Tag: just for fun

TBT^65,536: Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony

The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

I’ve been on a programmatic composing kick, which seems to happen every January.  I’m currently working on a collection of instrumental music inspired by my koi pond, which I’m tentatively calling Koi Dance.

Writing music inspired by God’s Creation is nothing new, but descriptive program music reached its height during the Romantic Era.  The great composer bridging the gap between the classical and Romantic periods was Beethoven.

Beethoven is known for many works, but I am partial to one of his less-appreciated symphonies, the Sixth.  It depicts a day in the countryside, and fits with the emerging Romanticism’s fascinating with the natural world and the countryside.

With that, here is 30 January 2025’s “TBT^256: Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony“:

Read More »

Midweek Update: Home Selling

The Portly Politico18 Comments

A quick update from yours portly today, as I’ve been hustling to get my house ready to list.  Last week, my pastor (who just started a carpet cleaning business) did a deep clean of the house, which, of course, meant I had to deep clean before he arrived so he could get to the really bad stuff.  My mind boggles at how much junk I have accumulated in just seven years.

This morning my realtor came by with a photographer to get pictures of the house, so that required more organization, especially involving the artful concealment of things no one wants to see in pictures of a home—trashcans, the stuff you keep on the back of the toilet, etc.  I was really pleased when my realtor told me that I’d done a great job getting things together.

Now I’m just waiting for the disclosure paperwork, and soon my little home will be on the market officially.  Selling that will be a huge boon for Dr. Wife and me.  We currently own three homes between us, which sounds like some kind of decadent dream, but it’s really a huge time- and money-sink.  My house, fortunately, is paid off, thanks in part to the best bank of all, The First Bank of Mom and Dad.  The value has more than doubled (of course, the value of the dollar has probably halved) since I bought it, so I should walk away with a good profit, which will help to pay for the hefty mortgage on the new house.

Shew!  But I digress.  Please be praying that my house sells quickly—and Dr. Wife’s!  She’s had hers on the market since right before the wedding back in November, and while she’s had some showings, she hasn’t had any offers yet.  We need that albatross dropped onto some hapless chump happy new homeowner ASAP!

More to come.  Happy Wednesday!

—TPP

New Music Tuesday III: “Snail Drop”

The Portly Politico2 Comments

The koi pond at our new house has served as a source of immense inspiration for yours portly.  I’ve spent many late nights researching various species of aquatic life that can thrive in our little pond ecosystem.  I’m most excited about getting some Japanese Trapdoor Snails for our pond.

In the meantime, however, I’ve added some ramshorn snails to the pond already.  They arrived in a bag from an eBay seller in Oklahoma, clinging to the walls of their watery shipping compartment.  I drove them up one frosty night and gently plopped them into the pond, which inspired today’s new piece.

Read More »

Lazy Sunday CCCXLXIV: Fire and Water

The Portly Politico6 Comments

It’s a quick Lazy Sunday this week as Dr. Wife and I hunker down in the cold.  I’m casting my gaze back to two posts from earlier this week, one based in the coolness of the watery depths, the other in the fiery crucible of the modern restaurant industry:

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Phone it in Friday CXIX: YouTube Roundup CLXXIX: Winter

The Portly Politico2 Comments

It is the deep midwinter, and even the Carolinas are getting their share of the white stuff.  Murphy and I were up at Dr. Wife’s house in North Carolina this past weekend, and there was a little bit of snow on Sunday afternoon!

This weekend brings Winter Storm Fern, which is supposed to dump lots of snow and/or “wintry mix” and/or ice all over the Southeastern United States.  Gulp!  We’ll know more by Sunday.

In the spirit of wintry frostiness, here are a couple of recent videos from North Carolina all about the cold.

Read More »

TBT^16: The Hermit’s Life

The Portly Politico2 Comments

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. If you purchase through these links, I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.

My mind is always a bit sharper during these cold, bitter wintry months, especially in the morning after a good cup of black coffee.  Indeed, I’m writing this post while sipping coffee in the wee hours of a very cold morning.  Dr. Wife and Nugget, the three-legged wonder dog, are still fast asleep; Murphy and I have been up for about thirty minutes.  The old girl (Murphy, not Dr. Wife) is munching on a beef rawhide in the other room as the morning light slowly pierces through the grey of January.

These early hours are about as close as I get to the hermit’s life these days.  It’s quiet to focus on writing, spending time with God, reading the Bible, and knocking out whatever little tasks need doing.

In putting together these TBT posts, it’s always fun—and occasionally cringe-inducing—to look back at posts from yesteryear.  One of the joys of maintaining a daily blog for seven years—whoa!—is the ability to explore my own, evolving time capsule.

