Little everyday funny things

Just few of them to remember on a rainy day:

Rice through the straw
Kids were desperately trying to eat rice with chopsticks few days ago. I said “You know, in the Central Asia they actually eat rice…” But before I concluded “by hands” dear husband said “through the straw”. Just imagine…

Drunk hairdressers
The railway got flooded after the rain yesterday so my husband and all the other passengers were put on the bus. On the back of the bus there was a group of noisy drunk hairdressers from nearby village who (judging by the horrible smell of hairspray) were practicing their hairdressing on the way…

Nightmare music
When I was a child & teenager in our apartment block in Moscow we had a British neighbour upstairs. Possible his name was Barry Jones and he was a writer but maybe not. He liked noisy overnight parties. He used to listen to the same few songs all over again. I truly hated them, they were my instruments of torture. I liked to sleep at night. Then very recently I noticed something familiar, long forgotten, in Jethro Tull songs I do listen a lot now. Possible, it was Crest Of A Knave album (certainly not my favourite) but it is still funny how everything in life can turn round…


Small World
A week ago I found out that there is a long existing Russian Language group in Newtown and that it is lead by a lady from the same department of the Moscow State University I am graduated from!

Cup of Wonder

I think I’ve found my favorite singer-songwriter-composer. Just can’t have enough of this:

Ian Anderson & Jethro Tull playlist by Linandara

Gypsy Mermaid

Sorry I haven’t been writing too much here as I’ve got very involved with my Russian blog.

Apart from few new drawings I was experimenting with a bit of shell, textile & sea glass jewellery which I’m starting putting in my Artfire and Etsy shops.

The name Gypsy Mermaid is partly related to how this looks like, and partly to a song by M. Scherbakov.

Seasonal

Again I am feeling the pressure of the modern day commercialized Christmas – all the emails from my online shops saying “don’t miss Black Friday, don’t miss Cyber Monday, hurry up, promote yourself (which I actually hate to do anyway)”, etc. The high street shops shouting their seasonally loud mantra of “spend, spend, spend”. Plus the worries about presents, running out of money, business unfinished before holidays, a Christmas tree to buy and carry home and so on. Plus the sun is low, the weather is often gloomy…

I really have to tell myself “STOP!” Why not just enjoy the season? Yesterday we spent the evening with my daughter creating a new playlist. She almost always goes to sleep listening to the music, usually Ancient Egyptian, Tudor, ABBA, violin or piano. This time its mostly Christmas carols & songs:

http://www.last.fm/user/linandara/library/playlists/3mxly_christmas_1

(we still are working on it).

Crisis @ school

I’ve received a couple of letters from my kids’ school:
“We have been fortunate for a number of years to be able to subsidise the instrumental tuition from the school budget. However this year the Governing body has to make significant cuts in the budget which means that as from September we will no longer be able to do this….”

My daughter is learning to play violin & recorder and my son does guitar. That’s triple the cost. I really don’t know if they will be able to continue doing this… I’m trying to hope for the best of course. By the way, its interesting to me that given a very big choice of music from various genres, my daughter definitely prefers Bach, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, John Williams & Enio Morricone. She falls to sleep listening to them plus traditional lullabies.

New shop

I’ve joined CafePress today:
http://www.cafepress.com/linandara

I’ve also had an idea for Delta Quadra group on Last.FM:
http://www.last.fm/group/Delta+Quadra+-+Socionics

INTPs got their own group, so why not?

Anyway, I’m also working on a very strange painting (in digital sketching stage at the moment), incomporating my love for music and some socionic ideas. My husband already christened is Abbagonewrong… Sounds sort of Welsh… (my preliminary name is Shadow Walkers)

Also I’ve found some funny socionics-inspired art:

http://www.iztkanirukami.ru/cats/socion01.html

Music

I’ve found out on Last.fm that apparently my “mainstreaminess” equals zero (great news) and this is the list of the most common tags from the music I listen to.

Probably the last snow of this winter

Just on the hilltops.

Last Sunday some very kind people from Romania gave me a lift to the nearest Orthodox Church where I met some very nice and interesting people.

And I’ve found another INFJ blog:
http://harrietmwelch.com/
I still have problems with Google Reader, I guess I bookmarked too many blogs, so they keep disappearing or changing folders…

plus another find – the Beatles songs turned into Gregorian chants…

Andrey Chulovskiy – organ recital

We visited a very nice organ concert in the village of Kerry last Saturday. This is this Russian composer’s web site:

http://www.chulovskiy.com/

I am impressed: few years ago I’ve heard some modern organ music and frankly it sounded like a tummy rumbling but Andrey Chulovskiy seems to master writing modern music for traditional organ.

Only one complain (yes, I just can’t go without them 🙂 – this village is in walking distance from Newtown, but we had to take a taxi: its a busy road without any sidewalk space again!

Poor doggy

Kids were watching children’s channel CBBC yesterday:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00gnskf

The program was about designing an outfit for a dog… And the winner proposed to put MP3 player and loudspeakers onto it. And NOBODY mentioned that it probably would damage dogs hearing as its much more sensitive than ours and generally may make the pet very uncomfortable (and I’m not even a dog lover or animal rights activist to notice that!). So the moral was: 1)Its fine to have you music on loudly on the street; 2) it doesn’t matter that a pet is alive, its just a cool gadget… And that’s taxpayer-sponsored channel for you…