Only at Christmas Time

This is one of the songs I listen to on repeat during the Christmas season. Enjoy! I hope everyone is having a fabulous weekend.

A Few Things I Love

Hi guys! Happy Valentine's Day! I hope everyone is enjoying something you love or spending time with someone you love. I'm not going to do a mushy post about how in love I am (I'm saving that for next Monday, my 2 year wedding anniversary!). Instead, here's a list of things I am loving at the moment, around the web and whatnot.

1.First, in case everyone thinks I hate the Internet because of last Friday's post about Facebook, I don't! I love the Internet! And so does this guy. Ze Frank is very, very cool. This is what "connection" over the web looks like and feels like.

2. I've just discovered this, via Chester Copperpot and her pretty much infallible taste in music. I'm pretty sure this is one of the most beautiful videos I've ever watched!

3. Anything and everything Garrison Keillor. I'm currently reading Lake Wobegon Summer 1956. I've never read anything by him before, but my grandmother used to play a Lake Wobegon tape series on the way to family reunions.  I remember loving to listen to him tell those stories and sing snippets of hymns. He introduced me to rhubarb pie. I might still have those tapes in my closet somewhere, but I wouldn't have anything to play them on. Instead, I listen to the weekly podcast of the Lake Wobegon bit of Prairie Home Companion. Seriously, if you don't love this guy, I'm not sure we can be friends. ;)

4. marc johns. I spent hours scrolling through his work the other day. It's simple, fun, and oftentimes hilarious.

Have a good week, lovelies! What are you loving, lately?

Right Now

I am in a weird mood, akin to grief in some way. Maybe grief's second cousin. I finished Graham Greene's The Comedians last night and I'm a bit sad it's over. I think I always feel this way after finishing a book - some more than others. I step into another place and live there for a while. I got used to the idea of Haiti and the Tontons Macoute with their dark sunglasses and jeeps. I was familiar with the Columbus statue where Brown and Martha would rendezvous. I was fond of Joseph, limp and all, and could almost taste his famous rum punches. Anyway, it's over. I've put it back on the shelf, next to Villette, which also brought me to tears and showed just how much one can still manage to understand while skipping paragraphs of French I should be able to read.

Perhaps this mood is amplified by my current musical obsession: Goldmund's The Malady of Elegance. Also, I am mortified that I am just now discovering The Kings of Convenience. Go listen. Now.

However, I am definitely excited at the same time. Amazing how dichotomous I can be, eh? Tonight we settled with our landlord another year's contract. We'll be in Wonju for at least another year in our current apartment. We'll be getting new flooring in the office and our bedroom PLUS! an air conditioner for next summer! Woot. We only have to pay for installation for the air conditioner. The year's rent is incredibly reasonable and we've saved just enough in our "housing" savings account to be able to pay it all in advance come January. I'm thinking of doing a few things to spruce up our bedroom because it's so boring, and yet it's such a lovely place to be. I've been reluctant to put much more effort into the apartment since we don't own it and we'll probably move out after this next year here. But I think that's silly now. I should strive to make wherever I am a comfortable home and even though I might not own it, I can somehow make it mine.

I'm also currently thinking about Christmas gifts! Sadly, I'm doing more thinking than anything else! I know what I'm making for some of my family and friends and I just need to get busy.

Well, that's about all right now. Oh, and since I opened with books, I'll close by telling you I'm a few pages into Dave Egger's Zeitoun. I'm a reading freak these days.

What are you up to right now?

Of the Moment. Or Minute. Whatever, here's a list.

Hello my name is Danielle, and I am obsessed with a number of things at the moment. Besides iced caramel macchiato. That's pretty much a given on any day. And because it's late and because I'd rather be singing with my husband (We're in a singing phase. He plays guitar. We sing. You wish you were us, I know), a list.

1. First, this video:

SUMMER CAMP - Round the Moon from Paddy Power on Vimeo.

via my new favorite blog I Am Photograph, actually found via my other new favorite blog, A Beautiful Mess. Watch this video. For reals.

Next, I have become slightly entirely bewitched by Internet shopping now that I've got a PayPal account. Turns out this was a huge mistake. It's so easy to push the little button and all my info is filled out and all I have to do is click. I should really wait until all my stuff arrives (of course I order from across the world and must have everything shipped to Korea, which takes FOR-EV-UR) and make a huge post, but I can't wait. This is my new winter way to make Koreans smile before noon! I'm pretty sure it's just as good as this one.

