Diversions for those stuck at home

I'm taking up yoga.

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Watching "Good Morning Vietnam" Robin Williams (RIP) at his best. Such a loss. What would he do to heads of state in this crisis? Just the thought makes me laugh. RW would "Rip a new one" of ALL heads of state. Miss RW. His ripping humor would be greatly appreciated now.
 
Duck59 said:
We've been looking at this site:

The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland

Okay, it's a bit of an anorak-ish pastime, but it's fascinating.
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The first European of my dad's family (following the male line, which is kind of pointless, but I digress) came here from the Alsace on a Huguenot ship in 1760, and records aren't clear whether he considered himself German or French, but...his wife was a good ol' Bristol gal! :)
 
ElizabethB said:
Watching "Good Morning Vietnam" Robin Williams (RIP) at his best. Such a loss. What would he do to heads of state in this crisis? Just the thought makes me laugh. RW would "Rip a new one" of ALL heads of state. Miss RW. His ripping humor would be greatly appreciated now.
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Brilliant, ElizabethB! One of my favourite films of all times. I love the sound track too - I have a CD of it in the car. He really was a gem.
 
TastyReuben said:
The first European of my dad's family (following the male line, which is kind of pointless, but I digress) came here from the Alsace on a Huguenot ship in 1760, and records aren't clear whether he considered himself German or French, but...his wife was a good ol' Bristol gal! :)
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I've got one of those names that isn't exactly common, though it's not rare, either. It's also a name that crops out throughout Britain and Ireland without having any particularly strong connection to one area or region. In Ireland, where my roots lie, the most common instances of my surname appear in very diverse areas; Westmeath and Dublin, which are in what one might call the midlands, Armagh in the north and Cork in the far south. Curious, but interesting.
 
Duck59 said:
I've got one of those names that isn't exactly common, though it's not rare, either. It's also a name that crops out throughout Britain and Ireland without having any particularly strong connection to one area or region. In Ireland, where my roots lie, the most common instances of my surname appear in very diverse areas; Westmeath and Dublin, which are in what one might call the midlands, Armagh in the north and Cork in the far south. Curious, but interesting.
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MrsTasty has a very unique surname, and her family were/are always proud to point out, in a mildly superior way, that if you ever run across anyone else with that name, they must be a relative. It was always said with the unspoken add-on that you wouldn't, of course, ever meet anyone with that name, because it was so unique and special.

After it became obvious I was going to be part of the family, and hearing this for about the 20th time, I couldn't hold my tongue any longer, and pointed out the common of practice of Europeans arriving to America and having their names Americanized, or just plainly spelled differently, due to whomever wrote it in the Big Book Of Immigrants when they stepped off the boat. Then I proceeded to tick off a half-dozen or so very common surnames that were obviously off-shoots of their name.

That won me no friends and everyone disputed it, but years later, when my wife developed an interest in her ancestry (which she follows to this day), the first thing she found out was her "unique" surname was indeed just one variant of a quite common name - one so common that the elementary school I attended as a child carried that common name and my high school English Lit teacher also went by a variation of it!
 
My partner has a very common Irish surname, though in a sense, she has changed it or at least its pronunciation. She hails from Cork city and her name is pronounced differently there than in the UK. After her family moved to England, she quickly decided to just go along with the "English" pronunciation of her name. As she observed, she didn't want to spend half her life correcting people on the pronunciation of a monosyllabic name.
 
Ok, at the end of March, I posted this...
TastyReuben said:
This will be my diversion for the next few weeks:
Dr. Rhythm!

Dr. Rhythm!


It's a little personal drum-and-bass machine that I bought 15 years ago, probably, with the intention to use as a practice tool.

While it has tons of preloaded drum-bass loops, I was more interested in creating my own. I spent 15 minutes with it when I first bought it, deemed it too confusing, and stuck it back in its box.

Now, I'm ready for round 2...
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...and here's what I did with it:

View: https://youtu.be/sMVFA1HtmBU


Today is my and MrsTasty's 30th anniversary, and I wrote that as a wedding present, so now seems an appropriate time to share it.
That's recorded simply by propping my iPhone up and videoing it, so the sound may be a little iffy, and my voice does it's usual unsolicited croak a time or two, but that's just because, at 53 years old, I'm finally going through puberty. :)

The drum and bass parts are made with that little rhythm box, and that was very much a pain to program.
 
TastyReuben said:
Ok, at the end of March, I posted this...

...and here's what I did with it:

View: https://youtu.be/sMVFA1HtmBU


Today is my and MrsTasty's 30th anniversary, and I wrote that as a wedding present, so now seems an appropriate time to share it.
That's recorded simply by propping my iPhone up and videoing it, so the sound may be a little iffy, and my voice does it's usual unsolicited croak a time or two, but that's just because, at 53 years old, I'm finally going through puberty. :)

The drum and bass parts are made with that little rhythm box, and that was very much a pain to program.
Click to expand...
👏👏 Encore! Encore! Really enjoyed your song this morning - Happy Anniversary 😀😀
 
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