Amazing to think we have been going to space for nearly 50 years!

playingforchange, a group who is trying to promote peace through music, made the following video.  It touched my heart, hopefully it will touch yours. “This cover of Stand By Me was recorded by completely unknown artists in a street virtual studio all around the world. It all started with a base track—vocals and guitar—recorded on the streets of Santa Monica, California, by a street musician called Roger Ridley. The base track was then taken to New Orleans, Louisiana, where Grandpa Elliott—a blind singer from the French Quarter—added vocals and harmonica while listening to Ridley’s base track on headphones. In the same city, Washboard Chaz’s added some metal percussion to it. And from there, it just gets rock ‘n’ rolling bananas: The producers took the resulting mix all through Europe, Africa, and South America, adding new tracks with multiple instruments and vocals that were assembled in the final version you are seeing in this video. All done with a simple laptop and some microphones.” [gizmodo]

After a long a stressful week, I unfortunately came down with a bit of laryngitis.  However, this movie made me smile, so I’d like to share.  It’s called Validation:

As Kjirsti already blogged, the big highlight of the week was probably skiing. I was talking to friends at work, and we all decided it would be great to go skiing together. It was wonderful to cut through the icy snow, and get a nice workout. I had a great faceplant early on, which would have been documented if I wasn’t the photographer. Cleveland is so great this time of year!

Happy New Year!

Kjirsti and I had a great time in Washington with her family.  I love all of our wonderful nieces and nephews.  They have such spirit!

Kjirsti got me perhaps the coolest gift I’ve ever gotten.  It’s called an arduino, and it has to be the geekiest thing I’ve ever owned.  But it sure is cool.  I made a timer for our camera, and put together a time lapse video of our front yard: