The Jack Noodle Journal

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.

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.

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.

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.

We had a really fun busy weekend. Every second of it was filled with action and adventure!

We were up in Sheltonville over a night to celebrate the marriage of our friends Lianne and Martin. Woo hoo! They tied that knot for reals! The ceremony was lovely. Out on the bay. It was officiated (?) by the freshly anointed reverend Lynarra who did an excellent job. The rain stayed back long enough for the ceremony to wrap up and the bride and groom jumped into their kayaks and paddled off into the sunset.

There was quite a bit of celebrating and well wishing. Also a massive dance party broke out. I think that Seth and Alex were the winners of the dance competition and will have to have a dance-off in the near future.

We at the Noodle Compound love you kids and wish you the best of married bliss and much luck and happiness on your adventures together in the near future and beyond.

When we weren’t partying it up in Shelton we partying it down here in P-Town. We had a fun visit and hangout with our friends Mat and Niki. I think it had been 4 years since they had been here visiting the land of Mat’s birth.

We were very happy that you guys finally got to meet G Noodle. One day, oh one sweet day, we will come and visit you in NY.

Yes, yes. Good weekend. Fun times with good friends. I’m only a little sleepy now. I really could have been more tired today but think I paced myself well Friday to Sunday night.

I felt like I actually relaxed more than I have in a month or so.

Now… Back to work.

Oh yeah!
Hey almost forgot. They finally posted G and I’s Manbaby photo. Check it! Ah yeeeah!