog entries I swear.

I had typed this one out last week, but didn’t get around to posting it. It’s kind of a bummer post. It’s good to include in the journal though as I am still pondering it’s topics. Plus it’s a lot of typing to not make use of. I am in much better spirits this week so far. I may post a part two to continue where I trailed off at the end there.

It goes something like this:

I guess I have been wound up pretty tight for the last couple of weeks.

I have been uncontrollably annoyed as of late. Quick to anger. You know, it’s the same old crap. It seems like millions of little annoyances are joining up into one giant beast and smashing into my skull. I’ve been grumpy, bitchy, and curmudgeonly. Oooh, surly is a good word too. Not being able to get a hold of my bad-tempered unfriendliness feeds my surliness.

I became more aware of my shaky mood this morning when some annoyances dissipated, a couple of Etch-a-Sketch items were shook back up to a clean board, and I instantly felt better.

K just informed me that I needed to cross check the Journal archives because I am again repeating myself about how much of a bad mood I am in. What? Really? Well yeah, it looks like I was writing about being pissed as recently as February. Thanks K. You know how I hate to repeat myself too much here in the Journal.

Well, not to belabor the point too much and create more of a rerun than necessary, I need to calm the hell down, try to relax and get unwound.

I can put labels on most of the things that are troubling me. That’s a good start I guess. Sleep deprived, poor time management, poor financial planning, poor diet, lack of exercise, over-indulgence of spirits, general lethargy and laziness.

My biggest problem over the last few months has been a deficit of creativity. I have been feeling stagnant in my creative expressiveness. I haven’t been making anything.

Oh gosh, boo hoo!

Maybe here lies a chicken or the egg question. Did my deficit of creativity come from a deficit of inspiration or is it the other way around?

I went and saw “Terminator Salvation” with my aunt Gina a couple of weeks ago. I loved going to the movies with my auntie! Boy what a stinker Terminator was though. Really? Another installment of the Terminator franchise? Why? It was one of those movies again where you could totally see how annoyed they were that someone was making them put a story in. The robots (for the most part) were awesome, the explosions were spectacular and the sound effects were ear burstingly cool. The special effects were nice on the eyes. Remember how blown away we were when we first saw the liquid terminator in Terminator 2? There wasn’t anything mind blowing in the current installment. Maybe the movie viewing audience has seen it all now and aren’t impressed with computer effects anymore? I know I’m not.

I left the movie theater uninspired. I felt like I had seen a really cool, instantly forgettable, 4th of July fireworks display (they’re not). This is when I started to ponder again my lack of inspiration…

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We pounded out some major yard work yesterday! I am sore today.

Thanks once again to Seth and Alicia who helped with the holly tree pruning and front yard clean up. Cutting and picking up the hundreds of pounds of pokey leaved holly branches is hard work! We were offered some dumpster space so we tried to cut down as much as possible.

The yards are coming along. It’s quite enjoyable and relaxing now out back sitting in a lawn chair. It has been therapeutic for me getting outside and working. We built G Noodle a nice sandbox in the back that he has been having lots of fun in. K has gotten seeds and plants put in her raised bed gardens. It’s going to look great once stuff starts growing.

This year we are going to have corn and sunflowers on the side of the house like we had four or so years ago. A whole row of corn and sunflowers will be cool over there.

The weekend of sunny weather was just amazing.

Most of the Memorial Day weekend was spent at Lianne and Martin’s. There was a big leaving for Germany send off, overnighter, camping sleep over, croquet competition. What? Oh, you hadn’t heard? Yeah, Lianne and Martin are leaving for Germany for a couple of years. Stupid Germany.

We tried the camping thing out with the G Man sort of as a test run at the shindig. It didn’t work out so well. G wasn’t able to settle in and fall asleep in the tent. He ended up getting pretty cranky. Not use to his surroundings. We had to go home and come back the next morning.

