Monthly Archives: August 2009

Brotherly love, eh?

OK, so I read this in my hometown newspaper this morning, opposite the headline, Twins blast Tribe, 11-0 (but we won’t discuss that today). From Rob Maaddi of the Associated Press:

Philadelphia sports fans, it is said, would boo a cancer patient. They threw snowballs at Santa Claus during a game in 1968. They cheered when the Dallas Cowboys’ Michael Irvin injured his neck and had to be carried off the field in 1999. They behaved so badly that a courtroom was set up at old Veterans Stadium to handle arrests.

But the City of Brotherly Love is where [quarterback Michael] Vick will make his comeback attempt.

Now fiends. Everybody knows that Michael Vick did a very bad thing. He did his time, he’s paying his debts, and hopefully he has learned something about compassion for animals. However, I still maintain that compared to some other athletes, he got an unusually harsh sentence. Would that mere humans received as much aggressive defense as dogs. (If you like, refer to a past rant on that subject.)

So, I ax you: Does Vick deserve a second chance? Or is it fitting that the mighty should fall once in awhile? I covet your articulate and compendious responses.

I think he’s going to get, if nothing else, a huge lesson in “I can’t let them get me down.” Still, if he doesn’t produce for the Eagles, everybody’s gonna look bad.

Fink out.

Finkday at last.

Aren’t you happy? Me too. I have random thoughts this day.

  • I have chained myself to the sofa this whole weekend so I can get some Birdie stuff done before my cohort pulls out her (and my) hair. Looking forward to the show, but not to a lot of the insanity that precedes it.
  • Mac people: Three things I miss from the PC side are the “Home” key, the “End” key, and the Delete key that allows you to delete characters from the left. I use those three functions all the time; is there a workaround, or something really obvious I’m missing? I yearn to learn, but I’m too lazy to research it right at the moment.
  • Kristen, one of our regular Finkville fiends, started her own blog. Check it out here and leave her some love. (Samuel…no post since May? Sheesh.)
  • I’m worried about BoomR’s company’s reorganization plan.
  • The Thriller was accepted into the Masters in Clinical Counseling program at the seminary — yay! He starts classes in October. Now he can practice his psychoanalysis skills on me.
  • Mavis is an awesome sis. I had some doctorin’ to do yesterday (all day, actually) and she was there with/for me every minute.
  • Friday is our usual Jake sleepover. We can’t have it tonight and I am sad.
  • What are your plans for the weekend? Something fun?

All right. Back to the Birdie DVD. Stoney reads RtB and she will know that I am goofing off instead of working. And I’m a-skeered of Stoney. Can I get an Amen, students??

Fink out.

Stark reminder

Had a meeting with my pal Stoney yesterday. We pretty much got September’s rehearsal schedule done. By the time I left for home, it dawned on me: summer’s really over; time to think about getting serious.

The second half of this summer has been fabulous (first half, not so good, but hey – everything happens for a reason). I’ve spent time with the grandchildren, my friends, and my awesome fam. For the first time in many years, I’ve taken time to enjoy myself over the summer, instead of being chained to this box twelve hours a day, doing research and writing papers. Icky.

One more semester of that nonsense, and I am done. I will never take another grad course as long as I live. (That’s the plan, anyway.)

So for the next two weeks, I’m heavy into score study, transcriptions & transpositions, and updating choir tour accounts. I plan to hold down the sofa for the weekend and work on the laptop. Sounds like fun, eh?

To the people with real jobs: it’s almost Friday. :-)

Gran éxito

deet deet deedle-eedle eet deet dee deeGreat success!

~

Yesterday’s little game was fun, and I learned a lot. Touché! Gracias to all my fiends who played along (some more begrudgingly than others, albeit, but I heart you for it). If you didn’t get a chance to play yesterday’s game, please do so. I covet your articulate and compendious replies.

You know, I got to thinking: maybe few people comment because the content is insufficient to stimulate cogent thought. Yikes. If that’s the case, back to the draw-ring board. Still, I’m happy.

And since I’m happy, I’m bringin back the nostalgia. Yes, I admit it — I think this video is hysterical. I have neither explanation nor excuse. My students will probably think I have truly lost my mind (if they don’t think that already). It’s the dumbest thing ever, and yet, I laugh.

Back from when MTV was actually worth watching on occasion: Sifl & Olly.

Fink out (for a busy day, arg).

All together now

I ponder something this day. I wonder how many people:

  1. Don’t care to comment on a blog post, even if they have strong opinions or would normally contribute a comment if it weren’t in writing
  2. Are afraid/intimidated to comment on a blog post, mostly because of the “retribution” factor
  3. Just enjoy being anonymous and having a (hopefully) good read, and not feeling responsible for advancing the discourse
  4. Think I’m just cute

writingratMy blog stats regularly show between 70 and 150 unique visitors a day (I know — not much on a worldwide scale, but you could say quantity isn’t everything), and very few of them come from search engines, with the exception of about a dozen or so who arrive at the site looking for images (which is why I give most of my images non-descriptive names). In other words, most of my hits arrive with “no referring link” — that is, they access the site from a bookmark or by typing finkweb.org into the location bar.

But only a handful of those readers actually comment. And, for those who are blog-savvy, commenting is what keeps a blog moving forward; alive. And I must admit, it’s my absolute favorite part of this little endeavor — even more than my writing. I am a textbook extrovert, which means I draw my energy from others. I live for the repartee, don’t you know.

So, all together now, let’s play us a game. [Regular RtB commenters, please get the ball rolling here, k?] I’d like to see how many lurkers we can draw out of the shadows. If nothing else, it’ll give me a better idea of who comes knocking in Finkville.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to share the following, to the extent with which you are comfortable:

  1. Your state (geographical, as opposed to, like, dazed — and if not US, your country)
  2. What you do for a living (laborer, homemaker, student, retired, yadda)
  3. An interesting fact about you (a hobby, an accomplishment, a research interest, you once sang in a boy band, etc.)

I will respond to everyone’s contribution, and I hope others will respond to them as well. The result: some fun banter, some new information about Finkites, and probably some funny exchanges here and there.

Because I’ve been around the internet block a couple-a times, I know there are people who might be untruthful or silly, but that’s just taking the wheat with the chaff, and I’m fine with that. It’ll still reveal some interesting stuff.

So….ready, steady, go! I’ll start.

  1. Ohio
  2. High school choral director/Musician
  3. In 1973, I won my 8th grade spelling bee. Mrs. Lewis, my English teacher (Mickey Finn, do you remember her? She was my fave teacher EVER–largely responsible for my love of  reading and writing), gave me my very own copy of The Andromeda Strain as a prize. I felt like I’d won a gold medal at the Olympics.

Allons-y!

LeFink *poof*