You tamed the lion in my cage but it just wasn't enough to change my heart.

New Shakira Album/s = Awesome. She is pretty much the only female singer that I like, and I love her. More than words. (You are supposed to get that cheesalicious More Than Words song stuck in your head now.)

The only problem with Shakira's music is that after listening to it I get a pit in my stomach and a lump in my throat and for a couple of days visions of memories from Central America keep popping up in my head. I remember eating a late dinner with Jordan in this empty open-air, thatched-roof restaurant on the beach of Big Corn Island, Nicaragua, when we realized that the radio station was playing a Shakira music marathon. We stayed and talked and listened to Shakira and the ocean for a couple hours. Nobody else was there. It is almost not even worth the immediate pleasure of listening to the good tunes.

I know I have touched on this idea before, but I love the fact that music captures the aura of different places. It doesn't seem like it is done intentionally either. My brother and I took this awesome road trip a couple years ago--shortly before Jordan and I got married--to take him out west to UC San Diego. On the way across the deserts of New Mexico and Arizona, we came to the conclusion that all American music captures the feel of the geography of America. From the worst to the best music, I believe this holds true. There are some foreign singers who can capture American geography pretty well (U2's Beautiful Day is about the best example I can think of), but try as they might, they still can't beat the American classics. Stuff like Free Fallin' and Me and Bobby McGee. But,again, even annoying American music still gives you the feeling of America. Kid Rock makes me feel like I'm driving through a bad part of Memphis and what's-her-name, that girl who sings Sunrise, Sunrise, makes me feel like I'm on a winding tree-lined road in one of the Carolinas. Good stuff, American music.

But if you love Latin America or any other place, you love its music too. I think when you fall in love with the land, the music captures you. I love Central American folk music, and I love Central American rap, though I have listened to a very small portion of both.

Sophia calls bellybuttons "Dada." It is pretty funny, especially since she seems to be more certain of that word than she is of calling Jordan "Dada." She will lift up her shirt and take your finger and poke it in her bellybutton, saying Dada all the while. If she hears you say something sounding like Dada it will remind her to look at her bellybutton, or yours, if it's more accessible. It's pretty adorable.

Melissa, my sister, reported that the best part about her birthday was that it was the fourth day in a row that she and Karl saw dolphins. They apparently play with the boat, swimming along with it. They are off the coast of South Carolina now and beginning to think about when to head towards the Bahamas. I can't help but wonder if her whole journey originated because of the part in A Severe Mercy where the author talks about floating around the Caribbean on a sailboat with his wife like two brown nuts. Yum, what an image. I also wonder what it's like for my sister and her boyfriend to not really have a normal schedule of the future. I need to ask her what her mental timeline is like... ten years sailing around the globe a few times and then maybe settling in a bungalow in Southern Thailand... I don't know. I don't believe they'll ever go back to normal jobs, and I will eat my shoe if I'm wrong.

I wonder if Sophia would be scared of the dolphins if we were on the boat. Maybe not, since they wouldn't be doing somewhat unnatural tricks.

Jordan and I watched An Inconvenient Truth (which my brother jokingly refers to as A Convenient Truth since it is pretty nice having such a warm winter) last night. It was both better and worse than I expected (a little too political, but pretty interesting--the dying polar bears and baby birds made me want to cry), but it successfully convinced me that Global Warming is occurring and that it is pretty darn significant. I had previously thought that maybe our current global warming could be attributed to a natural cycle or something, which I now know is not true. Furthermore, good old Mr. Gore explained that of the over 900 peer-reviewed journal articles on studies analyzing global warming over the last ten years _none_ of them indicated that global warming was not a problem. The disconnect occurs because over 50% of reports published by the media suggest that the evidence is not conclusive... which is a lie, since it is conclusive.

One other problem with blogging is that you always feel like you are repeating a story you've already told when you tell someone or say something similar to something you wrote on your blog.

Note to My Morning Jacket fans: The lead singer and the guy who waves his very long curly hair around over the drums (the drummer) both appear a couple times in Elizabethtown, despite the fact that the movie pretty much sucks. Since Jordan and I unfortunately happen to own a copy of the movie, notify us and we will mail/lend it to you so that you don't have to rent it yourself if you want to see it.