Blossoms blossoms everywhere...

( Brooklyn Botanical Garden's 25th Annual Cherry Blossom Festival )

Sunset last night (sigh)...



Preview of the Cherry Blossom festival (plethora of photos to come):





Tonight Laurie is taking me to see the Yeah Yeah Yeahs at the Roseland Ballroom. That should make for an excellent story (unless I get eaten alive by the punk rock!!)

Good Saturday! It is 65 and unbelievably beautiful in the great state of New York today. Amber is on her way to Brooklyn and we'll be spending the rest of the day at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden at the 25th Annual Cherry Blossom festival. Many photos to come...

Now on to this morning's announcements:

First, this journal will shortly be relocating and you will receive notice in the next week, if you don't get the new link please email me (erin at eringee.com) and ask for it (I will preapologize to any readers I leave off the notification email list, I am sure it will be an oversight. That or I don't want you reading my new journal...ha.)

Second, I've been having this great conversation about music with a few friends lately...talking about best artists of all time and best albums and songs we could listen to for all eternity. I've made a short lists of my personal 'best albums of all time' and I thought I'd stick them here for kicks and hopefully that will inspire folks to tell me a few they love and in a perfect world I'll get turned on to some new great stuff!

So here's the short list:

Patty Griffin's Living with Ghosts
Counting Crows - August and Everything After or Recovering the Satellites (major tie - I'd like to combine both)
David Gray's White Ladder
Fiona Apple's Tidal
Indigo Girls' Strange Fire
James Taylor's Greatest Hits (I'm sort of cheating there, but the hits album really is my favorite of his)
John Mayer's Room for Squares
Lauryn Hill's The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill
Paul Thorn's Ain't Love Strange
The Police Every Breath You Take
Simon & Garfunkel - the Essential S&G
Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life

I just had to stop myself, I was laughing realizing I could add ten more and it's so far past a short list! I really love a lot of stuff...but that's a good start. Those are albums I could listen to every day, they each songs that have great significance in my life and really speak to me about a time or place or person that means something dear to me.

I've had cause lately to think about water a lot and why I love it so. My new obsession is The Deadliest Catch on the Discovery Channel. I don't miss an episode of the documentary-type exploration of Alaskan crab fisherman's death-defying seasons at sea. I also like to listen to Billy Joel's "Downeaster Alexa" (about fisherman) while I watch. I play it quietly in the background and think about what a life at sea would be like.

In thinking on my primal draw to the ocean, I remembered that Cancer is indeed a water sign. I did a little research and I found that:

Water Signs are intuitive, sensitive and feel more intensely than the rest. They are emotional and nurturing and, like a river, run deep. Water is also about compassion and understanding, since the receptive talents of these individuals are remarkably high. Those graced by Water love to take their sense of the world and translate it into the artistic. They desire aesthetic beauty -- and for everyone to be happy as a result of that beauty. Much like still water can become stagnant, however, an inactive Water Sign person is not a Water Sign person at their best.

The flip side of this dreamy Water world is the tendency of these individuals to brood. Water Signs are susceptible to mood swings, and, at their worst, they could become self-indulgent, controlling and hostage to a fantasy world. This also brings up the ability of these folks to see things more clearly than others. Call it psychic, if you will.

Water Signs are emotional, empathetic, receptive and feel things deeply. Alternately calm like the sea or possessing the force of a torrential rain, the emotions brought forth by this Element are plentiful, indeed.

Uh, yep. About right.

Go to Wikipedia and type in your birth date (no year, just month and day: i.e. July 6) and search it, on the resulting page choose what you believe to the most interesting event, birth and death that has occurred on that day.

Mine (which is, uh, July 6th):

Event:
1785 - The dollar is unanimously chosen as the monetary unit for the United States.

Birth:
1925 - Merv Griffin, American game show developer and television show host (always thought it was freaky he and I shared a birthday)

Death:
1971 - Louis Armstrong, American musician (b. 1901)

This game is utterly infuriating and yet fascinating:

Move the box around

If you last more than 18 seconds you're supposedly doing brilliantly...you get better the more you do it, I played about a dozen times until I got good (you'll start to notice the pattern) and lasted 25 seconds.

Interesting:

On Wednesday, at two minutes and three seconds after 1:00 in the morning, the time and date will be 01:02:03 04/05/06.

That won't ever happen again...in our lifetime.

I revised that statement due to smart and friends and family pointing out it will indeed happen again...we just won't be around to see it (or will we?)

( Laurie turns 23 )