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Our Daily Thread 1-17-14

Good Morning!

It’s finally Friday!

On this day in 1806 James Madison Randolph, grandson of President Thomas Jefferson, was the first child born in the White House.

In 1900 Mormon Brigham Roberts was denied a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives for his practicing of polygamy.

In 1945 Soviet and Polish forces liberated Warsaw during World War II.

In 1991 coalition airstrikes began against Iraq after negotiations failed to get Iraq to retreat from the country of Kuwait.

And in 1994 the Northridge earthquake rocked Los Angeles, CA, registering a 6.7 on the Richter Scale. At least 61 people were killed and about $20 billion in damage was caused.

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Quotes of the Day

“Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.”

“We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”

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Today is Eddie Carswell’s birthday, so NewSong, with “Blessed Be Your Name”

And this young lady is good. 🙂 Like Eddie VanHalen good. 😯

From TinaS

Bravo! 🙂

You can see her play Antonio Vivaldi’s “Presto” from “Summer” as well by clicking her playlist at the top left of the video. Heavy metal classical music. What’s not to love? 🙂

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Anyone have a QoD?

70 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 1-17-14”

  2. Good morning everyone .
    It’s Friday! You know what that means?
    It’s 25.6 degrees in Hendersonville, but we’re going to the Y anyhow.
    And I go to Lions. First time in a month.
    Everyone else, up and at it.

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  3. Wow, Chas and I have gotten us all off to an early start or perhaps it is a late start for me. Haven’t gone to the weight room yet, Chas. Still recovering and need to focus on school

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  5. Mornin’ Jo and Chas.

    Chas,

    That fine piece of equipment is a Vigier Excalibur Custom. It’s for the serious player/professional because that baby is about 3,000 dollars. 😯

    Way more than I could ever afford or would pay, but worth every cent. As you can see, in the hands of a trained professional, it has an amazing sound.

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  6. Good Morning, Y’all!
    Thanks, AJ…now I have to go throw away all my guitar equipment! Wow!

    Speaking of music…has anyone else here seen the Black Jacket Symphony? They are a musical project out of Birmingham that chooses iconic albums, auditions and hires musicians for that particular album/group and performs the album in its entirety live. My oldest son and I saw them perform Abbey Road last weekend in Mobile (Sorry, Kim…it was last minute or I would have let you know we were in town…).They did a masterful job of recreating the album including every detail and after intermission did another selection of Beatle’s songs. Very interesting! No portrayal of the band…just the sounds. They have a website…Google them if you are curious…

    Have a terrific day!

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  7. I mentioned before that Chuck got a Les Paul guitar for Christmas.
    I suspect it cost about 10% of the $3000 that guitar cost. He plays well, but not anything like that. He can do finger picking.

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  8. Hi. Yes, Chas, it is indeed Friday! And this time you can click anywhere in that phrase for the funnies.

    Form AJ’s history digest above: In 1900 Mormon Brigham Roberts was denied a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives for his practicing of polygamy.

    He was 110 years too early. Now he could sue for his civil rights to marry whomever he wants and he would be seated. It’s only a matter of time for people like Mr Roberts to have their preferences turned into civil rights.

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  9. IBNO It’s OK. We almost went to see them but didn’t. Now THAT would have been funny if we had been in the same place and didn’t know it!!!!
    I don’t know why I never relaized this, but musicians have different guitars for different songs. Obviously they don’t all sound alike and if you are doing a country song you want a certain sound out of the guitar and if you are doing something more rock and roll you want an entirely different sound out of the guitar. I don’t have a musical ear and really couldn’t tell the difference except that I went to a concert and noted the guy kept switching guitars. I asked my friend S about it and got about an hour long lesson as he played three different guitars so I could hear the difference–waste of time on me.
    This is the TRUTH : Mr P wanted to watch American Idol the other night. The judges are Jennifer Lopez, Harry Connick Jr, and Keith Urban. A few people sang that I was absolutely embarrassed for them. I said something and Mr P said “Oh no. She has perfect pitch”. THEN Harry Connick Jr, who ought to know a thing or two about music, complimented her on her perfect pitch and went into explaining something about a 12 note scale. Mr. P asked me if I could sing. Nope. No way. No how. I don’t even sing in the shower. The last time I sang in front of someone else was when BG was potty training and I danced and sang in the bathroom about “We’re gonna tee tee in the pot tee”. I did sing to my baby when no one else was around.

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  12. Thanks, AJ, for reminding us of the Northridge quake anniversary. We lived then about 5 miles from the epicenter and had a wild ride. My toddler’s teething in those days brought about frequent middle-of-the-night fussiness. I had just gotten up with her about 4:30 am and was in a rocking chair trying to settle her back to sleep when the quake started. It was a good thing I was up, because a 6-drawer-high chest fell over onto my side of the bed. Baby Bear loves hearing that story and taking credit for having saved me from serious injury.

