make it happen

The summer of 2005 I lived in a house on Wood Avenue with a bunch of friends. I like weather appropriate music so I made a couple of summer mixes for my housemates entitled, Woodhouse Summer Shuffle Days '05 and Woodhouse Summer Shuffle Nights '05. I included songs by bands new to me I had seen recently like Bloc Party or United States of Electronica as well as a slew of other crap I was listening to right then. Roommates of both sexes seemed to enjoy. By the fall I had moved downtown and was falling in love with a boy from Minnesota. Van Morrison and Andrew Bird and The Magic Numbers were the soundtrack of that time and my cleverly named autumnish mixes, A Downtown Fall: School Days and A Downtown Fall: Long Weekends were loaded with those guys. I distributed the CD to new roommates, old roommates and a handful of other friends.

A trifecta of seasonal mixes was completed that next Valentine's Day when I decided to make yet another mix. This time it was intended for my circle of girlfriends who were surprisingly mostly single and I snuck around the night before placing them on cars and in mailboxes. I made a pretty case and named it i. love. you. And I gotta say it was good cus there was a The Knife sandwich with Whitney Houston and Willie Nelson on either end.

I have been up and down at keeping up the three mixes since then, but I do always hit up at least the Valentine's and another season. And I try to stay in the habit, because even if everyone I give them to were to immediately throw them out the window, the mixes still have an important record keeping purpose for me. I have never been a good journal writer, but the minute I listen to one of these CDs it's like a little time capsule bomb of my life explodes. I am taken right back to the people and things and experiences of that season and the ghost of Emily past.

So I finished my (late) fall mix last night. It's influenced by a summer of new people and places. I think it's a good one for wearing jackets buttoned up and the last few weeks of outside weather.

I started this little blog in February. I put a site reader on it in March. Taking into account my hits (I thought I took off my IP addresses but they seem to have been showing up lately), this little lady reached 10,000 hits sometime in early September. In celebration of me BEING SO POPULAR!!! I figure I'll send my baby out (in the real mail) to anyone who wants it. It's my thanks to you for indulging me and my habit of talking about my siblings and TV so much.

Just send me your address, I'm ejcliffordatgmaildotcom