Miss Wisabus » Music

Tuesday List

Elizabeth — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 13:12:06 +0000

I want to start trying out some new recipes. After about 6 months of my husband’s new schedule I am still not quite used to him getting home late and we have gotten out of the habit of eating at home. My goal for the coming weeks is to try some new recipes and get back to using my slow cooker.
Oh, my dear little slow cooker. I have the tiniest thing that Granny bought for me on Black Friday 2007. It was marked down to $2. Tell me, how can something that costs only $2 work so well? I think it’s time to upgrade though. It’s definitely too small to cook a pot roast or a small chicken in. Recommendations for a decent sized (but not enormous) slow cooker?
My baby brother has come up to see me more often in recent months. That’s been nice, as for the most part my parents and occasionally my grandparents are really the only to visit me here, 50 miles away. Anyway, it’s been nice to see him. When he visits we usually watch a little TV (he watches the same shows as me and Kevin) or he makes me listen to music. Really, he makes me. The thing is though, I already know most of the songs, so it’s like a game of name that tune for a mish-mash country (new and old) and classic rock. With your occasional hip hop song thrown in. You can’t fool me, boy. I’ve got 4 years on you. And I was around for the early days of Napster.
As far as I know, my baby brother does not read my blog. This is a scientific experiment to see how long it takes before he finds out I mentioned him here.
While we’re talking about my baby brother, here is the ring tone I have for him on my phone:
Thinking about cutting my hair off.
This was supposed to be the week of getting back in the gym, but after throwing my back out sometime this weekend…that hasn’t happened. Last night I broke out the shiatsu back massager (one of those you put in your chair) and while it worked a few kinks out, I think I may have bruised my back. Ouch.
Since ibuprofen and acetaminophen haven’t been able to touch this pain, I’m awfully glad I saved a prescription pain killer from my wisdom tooth removal. Yeah, those pills are forever old, but the one I took yesterday is the only thing that’s helped. Even if it’s just the placebo effect.

Listening Lately

Elizabeth — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 02:51:39 +0000

A few songs in rotation around here recently…

The Band Perry…I enjoy your music despite the fact that one of the boys has a haircut that he clearly stole from Melissa Etheridge. The lyrics in this one are nice.

This is one of my favorite covers that I’ve heard Tori Amos perform. Her rendition of the song has been floating around for a while, but this performance was from a month ago. Lovely.

An older one from The Civil Wars and maybe my favorite. I don’t have a choice, but I still choose you. I just love their voices.

Taylor Swift and The Civil Wars the other night at the Ryman Auditorium. Sooo pretty.

And lastly, Ryan Adams singing “Elizabeth, You Were Born to Play That Part”. Who doesn’t love a song with their name in it? This one is special.

Monday Morning Cuppa

Elizabeth — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 13:00:23 +0000

Raspberry leaf tea. Mmm.

Flying Wild Alaska is my new obsession. Alaska has forever been an interest of mine and I’ve always gobbled up books about the state, but now I have a half dozen TV shows about the place at my fingertips. Gotta love it! Anyone else watch this show?
Speaking of TV obsessions — fangirl moment. A former EastEnders actress (Kylie Babbington, “Jodie Gold”) responded to me on Twitter. It’s the little things, y’all.
Wait, none of you watch EastEnders? Here’s a clip of Jodie and Poppy, one of history’s greatest comedy duos (ha).
South Beach Diet Phase One Recipe Round-Up from Kalyn’s Kitchen (if you try to stay low-carb and are not following this blog you are missing out!)
Slow & Steady, a post about homesteading from Quinn
A recipe for rosemary sea salt from Dreadlock Girl
A spoon in the persimmon seed this year, but I’m still waiting on my snow! via Territory Mom
Leanna makes elderberry syrup — I cannot wait to try this myself!
And because it’s Monday, like me you may need something to kind of start the day off right. I heard this in the mall on Saturday (I love how, for the most part, mall soundtracks haven’t changed since I was about 6 years old) and it’s been in my head ever since. Enjoy your Monday!

Goodness and mercy

Elizabeth — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 13:24:20 +0000

Author insert a music with WS Audio Player.
(Download) this music.

♥ Psalm 23
♥ new camera lenses (that I am chomping at the bit to try out!)
♥ 4-day work week
♥ Downton Abbey
♥ a good story
♥ clean starts
♥ I will fear no evil
♥ turning on the radio and hearing the perfect song
♥ dormant trees
♥ the gentle sound of a stream
♥ finding out how couples met
♥ beauty in the tiniest detail

Listening Lately

Elizabeth — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 01:39:08 +0000

My music listening happens in spurts. A mood will strike me and I’ll be stuck on one thing for a while. It’s sometimes based on what I’m reading or watching at the time (yes, occasionally I’ll have a reading playlist), but mostly the music I listen to is stuff that I happen upon. Like when I’m shopping and I hear some lyrics that make me stop and then I have to save them on Evernote so I’ll remember to Google them when I get home (happens more often than you might think).