    After the main quake stopped and my wife and I got done exchanging “Are you okay?”s and “I’m okay”s, her next words were, “I don’t want to live here any more.” 20 months later we took up residence near her home town in Michigan.

    The epicenter of that quake was actually deep underground beneath the Reseda neighborhood where I had grown up. My dad’s house there took some damage. But the energy of the earth movement was released slantways up and northward, so some of the most dramatic damage was a few miles away in Northridge, thus it’s always been known as the Northridge quake.

    I bet Donna and some of our other LA friends have memories to share, but maybe they’re not quite awake yet…

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  13. 1994 may seem like a long time ago to some of you. Kevin’s daughter has grown up.
    Seems like yesterday to me.
    Elvera says “They grow up so fast!”
    Not to them, it isn’t.

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  15. The Real, that $3000 equipment for professionals is cheap. A professional classical musician would pay at least ten times that for a good instrument. $3000 would only get you a somewhat decent amateur’s instrument – one of my student violins was valued at $2000 (I was only loaned the use of it), and although it was nice, a professional wouldn’t have looked at it.

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  17. LOVE those commercials, I saw my first one last night. I especially liked the one where the family all starts barking at the mail truck. 🙂 And the ‘kids’ in the back seat, hilarious.

    I bought an acoustic guitar maybe 20 years ago for (?) I want to say $200-$300? Definitely a starter model, but a decent guitar for learning. I took lessons from our choir director at church at that time, then a class at community college, but I haven’t done much with it since.

    I love to sing. Sometimes I sing to my dogs.

    (The dogs I had at the time I was playing the guitar, though, used to quickly exit the room whenever I’d start practicing.)

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  18. A good friend was right near the epicenter of the Northridge quake — their girls were young at the time and everyone woke up in a panic, furniture toppling and flying, glass all over the floor as their mom made her way to the girls’ rooms. They were without power for several days.

    Damage to the mall in the area (I know, tragedy for us Californians), along with the university where my friend was taking classes.

    We were spared the worst of it being on the other side of L.A. But it was all quite sobering, a reminder of how things can go really bad really quick.

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  19. Donna, dogs and babies both howl at the sound of a violin, no matter how well played. I think the babies just find the sound overwhelming; but the reason dogs howl is because they can hear higher frequencies than us and the ones produced by vibrating strings seem to hurt their ears.

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  20. Here’s a QoD…

    Hash Browns or Home Fries? Are they a regional preference?

    Although I was born here in Connecticut, I grew up in the mid-west (Ohio & Wisconsin, but also had a couple years in Tennessee), & I remember mostly hash browns being offered on menus for a breakfast potato.

    Since being back in Connecticut since I was 19, I’ve noticed that home fries are on the menus, & hash browns are rare. I prefer hash browns, though.

    (What inspired these questions was that Lee bought us McDonald’s breakfasts on his day off, & the hash browns made me think of this.)

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  22. Home fries. No body in my family ever had the patience to shred potatoes. I sooooo wish I could make them like my grandmother did. She was the meanest one white woman on earth but she sure could cook.

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  25. I was wondering about that price, Chas. Roscuro is right.

    A handmade violin with good wood is not cheap, either. Nor should it be considering the work that goes into it. Bows can be more expensive than the violin. Both can be very, very expensive. Most people do not need anything that expensive. The better a musician gets, the more a better instrument is needed and appreciated, whether guitar or violin.

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  26. Husband loves the Waffle House Hash Browns which he orders Smothered. I think that means covered in onions.

    I make roast beef hash which is chipped up, not grated, potatoes and what my husband would have called pan fried potatoes. I call it hash because that is what my mom from NW AL called it.

    I think of those other potatoes as being something you got in a restaurant with a good burger. My favorite potatoes now are sweet potato fries.

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  27. French fries and hash browns are different kinds of potato. Though they’re just greasy potatoes served different ways.
    I have no preference. Breakfast it’s hash browns, lunch, French fries. Though I never knew what the French have to do with it. Kinda like Chinese food.
    But I remember the first French fries I ever had.
    I was in the AF, dating a girl in Springfield, Mass. We went to a park of some sort. Somehow, I bought some fries. I remember watching how she ate them and did the same thing. This was in 1951.

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  28. I like the home fries or country potatoes. My husband always go for the hash browns. If we are not eating out, we will usually make hashbrowns from frozen ones. We will also do fried potatoes, if we have left-over potatoes.

    It will also depend on the restaurant. Some make them crisper, which is my preference.

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  35. Wish I could hear the music on here today, but our speakers or Adobe Flash Player or something are not working on the computer.

