My "One Week" Soundtrack

In my previous post, I mentioned a song from the movie "One Week".

One Week is a move featuring Joshua Jackson and is super duper awesome for so many reasons. One of them as the feature of great Canadian musicians. I spent a lot of time looking for songs and artists in One Week as it doesn't appear there is a soundtrack to the movie. Here's the "soundtrack" I made for the movie.

Imaginary Bars - Great Lake Swimmers
Hard Road - Sam Roberts
20 Miles - Selina Martin
Calendar Girl - Stars
Reborn - Ged Flood
A Million Dollars - Joel Plaskett Emergency
Blackwinged Bird - Emm Gryner
Weighty Ghost - Wintersleep
The Great Escape - Patrick Watson
Nice Day - The Salteens
Skyway Bridge - Melissa McClelland
Pacifists Anthem - Sunparlor Players
Un Canadien Errant (this was song in the movie by Emm Gryner with Joshua Jackson, I downloaded a verson by Bill Garrett & Sue Lothrop)

Enjoy!! It's a great road trip CD!

Why I have killer taste in music.

I am currently at work (shhhhhhhh, don't tell anyone). And the bosses are currently out of the office. Which means.... (no, not lots of random time wasted) I get to listen to music while working! Don't even get me started on how much better my work is when I'm listening to music. I just don't get as bored as I do when I'm sitting in complete silence. Plus then I'm also not singing out loud to try and keep myself entertained, which is likely a better situation for my entire office.

While I've been sitting here, Jake has been on shuffle (Jake is my awesome iPod - we didn't really get along that great to start, but I know love him... even though he has a massive crack). Jake really kicks ass on shuffle. But then again, he has a pretty killer selection of music to listen to. Let me just list some of the amazing songs that Jake has given me the great pleasure of listneing to today.

Tokyo Police Club - The Baskervilles
this was actually on repeat for about 10 minutes without me realizing... I've listened to it a lot today

Led Zeppelin - Since I've Been Loving You
this is a fabulous song... it's so slow and got this really groovy beat - yes I did just say that... however, I can barely get through a three minute song without changing it... A seven minute song.... yikes

Pearl Jam - State of Love and Trust (live in London Ontario!)
1) I love this song A LOT. Definitely one of my fav PJ songs. 2) It's from their London show. Awesome.

The Tokens - The Lion Sleeps Tonight
This song is perma-stuck in my head. I think it's also my happy song. As in, I sing it when I need to feel happy.

Mother Mother - Touch Up
If you have never heard this song, I demand that you go and listen to this song RIGHT NOW. This song is awesome. It makes me want to dance and sing and dance. Love love love it.

Matthew Good - It's Been Awhile Since I Was Your Man
Many of you know my extreme love for Matthew Good and the former Matthew Good Band. This is by far one of my favourite MG songs of all time. This song makes me want to cry and I love songs that can do that. I hear this song and am immediately bummed out. Hahahaha. Was so pumped when he played it at the last show I saw in London.

Westlife - All or Nothing
I love boy bands. Deal with it. This song kicks ass.

Patrick Watson - The Great Escape
This song is from the movie "One Week" with Joshua Jackson where he finds out he's dying and buys a bike and rides across Canada. This movie is an amazing piece of Canadiana. The music in it showcases the awesome muscians that Canada breeds. This song is fabulous. I'd recommend downloading as many One Week songs as you can (perhaps I will put my One Week playlist on here so you can easily find them).

The Strokes - Someday
Rad beats. That's all.

MGMT - Electric Feel
I am not a huge MGMT fan. I could really take or leave them. However, this song does catch my fancy quite a bit.

Silversun Pickups - Lazy Eye
I can remember the first time I heard this song (there are few songs that have that effect on me, but this was one of them). I was in love with this song from the get go. I'm not sure what about it is so awesome, but it's awesome.

Stars - Fixed
One of my fav Stars songs. So fun!

Vampire Weekend - Oxford Comma
Vampire Weekend is slowly growing on me. Thanks in part to Just Dance 2 which features A-Punk, which has always been my fav Vampire Weekend.

