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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License
Crazy Caroline Looped
Okay, I’m not sure how best to explain this, but I’ll try. We were out to dinner the other month with my brother’s family, and the food was taking forever and a day to be served, that by the time we were done eating my brother was like I CAN’T SIT HERE ANYMORE, I’M GOING HOME. And my sister-in-law was like I’M STAYING FOR DESSERT. And of course, my daughter said ME TOO!! So my brother and went home. This left myself, husband, daughter, and Red at the table.
As soon as he walked out the door, Neil Diamond’s Sweet Caroline came over the sound system. And I tried to restrain myself, but couldn’t and soon the whole table was singing along. Then Red says YOUR BROTHER LOVES THIS SONG!
What? My brother? Loves Neil Diamond???? Clearly this was news to me.
YEP she nodded HE SINGS THIS SONG AT KARAOKE.
Who are we talking about here? My brother? LOVES Neil Diamond AND sings Sweet Caroline at karaoke??
How do I not know this? I grew up with him. I work with him every day. And yet, I do not know about Caroline. I must really suck as a sister, or (and I like this option better), he’s leading a secret underground life where he works during the day in a tool shop, and then wears capes and sings under an alias at the karaoke bar at night. Maybe that’s why he’s been looking so tired lately?
So a couple weeks go by, and my husband and I are at Zoe’s YMCA Camp Friday afternoon skit. The comedy camp is performing an American Idol-esque show; what are they singing? What’s the first song? Sweet Caroline.
And that’s when I totally lost it. And folks, let me tell you this, once I start laughing I cannot stop. I couldn’t help but imagine my brother up there, mic in hand, swooning the crowd of YMCA Day Camp parents with Sweet Caroline. Hilarious!
Not being able to get the song out of my head, I searched for it on iTunes, and found that Sweet Caroline has been performed by quite a few artists throughout the years, and that’s when I got this crazy idea to make a CD for my brother. The playlist is as follows:
- Sweet Caroline, sung by Neil Diamond
- Sweet Caroline, sung by the Dave Matthews Band
- Sweet Caroline, sung by Freddie MacGregor, reggae style
- Sweet Caroline, sung by Waylon Jennings, country style
- Sweet Caroline, performed by Valentin Movtosky, accordian style
- Sweet Caroline, sung by Julio Iglesias, in Spanish of course
- Sweet Caroline, sung by The Railbenders, a cross between rock and country
- Sweet Caroline, sung by Elvis Presley, live from Las Vegas 2/16/1970
My husband was a little hesitant at first when I told him I was making the CD, he just doesn’t get my family’s humor. I kept telling him I’M MAKING IT BECAUSE IT’LL BE FUNNY! Yeah, he totally sings along to it now. EIGHT TIMES IN A ROW.
Turns out not only is it funny, it’s a big hit too. It’s on non-stop, and when it isn’t on, people are humming it.
So, if you love Sweet Caroline, or even just a little bit like it, I encourage you to give the playlist a try. You’ll totally forget you’re listening to the same song over and over again, the styles are so different. My favorite version so far is Waylon Jennings, his voice is like butter.
Insomnia
I have a difficult time sleeping on Tuesday nights, it’s mostly because of my graduate school, the classes meet on Tuesday from 6-10 p.m. and usually by the time I get home and crawl into bed I cannot shut my brain off. There are times over the last two years (which is how long I’ve been in grad school now) that I toss and turn until close to midnight. This past Tuesday I tossed and turned all night long. I think I might have slept 15-20 minutes at a time between the hours of midnight and 4:00 a.m. but I’m not entirely sure.
Finally at 5:30 a.m. I gave up trying, and got on the treadmill and ran for an hour. By the time I got to work I was feeling it: exhaustion. My eyes were getting fuzzy and I really felt like if I were to lay down, I’d surely fall asleep. So I went home at noon, put on my jammies and crawled into bed.
And still I couldn’t sleep. I was certain that if I tried hard enough, and long enough, it would happen. I tried reading a book, but that didn’t work. I tried laying on the couch with the tv on, but that didn’t work.
Finally I gave up. It was a Mom’s Night Out for the Milwaukee Moms and I had dinner plans with Freckles and CeCe before we joined the MM’s for drinks and then a play at the Milwaukee Rep Theater. I warned them both that I had not slept since Monday night. After three glasses of wine, spaced out of course, and then a dark theatre, sitting between two good friends, I finally dozed off for a catnap. Ahhhh, sleep! It couldn’t have been more welcome.