Here are just a few gems I’ve been listening to lately. And some rambling.

EEE! So excited because we’ll be seeing Lady Antebellum in April with Darius Rucker and Thompson Square. Particularly excited about Darius Rucker because I have loved him since…

(So maybe I was 10. When I was a “tween” I listened to this. I don’t even think there was a Bieber-like alternative. Except maybe that Kids Bop stuff.)

…and this:

Gah. I spent a good chunk of my sophomore year of college crying silently while listening to this song.

Dear Darius, You have always been on the list of people that I intend to sing a duet with. Maybe someday whenever I get over my intense stage fright and fear of being laughed at, I’ll give you a call.

Twilight Saga Ultimate Fan Mix

Elizabeth — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 02:13:54 +0000

After weeks of study and pouring over thousands of songs, The Twilight Saga Ultimate Fan Mix is done. (Actually, this has been a draft since January 30, 2009 *blinkblink* ) In my opinion, it is a work of art, much like the abdominal muscles of Edward Cullen—cold, hard, and chiseled. And so very beautiful. If you don’t agree then you can go sit and pout in the tent with Jacob while the rest of us go pulverize some bad guys into Powdered Vampire Concrete.

Since the premiere of Breaking Dawn Pt. 1 is tonight I thought I would go ahead and post this. True Twilight fan I am not, but I cannot deny my love/hate relationship with this saga. Some of these I put a lot of thought into and some are a little tongue-in-cheek (umm…especially the one from All Dogs Go To Heaven if you didn’t pick up on it). Enjoy!

Links are to YouTube videos or versions of the song available to listen to online where available.
* = no video available online at time of posting

The Twilight Saga Ultimate Fan Mix by DJ Suckitupbella
Twilight
1. Human (LightsoverLA Remix) – Ellie Goulding
◊ I don’t know what it’s like to be alive, to say goodbye / To cry a thousand tears because my ears won’t listen
2. Love Addict – Family Force 5
◊ Doctor, Doctor, I’ve got an emergency / It seems I’m head over heels, a case of L-O-V-E
3. Song for a Winter’s Night – Sarah McLachlan
◊ If I could only have you near / To breathe a sigh or two / I would be happy just to hold the hands I love / On this winter’s night with you
4. Ready for Love – India Arie
◊ I am ready for love / Why are you hiding from me? / I’d quickly give my freedom / To be held in your captivity

New Moon
5. Wintersong – Sarah McLachlan
◊ It’s late and morning’s in no hurry / But sleep won’t set me free / I lie awake and try to recall / How your body felt beside me
6. What You Don’t Know – Jonatha Brooke
◊ You’ll never see me coming / You’ll never know my name / Try to remember, try to forget / But you’ll never be the same
7. I’m Not in Love – Tori Amos
◊ I’m not in love, so don’t forget it / It’s just a silly phase I’m going through
8. Leaving Side of Love – Tori Sparks (I don’t have a clue what’s going on in this fanvid, but it was the best version of the song I could find online. It’s completely unrelated, so just listen.)
◊ You’ll be the cure for all that ails me / And I’ll be the poison in your blood

Eclipse
9. How Deep Is Your Love – Jonatha Brooke (the “Stairway to Heaven” intro in this video makes it even better)
◊ Kiss my mouth and taste my tears / let them fall with all my fears / Talk to me, say my name / hold me down, say it again
10. Don’t You Wanna Stay – Jake Bruene & Clara C
◊ We can make forever feel this way / Don’t you wanna stay
11. E.T. – Katy Perry (the Kanye version is DUMB, but it’s the best version I could find to share)
◊ Infect me with your lovin’ / Fill me with your poison … Wanna be your victim / Ready for abduction
12. Who Wants to Live Forever – Breaking Benjamin (Queen cover)
◊ Who wants to live forever when love must die… / Then touch my tears with your lips / touch my world with your fingertips / And we can have forever / And we can love forever

Breaking Dawn
13. Love Song For a Vampire – Annie Lennox
◊ Oh loneliness, oh hopelessness / to search the ends of time / For there is in all the world / no great love than mine
14. Break My Broken Heart – Thus Far*
◊ Tell me I’m not far gone / That my heart’s not destined to be a stone / Well, I know your love is the realest thing / and I want to believe it’s all I need / So break my broken heart
15. First Love Never Dies – Scott Walker & the Walker Brothers*
◊ Let’s hurry to each other / for there could be no other
16. Love Survives – Irene Cara & Freddie Jackson
◊ Love survives beyond our lives

Soundtrack for the Weekend

Elizabeth — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 04:05:22 +0000

(Like I mentioned before, WordPress was giving me trouble and I worried that this wouldn’t post while I was gone. Well, it didn’t. So, I’m backdating it and calling it good.)

