Carleen and Mike » 2005 » July

heat wrath

Carleen Huxley — Tue, 26 Jul 2005 21:44:35 +0000

The heat in this state will be the end of me, I swear it. Last Saturday, it was so damn hot that my rear view mirror in my car melted off my window. If the heat didn’t make me cranky enough, then the rear view mirror, hanging from the car ceiling, bopping me on the head periodically as I drove home certainly did. According to the temperature gage, my house is supposed to be sittin’ comfy at 75 degrees but I know it’s lying because I’m sitting here drinking a frozen smoothy with sweat dripping down my neck. The dogs are feeling it too. Chani just got up from her afternoon nap, stretched, then scratched on the door to be let outside. So, she goes outside, turns around once, sniffs the flower bed and looks at me like “yeah, right”, and tottles back into the kitchen again. As for Turbo, well, he’s old enough to know better, I guess. My viking blood is boiling, I seriously feel a beserk coming on so it better storm tonight or Odin, by god, you will feel my wrath in the morning!

No One Calls You the Weasel…

Mike Huxley — Sun, 17 Jul 2005 06:30:01 +0000

One of the best things about having a wife who works at the Library is that I can get on the “Hold” list fairly quickly for just about any book that comes out. Thus it was with the new Harry Potter book. I was #3 on the list (scoring me a book as soon as it came out) and when i recieved the telephone book sized (ok, a REAL cities telephone book…), brand new Year 6, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince I was all giggles. As I finally sat down to digest the eagerly anticipated, next-to-last book in the Harry Potter series, I couldn’t help but feel something akin to the feeling you get when the weather starts to get cold and you take your favorite blanket out of storage and wrap it around yourself - it’s comforting, it’s familiar and it puts you at ease. This is how I felt when reading the first few pages.

This whole series has been so phenomenal. Say what you want about them, call it a fad, a craze, whatever - you can’t deny J.K. Rowlings writing skill. Fans of the books know - we CARE about Harry, Hermione, and Ron, they are our little brothers and sisters and we experience their pain and loss; thrill and joy, just as keenly as they do. I don’t own wizard robes, I’ve never gone to a book release party, I don’t dress up like a wizard to go see the movies and I don’t own a wand (well, not anymore anyway), but I’m on the bandwagon just the same, baby! Next stop, Diagon Alley….

Non-Ultra Joy

Carleen Huxley — Sun, 10 Jul 2005 18:48:04 +0000

So, I went to Albertson’s on Friday to get the weekly groceries. We’ve been running out of dishwashing liquid so I scanned the shelves for the Ajax but it looked as though they were out so I grabbed the next cheapest thing I could find, which was a bottle of Joy. When I got home Mike started to help me unload everything. When he pulled out the dishwashing liquid, he started to chuckle. “What?” I asked. Apparently, I hadn’t bought just any bottle of Joy. I had bought a bottle of Non-Ultra Joy, because really, who in all of worlds creation could possible want a bottle of Ultra Joy.

Mike Huxley — Fri, 01 Jul 2005 13:45:08 +0000

My interest in playing Music started completely by accident really. In high school, I joined a musical group called the Believers (yeah sponsored by the church, but i tried to keep a blind eye to that). We traveled to many of the nursing homes in the area and sang and performed skits and such for the old folks - community service. A year or two after joining, our drummer graduated high school, so the position was open. So I asked a friend to teach me how to play so I could fill the position. I was basically shown the quick and dirty way to play - good enough to get me going.

I kept at it for several years and eventually joined a Blues band, doing Stevie Ray Vaughan covers. It was during this time that I think I learned the most about playing. After a few years of that it was time for me to head away for college so - at first at least - the drums had to stay behind and my learning came to an abrupt halt. I eventually brought them down with me (much to the dismay of girls dorm upstairs, hee hee) and joined another band, this time writing our own music. We called ourselves Leroy the Atomic Hippo (I love that name) and me and the bass player pretty much played the same beat for just about every song. It became a running gag. But soon that too came to an end with the end of classes. No longer having my drums soon got to me - a sort of musical itch. That’s when I picked up the Guitar. Never did get anywhere with that, though it’s still on the “to-do” list.

More recently, I picked up a cheap violin on Ebay. I think that if I could spend the time to really focus on it and take lessons, I think I could get really good at it - however as I should have learned with the Guitar, Strings just ain’t my bag, baby. And now the next step in my muscial evolution is a Native American Flute and the Didgeridoo. I’m having a blast (ha! that joke blows ha ha ha…). If you’re not familiar with either of these instruments you should at least hear them - or better yet, buy one and learn! Here is a link to hear some samples of the Native American Flute (scroll all the way to the bottom). And here is a link to a video of a Didgeridoo player.

I never really thought of myself as a Wind Instrument type of person, after playing drums for so long I thought I was strictly a percussionist, but the change has been really exciting and I can’t wait to see where I go with it.