April 12: Listen to Justin Bieber's music

I always joke around and say that I don't like Justin Beiber because he made me late for choir practice once (which is actually true!). I haven't ever actually heard his music before, so I thought I'd at least I listen and see if I was late for a good reason.

One day last fall I was already running a few minutes late for choir practice at my church, which is downtown. When I got downtown (which I didn't know that well yet considering we'd just moved here in August), there wasn't a parking space near the church, which was a little odd for a Wednesday night. I just figured there was a festival or something. Anyway, it took me forever to find a parking space because they were all taken and I didn't know the area. I found one at the very top of a parking garage a couple blocks away, so not only did I have to drive up the parking garage, I also had to walk two blocks, and I was probably 15 or 20 minutes late instead of 5. On my walk to the church, I heard all these screams and saw a big crowd around the traffic circle. Later I found out Justin Bieber was filming a Christmas music video and those screams were from fans, who took up all the parking spaces. Silly Justin Bieber, causing a commotion! :P

So today, I actually listened to one of his songs and I picked the one he was filming in Franklin, "Mistletoe". Here is a picture of the video I watched. You can read about it and watch the video here: Justin Bieber flims Mistletoe in downtown Franklin  In the video, he's on a street in downtown Franklin. (It wasn't snowing that night--that's artificial.)

Lee doesn't approve.

Or maybe he does?

Na...

Here you can see the traffic circle I mentioned earlier in the background.

I don't think this is my kind of music. And how old is he, 10? He does NOT need to be singing about mistletoe. :P

April 7: Super Music Nerd Tries Three Against Two

This morning, Lee and I went on a walk/run. Now, he's about average height for a man, but I'm a little vertically challenged (thanks Mama!). This means that most of the time I'm struggling to catch up to him because my legs are so much shorter. Here is a picture of Lee running:

And here is a picture of me running:

Here we are running together:

Clearly, our strides don't match up (haha not really clear to you guys, but trust me okay!).

Today while we were running side by side, I noticed my feet were hitting the ground much more often than his were just to keep up with him. I bet his stride is as long as I am tall. :P Anyway, after I tried to sync up with him a couple times and failed, I thought it would be cool to try 3 of my strides against 2 of his. This is something I've done in music and it's pretty neat! Imagine your right hand playing in twos and your left hand playing in threes on the piano at the same time, against each other. Crazy stuff, but really fun once you get it and it sounds cool! It looks like this (top is right hand, bottom is left hand, and they play at the same time:

So I tried it, and I think I almost got it to work a couple times, but not enough to count. I think it would be easier if we were walking. It was a fun experiment, and definitely something I've never done before! We still had a good walk even though we struggled to keep the same pace.

Also, Lee said he thinks the reason sidewalk curves like this is because Chuck Norris was standing there when they were pouring it, and everybody was too afraid of him to ask him to move so they just went around him. (Ignore the manhole cover...some of the curves don't have it so Chuck Norris IS the most probable explanation! :P)

April 3: Ben & Jerry's, Baskin Robbins, Ukes and a Fedora

Lee and I went to Nashville tonight, in an attempt to go to Ben & Jerry's for free scoop night. We've had Ben & Jerry's ice cream before, but never from a scoop shop, and never a free scoop, so it was a perfect "new thing".

Unfortunately, we had lots of trouble finding parking because it was near Vanderbilt University and all the lots nearby required school permits.

After a while of looking for parking, we finally decided to park at Centennial Park and realized Ben & Jerry's was still 1.2 miles away. The 8:00 cutoff was getting close by this time, and there was a long line, of course, so we just went back to Franklin, to Baskin Robbins downtown. We got our ice cream and walked around a bit. A musician was performing "When I'm Sixty-Four" by the Beatles at Mellow Mushroom, so we walked that way to check it out. By the time we got there he was packing up, but we talked to him for a while and he is a huge Beatles fan! He plays the ukulele for a lot of his Beatles covers, and apparently the Beatles really liked the uke, and most of them played it. I like it too, and it's funny that I played a little on the way to Nashville tonight before we met this guy.

We still had fun, even though we didn't make it to B&J. I still did a couple new things, and it was a beautiful night! Also, I bought Lee a fun fedora at Dollar Tree, and he loves it!