States I've Visited (as of 09 July 2005)Okay, I ran across this site while reading this 'blog entry and had to create a map of the states I've been to thus far in my life. Kentucky and Illinois are both listed for the few minutes or hours spent at airports there changing planes. An interesting little bit of fun...

I'm listening to one of my new CDs, Jane Monheit's album Taking A Chance On Love.

Actually I'm playing a burned copy of the CD. For some reason the actual CD wouldn't play in my DVD/CD player in my living room. I suspect that my player is just brain-dead. I've had trouble with a few other CDs too. But the burned copy--I ripped the original and burned a copy to use--plays just fine. Odd.

It's nice. She's very good at vocal scatting. Picking the right kind of songs, having a good arrangement, and a having great back-up band sure complement a good singer.

My sister, Katie, would be happy to hear I've got this CD, since she's been an avid Jane Monheit fan for years.

While listening, I got thinking of some of my all-time favorite vocalists. I think my all-time top female vocalist would have to be Ella Fitzgerald. My all-time top male vocalist pick would have to be Nat King Cole. Anything either sings is going to sound good. I'd have to include Frank Sinatra up there among the greats, and Norah Jones too. But Nat and Ella win the top spot, no contest.

At this point in listening to the CD, I'd have to say I mostly prefer the quick, energetic songs. When Jane sings the slower songs, a little Jane goes a long way. Don't get me wrong, she's very good. I like variety, and apparently this evening, I like a little energy.

Jane probably ranks at about the same place as Harry Connick Jr. They're both good, but sometimes I can't make it through an entire CD.

Harry's CD Songs I Heard is an exception to that rule. It's one of my top favorite CDs. I can listen to it again and again. Proving that with such talent, picking the right music, the right arrangements, and a good band or orchestra can make a very good singer sound great.

I did really like the duet with Michael Bublé, I Won't Dance. (He's another favorite vocalist.) And now Love Me Or Leave Me is playing. I like it.

Except even with the burned CD, my stupid player is introducing audio glitches here and there now. Argh! I'm gonna have to get me a new DVD/CD player it looks like!

Oooh, using an acoustic guitar as sole accompaniment for Gershwin's Embraceable You was a good way to provide some contrast. Good choice! Nice. And it's hard to go wrong with a classic Gershwin.

From acoustic guitar to symphonic orchestra for accompaniment for Dancing in the Dark is nice. But I would have broken up the two slower songs with an energetic one in between, though.

Sego lilies were blooming in the mountain meadows atop Kolob in Zion National ParkOn Monday, the 4th of July, about eight miles away from where I was (as the crow flies -- well over 30 miles away by motorized vehicle), just outside of Zion National Park, my friend and co-worker (not cow-orker) Cassidy Larson was hiking and taking pictures. (Check out Cassidy's Photo 'Blog where he posted a few of his photos.)

Unbeknownst, eight miles away from Cassidy and Matt, on Kolob in Zion National Park south of Pocket Mesa near where my maternal grandmother was born, I too was among the Ponderosa pine trees and moutain meadows and taking pictures, as well as...

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What a blow to my pride, my ego. *laugh* I did a Google search, searching for "gifford" as the only search term, just to see what I could see. How awful it was, to see that my web site only finally shows up near the bottom of page six. *smirk*

I shouldn't be surprised. I don't regularly churn out new and interesting material on my site. I don't exchange links with friends. I'm quite a web recluse after a fashion.

The search did reveal another Gifford (no relation that I'm aware of, though if we both traced our genealogy back to the 1600s, perhaps we'd find we were cousins), another blogger, Matthew Gifford who appears to be a tad geekish and interested in technology. Cool! I browsed his blog for a bit, and even visited his Amazon.com wish list. There was some interesting stuff there that could have easily been on my wish list, like C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity or perhaps (if I didn't own the books already), C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia (boxed set).

Mr. Gifford also managed to attend the Gnomedex, which I only heard about today while listening to the latest episode (episode 11) of TWiT (This Week in Tech).