I bought this at Red Velvet Art owned by the lovely Elsie of aforementioned A Beautiful Mess. Really, this list is more like connect the dots.

Number Three: The picture above was taken with my iPhone and my latest App infatuation: Instagram. This is my favorite photo app so far, although I'm still loving the Hipstamatic and ShakeItPhoto. But Instagram is just good. It's easy to share your pictures and the quality is fabulous. Here are some of my favorite shots with it so far.

                        

Also, I'm never not obsessed with my cats, but right now I'm obsessed with taking pictures of them. Especially Miso. She's just so photogenic and she looks at the camera and she stays still, like she knows what I'm doing. I'm not going to bore you with my latest series of kitters photos (don't worry, Bo is having his fair share in the spotlight, too). I'll save that for later. Put it on your calendar.

Next on the list is my latest absorption in literature. I'm just devouring it. I just finished Wuthering Heights two days ago. My favorite part: "...he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same." I'm pretty lucky that I feel this way about my husband most of the time. (You can gag now. Go ahead; I'll wait.) Yesterday, I picked up and finished Nora Ephron's I Feel Bad About My Neck and Other Thoughts on Being a Woman. Sharp, moving collection of essays if ever there was one. Today, I began Graham Greene's The Comedians. Next in the queue are another Dave Eggers, Zeitoun, and yet another Vonnegut, Slapstick, because there is no such thing as too much Vonnegut.

Since I began this list of obsessions with music, I think I'll end it there, too. What's playing over and over all day, while I grade papers, while I'm at my desk with 10 minutes to kill between classes, while I run in the middle of the night, while I drive 5 minutes down the street? Well, I'll tell you. Florence + the Machine. I am consumed by this music. Specifically, this:



And this:



And that, my lovelies, is what I am preoccupied with and riveted by these days.

What are you currently obsessing over?

[Funny the Way It Is]

[push play, read]




I listened to this song on the bus home tonight. I realized a few lines of the lyrics captured the culmination of some debate going on inside me about convenience and comfort and what they cost.

standing on the bridge
watch the water passing under-
neath it must have been much harder
when there was no bridge just water
now the world is small
remember how it used to be
with mountains and oceans and winters and rivers and stars...

I live in the country of convenience. We have the fastest Internet; we have the most efficient airport in the world; we have ridiculously affordable health care; we have free shipping with online shopping; we can order food and have it delivered in a park, on the sidewalk, in an alley. And that delivery guy will come back later to pick up your dishes. We live in apartments surrounded by every kind of convenience you can imagine. Korea is saturated with convenience. Everything is done for you. You don't even pump your own gas in this country.

And I will tell you, dang, it's comfortable. I sit around and think about ways I can make my life even more comfortable. And generally, I discover how many things I need to achieve this. I need a better rice cooker so my rice will stay fresh longer and cook faster. I need a car so I can go where I need to go exactly when I like and skip the 10-minute-wait between buses. I need a better computer so I can spend more of my time in front of it. I need cable TV so I can watch programs I have seen before in English. I need a better cell phone so that I can Twitter on the go (because does Twitter really count if you must be tied to your computer and an Internet connection?). I need a personal trainer who will roll my belly out of bed in the mornings and march me to the gym. I need a personal chef (okay, I sort of have this one covered with the HubbO, but still) who will force me to eat things that are good for me while at the same time relieving me of the worry about and proximity with the food I consume. I need a lot of money so I don't have to teach. Because then I could spend all my time on the Internet, and everyone knows how great the Internet is!

And all of those things are fine. I love things. They're great. And I love easy and fast.

But what I don't love is who I become when everything is easy and fast. I don't love how those things prompt me only to consider further what more I need in order to be comfortable.

These things never stir me to create, to commune, to care about the person next to me. These things never allow me to test my patience or my discipline, both things running on empty. I am beginning to be drawn to the simple things in life. And I want to find beauty in waiting on the bus, instead of inconvenience. I want to order my life so that I don't need my rice cooker to keep my rice for 49 hours. And I want to stop seeing only my needs and the things that would make my life easier, instead of discovering the ways I can reach out and embrace a bit of difficulty or complexity. I want to stop complaining about being busy and having no time, and rejoice that I have a community to be a part of and people to care about. I want to work hard and build something for myself instead of ordering it to be done for me and delivered to my door for free.

