It was an odd, if busy weekend. Dad decided the time was ripe for installing hardwood int he front room which meant a lot of prep work on Friday night/Saturday morning but he did finish with enough time left for us to re-organize the room before guests started arriving.
Mom and dad decided to have a small BBQ to celebrate 30 years of marriage - talk about low key. So while dad installed hardwood, mom and I cooked like worker bees prepping all the goodies for consumption. Between the cooking, moving everything back into the living room and getting ready for people to arrive, I didn't have much to eat during the day. No problem except that once sis arrived, it turned into a drink fest. No crazy drinking but enough to make me a bit tipsy and overly happy. Here are a few highlights from the evening:
S practices his lift with my little sis.
Sis playing it up. "This is my supermodel pose."
"I've got one too..." [I sense a little Zoolander action here...]
Gosh, little sis is adorable!
I fall into a laughing fit.
Cuz looking suave.
By this point, I was pretty beat and I'm not quite sure who took this video but it's a bit of fun...if only because my hair isn't as crazy as I thought it was. Plus, you see me dance, if you can really call it that...
An explanation on the video. The truncated voices are those of moi and dad. We're listening to Fado and dad thinks its Amalia and I am explaining that it's actually Mariza. And you can't see it but in the background, I'm showing dad my Zune with the album cover as proof.
I thought I'd clear that up 'cause, you know, you might care.
Unfortunately, it's not all that triumphant. The holidays came and went. The illness came and went as did the food, the sleep, the rest and the fun. I lived through another holiday, relatively unscathed and surprisingly debt free. It was a good, relaxing holiday and school's already started. Work has been trucking along nicely and the new website is going full swing. Essentially, life is pretty good right now.
It's been a pretty quiet day at the office so I've spent the last 20 minutes or so cruising YouTube. That's pretty dangerous all its own, I know but even more so now that I've kind of figured out how to properly search for stuff and navigate the masses of videos to find what I'm looking for. I'm feeling a little nostalgic today so I dug up a couple of pretty cool videos.
This first one is of one of my favorite fadistas, a woman I'm sure I've mentioned in the past - Mariza. This is a great video of one of my favorite songs "Barco Negro" (translates into "Black Boat") and she even explains the story before hand. Beautiful.
Watching this prompted a search for a version of "A Thousand Years" which appeared on the "Unity" CD which came out during the 2004 Olympic games and featured Sting and Mariza together. This is the only embeddable version of the song I could find but it's so fabulous, I had to include it - even with the crummy video that goes with it.
Yesterday we discussed a few arguments from creation and then this morning, I read this entry which really made a lot of sense to me and I must say, I'm somewhat torn by this 'Dr.' Ross debate. On the one hand I can appreciate the fact that Ross did the work and obviously defended his case well yet on the other hand I can also see the truth in the argument that he lied his way through his thesis. Now, having yet to do mine, I can't really speak from experience but I would venture to assume that if you're putting that much of your life into something (your thesis), it's going to be something you fully believe in and have a vested interest in. The simple fact that Ross completed his thesis on something that he doesn't believe to be true seems wrong in some way. More than anything, it seems like a cop out. To me at least, it seems like he should have done his thesis on something he actually believes in like trying to find scientific proof for the belief that the world is 6,000 years old. I don't know, that's just me.
I've found all of this recent talk of creationism and Intelligent Design interesting. It seems to be a re-emerging theme in a number of my classes this semester and I must say, it's one of the few things that has really sparked my interest to the point that I've done some additional reading on the subject. This whole idea of how we got here and if we serve a purpose is one that really gets my wheels turning.
But enough of that. It's Wednesday and to celebrate hump day, and in lieu of a stupid thing today, I figured I'd share this with you. It's a video of one of my favorite performers. I've seen her live a few times and she's always fantastic. What I like best about this video is that they've captured her introduction to the song which is excellent for non-Portuguese speakers. Let me know what you think.
