I have a couple other posts floating around in my head, but need to gather some thoughts (and pictures) before writing them. So… a little this’n'that, aka bullet points for a Tuesday morning.

• Softball last night was fantastic. Beautiful weather, good competitive game. Oh, and we won.
• Not my favorite: opposing pitchers who whine about us taking walks when they are unable to throw a strike.
• Definitely my favorite: Becky, who struck out (looking!) said whiny pitcher to start the seventh inning.
• My list of projects is getting long. I’ve accomplished some, but others are going to slide right into June without me even touching them.
• Next week: headed to Montreal. Looking forward to it.
• Also next week: Becky’s folks come to visit. This will be two years in a row that they’ve come to visit the week that I’ve been on travel. Hmmm… wonder what I should infer from that?
• These Fractal Drawers might be one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen… at least this week. (Saw them on Boing Boing, then Daniel shared them, too… thanks Dan!)

Some weeks ago Becky and I were enjoying a date night with a stop at our local Coldstone ice cream shop when we overheard some college students discussing a plan - a plan we liked so much we decided to turn it into a tradition of our own. It’s really quite simple: the first day in the spring and summer that the high temperature for the day surpasses the next 10-degree mark, we go for ice cream.

It just so happened that our date night weeks ago was on the first 70-degree day of the year. And it just so happened that yesterday was the first 80-degree day of the year. So after getting a bunch of outside work done, we packed the girls up in the van and headed for Coldstone. I figure we have at least two ten-degree trips still coming this season, and if, God forbid, we hit the third (110°F), we’ll at least be happy for the relief!

So here are a few pictures from the night. Oh, and our ice cream flavors:

Addie: Chocolate with sprinkles
Laura: Cotton Candy with white chocolate chips
Becky: Chocolate & Coffee with cookie dough
me: Cake Batter Chocolate with cookie dough

First up, I’m having to work on my terminology. Don’t call it an “album” - apparently the cool term for a new multi-song recording is a “record”. Kinda takes you back to the days of the LP, doesn’t it? But that’s not really the point of this post.

Here’s the point: Ben Shive is putting out a record next month. Who is Ben Shive, you ask? Well, he’s the guy that I look up to the most of any pianist/musician of my acquaintance. Ben has extensively toured with and written for Andrew Peterson, which is how I first got to know Ben. He’s an unassuming guy, so much so that it’s darn near impossible to get him to perform any of his own stuff. He’s been hinting about a record for a couple of years now, and when I drove him around a couple of months ago (before an AP concert here in Cedar Rapids) I asked about it, and was excited to hear that he was planning on it coming out this year.

So now the announcement is finally here. Ben Shive’s The Ill-Tempered Klavier (a brilliant musical joke/reference, surely P.D.Q. Bach must have used that somewhere?) is available from rabbitroom.com for pre-order today. It’ll be a digital download for now, though Andrew noted that he might be printing some real disks later in the year. Ben, I’d love to have a real disk, so print some, eh?

My list of must-buy records for this year has grown by one… and then immediately shortened, I guess, since I went and pre-ordered it this morning. I can’t wait.

• It was an amazingly beautiful weekend. Fortunately the beautiful weather is sticking around for today so we can play softball.
• Oh, and I’m going to ump the second game of the night. I don’t remember if I’ve said it before, but I enjoy umping games almost more than I enjoy playing them.
• Got a bunch of projects completed on the house this weekend.
• New carpet put down in basement: complete.
• Nasty mold scrubbed from laundry room wall: complete.
• Pegboard hung in laundry room to organize tools: complete.
• Tools organized: not so complete.
• Crock Pot cord repaired: complete.
• Music leading both Saturday night and Sunday morning: yep.
• Double-edged sword: if I had the Versus channel I could’ve watched the Dallas Stars play last night. On the other hand, had I stayed up to watch, I would’ve had to watch until the fourth OT to see them win.
• Go Stars! Bring on those Red Wings.
• If the Stars win the Stanley Cup this year I’m gonna buy that Mike Modano jersey I’ve always wanted.
• Enough with the bullets already.