I never understood why artists and writers always went to the woods or sparsely furnished shacks on the beach. I always wondered why they needed to seclude themselves from everyone else to get their work done. But it's not the people or the place they're running from. It's the things. The convenience and the comfort. Because let's face it; how many times can you site comfort as the great motivator? It's not. It just doesn't move us. It doesn't make us dance. It doesn't help us value vulnerability with each other or even within ourselves.

And we're ruining things with it. I crossed a good number of swinging rope and stone bridges built across small streams and hung across large coursing rivers in the Himalayas. And I was so thankful for those bridges. They held me and led me to places I couldn't have dreamed up. But the bridges are simply not enough. It's not enough that people can walk through the mountains and cross the water with relative ease now. People can't drive their cars through the mountains, and well, that's just annoying, isn't it? So not only do we want bigger and better bridges, we want roads. We want a clearly marked line to follow on the map. We don't want to twist and turn and investigate corners. We want to know where we're going and exactly how many minutes it's going to take us to get there.

The roads that are being constructed and laid through those mountains are destroying Nepal. Eventually, it won't be any big deal to hike through the Himalayas because you'll simply be able to drive through it. Without relying on the generosity of mountain farmers to feed you. Without poking dirt-bathed babies tummies on a stone wall. Without talking to the people of this land and trying your tongue at their names for the earth and its inhabitants. Nope. You'll be able to drive through it, with your air-conditioner on, your iPod plugged in, and all other experiences drowned in the comfort of your leather seats and the convenience of your four wheels.

Perhaps if I was Nepalese and walked everywhere, I would think differently. Perhaps speaking from the heart of comfort and availability and the opposite of hardship, I find the simplicity of others' lives beautiful. Yet, I have felt that simplicity work within me. I have walked through those mountains, trying to avoid the roads and being thankful for small bridges. I have seen what it is like when there are "mountains and oceans and winters and rivers and stars." And I met myself clearly there. My vision was not blurred by modern gadgets that keep me busy. Because the longer I think about it, the more convenience hides me from myself. Extremely comfortably hidden, actually. I don't have to look inside myself to, to examine myself, to reflect on my character, my choices, my heart. I certainly don't have to consider anyone else in this scheme of the easy life. If it's easy then it's good. If it's difficult, or complex, or fuzzy then it needs some work and someone needs to fix it so I don't have to do that work myself.

I'm tired of it. I'm tired of feeling the things I have within me being hushed by my comfortable life. Of course, we'll see where all this weariness gets me the next time I have to, God forbid, stand in a line and wait for something. Or when I need to order my time more wisely so I'm not 5 minutes late to everywhere. Or when I need to turn off the TV and shut down the computer in order to sit in front of the looking glass. We'll see. I am looking to simplify my life. Hoping to ignore the comfortable and choose instead the creative.

But y'all. I still want a car. Really, really bad.

Workout, K-Pop Music Video Style

So, the all-time sweetest and strawberriest blogger ever, Kerri from Your Wishcake, started this great thing (or terrible thing, depending on my own determination and staying power) called Work It Out Weekends. And I thought it was a grand idea, to tell you how fantastically I fail each week at becoming small enough to wear "free size" in Korea, or to having an S-line. (I am currently sporting the B-line. It's a Boobs and Belly shape.)

And God bless Korea because I showed an enormous amount of initiative and joined the gym this week. I joined with two Korean girlfriends on Wednesday and signed up for the Aerobics class at 10:40 am. It's offered everyday, but I think for now I'll stick with Monday, Wednesday, and Friday classes. But I am a bit addicted to it and found myself wondering out loud whether they had a class on Saturdays when I got up this morning. And Kenny knew something was up. Because all of the sudden on my day off, the day of doing nothing, the day of taking three hour naps after only four hours of being awake, the day of eating however many corn dogs I can handle- on this day, I consider going to the gym.