Don’t worry though, I did not spend the night at the theater, nor did I snore during the performance. By the time I got home it was 11 p.m. and while I was a little worried that my insomia would continue, I drifted off and got a full night of rest.
Art in Bloom & Meeting Lois Ehlert
Yesterday my daughter and I spent the day at the Milwaukee Art Museum. We were there for a children’s class about Georgia O’Keeffe, however Art in Bloom was also going on and we stayed the day so we could attend the workshop with the lovely Lois Ehlert who wrote and illustrated many children’s books. The event is going on again today, and Lois will be there again from 1-4PM, I highly recommend stopping in to meet her, read a few of her books, and then create some art to add to the flower garden. It was a lot of fun!
Wine Club Tonight!
In honor of tonight’s wine club in which the selected wine is beaujolais, I’m rerunning this PSA. Cheers!
This is a Public Service Announcement to the World, from my sister-in-law Red, who is a french teacher at the French Immersion School.
Beaujolais is a red wine from France that is a big deal in November <nod your head that you understand>, and it’s pronounced Beau-zjo-lay.
Not Boo-zjo-lay. NOT BOO-ZJO-LAY.
So that’s Beau. As in Beau Bridges. Or my beau, like a boyfriend. Or tie your shoelaces in a bow. Not Boo, as in, BOOBIDY BOOBIDY BOO!
Red would be sooooooooooo happy if the World would read this post, and start to pronounce the damn french red wine the proper way.
Thank you!
PSA: Beaujolais
This is a Public Service Announcement to the World, from my sister-in-law Red, who is a french teacher at the Milwaukee French Immersion School.
Beaujolais is a red wine from France that is a big deal in November <nod your head that you understand>, and it’s pronounced Beau-zjo-lay.
Not Boo-zjo-lay. NOT BOO-ZJO-LAY.
So that’s Beau. As in Beau Bridges. Or my beau, like a boyfriend. Or tie your shoelaces in a bow. Not Boo, as in, BOOBIDY BOOBIDY BOO!
Red would be sooooooooooo happy if the World would read this post, and start to pronounce the damn french red wine the proper way.
Thank you!
NaNoWriMo
Today is the day that zillions of writers all around the globe will begin their 50,000 word novel writing quest that is affectionately known as NaNoWriMo. You can’t be a blogger with the ambition to be a writer and NOT know what NaNo is. But in the event you don’t know, because not all bloggers want to be writers, November is National Novel Writer’s Month and writers take the month of November to complete a 50,000 word novel.
It’s not about quality, it’s about quantity. You can rewrite and edit in December, but November is all about just getting the words onto the paper. It’s a bat-out-of-hell way to write a book, and it’s motivating to write with a group (a HUGE group) of writers. The website is awesome, and if you succeed you get a certificate to print out and hang on your wall (mine is framed and in my office at work). You also get to brag for the rest of your life that you wrote a novel. How many people can say that?
I remember the day in October of 2005 when I stumbled upon the idea of National Novel Writer’s Month, it was on Raehan’s blog, and she was going to do it as was KJones. I thought, if they are doing it, surely I can too! So I dove into my novel, head first. At least I had a story that I’d been wanting to write for years, the characters were just begging to speak! I’d put my daughter to bed at 8 p.m., then stay up until 11 or even midnight to pound out as many words as I possibly could so that I could keep up with my daily quota of 1667 words. Before I knew it, my main character, Kate, took over my thoughts and I became the vehicle which typed out her actions. All day long I’d think about what my characters would do next, what would be their natural reactions? And by night time I was writing it.
I learned a few valuable lessons during NaNo, the first was to SAVE! SAVE! SAVE! My PDA crashed once and I lost about three chapters which I then had to recreate off the top of my head. My battery died on my laptop when my cat (the one that’s really a shark) chewed through my powercord and I didn’t know it was running on battery until it was DEAD. I’ve got so many copies of my novel floating around it’s not even funny, but I learned the hard way that losing my work really sucks.
I’m not writing this year, but maybe next year I’ll give it another try. With grad school I just don’t have the time. I’m dying to write another Kate Carson mystery though. There’s been a link to my novel at the top of my blog for a while now, but if you didn’t know and are interested in reading an excerpt here’s the link. Enjoy! And if you are doing NaNoWriMo I wish you the best of luck!
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