• all streets | ben fry
  A map of all the streets in the USA, in one screen-sized picture. Very cool. Thanks, Jason Kottke!
  (tags: map America)

Last night was the start to our church league softball season. For most of the day it looked like we might not even play a game; the weather was quite nasty in the morning, with near-freezing temperatures, strong wind, and sleet. But the bitter morning gave way to a merely blustery evening, and so we made our way out to Noelridge Park to another season like the rest, save that this time we were bundled in multiple layers of shirts, sweats, and stocking caps.

Looks like we might have a good team this year. We’ve added a few new guys (and one older guy) from Noelridge who have skills, a catcher who managed to catch a foul fly for an out in her first-ever game (hi Bridget!) and our defense looks passable. I switched around from my usual third base last night to play first, and that worked out just fine. Not a lot of action, but managed to catch everything and make one stretch to get a bang-bang double play called our way.

In theory we’re starting up another league on Friday night with some folks from work, but right now the forecast says rain on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday… so I guess we’ll see. Sure is fun to get back to playing softball.

One of the things that just fascinates me is observing the girls’ learning - not just what they learn but how they learn. Sure, I’m a nerd, but thinking not just that “hey, she used a funny word” but realizing how that particular word reflects the fact that she’s learning about verb tenses (without even knowing it!) just blows me away.

Recent highlight: Laura, looking at a book of nursery rhymes in the van yesterday on our way home from the mall. It’s not a book we’ve read to her very many times. And she’s not reading yet, so what she does is look at the pictures in the book, recite from memory as much as she can, and then improvise based on what she understands from the pictures. So Becky and I are sitting in the front seat talking, and soon we hear this:

“Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker man, bake me a cake as fast as you can. Pat it, and roll it, and mark it… um… with some frosting…”

Hilarity ensued.

So I’m rather a new-music junkie. Granted, it’s gotta be in a genre I’m interested in, but hook me up with a new artist and I’ll go whole hog. This week, on the recommendation of Daniel, I’ve been exploring the music of composer Philip Glass. I didn’t know much about Philip Glass before this week; if you’d asked me I would have remembered that he was very into minimalism and possibly 12-tone music, but that’s about it. I would’ve guessed that he’s not my cup of tea whatsoever. But, having been promised that his newer works were more accessible, I decided to give it a shot.

My first stop: Glass’s personal website. It has a nice overview of his stuff and also… an audio player! The player gives a pretty nice sampling of his stuff. It includes cuts from his music for the movie The Hours, which is beautiful stuff. It also has a sampling of his Etudes for Piano which I found to be very nice. Then there’s some weird stuff - for instance, the soundtrack for a very weird independent art film called Koyaanisqatsi. Definitely enough good stuff to get me interested, though.

My next stop: the local library. I currently have checked out to me nearly every Philip Glass CD that’s in their system. While it’s not an extensive collection, it’s enough to get a sampling. There’s the recording of his String Quartets - fairly nice. Then there’s Einstein on the Beach, which is a whopping four (four!) CDs of “opera”, though it’s not like any opera you’ve ever heard or thought of. It’s either brilliant or totally bizarre… maybe a bit of both. Following that I’ve been listening to his Symphony #4, Heroes. It, too, is pretty good. I still have Dance Nos. 1 - 5 and music in twelve parts to sample, though I doubt I’m going to find them as enjoyable; I know from some online reading that twelve parts is his serious work in the twelve-tone motif, which is too far down the esoteric path for me.

I still want to get my hands on Symphony #1, which Daniel highly recommended; the little samples on Amazonmp3.com sound good. Other than that, I feel like I’ve at least given Glass a good shot this week.

My conclusions: The soundtrack from The Hours is a keeper and will get regular play time. The piano etudes probably will as well. Symphonies 1 and 4 are probably worth having and will get played semi-regularly. The older, more esoteric stuff is somewhat interesting, but probably not something that I’d listen to much. But hey, it’s a new musical discovery, and one that found me some good new music, at that. Thanks, Daniel!

The onus of defense isn’t on the proponents of new media; it’s on the antagonists who would limit how the gospel spreads.

Abraham Piper gets it right on 22 Words (one of my new favorite blogs!).