Fantastic Voyage - David Bowie

A few weeks ago my mother received a call from her aunt concerning my aunt. This left her with a lot on her mind and tears in her eyes. When I asked what the problem was she sadly told me that she was being forced to put her sister in a nursing home.

I little background history before I continue. My aunt has cerebral palsy and when my grandparents died my mother was more than willing to take care of her, she has all her life, but her aunt claimed custody over her as she wanted to exploit my aunt by using the money she receives from social security for her own personal gains. Apparently she fixed things in her home to make it more "wheelchair friendly" and what not so it looked as though she was using the money for the benefit of my aunt when in reality she wasn't. I believe my mother fought an internal battle with herself about her sister since her parents died. My father is not as understanding of my aunt's disability as he should be (especially since my mother told him the first day he showed interest in her that there would come a time when she would have to take care of her sister and he said he was fine with it) and mother is practically disabled herself and knows that she can't properly take care of her. So, she accepted her aunt's request to take care of my aunt.

My mother's aunt claims she can no longer take care of my aunt and wants her to live with us. My mother tried to explain to her that there's no one here that's able to take care of her, but her aunt persists. She's going on vacation and can't be responsible for her anymore. It's at this point that my mother realizes that her sister must be put into a nursing home and it breaks her heart. Not only because of the entire situation, but we've been planning to move to Las Vegas next year and she doesn't want to leave her sister here alone. The past couple of weeks have not been the easiest on her and it breaks my heart to see her so upset.

My aunt arrived yesterday. I wouldn't say I'm particularly close to her, but I'm in no way as cold-hearted as my mother's aunt who tried to give me a sob story that she wished she didn't have to do this. All I could think about was the vacation she would be going on in a few days and the money she took from my aunt for her personal benefit. It made me so angry and I found myself wondering how people like her live with themselves.

And now I sit here looking at my aunt, who's watching tv and coloring, and I just feel sad. I work at not one, but two nursing homes. The environment there is certainly not as warm as one would hope and I'm just imagining her sitting by herself feeling completely alone. I'm sure it's not any different to what she's used to, but it...I don't know. It just feels wrong since I know that she could have been spared this fate for a few more years if my mother could take care of her or if my mother's aunt wasn't so selfish and cruel. The only good thing about the home she's going into is that I work there during the night and have a half hour break almost every night. I've already made the decision to visit her on these breaks as I'm sure they'll be small rays of sunshine in her mostly dull days.

For now, I think I'll go in there to have lunch and watch a movie with her. She'll like that.

Catch Us If You Can - The Dave Clark Five

I'm going through the extremely painful process of organizing the music I've collected since the crash of Steve, my Dell computer, in 2003. Ever since then I've been building up the music collection I once had, and then some, and burning all the files to disk. Recently I have been uploading the extremely important files to an external hard drive and will soon back those up on disk when I get disks to burn them onto. I'm only slightly paranoid of going through another 2003 crash.

All ablums/songs must pass my four basic criteria to avoid the recycle bin:

• Complete Album - This means that all the songs listed for that album are present.


• Intact Songs - Nothing grates my cheese more than a song that is cut off a few seconds before it's over.


• Sound Level - Songs that have been ripped at a low volume level don't work for me.


• Song Quality - BIGGIE! No pops, static noise, outside noises, etc. Exceptions made for hard-to-find tracks.

What makes this task so painful? The size of the collection I've acquired that I've just neglected over the past year or so. I seems that I just downloaded a few of these albums for the sake of downloading them. Now I'm faced with 116 albums that I have go through to make sure they meet said criteria. Had I just listen to these albums within the week it came in to my possession I would not be in this predicament.

Let this be a lesson children. Don't be lazy and don't procrastinate.

Coming into Los Angeles - Arlo Guthrie (30sec clip)

I wish I could have this clip on a loop. Or I could, you know, just buy the album.

I watched Woodstock today with my mother and can't get that Arlo Guthrie song out of my head, Coming into Los Angeles, and decided to see if he was on tour or something (although I'm "not going to concerts"). For your information, Arlo is currently on tour and he's coming to Harrisburg which is only 45 minutes away from me. I am stoked! I wanted to check out the price of tickets on the theater's web site and found that they're either not selling tickets yet or haven't made them available online. So, because I was bored, I scrolled through who else was going to be there and fucking B.B King is coming in June!

Now, this would be fantastic on its own however I've been planning on going here, there and everywhere to see him and now he's in my backyard. I'm ecstatic, I'm going, and it'll be a lot cheaper.

So, I'm not off the concerts just yet. I'll just limit it to local gigs if I find out about them in time.