I mean, I didn't. But this is definitely a step in the right direction, y'all. I mentioned that last week I lost a kilo. (That's about 2 pounds for the Stateside folks. And see, the great things about kilos is that I count the amount of weight I need to lose in kilos because the number is smaller. But when I actually lose the weight, I count it in pounds because it pretty much doubles. It's a beautiful system of motivation, or self-deception, whichever.) I can drop weight pretty fast if I just discipline myself enough not to eat after 6 pm. Which, when you work from 1-9 everyday becomes quite the task because oh my god you have to think about what you're going to eat and actually make plans and cook ahead of time and then remember to take it with you to work. But this week, I let it slip a little because good grief I went to the gym twice! And this aerobics class is a full hour of jumping, popping, kicking, grape-vining, shaking, and more jumping.

If I could video tape me in this class, y'all, not only would I record it, I would post it on the Internet for the world to see. And then I would be all famous. People would call me The Aerobics Girl, and then I would get all these invites to talk shows and I would get to teach Ellen how to do aerobics Korean style and maybe finally meet G-Dragon. Because this aerobics is not like any aerobics you have ever seen. Unless you have seen this, on speed:

Because the aerobics instructor is hotter than these girls, I get insanely jealous during class. And there is a lot of standing still in this video. But in class, there is NO standing still. And they have a stereo with one of those knobs you turn to make it faster and faster, but without everything sounding like the chipmunks. So, speed this song up about 7 or 8 times faster than it is, imagine me trying to do this, but with all sorts of hops, jumps, knee raises, swivel hips, and cute little hand motions in all the places where these girls are standing still. I am not kidding when I say it is Korean music video class. Because this Friday, I learned this signature move from the Brown Eyed Girls:



This is not the Brown Eyed Girls. Because in their video, they do a lot of standing around and writhing on the ground. Which is actually not part of my aerobics class. although I do consider lying down in class sometimes. This is the Brown Eyed Girls video everyone is familiar with in Korea. But the move where they cross their arms and shake their hips back and forth, yeah baby. I got that one down. Because after that part, I'm completely lost. All the way. It's like my nightmares have become reality. When I was in high school (and even now sometimes) I would dream that I am at a dance recital. And I should know all the steps. But I don't. It's the most horrible feeling in the world. I can deal with the dreams where I almost die, where people are chasing me and trying to kill me, where Strawberry Shortcake leaves me in the forest to be eaten by a giant. But this whole being on stage and flailing around trying to keep up with everyone and drawing an absolute blank when it comes to the steps: that I cannot handle and wake up sweating with that awful feeling still in the pit of my stomach.

So yeah, Korean aerobics class is kind of like that. Because although I have rhythm, danced for 16 years, and still routinely perform in the kitchen while washing the dishes or cleaning the house, I cannot keep up with these ladies. So, I get a lot more rest than everyone else because I kind of do the whole  throw your hands in the air when everyone else does and try to figure out which direction they're moving in next. I've figured out one routine, but not entirely. It is hilarious. I do not even have enough shame to stand at the back! I stand right next to my friend, boldly showcasing my inability to perform 2NE1's latest moves and cutesy steps. This is another song we dance to, only some manic and fiercely fast version:



But I sweat. And I actually do have fun. Although I have come to loathe the fifty year old woman who centers herself in the front row and does everything with this look on her face like she's the instructor, even though her transitions are laughable and her movements often lack conviction. As in, what is that move supposed to be? Ohhhhh. She's trying to do the one where you contract your stomach while you pull your shoulders and hips forward and then arch your back, showcasing your boobs while throwing your arms and hips back quickly. But instead of contracting her stomach and arching her back in turn, she's just bending her knees. It's awesome.

So, to recap, I am going to aerobics class and trying to learn all these dances/aerobics combos that everyone else already knows! But, I did find out that they learn a new routine every other Wednesday and practice for two weeks. So, next Wednesday here I come! Because I will be on the same level as everyone else. For one routine. And the rest, I'll still be the girl turning three counts late, not knowing the 2NE1 hand signals to throw, or how to roll my butt in the right direction at the right time on the right count and pull my knee up to my boobs at the same time. Ah well, it's exercise, right?

What are you guys doing to Work It Out?

Good for your soul

new headphones+old music=good stuff

Redeeming Myself, Maybe

So, yesterday I posted probably the worst video possible for those of you outside of Korea because now all you've been exposed to is the current strangeness that is the K-Pop scene. Of course, G-Dragon is still a hot little muffin and maybe you might think so if you saw him in one of his other videos, with his band called Big Bang. Here's one of the songs that I can actually listen to while I watch the video of his perfect teeth. So what if the man wears headbands and ponytails?

