Canon in D

I used to help out with weddings at my church. Help run the sound, play music, etc… and I have been to 100s of weddings. Anyone who has been to many weddings knows that the default processional is Pachelbel’s Canon in D. In fact, when I was suggesting music for the wedding, and couples had no clue what to play, it was my first suggestion. It’s popularity made it a nice, safe recommendation.

The downside, of course, is that the song really sticks in your head, just like this guy points out in his rant…

IKEA

Living in Colorado I have an (unhealthy) fascination with IKEA. I totally dig that funky northern european furniture design. In fact, one of my Christmas presents this year originated from the Scandinavian Designs store in Westminster.

Unfortunately Those Swedes haven’t chosen to build one of their stores anywhere near my home, so when I was in San Diego this summer we had to visit the local IKEA store. Because of this my friends Kara and Joe, from San Diego, brought me a pair of IKEA slippers as a gift.

Amazingly enough there are people out there who aren’t as impressed with IKEA as I am. One of these critics is singer/songwriter Jonathan Coulton.

Jonathon has a very amusing song appropriately named… IKEA

Principles

Doc Rampage has a very interesting post discussing the difference between stubborness and principle. His comments interested me because I completely understand what he is discussing. I can be extremely stubborn. I just like to be contrary and don’t like to be told what to do. Probably, as Doc states, due to the smug satisfaction that stubborness brings

We aren’t stubborn for no reason; we are stubborn because it gives us a feeling of smug satisfaction. If you have that feeling, maybe you should reconsider.

In our culture everyone receives a moniker, liberal or conservative, redneck or hippie, Republican or Democrat. In order to defend our chosen affiliations it’s often much easier to simply react to our counterparts across the aisle and do the opposite than it is to make decisions based on what we know is right. Too often people in our society spends more time not being something (liberal, religious, etc..) that we don’t bother to make our own decisions.

I encourage anyone who reads this to contemplate this next time you take a political, philisophical or idelogical position on a topic. What are your goals? Does your knee-jerk response to the question at hand actually help achieve your goal, or are you just being stubborn?

James Brown Survivors

Yahoo has a story about a dispute between lawyers representing the late James Brown’s estate and his widow, Tomi Rae Brown.

While James’ passing is a sad story, I did find the last line of the article a little humorous:

Brown is survived by at least four children.

Emphasis mine.

Christmas

In honor of today’s christmas festivities I would like to share a personal story

Today marked the 4 year anniversary of a Christmas that was very frightening to me and my family. My Grandma Muzz, who is now 84 years old, has always been like a rock to us. She worked for the USPS are a Rural Letter Carrier for over 30 years, in fact she was still working full time four years ago at the age of 80.

One of our holiday traditions (Thanksgiving and Christmas) has always been dinner at Grandma’s house. Four years ago, Christmas 2004, was no different. The whole family went to Grandma’s in anticipation of our traditional chicken noodle soup, a family tradition stemming from my grandfather’s childhood during the Great Depression, and a nice ham dinner. What we found was my grandmother extremely sick. She had gotten up early and prepared the meal, but for the only time that I can remember she didn’t join us. During dinner she sat in the living room in her La-Z-boy and rested. Her explaination was a bad case of the flu.

Later that night the flu was so bad that my grandfather took her to the hospital. They admitted her, ran some tests and found she had cancer in her colon and it had perforated and she had to have emergency surgery that night.

I’m glad to say that after the surgery and some chemotherapy she made a full recovery. Today she is the most healthy 84 year old woman I know, but I am extremely thankful that 2006 was yet another Christmas that I was able to spend with my Grandmother.