It might be a little soon this year for camping with G. Maybe we could set up the tent in our backyard and try to get some camping practice in that way?

If last weekend’s fun is any indication, I think it is safe to say that this summer season coming up may be the best summer ever!

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Hey there.

Yes, well we did it. We headed over to Radio Shack last night and purchased our digital converter box for the television. Now when the analog blackout comes next month we will be safe. You know, not being able to see broadcast television leaves you open to terrorist attacks and the swine flu. Also the King of England can come in to your house and push you around if you can’t get your “must see TV” signal. Yes, I was planning on protesting the digital switch by not upgrading. Yeah.

Hey, be warned though, those government issue coupons that you receive actually expire. Our converter box coupons were a year old and the cashier wasn’t able to fudge it for me. While I was complaining to the store clerk about how lame it was that the coupons would expire and trying to figure out a loop hole to get my 40 bucks off, it suddenly hit me. I’m a cheapskate! I don’t want to spend the money to get cable or satellite TV, and I also moan and grown because the 40 dollars off coupon on my free digital broadcast TV expired.

The reason we jumped up to the modern digital world finally was to see the season finale of LOST last night with a crystal clear picture. It was magnificent. Not sure why we didn’t upgrade earlier in the season. We had been watching it all season with fuzzy analog reception.

So how’s about that LOST season finale? It was something else wasn’t it? It was pretty awesome. I did have a few problems with it right after I saw it and thought about it for a bit. After sleeping on it though I’m okay with it. LOST wouldn’t be LOST if it had more answers than questions right?

I was a tad annoyed at all of the quick fixes and things they seemed to be throwing in all at the end. The Jacob business seemed a bit rushed. After reading a few comments on the internets though, I guess that’s the way they had to do it so as to not show their hand to early. Maybe they could have had Jacob show up earlier in the season and just not said anything about who he was until later?

I was definitely surprised and shocked by the big surprises they dropped.

They are going to have to do a lot of explaining, hole filling and loose end tying when next season rolls around.

LOST is an amazing series when you figure in how much it has turned upside down now in season 5 compared to where they were in season 1. K and I were laughing a couple of times this season at how absolutely bizarre the show would seem if you tuned in to watch it now without ever having seen it before. I like that it doesn’t make sense unless you have watched all of the episodes. Well, actually after watching all of the episode there are still some head scratchers.

Overall it was a great season finale. There were hundreds of marvelous cliffhangers that made you sick to your stomach when you realized you had to wait 8 and a half months until the next (and final) season starts to see a new episode.

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Yeah, yeah. What’s up? How’s it going? What’s been happening?

Not much going down around these parts. Well, that’s not true. We’ve been pretty busy with this and that. I’ve been keeping my head down while pushing forward. I haven’t had any journal worthy topics burning a hole in my skull lately. I know. I’ll try to do better. I need to force some typing time into my schedule.

I’ve been working and thinking about working quite a bit lately. That’s not fun. Necessary though. Oh and I’m not complaining. Working is good. There are other folks at the office that have been working more hours than I have. Our little universe hasn’t heard about the economic downturn yet. Hopefully it stays that way.

I mowed the lawn for the first mow of the 2009 season Monday afternoon. Yes. I cut the grass on 4/20. It looks pretty good. I think now that the second mow of the season is usually the best our lawn will look all year. I might mow again this weekend.

I mowed the lawn last year for the first time on April 12th. I remember it quite well. That was the day that K went into labor. It’s a funny post because it was the post the Journal was stuck on while G was entering the World. A couple of you knew what was up and thought it kind of odd that the Noodles had been so quiet.

K has declared it the year of the yard. We are going to make an effort to spend more time out there than we did last year. I think I only mowed the lawn three times last year. We were preoccupied I guess. We’ve got a lot of work to do in the yard. It will be good though.

