April 6th, 2017

Iуьйре дика йойла (Jüyre dika yoyla) !! (“Good Morning to you all ” in Chechen.)

I am trying to simultaneously fix up the back yard and house. I am trying to spend more time out back. Its just paradise out there with our sunny days, air conditioning range temperatures and the sound of the water fall as my constant companion out there. With the Wisteria is full bloom, the scent is heavenly as well. Every once and a while our dogs or the neighbor’s will try to establish pack dominance thru the fences or an ambitious neighbor will have the bad timing to whack his weeds while I am out there but otherwise it is blissfuly quiet and an excellent place to paint. This week I planted some new colorful Ice Plant on the little hill that makes the water fall…so keep a good thought for the new guys in the neighborhood.
I have said it before and will now say it again. If you are not a member of your local library, you are at least missing out an a great resource for entertainment and God forbid! Learning!! Our library is rolling out an even more impressive ebook lending program this month and I am all aquiver:) I love reading books on my Kindle app on my phone or Mac. And I like not paying for them almost as much.

Our Garage is now a thing of beauty and Funky Sway:) Jess has re-established our exercise room and I can now find anything I need to commit my own fairly terrible acts of mechanical repair, furniture repair, door repair, bat house construction, etc. because all that stuff has been organized until it pled for mercy! Really, its a nice place to be our garage:)

For the first time in a couple of years, I started a new bonsai tree. This will be a beautiful over rock planting of a variegated Boxwood plant. I think it will look very cool when the transplant shock is over and I can start pruning and training the tree. I lost my old friend the Orange Bougainvillea over the rock planting that Darrian and I teamed up to keep going for over a decade.

This week I learned some stuff:

• I learned that it is NOT OK to try to serve Jury Duty for your adult daughter!! Duh! Another bit of evidence that there is no dumb-ass vaccine:)

Website Update
• New Vocabulary Quiz – Whoohoo!!
• Updated link to Tidewater Arts Outreach in the Things to Hear section. Please remember to send me a note if a link on the UJT doesn’t work so I can fix it. I hope everyone will donate to TAO as it is a very worthy cause. I am !!
• This week I also added the lyrics for “Who Can It Be Now ” by Men at Work for your sing-a-long pleasure.

Writing and Painting Update:
• I worked two paintings that I started earlier this week and I started a new one. I am trying to paint a picture based upon a really nice photo of some Dogwoods in bloom taken by Roger and Robin Grace.

Weird-Stuff-O-Meter:
• I have been thinking about standing up a new outlet for thought and discourse that I want to call, “ FOG Network”. FOG stands for “Fat Old Guy” and I have to believe that there is more than one of us who have something to say that isn’t being heard in some other way. The concept and format will be familiar to all. Some yahoo sitting in his backyard on a nice sunny day sets up his iPhone and captures a monolog of thoughts on news event, stories and anecdotes about living to be Fat Old Guy. Then some other liberal nut job from Bangor, Maine can chime in with his or her two cents worth. Well you get the idea. I am just pondering it as a form of therapy. As always, any constructive thoughts you might have about that will be humbly enjoyed. How weird is that !?

Music Update:
This week’s UJT Radio selections for you are:
• Men at Work – Who Can It Be Now — I have always loved this band but the sax work on this song is soon good.
• Justin Timberlake – What Goes Around…/…Comes Around (interlude) – I know some of the faithful UJT Radio listeners are surprised by the inclusion of this very current mainstream “playa”. I have inserted this cut into the hallowed ranks of UJT playroom, simply because it is a very very good song. Admittedly, not my usual cup of tea but none the less standing still in the world of music is an excellent way to get run over. So let it go..and enjoy.
• Daryl Hall and John Oates – I Can’t Go For That (No Can Do) – The Justin Timberlake of a previous generation??? I like this on too. The most excellent, Charles “Mr. Casual” DeChant plays the Saxophone on this song and just plain kicks ass 🙂
• Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers – Free Fallin’ – This one came up on the radio this week and just made me smile. Tom can do that to you.. for no reason at all, just sing a song that makes you smile.
• Train — Drops of Jupiter – This one always has grabbed me and made me feel it deep inside. Never knew the words so couldn’t sing along but I wanted to… I really did.
• U2 – It was a beautiful day – Another one of those songs that holds me so close that its hard to breathe. There is a feeling I get when I am listening to great music that makes life seem so satisfying and that humanity for all its stumbles and failures might just be worth it.
• Pink Floyd – Wish You Were Here – From their 1975 album of the same name. These boys had me at Ummagumma (In 1969, Duane Tanenbaum turned me on to these boys out in his day glow garage 🙂
• Dan Fogelberg – Stars – Dan sings a sweet sad sweet love song as only he can. “ Its getting easier each day to weep about you .. harder every night to sleep without you…”.

That’s it… Do the best you can; Laugh every chance you get; And always remember … The best is yet to come! 

As always, thank you for being my friend! 

James
Under the Jacaranda Tree URL: http://www.jfmccann.com