    Cost of instruments: I bought a viola around the time I graduated from high school because I was going to major on viola (and piano, as well) when I started college in the fall. The instrument seemed pretty expensive at the time, but my private viola instructor recommended I get a good one to use in college. (I’d been using a school instrument prior to that, and the difference in sound when I bought my own compared to the school model was notable, not surprisingly. She recommended I purchase from the private instrument maker who was considered the best in the state in which I grew up.)

    This was 1980, and the viola was something like $950-975, the bow about $250-300, and the instrument case with waterproof cover that also served as storage for music, extra strings, etc. was something like $350, give or take $25. Total cost was somewhere between $1600 and $1700, as I recall. That seemed like a lot of money then (but probably wasn’t), but it certainly was nice to own a quality instrument.

    I got busy with life after college, getting a teaching job in vocal/general music (I’d majored on voice, also), so I didn’t use my viola much once I was through school, and it sat unused for many years. I felt a little guilty about that, having such a nice instrument, and not using it. Piano had been my first love, and the viola, an instrument I’ve found to be much more challenging to play than piano, or even violin or cello, always took a back seat to the piano. In my free time — when I had it and wanted to make music — piano usually won out over viola.

    About two years ago, one of my friends from the string quartet we’d formed in college died. That reignited my interest in getting my viola back out and playing it for enjoyment. A lot of good memories from our string quartet days came flooding back, and I’ve been playing it more often now these last couple years than I did in all the post-college years before that — and there have been a lot of years since college for me. 😉

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  37. Kim, you may have just expanded my resources for meals to prepare for my husband with that salmon gravy recipe. He says he doesn’t like gravy much, but he likes chowder. He also likes chicken a la king, so I think he might like your dad’s “gravy.”

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  38. My mother made something similar with little jars of corned beef that she would make a gravy with and serve over toast. I liked it as a child but haven’t had it for years.

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  39. I just had the best thing happen. Two women came in my open house to look. One of them had on a Kimberly Clark jacket. I asked if she worked there. She worked there for 10 years and at Scott Paper for 27 year. I asked where she worked and then asked her if she knew Jimmy Black. She started laughing and asked, “Lawd, how do you know Jimmy Black?” I told her he was my daddy. She started telling her friend and me stories about working for him. We laughed and I cried. I told her God sent her to me today. They were here an hour. I am so glad…like pennies from heaven, little things happen

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  41. Ha! Kim, maybe that is why we had it. My father was in the Navy and probably liked it and asked my mother to make it. Since my mother grew up on a farm, I don’t think it would be anything she learned to cook there. Never knew it had another name. Don’t want to go there!

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  43. Tomorrow is Michelle O’s birthday. Via Drudge, National Review Online has these suggestions for celebrating:

    In preparation for the first lady’s 50th birthday on Saturday, ABC News has served up a fawning list 50 ways to celebrate the occasion.

    It highlights Michelle Obama’s most memorable and glamorous moments. Below, ten examples from the list, which you can read in full here:

    Dance to Beyonce

    Move into a massive new house with your family and invite your mother to move in too

    Make the cover of Vogue

    Buy a Jason Wu dress

    Hang out with your friend, Oprah

    Roll your eyes at House Speaker John Boehner or the Danish prime minister

    Hug, kiss and fist bump the President of the United States

    ​Travel the world on Air Force One

    ​Dine at Spiagga in Chicago

    ​Hang out in Hawaii for an extra week as an early birthday gift

    Meanwhile, the first lady has also found one more way to celebrate:

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  44. I like both the hash browns and the home fries (we call them American fries, s;iced the width of the potato, rather than the length, as French fires are). However, I like hash browns for breakfast, and sliced at other times. My favorite, though, are the fried, wedged potatoes. Of course, maybe that’s what we call American fries.

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  46. Hello all. We had a day off from homeschooling today as it was a teacher inservice day in our district. They also have Monday off, so we’re headed to our ranchette in the morning for the long weekend. Things are going well –we’ve both settled in to our new normal– and I’m so glad we made the decision to homeschool our youngest. She is much happier and seems to be learning a lot more.
    My sister and her family have decided to stay in Rwanda indefinitely. They will return in July for an extended visit so they can sell their house (it’s been being sublet, but won’t be after July), and get their two oldest situated in college. My mom is very sad about their plans. I miss them, but am proud of what they are doing.

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  47. Hi Ann….so good to hear the homeschooling decision has proven to be a blessing to you all. How are the horseback riding lessons going for your older daughter? Have a blessed time on your weekend away….

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  52. roscuro, interesting about dogs’ reactions to guitar string vibrations, that makes me feel a little better. 😉 I’d taken it all rather personally.

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  54. Kim: awesome story! So happy for you to have had that experience!