So I have been listening to the new Pet Shop Boys and the new Depeche Mode albums on Myspace this week. They’re both pretty alright. I’m leaning a bit more in the Pet Shop direction. It’s cool that for the most part you can now sample entire albums to decide if you like them or not before plunking down your 17 or 18 bucks to buy the CD.

I’m sure I’ve probably contemplated this here in the Journal before, but I was thinking about it again this week. Depeche, Pet Shop Boys, New Order and U2. I’ve been listening to the oldies lately. Kids these days think of those acts as old time, moldy, dinosaur rock. They are the same distance away from their 80’s heydays (yeah, make the U2 argument if you’d like) as the 60’s oldies were when we were kids. Youngsters today think of Depeche Mode and Pet shop Boys the way I used to think of the Mamas and the Papas and Janis Joplin when I was their age.

Dude! 1989 was 20 years ago. How did that happen?

I know. Calm down old man. Remember your heart.

“You kids get off of my lawn!”

I think I might be getting a cold.

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY LITTLE NOODLE!

Yes dear reader, it has already been a year! I am the proud father of a one year old boy. It has been a pretty wonderful year.

It seems important to me to mark the occasion with some touching, profound, moving, loving thoughts and scribbles. We’ll see. I have been a dad now for a year and I love the new role. I may not be the best at it but G has made it easy for me to try.

We feel so very fortunate to be living with the best baby in the whole universe. It’s a shame that all parents of one year olds can’t have a baby as great as G, but thems the breaks.

At one year we are getting about 3 steps consistently. I think he’s walked about 3 feet at one go so far. He can walk with you for a ways if you are holding his hand. He doesn’t seem to be in too much of a hurry to get off of all fours. Any minute though really.

He is using multiple syllables and sounds in his “speaking” now. We aren’t quite sure what language he is speaking yet but it definitely sounds like sentences are being formed. Da da and Ma ma comes through now and then and that makes us excited. We are beginning to notice that he understands what we are saying far better than we understand him. I have caught myself a couple of times already changing the tone and content of my words to the dogs when G has been in earshot.

I enjoy just sitting and watching him while he plays or gets into stuff. It is so fascinating now to witness the sparks firing and gears turning in his little head. He’s doing a lot of important thinking these days. It is also really fun to watch him when he tries to play with other babies or kids a little bit older than him. He loves kids and is impressed and mesmerized with whatever the children are doing.

This here Jack Noodle Journal has kept a pretty good record of the last year. I’m so thankful that I had enough sense to write a lot of this stuff down. I have been reading the old posts over the last couple of weeks. Some of it seems just like yesterday and some of it seems like it happened longer than a year ago.

If you hit the “Baby” category there under the post you can get the whole story laid out for you. If you are reading this post now in the form of a Facebook note you might want to click on “View Original Post” at the bottom so you can see all the photos attached. For the commemorating and celebrating of year one I went back and did a recap of some posts and photos that I liked and remembered here from the journal:

Look how tiny he was!
“Gilby Henry Noodle!”
Here’s the birth story:
“at home with the little noodle”

“feed on demand”

“happy one month birthday”
“take your baby to work day”
“get the balance right”
“mr. sheltonville cryer”

“front page news”
“uh yeah so anyway”
“standing on a beach and other nefarious escapades”

“4 months old”
“gilby speaks!?!”
“mommy went back to work”
“creating a bookworm”
“weekend in the AZ”

Thanks to all of you friends and family that have given us lots of support and love over the year. G Noodle is lucky to be raised by such a village!

With each and every coming year there’s going to be even more exciting adventures.

We love you Gilby!

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Hello hello. Gosh. I have been away from this here internet journal for way too long. We have been incredibly successful with maintaining our holding pattern here at the Noodle Compound. With the success of the holding pattern though comes the side effect of not having too much to report. We are hanging in there. Things are looking good. I’ll unplug the ole writing hole and let the words flow again soon.

