I’ve grown a full beard in the last couple of weeks. Er, more specifically I’ve tried to grow a full beard. ”It’s a nice masculine aesthetic,” as one guy put it in this article.

I had a goatee for years, but was incredibly tired of the whole thing. Also, this guy I know once referred to it as a porno donut. Now I don’t know what that means exactly, but I didn’t like the associations that came to mind. So it had to go.

Turns out neither me or my wife cared too much for the face underneath. Hence the full beard. But I’m having trouble on the sides. Nothing’s happening. Some people have these unbelievably fat sideburns - I would probably have to save for years to get something like that.

Now I haven’t shaved for about three weeks, but I’m still nowhere near a full-fledged, handsome beard. I was going for the George Clooney-look in Syriana, but I’m ending up looking more like Heath Ledger, sadly. Yup, it’s still a goatee. Or a porno donut, if you will.

But I’m telling you, I’m not giving up on the full-fledged version. I’ll keep you updated.

I grew up in the 70s and early 80s and I have many fond memories of that time. Spending weekends by the seaside with my grandparents who were only in their early 50s at the time, building boats and cars together with my granddad who was great with his hands - he could build anything. Spending entire days out in free air, playing by the sea and drinking cocoa and watching M.A.S.H, Soap or Mork & Mindy with my granny in the evenings, granddad still out working.

So today I put together a mix-tape exclusively with Christopher Cross, Captain & Tennille and England Dan and John Ford Coley for my daily walk. Mushy music, certainly, but absolutely perfect for the occasion.

I walked through a nice neighborhood that was built largely in the early 70s, with a lot of architect-drawn modernistic houses. We live in the outskirts of town, and after walking for 15 minutes you’re surrounded only by meadows and hills. I started to think back to my childhood and I went for a short trip back in time. Especially when I left all the houses behind and was surrounded by nature, I was able to leave modern life a little behind for a moment of reflection.

At 35, I begin to realize that nothing lasts forever. I’m gradually losing my grandparents to old age, and I slowly notice that things around me change. In about 7 to 8 years my parents will have retired, my kids are almost teenagers and all of my grandparents will likely be gone. I’m suddenly the man and the age I always used to picture my father to be, if you know what I mean: The working dad, the steady rock right in the middle of the family, or something. My dad turning into the granddad, and so on. All this is inevitable and self-explanatory, but in a sense I feel like I’ve gone from 15 to 35 in just a couple of years.

It’s kind of sad, but also good to think back to the times as they were. After all, I’m incredibly grateful for the life I’ve had so far.

I was out for a couple of hours today, and I feel renewed, once again ready to step up to the challenges of modern life. I have a meeting with the bank later on today. Nothing major, but the preparations I have to go through before this meeting brings me right back down to earth. But my batteries are reloaded, and I’m up for the task.

It’s always an interesting experiment to refurnish your home when you have children in the house. We are the proud parents of a three year old girl and a one year old boy. And it’s only been a couple of years since we established ourselves in our very own home. So every now and then we need to acquire some new furniture, and we ususally move some things about in order to make room for the new stuff.

And whenever we move some of their toys around it never fails: The toys, some of which they haven’t touched in months, suddenly appear as brand new to them. It’s Christmas morning all over, they pull out everything from their new location and onto the floor. This can last for days, maybe even a week.

This time we moved some of their books from a box on the floor and into a bookshelf. They had perfectly easy access to the books before as well, but the books never left that box unless we actually fetched them. Now, however, the books are pulled out of the shelf and spread all over the floor virtually seconds after the kids enter the living room. They look at every single picture and show us every last book as if it was discovered for the first time, and they spend hours with them.

This will probably last until, I don’t know, tomorrow or the day after. By then they will have adjusted to the new situation, and the books can once again return to their quiet life, now relocated in our brand new Ikea bookshelf. Funny thing, that.

It makes you think, though. Do they really need all the new stuff they’re given every birthday and every Christmas from me and my wife, from their grandparents, their aunts and uncles and God knows who? Maybe we should just draw the attention to the toys they’ve actually got to make them last a little longer? There’s certainly plenty of toys in our attic they’ve hardly ever looked at. And that’s too bad, isn’t it?

