I Miss My Blog (And You)
Wow. I haven’t blogged since July of 2010. That was last year, people! Where the fuck have I been?! Well, some of you know and some of you don’t. I guess I’ll have to post a little somethin’ somethin’ to make sure everyone is up to speed on what is going on in Aprilverse.
I lost my 7 1/2 year “day job” in July. It was a nowhere job that wasn’t even in my interests and I only worked it to have a steady paycheck and health insurance. I won’t go into details about how I lost my job, but let’s just say that I didn’t deserve it and I hope no one ever has to go through what I did. I immediately lost my health insurance and to this day I don’t have coverage. I keep my fingers crossed every single day that I won’t get seriously hurt. Why? Because…
I’ve had a lot of health problems and accidents over the past 8+ years, including but not limited to, a herniated disc in my lower back with a side of sciatica from a car accident (I got rear-ended… you can stop laughing now), a tumor the size of a golf ball on my thyroid that caused me to gain over 100 pounds, bouts of depression & agoraphobia, a broken ankle that forced me to learn how to walk again, double pneumonia TWICE, and numerous little ailments, some stemming from pre-existing injuries. I seriously need to be careful, eh?
One week after losing my job, someone decided to report this lil’ ol’ blog to my hosting company. What did I do wrong? I had music on my server. Copyrighted music. That I used a plugin to share that didn’t even allow people to download the tracks… only listen to them. I even provided links to download the music from iTunes or Amazon. How audacious of me! I must have been a terrible person for sharing music, right?! I mean, I can understand if it was the RIAA, but according to my hosting company, it wasn’t. It was a random fucking person, who I like to call ‘Captain RIAA’. Who takes it upon themselves to report someone when they have nothing to gain? An asshole, that’s who. I had to wipe all of the music from my server so I didn’t get my site shut down, causing all of my posts embedded with music to stop working unless they contained mashups, Creative Commons, or were embeddable mixtapes from 8tracks.com. If you were wondering why most of the music on my site wouldn’t stream, now you know. I still need to fix this. *le sigh*
Tagged: Friends, Life, Love, Mashup, Personal, Positivity, Relationships, Thoughts, Update
Why Hearing Is My Most Important Sense
As a music lover, hearing is the most important sense to me. I can’t imagine a life without music. I live and breathe music. If I had to choose between any of my five senses to keep forever and forgo all others, hearing would be my immediate response. I could live without sight, for I was lucky to be born with it and I already know what so many things look like. The sense of touch, while pleasurable in so many ways, still doesn’t top a life without hearing. The sense of taste is another sense that I wouldn’t want to lose, but at the end of the day, tasting food isn’t a priority on my list. Perhaps it would be if I was a chef. Losing my sense of smell would have some disadvantages, but I just can’t say that it’s more special than my hearing.
Every day we listen to so many things and we take a lot of them for granted. Imagine never being able to hear the voice of your children. Imagine never hearing someone telling you that they love you. Imagine never hearing the sound of rain, or the other beautiful sounds of nature. Now imagine never being able to listen to music. I shudder at the thought.
I couldn’t even begin to think of all the songs that I’ve heard through my 30 years on this earth. A lot of music has gotten me through a lot of hard times; Songs that made me jump up and dance, heal my broken heart, and songs that inspired me. If it wasn’t for my sense of hearing, I don’t know if I would even be the same person I am today.
I Love My iPhone 4, BUT…
Let me start off by saying that I’m not an Apple fanatic. While I love some of their products, I’m by no means an Apple-only type of person. I don’t think I could ever devote myself to one company faithfully and not be open to what else is out there. I’ve gone between using PC and Mac over the years, and my first computer was a Commodore 64. (Geek alert!) However, I love the Apple iPhone. I don’t love it more than other phones, but it’s a beautiful piece of technology that I’m lucky enough to be able to afford.
I got my first iPhone, a 16 GB 3G, over a year ago out of necessity. Since I am an AT&T customer, my only options at the time were between a BlackBerry or an iPhone. Since most people I knew had an iPhone, I decided to get one. I was not disappointed at all. It was a huge upgrade from the Samsung BlackJack II I had been using at the time. Even though the phone I purchased was refurbished, I didn’t have any problems with it and over a year later the battery is still going strong.
