The time has come to pay tribute again

We all have our different ways and timelines for deciding life is back to “normal.”

Maybe it’s your own vaccination status, or a combination of being vaccinated and living in a place with high vaccination rates.

Or maybe it’s about the experiences — going to a soccer game where the discomfort was more about being soaked by the rain and not being in a crowd of 21,000 other people, or running your first race in 580 days.

Just when you think you’ve heard all the Christmas music

The yelp caused me to bolt off the couch and hurry to the kitchen.

Suzi was making a buche de Noel, the last of her weekly pre-Christmas treats. Even though I had warned her not to expect it to be as effortless or perfect as Mary Berry’s Yule log, the fact of the matter is I’m married to a perfectionist, so I wondered what kind of disaster I was walking into.

It wound up having nothing to do with the baking.

Flashback to high school

It had been a good workout.

I felt energetic, strong, and even though Suzi is the best company, it was also good to be around other people during the class, if only through the iPad resting at the perfect height in the sock drawer of our bedroom.

And then Jamie, our instructor, started the music on her end-of-class stretching playlist.

Getting lost in the albums

We’ve done Christmas music. We’ve done travel. We’ve done our “wild younger days,” and now I’ve joined up with my pal Renata from Buffalo Sauce Everywhere to write about our favorite albums. Be sure to read her post here.

I’m not “Paul McCartney was in a band before Wings?” young, but the band people my parents’ age knew as Jefferson Airplane or Jefferson Starship was just called Starship by the time I first heard of them.

And that’s due to one album … “Knee Deep in the Hoopla.”

Specifically, the song “We Built This City.”

Not liking them Apples

Suzi recently confessed something to me.

Before I share it, let me warn you that if you don’t like it, you have to come through me, and I will defend her with fervor and zest.

So what’s Suzi’s apostasy?

Updates from everywhere

The Scotsman Hotel in Edinburgh wants us to know that the well-being of their guests and teams is their “absolute priority.”

The hotel will “adhere to the strictest possible terms of all advice issues by (the World Health Organization), as well as the protocols advised by local and international authorities.”

Furthermore, any employee returning from a country affected by COVID-19, or has been in close proximity with someone from one of those areas, has been asked to self-quarantine for 14 days.

Moving music … live and in person

It had been a great concert, but I knew it was almost over, she hadn’t played the one song I wanted to hear the most.

I was starting to worry, but then …

“When it rains it pours

But you didn’t even notice …”

Seeing singers signing songs

In the last year or so, Suzi and I have made the “amazing” (as in, it shouldn’t have been amazing) discovery that any musician on tour who we like will probably come to the Boston area at some point.

Which is why we’ve seen Sugarland, Josh Groban (with Idina Menzel), Mumford & Sons, Leslie Odom Jr. with the Boston Pops, Maren Morris and Kacey Musgraves.

I gotta tell ya … it hasn’t sucked.

Was there a message in the music?

I have hundreds of songs on my iTunes, but I tend to fall into ruts depending on whatever I’m into at the moment, or whatever I last downloaded to my phone.

Sugarland and Jennifer Nettles will always be there, but lately I’ve basically been playing Maren Morris, Kacey Musgraves, Sara Bareilles and Josh Groban in pretty heavy rotation.

This morning, though, I decided to hit the shuffle, to just go with whatever came out next. It’s a pretty good way to remind myself that I have a lot of different stuff that I like.

A list of concerts, just for me? That’s sweet

When I ordered tickets for my wife and I to see Maren Morris this fall, I apparently made a new friend at Live Nation.

We’ve only just met, but my amazing new pal — I believe his name is Al Gorithm — claims to know me so well that he emailed me a “personalized concert lineup” with shows just for me! Not anyone else … me!

Granted, if he really knew me he’d call, text or send me direct messages on Facebook or Twitter instead of email, but I appreciate a guy who looks out for me.

So how did he do?