Happy Birthday Blog!

Tomorrow, April 1, is my blog's first birthday! As this day has approached, I've thought that With Reckless Abandon should start acting like the grown-up blog that it is. I've been posting more frequently, have a weekly feature, and have even seen some international traffic (although I'm pretty sure my Italian visitor was here by mistake). I'm eventually going to post a picture, too. Thank you to the handful of readers that have been reading from the start and the many more that have, for some reason or another, decided that reading my blog is worth a minute of your day! If you're new here, and like what see enough to check back occasionally, drop me a note and let me know you're here! And if you're from Italy and you're not here by mistake, please accept my apologies. I would say something nice in Italian here but I don't know any Italian words, only food.

And the winner is...

...that 80's girl April!!! She correctly recognized this week's mystery line as Bon Jovi's "Livin' On A Prayer". Way to go April!

80's Mystery Song Lyric

Gina works the diner all day

What's it from? Who's it by? Tell me here.

Scout Songs

When I was very young, my older brother was a Boy Scout and my dad was a Scout leader of some sort (I think even after my brother was no longer a scout). I would often go to the meetings with my dad, so he has always joked that I was an honorary Boy Scout. Since I spent some of my formative years attending Boy Scout events, I was quite excited when I happened across scoutsongs.com, a virtual songbook. I looked up my favorites and they're all there! I grew up singing Pink Pajamas. In fact, even though I knew the tune was from a better-known song, for the longest time I seriously thought the chorus to the Battle Hymn Republic went:
Glory, glory, hallelujah.
Glory, glory, what's it to ya'?
Another longtime favorite of mine is Johnny Verbeck. If you grew up with Scouts too, enjoy!

Get a Blog

If you have read the comments on the previous post, you noticed that every winner of the Friday lyric contest is blogless, I repeat, blogless. And since they have no blogs to which I can link, they are requesting Starbuck's prizes. Well, I have a few words for these "winners"... Kick your Starbuck's habit and start a blog! (I say this to them because I know them personally. If you're new here, don't worry, I don't treat all my readers this way.) But maybe you can help me out: If you want to give away Starbuck's gift cards (say you own a Starbuck's; or maybe you can't stand the stuff but people keep you giving gift cards; or perhaps you're the president of the Corporation for American Coffee Addiction) and you want to donate Starbuck's prizes for 80's lyrics winners, I will gladly accept the donation and distribute the prizes. Yes, April, even retroactively.

And the winner is...

...loyal blog reader Maya!!! Congratulations Maya!

The line was from "Always Something There to Remind Me" by Naked Eyes.

I was asked by one reader if the prize for this weekly contest could include some link love. The answer is absolutely. Just make sure you include a link to your blog when you email your answer.

Congratulations to all of you who got the right answers!

Speaking of song lyrics...

If you're like me, you've often wondered what in the world Yankee Doodle has to do with macaroni. You know:

Yankee Doodle went to town, riding on a pony;
Stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni.

I always thought it was one of those things that got changed over the years through a series of misunderstandings. I was wrong. "Macaroni" is Merriam-Webster.com's word of the day today. Read on.

macaroni \mak-uh-ROH-nee\ noun
1 : pasta made from semolina and shaped in the form of slender tubes 2 *a : a member of a class of traveled young Englishmen of the late 18th and early 19th centuries who affected foreign ways b : an affected young man : fop

Example sentence: "If he...talks about London and Lord March, and White's, and Almack's, with the air of a macaroni, I don't think we need like him much the less." (William Makepeace Thackeray, The Virginians)

Did you know? As you may have suspected, the "macaroni" in the song "Yankee Doodle" is not the familiar food. The feather in Yankee Doodle's cap apparently makes him a macaroni in the now rare "fop" or "dandy" sense. The sense appears to have originated with a club established in London by a group of young, well-traveled Englishmen in the 1760s. The founders prided themselves on their appearance, sense of style, and manners, and they chose the name Macaroni Club to indicate their worldliness. Because macaroni was, at the time, a new and rather exotic food in England, the name was meant to demonstrate how stylish the club's members were. The members were themselves called "macaronis," and eventually "macaroni" became synonymous with "dandy" and "fop."

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

Now I'll be able to rest easier--one more of my life's mysteries solved.

80's Mystery Song Lyric

I'm going to have to start posting my Friday feature on Thursday nights since I'm not able to get to the computer until 9:30 AM (Pacific). Well, to make up for the late posting of the question, I will not post the answer and winner(s) until Monday. (Okay, maybe that has more to do with the fact that I will be away from the Internet until then.) So here it is:

As shadows fall, I pass a small cafe where we would dance at night

What and/or who is it? First with each answer gets all the fame and fortune associated with having your name posted on my blog! Email answers here.

