Shooflypie

I've made it through the first week of school and college, though I'm still trying to figure out the balance between exercise and homework and needed downtime and so on. In the meantime, let's get to today's ten... 1. Burden of Tomorrow/The Tallest Man On Earth (7) 2. The Decibels and the Little Pills/American Music Club (2) 3. Cocoon/The Decemberists (3) 4. Why Modern Radio is A-OK/Roman Candle (4) 5. Can You Tell/Ra Ra Riot (2) 6. Skip Steps 1 & 3/Superchunk (12) 7. Meet Me In The Basement/Broken Social Scene (6) 8. Eyes on the Prize/M. Ward (1) 9. Candy Cigarettes/Portastatic (6) 10. The Slide Song/The Afghan Whigs (14)

It's my last day of summer. I have to report to work at 7:30 tomorrow morning for a 4 hour meeting and my first college class is at 5:30 tomorrow evening. I'm not ready but that doesn't mean I'm going to phone it in. I want to have a really good fall semester. So, let's see what ten songs send me off into fall... 1. Another New World/Josh Ritter (8) 2. Tuberculoids Arrive In Hop/Ted Leo & The Pharmacists (13) 3. Go By/Elliott Smith (1) 4. Fire In Your Belly/Liam Finn (4) 5. Somewhere on a Roadside/Warren Zanes (4) 6. What Did I Ever?/Tom Adamson (4) 7. Estate Sale Sign/The Mountain Goats (7) 8. Shake And Pop/Nick Lowe (2) 9. Queens Will Pay/Black Mountain (3) 10. Rosemarie/Superchunk (15)

I posted my plans for my "Summer of Books" back on June 1, when I still had a week or so left of working at school and had not yet started teaching swimming lessons for hours at a time. Today is Aug. 15, when it's about a week until school starts again and I finished up my swimming lesson schedule a few days back. In the meantime, all I've posted has been Sunday Shuffles and a lone Heavy Rotation. That's doesn't mean I haven't been reading, though. I've actually read 14 books since that post 2 1/2 months ago. Even if I don't get around to writing about them, I would like to note them for posterity... The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi The Illumination by Kevin Brockmeier State of Wonder by Ann Patchett The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai Zombie Spaceship Wasteland by Patton Oswalt The Dewey Decimal System by Nathan Larson The Great Frustration by Seth Fried The Astral by Kate Christensen The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan A Clash of Kings by...

It's already the middle of August, which seems unreal. My wife starts back to school tomorrow, so her summer is over. I still have a week yet and am done with teaching swimming lessons, which means I don't have to punch any kind of clock. I'm quite happy about that. I do, however, have things to get done. If I'm going to do any posts other than Sunday Shuffles, this would be the week. We'll see. Anyway, let's do today's ten... 1. Slow West Vultures/The Mountain Goats (5) 2. Saving My Ticket/Superchunk (10) 3. Rapture (Sweet Rapture)/A.A. Bondy (4) 4. Paradise Blues/Eels (5) 5. Funny Little Frog/Belle and Sebastian (4) 6. The Sun Is Still Sunny/Dean & Britta (2) 7. Soft Fruit/Portastatic (5) 8. Ticket Machine/Frankel (2) 9. Avalon or Someone Very Similar/Yo La Tengo (2) 10. Raining in Darling (Cold Rock. Dull Grass)/The Prayers and Tears of Arthur Digby Sellers (3)

I'm heading into the last week of being in the pool and all sorts of school (work and college) is coming up behind it, so I need to start focusing on what needs to get done. To that end, I'm up a little earlier than usual for a summer Sunday and ready to get to today's ten... 1. Revelator/Gillian Welch (2) 2. Rain/Bishop Allen (2) 3. When You Were Doing Cocaine/East River Pipe (4) 4. Galaxy of the Lost/Lightspeed Champion (2) 5. Casanova, Baby!/The Gaslight Anthem (3) 6. Try/Michael Penn (2) 7. The Beginning Of The End/The Twilight Singers (4) 8. Notion/Kings Of Leon (3) 9. Gypsy Rose/Ben Kweller (3) 10. Better Times Are Coming Our Way/Cracker (3)