With the launch of the new iPhone 4, upgrading from a 3G iPhone was a big upgrade for me. I wanted a better camera, some sort of multi-tasking, and a faster phone since I am a heavy user. I also invested money into the apps I owned so getting another iPhone was the best solution for me. I just happened to be one of the lucky few that were able to order their phone the first day through AT&T’s website. I had never ordered anything at launch before and I wasn’t expecting the mass chaos over the iPhone 4 because there are so many other phones out there now, especially with the open source Android OS. I don’t think anyone expected that millions of people would crash 2 websites at launch over a phone, but it happened and here we are.
I received my iPhone 4 via Fedex on June 23rd from AT&T. My excitement over the new phone had been raised by the fact that I was lucky to have been able to get one at all. Then I activated it. I had no signal when I touched my phone. My first thought was that it was an AT&T issue. After realizing that the signal dropped every time I picked it up, I realized something was amiss and did a quick Google search and found that people were reporting the same problems. This was not good.
Tagged: Apple, Apps, iPhone, Technology
Hanging Up On Negativity & Being Positive
I wouldn’t call myself an overly positive person. I do believe in positive energy and like the idea of a glass that is half full. I have been on the opposite side of the scale at different points in my life, especially during bouts of depression, and at times I’m also a realist. Having said that, I’m no longer at a crossroads in my life. I have learned that seeing the glass half empty is a waste of energy that can be channeled to a more positive outlook. There are moments when I start to feel down, but I do my best to think logically about the situation and I surely don’t complain to every person who is within earshot or on a social network away about how I feel. I wouldn’t want my negative energy to bring someone else down. It’s not fair to my friends to feel bad or depressed because I am. That’s not cool at all.
Lately, I’ve begun to see a trend. Maybe it’s because I’m enjoying my time seeing the world through rose colored glasses, but being around negative vibes is unavoidable when I allow myself to be subjected to it. No more. I’m hanging up on the people who spend all their time complaining about how terrible their life is and do nothing about it. I’m hanging up on the people who would love nothing but a bullshit flame war because they have so much anger inside that they taunt you into replying to their negative comments to get some sort of reaction. I’m over it, over it… so fucking over it.
Tagged: BW, Choices, Friends, Life, Negativity, Personal, Positivity, Social Media, Thoughts, Twitter
I Am Thirty, Going On Twenty
My twenties sucked. Hard. I’m not complaining because whatever happened, happened. (Nod to my fellow Losties out there.) I’m merely bringing this up since I recently turned thirty and entering this new decade of my life, I feel like I have a chance to do a lot of things I should have done or have been meaning to put off, but I finally have the maturity and experience to deal with it and I feel the most confident in myself than I have ever been.
I AM ME
For once I can say that I know who I am as a person. I am okay with my faults because they are a part of me. What you see is what you get. I wear my heart on my sleeve and make no apologies for it. I like writing AND designing, and I don’t feel the need to only do one or the other. I CAN have my cake and eat it, too. It took me a long time to get to this place. My whole life, I’ve always doubted myself. I’m my own worst critic and rather than appreciating what I do, I would compare myself with the people I was surrounded by, the people I looked up to.
Goddamn, I Miss That Girl
Losing a friend is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to experience. When you are born into this world, you have your family, but your friends are the family you choose. I’m not very close to my family and I cherish each and every one of the people who have come into my life and became part of my found family. When you lose anyone, it hurts, but as a part of life you expect the inevitability of witnessing your family die. You believe your friends will be around until you grow old. In my 29 years, I’ve learned the hard way that this isn’t always the case multiple times over, and last week I lost another friend who died before their time.
I met my friend Carol in 1999, when I was dating a mutual friend. She was spunky, outgoing, and had a great sense of humor. Over the years we spent time together as friends and had a lot of fond memories, but not all of them were great. Carol liked to live on the edge, and this included drugs. When Carol was high, she was driving a fast car to nowhere.