Oh no, I was in love with my design template. I could sit and scroll up and down on my newborn blog all day, imagining it was me who created it. It wasn’t, though. Apart from the actual words and the selections I made on the sidebar, everything’s was a standard template - on Wordpress

I think Wordpress has better templates than Blogger. I’m very happy with my Blogger account though - apart from the templates. I don’t want to spend much time on layout, though. I just want something that’s functional and aesthetic - originality is not required. I mean, if I can’t convince you to read the words anyway, there’s not much point to the design, is there? The design must be made so that it doesn’t interfere with the content. And I guess this will have to do.

Speaking of Blogger, I’ve Googlified my life quite recently, and it’s been a wonderful experience. I now have Gmail, Personalized Home, Blogger, Bookmarks, Calendar, Picasa, RSS Reader, and I’ve started collaborations on Google spreadsheets and documents (formerly Writely) - oh yes, and I’ve implemented the Notebook. All this courtesy of Google. All interconnected. All seamless. Combined with a couple of brilliant Greasemonkey scripts in my Firefox, as well as a few add-ons, my browser is essentially a Google browser. I’m thoroughly impressed with the Google project. They’re ominpresent, and they’re so incredibly good at almost everything they do. It’s a bit frightening too, of course. If the rest of the world will follow my example, Google will have access to a lot of personal information, which could surely be misused by people with evil (or overly commercial) intentions. But for now, I’m more impressed than scared.

Lots of syncopation, plenty of modulations, excellent musicianship - especially on bass, drums and keyboards - guitars are somehow almost absent… Still good stuff. In no particular order.

1. Can’t Hide Love - Earth, Wind & Fire (Gratitude 1975)
2. Heart To Heart - Kenny Loggins (High Adventure 1982)
3. The Sailor’s Song - Pages (Future Street 1979)
4. Margarita - Marc Jordan (A Hole in the Wall 1983)
5. Georgy Porgy - Toto (Toto 1978)
6. I Keep Forgettin’ (Every Time You’re Near) - Michael McDonald (If That’s What It Takes 1982)
7. Gotta Get Back to Love Bill Champlin (Runaway 1981)
8. No One There - Eric Tagg (Dreamwalkin’ 1981)
9. Who’s Right, Who’s Wrong - Pages (Future Street 1979)
10. JoJo - Boz Scaggs (Middle Man 1980)
11. Fly Away - Peter Allen (Bi-Coastal 1980)
12. Woman - Dane Donohue (Dane Donohue 1978)
13. This Is It - Kenny Loggins (Keep the Fire 1979)
14. Lovin’ And Losin’ You Ford, Dwayne (Needless Freaking 1982)
15. Look Who’s Lonely Now LaBounty, Bill (Bill LaBounty 1982)
16. Sailing Cross, Christopher (Christopher Cross 1979)
17. Biggest Part Of Me - Ambrosia (One Eighty 1980)
18. Hey Nineteen - Steely Dan (Gaucho 1980)
19. Rosanna - Toto (IV 1982)
20. Suspicions Eddie Rabbitt (Loveline 1979)

I turned 35 years old this fall. I grew up somewhere in Europe in the 1980s. My first vinyl LP was Make It Big by Wham! Don Johnson in Miami Vice was my idol, and I worked hard to emulate his style - all slick hair, white suits and pastel colored t-shirts - in high school - at age 14…

I grew up, thankfully, and reconsidered both my hairstyle and my clothes, but I never stopped looking back, musically. Since turning music into an obsession at about age 14, I’ve never really been hooked on any contemporary trends. Guns’n'Roses, Kurt Cobain, Oasis, Red Hot Chili Peppers - or Madonna for that matter - all of them more or less eluded me. I wasnt’ indie-cool, and definitely not mainstream-cool. I wasn’t any kind of cool. Instead I went back in time to smooth and jazzy acts, like Michael Franks, Steely Dan, Al Jarreau and Pat Metheny Group. I don’t mind hard rock or avant-garde classical, and I love hard bop jazz. I do, however, have a definite soft spot for the mellower side of rock music, often with a touch of jazz, and that’s going to be the main focus of this blog.

It’s a guilty pleasure, for sure, nevertheless I have a genuine affection for this kind of music. Whenever Sometimes when I hear some Stephen Bishop or vintage Michael McDonald, I’m in musical ecstacy (unlikely as that might seem to most of you).

But if you feel the same way, stay tuned. I’ll be back in a couple of days with a few useful links to help explain this particular brand of rock music.