Today is the second time that we have been confused this year about what time it is. Last time was in April, when our computer automatically updated the time to reflect Daylight Saving Time. However, our computer was unaware that the President had said that it was wrong. An Act had been put into place which moved the date to change clocks from April to March (in an attempt to save energy). The rest of the world that uses Daylight Saving Time was left unaffected (as was our operating system).

Now, once more our computer is wrong. The date to “fall back” is now in November, not October as it once was.

What stinks is that our operating system doesn’t update correctly, even when instructed to synchronize time with Internet time. So we have to set it manually.

If you are left thoroughly confused, as I was, here’s some more information.

Our poor kitty had to get one of his teeth pulled yesterday. Betsy said he was sitting on her desk looking at her and she noticed that he “looked like a warthog.” One of his teeth was coming out of his mouth a bit. She rushed him to our wonderful vets and they checked him all out and pulled his poor little kitty tooth. They gave him some medicine and said he would be fine. Yay!

(By the way, the picture to the left is a loving recreation of a picture that Betsy drew to show me how it looked. I never actually saw it because I was at work. So, I tried to redraw it.)

Ryan Adams – Follow the Lights
Yes, I have been waiting eagerly for this album for a few months now. And the payoff is sweet. I don’t even care in the least that it is largely recycled material. When you can reimagine songs as good as this (as he often does live, so it’s no surprise he does it in the studio), you don’t need new material right away. Not that he has been accused of needing new material.

He feels like he’s stetching this material out, breaking it in, and getting cozy in it. It feels new and old at the same time, like that joyous sensation of taking old garments out of the closet and making a “new outfit” out of them.

Further, the pieces match. The choice of material seems well-planned. There’s one new track (”Follow the Lights”), one very old, unreleased track (”My Love for You is Real”), one side-project track (”Blue Hotel,” that he wrote for Willie Nelson), one cover (”Down in a Hole”), one track off Rock and Roll (”This is It”), one track off Cold Roses (”If I Am a Stranger”), and one track off Jacksonville City Nights (”Dear John”).

This EP, along with Easy Tiger, will definitely feed the addiction until the box-set later this year.

Hmm…two weeks and nothing to say?

It’s been a while since I’ve written about the music I’ve been listening to lately. That’s most likely because I haven’t found the time to really absorb anything to have enough feeling to write on it. But, after being reinvigorated by a few students that read my blog and said they liked my music interests, I thought I’d put together a post on some new albums that caught my ear.

Bob Dylan – Dylan
Betsy made me fall in love with Blood on the Tracks. But other than that magnificent opus, I could never really sort any other Dylan album out. Well, maybe I caught on to Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan a bit too. But my point is that his repertoire is so huge that I often get lost. That’s why I was happy to see this new compilation Dylan. It spans 3 cds and gives me a pretty good grasp on his best and/or better known material.

Dashboard Confessional – The Shade of Poison Trees
This is the best album he’s come out with since Places…Now, that’s not really saying much for me, because I didn’t really like any of the albums since Places. Places… and Swiss Army Romance were tear-jerking, emo monuments of my tender years, however. I had begun to wonder if I would ever like Dashboard again. I thought that perhaps I had grown out of emo and become twee. This album seems promising, however. At least it sounds like Dashboard (and not, for instance, an attempt at Weezer). When I listen to Dashboard, my desired formula is clear: bang on some alternatively-tuned acoustic guitars and scream at the top of your lungs about relationships. This album finally sees that–less production, less band, more acoustic tears.

[tags]Bob Dylan, Dashboard Confessional[/tags]