My Idol Picks

And now for my latest top-4 American Idol selections:
Mandisa
Chris Daughtry
Kellie Pickler
Katharine McPhee

Mandisa and Chris are my favorites. They both were amazing tonight. My guess for who's going home tomorrow: Lisa Tucker.

Locals Only

For those of you in the Fresno area: If you haven't tried Mother Mary's Wood Flavored Pizza yet, you've got to try their garlic knots. If you have, you know what I mean. They're covered in garlic butter and parmesan cheese and you get a dozen of them for five bucks! Don't let Mother Mary scare you off with her wooden spoon.

Getting Sucked In

I'm on the countdown for the upcoming women's retreat I'm attending: 4 more days to go! I'm counting down partly because I'm looking forward to it but partly because I'm co-leading a craft project at the retreat. Saturday I was cutting paper. I've been busy punching holes in paper bags today. Tomorrow I will tackle ribbon cutting. We are making these very cute scrapbooks out of paper bags. (Did you even know you could do that?) Hopefully the prep work we're putting in will make it fun and easy for the ladies who participate this weekend.

I love doing crafty stuff. I love making all kinds of things really. I like to cook. I like to sew. I like to write songs, blog entries, and code. But I decided a long time ago: I WILL NOT GET SUCKED INTO SCRAPBOOKING!!! Every time I talked to a scrapbooker the first thing out of their mouths was always "I'm so behind." I have enough things I'm behind on--I don't need to add another. A friend used to tease me that she was going to drag me into it. Her husband said it was repayment for getting her started drinking coffee. (I really still don't know what I had to do with that Jeremy.) I resisted for years (literally). But I give. In the words of Mr. Sparkle "Join me or die. Can you do any less?"

Baby Got Book

I just watched this video at Two Blonde Boys. Watch it. It's hilarious!

And the winner is...

Congratulations April (totally an 80's girl) for correctly answering this week's 80's lyric...
Everybody Have Fun Tonight
Wang Chung

New Friday Feature!!!

Let's try something new! Every Friday I will post a line from an 80's song. You email me with title and/or artist. I'll post the winner(s) (first with correct title, first with correct artist) later that day or on Saturday. I'll try not to make them too easy or too hard. Here's today's mystery song lyric:

I'll drive a million miles to be with you tonight

So if you're feeling low turn up your radio.

Email your answer here.

38below 6feetunder

One of my regular reads has been 38below, an Accuweather.com blog. It was originally a mechanism for getting feedback on their website redesign efforts which were completed about the time I started reading, maybe six months or so ago. The blog has been discontinued due to mysterious corporate reasons left unstated by blog author Carl Schaad. (My guess is it has something to do with the website redesign being complete.) But Carl has started his own personal blog that you can read here. Take a read. He's a funny guy.

My Idol-less Week

It's a sad thing, but I didn't get to watch American Idol this week. I didn't even record it to watch later. Instead I was trying to get my 2-1/2 year old to go to bed. (And yes, I missed the entire two hour episode that way.) I watched the results show last night, though. Even without seeing the performances, I was shocked to see Ace and Lisa in the bottom three.

Say Goodbye to Gedeon's Smile

That's right. Gedeon McKinney didn't make it to the top 12. Neither did Will Makar, Kinnik Sky, or Ayla Brown. The only surprise in all this was that Kevin Covais IS in the top 12. Whether that has anything to do with VoteForTheWorst.com's support for him is questionable.

My Idol Picks

I agree with Maya's recent comment on my previous American Idol post: Chris Daughtry rocked last night! Unfortunately, he was really the only one. In fact, he's the only male in my picks for the Top 4. (It's not too early for picking the top 4, is it?) Here it is, the next in what has become a series of weekly Thursday posts...

Sara's Picks:

Paris Bennett

Kellie Pickler

Mandisa

Chris Daughtry

Lazy Quantum Computer

It's kind of like me in high school: not doing the assigned reading but still getting a decent score on the pop quiz. From "Easy Answers: Quantum computer gives results without running" at Science News Online:

Physicists have long known that quantum computers have the potential to race
through calculations trillions of times as fast as ordinary computers do. Now,
it seems that those machines may not have to calculate at all to deliver
answers.
That seemingly absurd possibility, which was advanced as a theory
several years ago, has now received experimental verification. What's more,
although previous calculations indicated that such an approach would work only
half the time at best, the new study suggests that it could become completely
reliable.

Apparently we may not even have to run computers in the future-- They will just have to exist. And maybe we can do away with that, too. Seriously, though, this sort of experiment challenges what seems like common sense (that is, that it would have to run to give a correct answer). It makes you (well, me, at least) wonder if it can really be true. Maybe I'm just too simple. Any thoughts? (Nerd Family, I'm calling you out on this one--You can't be silent on a topic as nerdy as quantum physics.)

Read entire article, if you dare, here.