The biggest event for us over the last few weeks has been our trip to Arizona to visit G Noodle’s grandparents Mr. Baptist and Ms. Bee. We had a great time! This was G’s second time visiting the desert. Here’s some photos.

We had extra special fun this trip because Sarah, Chad Jr, and cousin Amaya flew down with us. There was a house full of excitement. Hanging out with the whole crew for a week like that wasn’t something that we had done before. I was actually surprised (not sure why) at how refreshing it was. Sarah and Chad’s friends Zeke and Dori, sister Kellie and Crazy Eddie rounded out the gang. The group got along smashingly. At times it kind of felt like summer camp (only with way more drinking).

G had a great time. He did wonderfully on the plane again. He was a tad more wiggly this time. He was more mobile of course and will probably be running around next time we visit. The desert is full of stickys! G got some sort of cactus, bur, sticky thing stuck in his tender bare foot. Auntie Sarah was kind enough to pull it out for him. It’s going to be something else when the Little Noodle is racing through that desert at full speed!

Oh the warmth! It was in the upper 80s every day we were there. It gave us Oregonians hope that we will see spring and summer again here shortly.

Filed under: Mondays, baby, G NOODLE | 1 Comment »

We went and saw the Dallas Mavericks beat the Portland Trail Blazers 93 - 89 last night at the Rose Garden.

We had a fun time. K and I went with some of my coworkers. G Noodle stayed with his grandma while we were at the game.

We got the cheap, nose bleed seats. We were quite a way from the game as the grainy cell photo up there shows. We were one row away from the back wall, all the way up. Our seats didn’t matter though as we had fun anyway.

That was only the second Blazer game I have been to.

It was kind of trippy being up so high and seeing the whole stadium at once. There was a crazy massive, sensory overload that took a little bit of getting use to. Stuff was happening and moving in every square centimeter of my field of vision. At first it was kind of hard to follow the game down below.

There was a whole bunch of people there! Spending the week with just baby, it was a shock suddenly seeing thousands of people in one place.

I had some picturing of what it must of been like to be sitting in the Colosseum in ancient Rome times. Alright, yeah that’s a little cheezy.

Lots of people watching and ponderings.

I was wondering if working at the Rose Garden was any fun. It would be cool to see games and concerts, but it must be awful dealing with drunk fans and sketchy morons.

Gosh, wouldn’t being a basketball player be an awesome job? Yeah, that was them going to work last night. That would be weird to be an NBA player I imagine. Do they sometimes dread going to the office in the morning? Probably. I wonder how recession proof the NBA is?

I didn’t mind the Mavericks winning. Last time I followed the NBA at all was a few years ago when I helped Seth root for the Mavericks during the finals. It was cool to see Dirk Nowitzki in non-TV reality.

It was a good time. I would love to go again soon.

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Ah yes. Good Monday morning to you! Not too much to report today. The little Noodle is snoozing peacefully on my lap in the lap bed I have fashioned for him out of blankets and pillows. I thought it was a good time while he was sleeping to force out some blogging bullets.

I thought that the plague, the creeping death of sickness, had finally caught up with me yesterday but now I’m not so sure. I was feeling very achy, sore, sleepy and worn out yesterday and I thought maybe that was the start of the bug that you all have. I’m still feeling sort of funky, but don’t think I’m sick. We’ll see.

I don’t get sick very often you know.

I had a pretty good week last week. I felt like a corner was turned or something. I had kind of been down in the dumps for the last several weeks. Worn out I guess.

Now I am back in a good place.

I’ve got some schemes brewing.

There’s some mighty restless, creative energy surrounding me and pulling me under. It’s a beautiful thing. Soon these harpies will toss me ashore and I will be coughing up something magnificent.

I think I am going to spend the rest of the day doing some purposeful (hard to do) web surfing and research. I need to do a bit of reading. Get some scoops on some topics. Continue on with the inspiration mining.