But anyway, I wanted to give you a little taste of what we're listening to in our house. My taste is mainly informed by Kenny's preferences, obviously. But I like this music. I've decided to give a short video playlist for your listening pleasure. You can thank me in the comments.

First up, here's Lucid Fall. He is my favorite Korean artist and I love ALL his songs. Every single one. If I had to pick a Korean artist to listen to for the rest of my life and I could only pick one, it'd be this guy.



Okay, and this is simply the happiest song in the history of happy songs. No matter what it makes me smile and dance. I like Kim Jong Kook (김종국) in this video because he's not being all manly and obsessed with working out. So, turn up the volume and do a happy dance!




This is from a band called Rollercoaster (롤러코스터)and this is their song Last Scene. They're kind of old school, but I enjoy it.




For another seriously happy song, here's Humming Urban Stereo with Hawaiian Couple. The video is quite cheesy, and so is the song from what I can gather. But I like it anyway. In the beginning of the video, the guy is saying, "I'm sorry. I don't know what I did, but please forgive me." And later, the announcement in the train station says something along the lines of, "The love is train is coming. So hug each other." Listen to this song and go hug somebody!


Last of all, this is a freaking awesome song you should go listen to. The embedding has been disabled, but click on this link and go listen. It's incredible. Seriously, start your day with this. Or end it with this. Or split it in two with this. It's by Jeon Ja Yang (전자양). It's perfection.

So, that's kind of what's going on in our house, Korean music wise. Besides all the G-Dragon YouTubing that's going on. Hope you enjoyed this foray into Korean music. I find that even if you can't understand the words, you can always hear the feelings. I can pick out certain phrases and words, but I often just enjoy the sound. My Korean classes begin tomorrow though! The free ones I get through my freaking awesome school. So, maybe I'll be able to sing all of these at the noraebang the next time we go! (Noraebang is karaoke in Korea. It literally means song room. And you go into your own room with your friends and have drinks and snacks and sing your heart out.)

On a P.S. sort of note: I was observed by my principal for the first time today. And basically all I did was the exact same thing I always do. Except, um, I ignored the fact that she was there. I feel like it went pretty well. The kids were great. They didn't freeze up or act any different. Perhaps they participated with a little bit more enthusiasm than usual, but hey, it could only help, right? Still loving my job. Wonder when the new will wear off?

Bobby's Back

I just had to share this with you. Because I love you and it hurts me to imagine that you could possibly be living your life without the joys and musical genius of ol' Zimmy.  

You can listen to Bob Dylan's new "bootleg" 2-disc album FOR FREE until it's release date, October 7th. So you only have a few days to give your ears the gift of Tell Tale Signs, courtesy of NPR. Click here to discover the auditory brilliance of Dylan's "new" stuff. You can thank me later. Or you could thank me now, like in the comments. 

Rage with Accompanying Soundtrack

Normally I listen to music on my morning commute. I’ll go ahead and confess that I’m not a fan of the Shuffle function on my iPod. I often get stuck with a bunch of songs that I don’t listen to, strange interludes, preludes, and spoken word found on musical soundtracks. Or all the instrumental music I own decides to pile on the Shuffle queue and bore me to death on the way to work. But I’ve been thinking about the Shuffle for a while, due to my fabulous luck of finding this guy’s blog. Read it; it’s good. Anyhow, Shuffle has been on my mind, so I decided last week to test it out. Monday: eh. Tuesday: eh. Wednesday: Really? Thursday: Why am I torturing myself with this? And then, Friday happened, people.

So, Friday morning I’m suppressing my rage because there is always a reason to be full of it on the Seoul Metro. And I’m finding it easy to not think about how angry I am because I can’t believe what I’m hearing. It’s like my iPod has finally become my best friend. All week, Shuffle has been disappointing me. But for some reason, I swear my iPod has finally figured me out and is using its Shuffle feature to woo me. You’re not going to believe this list. But here it is anyway.