Heather and I have a long history of fantastic road trips and with road trips come playlists. Here’s the one from this weekend.

You Get What You Give – New Radicals
Your Song – Ellie Goulding
Hold On – Wilson Phillips
Video Games – Lana del Rey
Your Biggest Mistake – Ellie Goulding
Lighthouse – Westlife
I’ve Got This Friend – The Civil Wars
We Owned The Night – Lady Antebellum
Friday Night – Lady Antebellum
Texas Was You - Jason Aldean
Footloose – Blake Shelton
Best I Ever Had (Grey Sky Morning) – Vertical Horizon
You’re An Ocean – Fastball
Work It (AC/DC remix) – Nelly (ft. Justin Timberlake)
The Club Is Alive – JLS
Shake Ya Tailfeather – Nelly (ft. P. Diddy & Murphy Lee)
Eyes Wide Shut (Official Remix) – JLS (ft. Tinie Tempah)
Country Grammar – Nelly
This Love (Will Be Your Downfall) – Ellie Goulding
I’m Into Something Good – The Bird & The Bee
Everybody In Love – JLS
What About Now – Westlife
Runaway Train – Soul Asylum

It probably looks weird and doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it’s full of songs that we liked in college or even earlier and mixed in with some newer stuff and some of my latest guilty pleasure songs.

50 of My Favorite Films — 20-16

Elizabeth — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 12:27:13 +0000

Grab some tissue. This portion of the list contains some tear-jerkers.

20. The Way We Were
You’ll never find anyone as good for you as I am, to believe in you as much as I do, or to love you as much.

“Two desperate people have a wonderful romance, but their political views and convictions drive them apart.”

Ain’t that the way it goes? Hmph.

I’m glad I saw this movie purely because it helped me to understand approximately 27 references made to it in Gilmore Girls, but even without all of that, it’s one of my favorites. I’m a sucker for a Babs movie and this one is awesome. It’s a classic so I won’t go into any details, but you should watch it sometime if you haven’t.

Moral of this story: Don’t marry someone if your plan is to try and change them.

19. You’ve Got Mail & The Shop Around the Corner
Don’t you love New York in the fall? It makes me wanna buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address. On the other hand, this not knowing has its charms.

Sometimes I wonder about my life. I lead a small life. Well, valuable but small. And sometimes I wonder, do I do it because I like it or because I haven’t been brave? So much of what I see reminds me of something I read in a book, when, shouldn’t it be the other way around? I don’t really want an answer, I just want to send this cosmic question out into the void. So, goodnight, dear void.

I bundle these two together because in my mind they need to be that way. There’s probably only one other movie that I have watched more than these and it’s closer to the top (We’ll be getting to it soon). The first time I watched You’ve Got Mail, it was love. Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks together, as cliched as that paring may be at this point, are wonderful (I love Sleepless in Seattle even though you won’t find it on this list). I’ve had to come a long way to get back to just enjoying this movie because I wrote my big capstone paper over it in my last course for my English degree. You’re probably wondering how that works, well, my class was “Comedy & Laughter.” And it was a joy. It made me very critical of this film though and there are some parts in it that, when I sit down and really think them out, I can’t get my head around them. Some of the character’s decisions seem like they come out of nowhere.

But you know what? That’s how love is.

Online love. Sigh. Back in the day before sex predators were a huge concern. This one holds a special place in my heart. Some of the very best relationships in my life happened in part thanks to AOL Instant Messenger. Thank you, AIM, for helping out a girl who is really bad at getting the right words out of her mouth.

Note about this film & me: I wore my hair like Meg Ryan has hers in this movie for about 3 years. I’m not brave enough to go back to that though. Her style here seems to mirror my own, which is to say — cardigans and sheath dresses and Mary Janes. I think there is a causal relationship between this movie and my affinity for Barnes & Noble.

The Shop Around the Corner was inspired by the same play that spawned You’ve Got Mail (as was Judy Garland’s In The Good Old Summertime which I find dreadful) and it’s a must-see simply because James Stewart stars in it. The premise is similar, only the main characters are pen pals and co-workers, and it’s set in Budapest around 1940. Pick it up or try to catch it on TCM someday. It’s lovely.