Then the greatest song of all time came on. And I do mean THE greatest song of all time. The song that is perma-stuck in my head, that I will break out into at any time, that I will never get sick of.....
Cher - If I Could Turn Back Time
.....this is such a great song, I can't even explain it in words. "If I could reach the stars.... I'd give em all to you...... And you'd love me, love me, like you used to do........ If I could turn back time......"

MxPx - Party. My House. Be There.
I still love MxPx.... This song reminds me of highschool, but in a good way, unlike most songs that remind me of highschool!

Eve 6 - Open Road Song
This song makes me want to go buy a piece of shit convertable that's like a boat and get in it and drive through a dessert as fast as I can with the wind in my hair and the sun beating down on me and the music blaring. That's why I love this song.

Save Ferris - Come On Eileen
Alright, we've all heard the horrible old version of Come On Eileen by the Dixie Midnight Drivers (or whatever they're called). Save Ferris is this super awesome ska band with this killer female singer. Their cover of this song is one of my favourite songs of all time. Seriously. Look it up, listen to it, love it, dance to it.

At The Drive-In - Sleepwalk Capsules
My enjoyment of "screaming" music is kind of small. While I do kind of like it, I don't know how I ever heard this song before (I'm thinking from my sister at some point). However, this song has remained for years, as one of my favourite songs... I'm not sure why, I don't know what they're saying... And I don't think I've ever listened to any other At The Drive-In music... Maybe I should.

Mumford & Sons - White Blank Page
I loooooooooooooove M&S. I feel blessed to be seeing them next week in Toronto. I'm surprised it's taken Jake so long to even get to an M&S song... this is def one of my favourite M&S songs, but I could really say that about a lot of them. And I may have over listened to this song on repeat... oops...

Well.... I could keep going because there is so many songs that I love. And I love sharing my love of music with people. Even if you've read this and look up just one song and love it just a little bit, then that's awesome.

What to blog, why to blog, do you care I blog?

I'm sitting here feeling rather frustrated at the world and want to take my mind off of things. I've decided to blog.

But what do I blog about. Nothing... my mind is totally blank. Yesterday I had considered writing a blog about Rolling Stone's Top 100 Beatles Songs of all time. Now that seems empty and lame. Really, they've done it, who cares what I have to say about it. But isn't that the whole point of a blog? Where someone can write anything they're thinking about without cares of whether or not someone agrees, disagrees, will read it or even care?

I then Googled "blog topics". Thank god for Google. I seriously wonder what the world was like before Google. How did people figure stuff out? And don't tell me "the library". If I had to get myself to the library for every time I Googled something, I would never leave the library.

Back to the results of Googling for a blog topic. The most interesting (and likely one of the ones nearest the top of the Google results) was a post from http://chrisbrogan.com titled "100 Blog Topics I Hope YOU Write". Thank goodness!

But it started off with "People often ask me how I come up with things to blog about, and I find the question strange, because my problem is the opposite. I have too much to blog about". And it's so true. SO TRUE! All day, every day, I'm constantly thinking "I should blog about that". My problem.... I ALWAYS FORGET.

Just this morning on my way to work I saw a girl... I think it was a girl... and she was doing... something. And I thought to myself "I should blog about that". But then remembered that I wanted to write my blog about the Beatles songs. And then I wanted to write an obituary blog for the Brass Door. And what was it that she was doing or wearing that I was even going to blog about in the first place? I have no idea. It has slipped my mind.

But what should I blog about? Shouldn't I use my blog to write something significant to the world? Can anyone actually even manage to write something significant to the world anymore? We're overcome with thousands and thousands of images and thoughts and words and opinions all day every day. You turn on your computer and you see the ramblings of your 200+ Facebook "friends", then you see the thoughts of the 400+ people you're "following" on Twitter... then you may actually read the real news. Turn on the TV. Hear what Oprah and the ladies on the View have to say on every topic "relevant" to our current lives. Turn on the radio and you get to hear some idiot say his views on how things should be.