I think I will spend some time going over some of my old journal entries today as well. 1,170 is a lot of posts! Man oh man. With such a breadth of rambles, I’m sure I could find something useful (probably only to me) and surprising in say post #416. There’s a lot of events and memories documented in this journal that are definitely starting to get fuzzy. I think that the dates of things is always surprising when you go back for the revisit.

I need to back this journal up and save all the contents of the database now while I’m thinking of it.

I’m starting to think about a redesign of JackNoodle.com. So far all I have is a color scheme idea. It’s time. I haven’t had a redesign in a number of years have I? When was it? 2005? Time flies.

With all of the poo pooing of Facebook that I had done, it is surprising now how hooked I am on it. All of my posting, chatting, and updating in Facebook is giving me my blogging, and content creation fix. It has caused me to think more about what exactly is going on with JackNoodle.com. I hope to be stepping it up with the next variation of the Noodle Journal. Do something more than just use it as the starting place for my RSS feeds.

Hmmm… Scheming. Ah yes. More please.

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A couple of you (at least 2) have asked where my Best of 2008 Mix was or where was my end of year best music list? Yeah, I didn’t have one. I am encouraged by the interest expressed in my end of year list so I will definitely do one for 2009.

I don’t know. I guess there was some good music released in 2008. I did listen to a lot of tunes during the year, I just didn’t veer too far from my usual path out into uncharted territory. There was some other things going on in 2008 that took my attention away from staying up to date with what was being released. I was still listening to stuff released in 2006 and 2007 (good years). I also listened to quite a bit of my own personal standbys, go-tos-in-a-pinches, and older Noodle classics.

Hey, it’s March 2009. Why are you talking about 2008 best ofs?

Well, the lovely and eternally hip lady, Lynarra sent me an awesome link this week that I have been visiting constantly since receiving. The link is to the Music Blog Zeitgeist 2008 by the Hype Machine and Blog Fresh Radio. It’s a list that they compiled somehow of the top 50 albums of 2008 according to music blogs around the globe.

“Oh yeah that’s cool whatever” you may say. The thing that’s awesome about the list is if you scroll down a little further you can listen to every album that made the list in it’s entirety! How can they do this? Is it a secret that I shouldn’t be blogging about?

It looks like Imeem is fueling the list. I of course am usually a few years late to every internet party, but I do remember Lynarra and Kathleen saying they were into Imeem. Oh here’s an article I skimmed from CNN that talks a bit about some music services.

It’s been pretty great this week checking out artists and albums that I had been hearing about and was curious to sample.

So the Hype Machine’s top 50 list for 2008 is pretty good. Some of the albums that I picked up during the year made it into their list. Most of it is stuff I have never heard of. I’m glad to see T.V. On The Radio up there so high. I’m not sure if I care for much of their top 10 though! Maybe 2008 wasn’t that great for new music? Perhaps my tastes don’t match with the blogs that were used to compile the list? I don’t know.

Fleet Foxes? Really? I listened to the album and guess I just don’t get it. It seems to me that if I wanted to listen to some moldy old hippy, folk, freedom rock I would go to the source and originators of that kind of music instead of a new band of kids trying to mimic the sound. There were a number of classic rock wannabes in the list that didn’t do it for me.

Perhaps this old timer needs electronics, sound effects, electric guitars, samples and drum machines in his music. Oh! Kids these days with their acoustic guitars!

I did enjoy listening to the Vampire Weekend album. I liked being able to listen to the R.E.M album without committing to it. I loved the Lil Wayne album and turned Kanye off in the middle of the second song. Some of the other albums I think require more than one listen.

Yeah so that’s a pretty good find. Thanks Lynarra! There are probably more sites like that out there that my laziness is keeping me from. I’ll be listening to those 50 albums over the next few weeks. Great for my work hours. I think what I’m going to do now is read Metacritic’s best of 2008 list and map out my listening that way.

Filed under: music | 5 Comments »