Say It To Me Now- Glen Hansard (Once)
Drive In, Drive Out- Dave Matthews Band (Crash)
Come Together- Aerosmith (Aerosmith’s Greatest Hits)
Things We Said Today- The Beatles (Hard Day’s Night)
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds- The Beatles (Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band)
Stuck inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again- Bob Dylan (Blonde on Blonde)
Brainwashed- George Harrison (Brainwashed)
If You Belonged to Me- Traveling Wilburys (The Traveling Wilburys, Vol. I)
Memories- Elvis Presley (2nd to None)
Black Star- Radiohead (The Bends)
Not Yet Dark- Bob Dylan (The Essential Bob Dylan)

No lie.

So, as I pushed the lock button on the top of my beautiful black square of music, the song Say It To Me Now began playing. This is from the soundtrack to the movie Once, which won an Oscar this year for Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures and it won Best Original Song for the first track on the album, Falling Slowly. Once is a superb film in my intelligent and infallible cinematic opinion, and if you haven’t seen it, you should see it. Say It To Me Now’s 2:37 got me down the elevator and all the way to the escalator going down into the pit of hell, also known as the subway.

DMB was a nice treat. Dave always takes me back to being 17 and my first real concert. I saw them the summer of 2000 with Gaelen, a boyfriend who shaped my musical taste my junior and senior years of high school. Dang, he deserves a lot of credit for my intelligent and infallible musical opinions… And then I was surprised. I couldn’t be mad at the lady who whacked me with her purse trying to get off the train for all the wonder and surprise of Aerosmith’s cover of Come Together, which I didn’t even know I owned. What the crap? I know, right? Danielle didn’t know she owned a Beatles cover? Ah, well, I didn’t. I snatched the Greatest Hits album off my friend, Evan, in 2006 before I left for the U.K. All morality issues aside, I didn’t realize this song was on there and I couldn’t place it, so had to look at the iPod to check and see who it was. Hey, it’s always a good day when you find you have Beatles covers you didn’t know you had. So, I was gracious and didn’t yank that woman’s fat purse out of her hands and beat her with it. I just rubbed my arm where she whacked me and thought about how empty her life was without the Beatles and the bands that decide to play their stuff.

Which was weird, because then the Shuffle threw the Beatles right on into the mix. What are the odds? (I know there is probably some way to actually calculate these odds taking into account the total number of songs on my iPod and the ridiculous number of Beatles songs I have. But that would involve math. And Danielle Math is never correct and can sometimes be harmful to your health.) Things We Said Today is from the film and album A Hard Day’s Night. The film is awesome. See it now. This song was followed directly by another Beatles song- Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. First, my mouth dropped open a bit and then I began to laugh with disbelief, which made all the Koreans who weren’t already staring at me do so. My friend Tariq had just recently told me that he thought Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds was entirely overrated. I listened with his statements in mind, but couldn’t get over the fact that the God of all Things Musical was living and breathing through my iPod, orchestrating the perfect morning playlist. So, the song may be overrated, but it was lost on me as I was so awed and thrilled that I had now heard 3 Beatles songs (albeit one a cover) in a row and the choice was anything but mine.

Stuck inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues again got me through the transfer at Jamsil from Line 8 to Line 2. My favorite line is “Your debutante just knows what you need, but I know what you want.” Dylan helped me throw off the annoyance of an older man stepping on the back of my foot and causing my shoe to fall off. A shoe falling off is no big deal except that I was in the middle of a mass of people moving in one direction and when you stop, you shall be trampled. I felt a bit like Mufasa in The Lion King with the wildebeests. Or, I felt like I was stuck inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues again. Both are apt. Then I wondered as I waited on the next train if it was possible that everyone in this country had been brainwashed in their underground behavior. And Georgey boy helped me out with his solo work, Brainwashed.

So far: soundtrack, Beatles cover (for a soundtrack, actually- Sgt. Pepper’s…), actual Beatles double-time, Dylan, George Harrison AND THEN THE TRAVELING WILBURYS, which included Dylan and Harrison (along with Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne, and Roy Oribison). I know. It’s unbelievable. The rest of my journey was filled with Elvis and Radiohead, who aren’t related, but I realize the Shuffle is only capable of so much. It is, after all, a machine. The Radiohead song was from my favorite album so far, including their latest In Rainbows, which is great but just can’t top The Bends for me. Another Dylan song brought me full circle in the music world and escorted me off the elevator to work. I took my shoes off, put them on the shelf, walked straight to my desk and wrote down this playlist. Even as I write this, I’m still amazed. Aren’t you?

To sum up: I heart Shuffle. Who knew?