PixlBit

Good morning, Pixlbit Nation! Today's blog post is happier than yesterday's. It's amazing what a good night's sleep and a project to concentrate on will do for your spirits.

The Grandma Project: Before my grandmother dies, I want to do a storycorps-style interview with her. My cousin Sean was a film major and still has his recording and sound gear and he and I are going to hopefully get my grandmother to tell us some stuff about her life when she was young. I contacted my sister and Sean's brother and asked them if they had anything they'd like to ask, and I've been doing some research on how to conduct this kind of interview. A friend is loaning me a book about how to do this that was written by someone who used to collect old songs and stories for The Maine Folklife Center. The Storycorps DIY webpage is also full of useful info.

Watching: Finished season 2 of The Red Road. Granted, a season is only six episodes. Jason and I watched Despicable Me for the first time last week. Keeping caught up with the current seasons of my favorite shows (NCIS, Agents of SHIELD, Supernatural, The Originals, and Hawaii Five-O), discovered that Hulu isn't showing episodes of The Blacklist this season (so not happy about that!), and started watching Jessica Jones. I didn't care for it at first, but by the end of the first episode, I was getting intrigued.

Reading: Been reading a lot lately. Over the last several weeks I've read Jack the Giant Killer and its sequel Drink Down the Moon by Charles de Lint, The War for the Oaks by Emma Bull, The Maze by Will Hobbs, and Star Commandos: Colony in Peril by PM Griffin. There are about 12 books in the Star Commandos series, they're kind of space opera-ish, not terribly well-written, but a lot of fun. I'd forgotten they existed until I found most of the series in a trunk at my gramma's over Thanksgiving.

Listening: The trip down to Gramma's included: Alasdair Frasier - Dawn Dance, Bruce Molsky - Lost Boy,  The Saw Doctors - If This Is Rock and Roll, I Want My Old Job Back, Roseanne Cash - The River and the Thread, Social Distortion - White Light, White Heat, White Trash, and Granet Rogers - Night Drive. Also, since it's now after Thanksgiving, the Christmas music is starting to go into rotation. I helped crowd source a CD a few months back, and it arrived sometime last week. It's a folk CD of Christmas songs, mostly traditional, done by a young duo called Meridian. The title of the CD is Joy, Health, Love, and Peace. If I had any info on how to buy the thing, I'd post it, but they aren't very good at marketing yet, unfortunately.

Playing: Not much. Played Animal Crossing for a chunk of time Thanksgiving Day, and then forgot I still had the game running and shut off the 3DS. That produced some serious potty mouth, good thing my grandmother didn't have her hearing aids in at the time! I downloaded Dungeon Siege III and played that for a bit, and a few match three games, but that's been pretty much it.

Mouse Update: The Havahart trap arrived, and I proceeded to catch not one, but six mice over the course of a week, three within the first 24 hours. Left the trap set up for two weeks after catching the last one and I think I may have gotten them all. Little dudes (and dudettes) were awfully cute. This was the first one I caught, I named her One. You can guess what I named the others from that clue.

And with that, I'm off to get another cup of coffee and continue reading Star Commandos.