If I'm ever to rise in the ranks of Google's search, I'm going to have to change, and become interesting so that people will link to my web site. *sigh* It's not going to happen, however. I'm too lazy for such an endeavor. I shall have to continue where I'm at, way down the list. Fame is not everything, and in fact isn't that desirable. It's often destructive from my own observations, so why should I bother?

Well I need to stop ruminating and go hold Family Home Evening with my friend Jason. See you later!

Peter Schickele's opening narration to the track Kangaroos from the Carnival of the Animals composed by Camille Saint-Saëns from the CD Sneaky Pete and the Wolf/Carnival of the Animals open with this awful poem:Then the music begins.

What does it mean that I love that? I mean, I really go for the puns and the corny humor like that. My family members will gladly warn anyone that I'm a regular purveyor of puns and one had better have a strong constitution for tolerating such if they hang around me too long.

I also must admit, if I'm being completely honest here, that I like Peter Schicklele's musical humor, and his P.D.Q. Bach compositional humor. I've got a few of his CDs and I thoroughly enjoy them, though I'm quite sure some of the parody is way over my head due to my musical ignorance.

Elantris by Brandon Sanderson I finished reading Elantris by Brandon Sanderson.

After reading Orson Scott Card's review of Elantris back in November before the book came out, and after discovering that the author had put sample chapters online, I hopped over to his web site and devoured the first three chapters. I was hooked. I had to have the book.

It was mighty annoying to have to be patient, to wait over five months until May, 2005 to buy the book. By the time May rolled around, Elantris was lurking in the dusty back corners of my mind, so I didn't get around to ordering a copy from Amazon.com until the last part of May.

It's a good book. No, a really, really good book. While there wasn't a lot of physical action at first, by the ending scenes, things were hopping all over the place. And the unique, fantastic system of magic in the world Brandon Sanderson invented was intriguing from the start. And I enjoyed the characters, their development, and liked watching the choices made by both protagonists and their enemies and the consequences of those choices.

It's a keeper, and a re-reader.

My friend and co-worker (no, not cow-orker) Cassidy was expecting delivery of a new wide-screen high-definition television to his new house this week. He bought the Samsung TV online and knew it would be delivered mid-week. I had to ask him when he was going to invite me over to watch a movie on it, once it arrived. My curiosity was double, because I hadn't yet seen the inside of his recent home purchase.

Wednesday was the day the television arrived...

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Early this afternoon, while doing some work, I discovered that my server (the computer that runs this web site as well as performing other jobs for me at my house) had spontaneously rebooted last night. That should never happen. The server computer has run continuously for five months with no glitches or errors until recently.

Since the files I was working on are temporarily stored on this server, I had to stop what I was doing, shut the thing down, open it up, install a CD-ROM drive, then...

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Gorgeous music! I've raved about Eric Whitacre's music before. Here's an excerpt of Sleep which is currently my favorite Whitacre composition, available directly from Eric Whitacre's web site. I think it's probably the BYU Singers rendition.

http://www.ericwhitacre.com/flash/music/Sleep.mp3

Or an excerpt from the wind instrumental rendition (I'm not sure who the performers are):

http://www.ericwhitacre.com/flash/music/sleep_winds.mp3

While perusing some other blogs tonight, my iPod Shuffle decided to shuffle on over to Sleep, and the expressive, beautiful music instantly grabbed my attention so powerfully that I had to say something about it.

Way to go, Mr. Whitacre!

I suppose I must also mention another track I listened to, composed by another of my favorite composers, John Rutter. It's the first movement of Magnificat, from track 19 on my The Cambridge Singers Collection CD. Celestial music!

Eeek, I guess I rant about good music often enough that I ought to create a separate category for it. *laugh*

After Church services today, I drove over to Hurricane to visit my folks. What's more, my brother's wife and the two eldest of their children have been visiting from Georgia, so I anticipated...

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