It’s one of the things I love about WordPress.com.  It’s very easy to find my old posts and link to them instantly.  Oftentimes, I’ve forgotten about some of the topics I’ve covered over the years (in searching for “coffee” this morning, I found a post about coffee glasses).  Links are insanely easy, especially if you use the “Classic” block—still my preferred method of writing using WordPress.com:

They're like glasses, but made from coffee!

I currently use the $8/month “Premium” plan, which features the functionality I crave (for plug-ins, however, you’ll need the $25/month “Business” plan).  It boasts 13 GB a storage, which might not sound massive in our age of terabyte SSDs, but is more than ample when you’re mostly uploading pictures of your dog:

Also, WordPress.com is constantly throwing coupons at me.  It’s rare that I actually pay full-freight for my plan (which is billed annually).  For example, WordPress.com‘s sister site, Pressable, is offering 15% plans with code 2025PRESS15AFF.  I can’t speak to the functionality of Pressable firsthand, simply because I haven’t used it, but it offers hosting services for ecommerce sites, developers, and the like.

For everyday use, however, WordPress.com is fantastic.  I love the “Classic” blocks because I’m used to working with the formatting ribbon included, but the sheer number of available blocks is impressive:

So many blocks!

I literally just realized there’s a “Slideshow” block—my mind is already envisioning compelling slide decks of koi pond pics once the weather warms up!

I’ve been really pleased with the functionality of WordPress.com, which also comes with Jetpack built in.  Jetpack has functionality I’ve only begun to explore; that said, I love its Akismet anti-spam system. According to Akismet, it’s blocked 13,830 spam comments in the past six months alone—and 141,377 over seven-plus years I’ve been writing this blog:

Well, enough of my yakking.  If you’re like me, these cold, dark months are the perfect time to brew up some coffee, pet your dog, and start your own blog at WordPress.com.  Blogging has opened up so many doors for me, and the switch to WordPress.com back in Summer 2018 has been life-changing.  I may be a hermit, but I love the little community we’ve built here around TPP.  I have several readers who are bloggers, and many more who should be blogging.

I’d love to see our little community grow further.  WordPress.com makes it easy to get blogging, but I’m here to help!

With that, here is 2 January 2025’s “TBT^4: The Hermit’s Life“:

Read More »

Chilly on Chili’s

The Portly Politico12 Comments

Dr. Wife and I love Chili’s.  For my European readers who aren’t blessed with the family restaurant concept (I assume you eat at McDonald’s or at pubs), Chili’s is a restaurant that acts like it’s all about Tex-Mex and Southwestern cuisine (that’s an Amazon Affiliate link to my highly unsuccessful book Arizonan Sojourn, South Carolinian Dreams, which features a chapter about eating a massive burrito on the drive to the Grand Canyon; I receive a portion of any purchases made through that link, at no additional cost to you), but really it’s a great burger place with chips and salsa.  The food is very American, with a bit of a Southwest twist.

Indeed, when I was playing the role of brash American in the comments section over at Free Speech Backlash, I kept joking with my detractors—the people who objected to the idea that the United States should take Greenland, because 60,000 defenseless Greenlanders have the right to sell their sovereignty to the Chinese but not to the United States—that we’d soon be dining together at the new Chili’s in Nuuk.  Eating an Old Timer with Cheese in Greenland will be one of them any blessings of American imperialism.  Who needs independence when you can get unlimited chips and salsa for free with the Chili’s app?

But I digress.  Chili’s and Texas Roadhouse were the two most profitable and/or fastest-growing restaurant chains in the United States in 2025 for good reason:  they offer patrons tons of great food at ridiculously low (for the post-Age of The Virus inflationary world) prices.  Dr. Wife and I can split a burger and get out of Chili’s sufficiently stuffed for under twenty bucks.

However, all is not well at Chili’s.

Read More »

New Music Tuesday II: “Koi Dance”

The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

I’ve been working hard on this week’s piece, “Koi Dance,” for about two weeks now.  It’s a chamber piece featuring two flutes, bassoon, and piano, and draws inspiration from Bedřich Smetana’s “The Moldau”; that piece also features a flowing theme that depicts the movement of water.

I plugged the finished piece into Audacity and applied some additional reverb and a master effect, both of which I think have allowed the sound to “pop.”

Read More »

Lazy Sunday CCCXLXIII: Empire

The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

It’s been the week of American imperialism here on the blog, and I don’t necessarily mean “imperialism” negatively.  Here are some posts about how the United States is embracing its destiny (and the peaks and pitfalls of doing so):

Happy Sunday!

—TPP