18. Steel Magnolias
I do not see plays, because I can nap at home for free. And I don’t see movies ’cause they’re trash, and they got nothin’ but naked people in ‘em! And I don’t read books, ’cause if they’re any good, they’re gonna make ‘em into a miniseries.

I am a woman, I am technically from the south, and this movie is the real deal. You can quote it all day around my house and it just sounds like normal talk. It’s precious and perfect in so many ways. When I see it on TV, I have to stop. I think it should be required watching…for life.

17. Nine Lives
Every life has a story. And every story has a life of its own.

Another group of interwoven stories by Rodrigo García. This is one of those films where I don’t feel comfortable saying much about the plot because it’s all connected and you have to see the whole thing play out. It’s beautiful and I think that the film shows just what a grasp the writer/director has on human behavior and relationships. He writes things that are real.

Here’s what Roger Ebert had to say — “Rodrigo Garcia … the son of the novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez … has the same love for his characters, and although his stories are all (except for one) realistic, he shares his father’s appreciation for the ways lives interweave and we touch each other even if we are strangers. A movie like this, with the appearance of new characters and situations, focuses us; we watch more intently, because it is important what happens.”

16. Once
What’s the Czech for “Do you love him”?

Would I have enjoyed this film if I hadn’t seen it until I was much older? I don’t know. Sometimes things come along at the right time in your life and this is one of them for me. It came out toward the end of my time in college and it touched my heart. It’s a quiet piece of film-making that captures a few days in the lives of two people. (SPOILER) It does not have the storybook ending that you might expect, as life rarely does. But it shows that every once in a while there is someone who comes into your life, for no matter how short a time, that you will never forget.

Tuesday List

Elizabeth — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 12:39:12 +0000

The last of the boy bands that I listened to in 9th grade is calling it quits. Back then there were so many of them, but Westlife lasted longer than any of the others. Sigh. Sad day. This is the video to their final single.
Read-a-Thon went swimmingly and I finished two books total. I made headway into two others and I need to finish one of them soon so that I can loan it to a co-worker. Reading is fun!
Participating in the Bout of Books read-a-thon this week, but I haven’t had time to actually dive in. Yesterday I got the urge to clean the floors in the most trafficked areas of the house and then fell asleep earlier than I’d planned. Ah well. My floors are clean.
There is so much good TV on right now. I feel like it’s been lacking for a while, but right now I have so many shows that I’m looking forward to. Sons of Anarchy, The Walking Dead, Once Upon a Time (loved the premiere!), 2 Broke Girls (shocker — I find this HILARIOUS), How I Met Your Mother, Big Bang Theory, and my favorite reality show — Sister Wives.
I’m ready to get out and take some photos of the changing colors in the area. Maybe I’ll take a little roadtrip this weekend?
I’m closing in on the last half of my movie countdown and they just get more fun as I go along. Watch for another one to be posted this week.
Just a little over one week until Jolene is here! Much fun will be had!
My trip to An Affair of the Heart with Mom and Granny was super. I got a few good deals and got one Christmas gift out of the way. I did walk away from a quilted throw that I loved and when I came back to purchase it 20 minutes later it was gone. Heartbreaking.
P.S., I want to learn to quilt.

Tuesday List

Elizabeth — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 12:29:43 +0000

A few weeks ago I watched Muriel’s Weddingfor the first time just because the Netflix synopsis sounds like my life at one point — “A misfit escapes life by listening to ABBA ditties and dreaming about marriage, but when she leaves her hometown, her fantasy starts to come to life.”
While we’re on the subject of ABBA I have to tell you that I was sorely disappointed that I couldn’t make this happen at my wedding reception.
My brother has finished his first stint working in North Dakota. I expect him to regale me with tales of the frigid north when he returns.
P.S. — Kyle, we will take you for sushi at one of our new favorites.
Back on my WOE (way of eating) again and I think this time it’s going very smoothly because my husband is being more supportive in his own food choices. What a difference that makes!
I have a new steam cleaner! (Thanks, Mom and Dad!) And I will clean your floors. For free. Or for low-carb snacks. That’s how much I love this thing.
Fall break was nice, but it’s never long enough. I’m looking forward to Thanksgiving and Christmas.
I think I have something to look forward to every weekend between now and the end of the year. Huzzah! I love this time of year.
Annnd, it’s only about one month until my birthday. (Hint, hint to any family members who say that I never give them birthday ideas…ahem, Mom.)