How often are we not even making our own thoughts and decisions up but simply hearing them from other people? Not to mention, what is even releveant in our lives anymore?

I was thinking if I were to blog about the Beatles top 5 songs or the Brass Door (my favourite bar) closing or my cats, for example, is that relevant. To you, maybe not. To me, yes. That is actually the things that are relevant in my life. Last night while I was driving home, listening to the radio play the top 5 Beatles songs, it got me thinking of what my top 5 Beatles songs are. They didn't match, but of course they didn't. Because I looked at them from my point of view - what the songs make me think of, who the songs remind me of, how the songs make me feel. Relevant to me.

............... So I just re-read this blog because really I feel like this has been total ramblings that don't make any sense. When I realized the point of this blog: When I Googled a blog topic, I was actually looking for what I could write that would be meaningful and relevent to the entire world. But that's not what a blog is supposed to be about. A true blog should be your ramblings on the world. After all, aren't my opinions just as important as all the other people's we have to hear every day?

To follow: Blog about the top 5 Beatles songs of all time........

Why I love my cats more than most people

I have started to realize of late that I actually love my cats more than I love most people. It's kind of sad, but pretty much true.

1) They are very cute. I always thought my cat Chloe was about as cute as you could get in a cat. Then I met Ralph. Ralph is by far the cutest cat in the entire world. I'm not kidding. He has the cutest little eyes that make my heart melt every time I look at him.

2) Regardless of the world outside, the weather, what my day has been like or how I'm feeling, one or both are always at the door to great me. When they sit at the window beside the door and do their "silent meows", my mood is instantly lifted.

3) When you're laying on the couch, bed, etc and they come up and pat you with their little paws, I want to melt. It's the cutest thing ever.

4) When I wake up in the middle of the night and Chloe has decided that my pillow is her pillow because she wants to lay with me, I feel awesome!

5) The fact that I cannot walk anywhere in the entire house without Ralph at my feet (getting kicked half the time) because he needs to be with me all the time. And that Ralph meows when he's gotten "lost" by walking into a room that no one is in. Priceless.

This is why I love my cats more than I love most people. Problem with it? I don't care. You haven't met my cats.

Anxious But Thankful

As Mental Health Awareness Week draws to a close and Thanksgiving dawns on us, I have been thinking quite a bit about both my anxiety/panic disorder and what I'm thankful for.

It's hard to be thankful for something that negatively effects me every day of my life. Why would anyone really be thankful of that?

However, there are things that I'm thankful for that revolve around my anxiety disorder.

I am thankful that I have a husband who will sit up with me at 1am while I pace around the house, rambling about silly worries if I wake up in the middle of a panic attack. I am thankful that I have sisters who will drop anything they're doing to help me work through a panic attack on the phone or in person. I am thankful that I have friends at work who will stand and stare out the window with me when I start to feel anxious at work. I am thankful that I have family and friends around me who have supported me through my darkest and worst moments and positively encouraged me to seek the help I need.

Mental Illness Awareness - what does it mean to me? It means being aware that mental illness likely effects people you know and you don't even know it. It means being aware and willing to help those around you if and when they need it. It means being aware that someone may need help with a mental illness before even they're aware they need help with a mental illness. It also means being aware of mental illness and removing your stigma around mental illness.

Be aware. And be thankful. I am.

I am someone with an anxiety/panic disorder.

Mental Illness Awareness Week is this week. What are you doing to bring awareness and reduce the stigma?
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I am someone with an anxiety/panic disorder.
I take medications for it every morning.

I am also....
a daughter
a sister
a wife
someone who loves to dance
a knitter
a friend
a reader
a pianist
someone who loves music
an analyst
a pet owner
a baseball fan
a hockey fan
sarcastic
loud
a sister-in-law
a niece
a cousin
a daughter-in-law
someone who can't eat gluten
a Londoner
a Canadian
an organizer
a perfectionist
someone who loves playing Dr. Mario
a grand-daughter
someone who loves naps
a worrier
a figher
.....
....
...
..
.
.
.

How do you define me? How do you judge me?
Is it by my mental illness?