Love Lockdown? More Like Jaw Lockdown…
Ever have one of those days where everything seems to be going wrong? I’ve been going through a bit of that this week. I suffer from TMJ pain and I somehow strained a muscle by my jaw, causing the right side of my face to swell. I could barely move my jaw at all, and I was getting nerve pain sent up the side of my face to my head.
After a visit to the hospital to find out what was going on, in case my jaw locked open or shut, I was given anti-inflammatory medicine as well as painkillers with orders to rest until I could eat solid food again and talk without being in pain. I’ll be posting as soon as I’m feeling better. Until then, rock on!
Image Source: Tumblr
Happy New Year From Me To You
Wishing a Happy New Year from me to you. May 2010 bring you all the happiness you deserve. The past is behind us and the possibilities of the future are endless.
The best thing about New Year’s is that we all get to start over. Make the most of it. Besides, 2009 was so last year.
Auld Lang Syne by Mairi Campbell and Dave Francis (my favorite version)
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Down To The Wire
I’m one of those people who tend to smile and tell everyone that everything is going to be alright, even if I’m not sure it will be. I love cheering people up and making them laugh. I don’t like to burden others with my own problems because I don’t want people to worry about me. I keep everything that is bothering me all bottled up until I can’t take it anymore and then I let go for a moment, but just a moment. I usually get up, brush myself off, and keep going.
See, it’s not that I’m afraid of expressing myself, since anyone who knows me knows that I frequently speak my mind. Over the past few years, more often than not, I’ve kept my raw emotions about my own life to myself and only shared them with a few people that I trust. Because of this, I feel like I’ve deprived myself of things in my life because I was afraid of letting go. Why? Well, mostly because my harshest critic is myself. I don’t like people to see me weak.
My Love Affair With Music
My name is April and I’m an addict. My drug of choice is music. Just saying the word music makes my stomach feel all tingly like I have butterflies in there. From the time I wake up in the morning, to the time I go to sleep, I live for music. I can always be found listening to something new I found or a classic that is timeless. It all sounds the same to me and I just can’t help swayin’ to the groove.
I think my love affair with music started when I was a young child. I was born in 1980, back when MTV was still a fledgling network and didn’t have us begging for our MTV quite yet. 1980 was a sad year for music lovers everywhere, as John Lennon was assassinated in December of that year. I don’t remember that, but when I think about how much he brought to the world with his music and words of peace and love that I can only imagine the pain of losing someone so special. I only have John’s music to listen to but it fills me with a sense of him, as if listening to his music keeps him alive and makes me feel a personal connection with him. I’d like to think that anyways.
Tagged: Love, Music Video, Oldies, Personal, Pop
Theme Mashup
So I decided to redo my site. I wanted to stick with a lot of whitespace, but other than that, I couldn’t find a theme I really liked. I liked different elements of themes, but they didn’t all combine into one which is what I wanted. So what is a girl to do? Make a mashup of themes, of course!
I started with the original Arthemia theme, and I stripped everything down so there was lots of whitespace. I removed the top featured areas because, let’s face it, I don’t need them. I did want to keep the category bar on the top, but I hated the search area, so I decided to use The Morning After‘s search and navigation area from their theme and implement it in the header here. I did like the Arthemia Premium‘s option on the bottom to have randomized posts so I added the scripts from the theme to this theme as well. I also upgraded Arthemia’s comment section to have threaded comments, and I did some other minor touch-ups throughout.
I’m really happy with how everything turned out and I love having all my white space with images and easy navigation. I hope you all love it as much as I do.
Cheers!
My Watchmen Soundtrack Review at Killer Film
I recently joined forces with KillerFilm.com to write movie soundtrack reviews and my first one is up! I chose to do Watchmen. I included a playlist of the soundtracks along with a few tracks that didn’t make the cut, as well as the music video for My Chemical Romance’s cover of Bob Dylan’s Desolation Row.
I’d love for you to read the review here and comment if you like!
Cheers!
Tagged: Asides, Personal, Review, Soundtrack
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