    Thanks for the well wishes! Even though I’ve been scarce (I’m having an awful time learning to manage my time)– I’ve felt covered in prayer this whole time–like I’m in the palm of His hand–and that has been a source of great comfort to me. So, thank you to everyone who has been praying for me and Becca. It has not gone unnoticed. The changes in my child have been nothing less than supernatural.

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  55. When my mom would make Creamed Chipped Beef on Toast, she’d add a dollop of grape jelly in the middle, as had her dad before her. Anyone else ever heard of this?

    Usually, though, she’d substitute ground beef for the chipped beef. That was good, too. In fact, I think I liked that better.

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  56. Kim – My dad was in the paper industry, as a salesman of paper machines & parts. He became very well-respected in the industry, & he’d have customers follow him from one company to another when he changed jobs.

    I don’t know much about his work, but there was more to it than being a salesman. He had to know all about those machines & how they worked. There was a technical aspect to the job, knowing about the “specs” & such.

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  58. I am happy, too, to hear about the good results from homeschooling. It is not the best way for every child in every family, but for those that enjoy its individual methods of teaching and learning, it can be a solution to a solid education. I spoke with the mom yesterday about Common Core which led to a short mention of homeschooling. She knows one mom who covers one different subject each day of the week so they are not having to lose focus by changing subjects numerous times each day. We tended to concentrate on one subject until it was finished. I was surprised as we looked at colleges later to find that a few colleges have a block system where they cover only one subject at a time in concentrated form. I thought our son would thrive in those colleges.

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  59. A little while ago, Emily told me of something Forrest said today that reminded her of me. She recounted how there were two cars parked diagonally across parking spaces (but in opposite diagonals), & she had muttered something about them being stupid for parking that way.

    Forrest piped up with, “Maybe they just like to park differently”.

    She said she thinks he got the attitude of giving the benefit of the doubt from me. 🙂

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  60. Nancyjill: Older daughter still takes riding lessons twice a week and usually rides about five days a week, since we leased a horse for her last summer. It keeps her busy and she absolutely loves it! There’s nothing she’d rather do than ride… Unfortunately, we’ve had our share of junior-high-girl-drama for the last few months and I honestly believe her relationship with her horse has helped ease the emotional angst so prevalent among her peers. I can’t believe she will be in high school in one more semester; it just doesn’t seem possible! Sometimes, it’s been difficult to have the six year gap between kids, but I’m grateful for it these days as I can’t imagine facing the empty nest years in just four more years. Instead, God blessed us with a second child, in His perfect timing.

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  62. Janice G: When I was in graduate school in social work at The University of Texas-Austin, all of our classes were in block format. They met once a week for three hours. I loved it b/c you had a whole week to do assignments, but it was also easy to become really far behind if you missed only one class b/c a weeks worth of material was covered in those three hours… Also, I don’t think block scheduling would work well for a language course as one needs frequent repetition in order to master a new language. I remember that both Spanish I and II were five hour courses that met for one hour Monday through Friday.

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  63. I actually threw up when I was a child and forced to eat creamed salmon on toast. I was never made to eat any fishy tasting food after that. Of course, years later my dad told me the name for it they had in the service. My dad caught a lot of lake salmon.

    Years later, I learned to appreciate fresh salmon (from Alaska) grilled with soy sauce and brown sugar. I never would have believed the difference.

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  64. The first time we had quinoa, 1st Arrow got sick at the table and threw up on his plate. I don’t think it was the quinoa’s fault — we had other foods, too, and I think he had some sort of bug that caused him to get sick — but he will not eat quinoa to this day.

    We had two plates that looked like the one he threw up on, and after that day, 2nd Arrow refused to eat off either of those plates because “one of them might be the barf plate”. 😉

    After a few years, one of those plates dropped on the floor and broke, so we were down to one, but 2nd Arrow still wouldn’t eat off of it, because, you know, if might be the barf plate!

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  65. Annms, great news about Becca. 🙂

    I’m recoiling from the chipped beef and gravy discussion. I think that was the only thing my dad “kept” from being in the Navy, some of that food.

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  66. Changing the subject now…

    The Christmas tree and decorations are down now, and the living room is almost put back together tonight. One table will be moved back to the location where the tree had been, and a few items in the living room will be taken downstairs tomorrow to make room for a smaller table that we put in our bedroom while the tree was up. A small table with books and magazines will need a bit of tidying, and that will just about be it.

    Oh, and there might be a few surprises under the couch and love seat. One never knows what treasures you can find under there. 😉

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  68. Mumsee, the number of posts is always at the top. So you have to go back to the top right before the comments begin to see the number.
    Still getting over jetlag. I get hungry at odd times, but I brought back some granola bars that have been helping. Traveling for 36 hours and being up for all that time is rough. Also my body was sore from sitting for so long.

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