My Love Affair with Herb Alpert

In the midst of all of my music, heavily dominated by Queen, David Bowie, Aerosmith, Elton John, Beatles and other favorites, I have Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. It makes me laugh, but I have to admit that I do love it. Its one of those hold overs from my early childhood. My Mom used to load up vinyl LP's onto the stereo and turn up the volume for house cleaning, for cooking. Apparently, any domestic endeavor required Herb Alpert as the background music. And even though I went 20 years or more before I re-discovered these tunes, I remembered them. Like note for note, anticipating the next bar, the next rift. It must be embedded into my subconscious somehow.

And listening to this (yes its even loaded onto my MP3 player) makes me feel happy, and joyful. I think Mom had all over his records, but I particularly remember this album. I don't think I realized, way back when I was just 4 or 5 years old, just how evocative the cover was. Is this lady really naked under all of that whipped cream? LOL. I remember seeing it and thinking how delightful it must be to be encased in all that delicious whipped cream. I wondered if she would be able to eat all of that. Ah, the innocence of the very young. And its funny just how fast a song from the past can bring back those memories.

I made it!!!

I survived Christmas this year, and I even had fun. I had this one meltdown on Christmas Eve, when the sadness of missing Erica really closed in on me. I had a good cry but was able to pull it together. But Christmas Day was fine. Good even.
We set up Bruce's laptop in the middle of the morning gift opening, and she tuned in on Skype, so it was "almost" like she was with us. In a weird and funny way....but still. She was there.

And I got an iPad 2 tablet. It came as a major surprise. I had mentioned the idea of a Kindle Fire, but never even considered an iPad. I know it is supposed to be a lot more versatile, but my husband has a deep-rooted dislike of Apple. OMG this thing is amazing. I still don't know probably a 10th of what it can actually do. I DO know that I can download books from iBooks AND Kindle. Stephen put the Kindle app on it yesterday. It looks like its going to be a fantastic e-reader. But also, a tablet computer. Its fast and responsive, but its a lot different than my laptop. Like, there is no right click for stuff. I have a whole lot to figure out, but thats part of the fun......I am so excited about it.

Stephen was here. Chris and Jessica came over yesterday afternoon. We had a big dinner of roast beef, and all the fixings. Yummy. And then we had plenty of cranberry Mimosas and played Wii games until we were all exhausted. There was a lot of laughter, and hilarity, and the day passed without my even having time to remember that I was worried about being excruciatingly sad.

I think today is going to be a lazy day. Maybe even an "I am not getting out of pajamas" day. I am going to clean up a little of the Christmas chaos (I was too busy yesterday), play around with my iPad and try to figure more of it out, and there might even be a nap in my future. I hope you all had a fantastic holiday too. Now its time to look forward to a whole new year. I love those fresh starts.