A Great Week to be James

Let me start by declaring how grateful I am that James' overtime days are over. The last 2 weeks have been filled with, 10, 12, and 14-hour days, and he even had to work a Saturday! That is unheard of around these parts. But UVU had the library grand opening on Monday and things mostly went off without a hitch, so now life can return to a more normal pace around here.


The most exciting part of the new library is, of course, James' new office. His whole department has a new workspace which includes: offices, storage, workbenches, and more storage. And James gets his very own, big boy office - complete with desk, chair, shelves, filing cabinet and door. I love this space already because it prompted him to say the 6 sweetest words I've been longing to hear, "I want to go to Ikea." James is way excited to make his office his own space and I am more than happy to help, especially when it involves a trip to the Holy Land of interior decorating. So we will head up on Monday before we hit the Zoo for Zoe's birthday.

In other "amazing things to happen to James" news, his song By And By is being recognized again over at GarageBand.com. This time as the track of the week (in the folk rock genre). It has also climbed to #39 in the charts (out of 360 songs in that genre).

So let's all give a big Woo-Hoo to James for being so amazing!

Music Snobs Anonymous: Track of The Day

Well, this pretty much catapults James into the hierarchy of music snobs, but I am SO PROUD of him. If you haven't noticed, James writes and records his own music. Every so often he puts his music on GarageBand.com where other bands can review and rate his songs. His new song "By and By" was selected to be Track of the Day today (in the category of folk rock). It currently has 4.4 stars (out of 5) and is ranked 72 out of 233 songs ( it was 70 yesterday). Other awards for this song include Best Male Vocals (this week), Best Lyrics, and Best Beat (both for last week). In December 2005, James won Track of the Day for "Now I Understand." That was in the category of Power Pop. He also made it to #7 in the rankings.

What's really nifty about Garage Band, is that the reviews come from other artists and are usually very precise and constructive. The whole process of entering and reviewing songs is pretty involved and you can only enter a song after you have done so many reviews. And the reviews have to be pretty in-depth. All of this is way over my head and I'm only pretending to know what I'm talking about. What I do know is that this is a big deal for James and he really deserves it. This is also another opportunity to remind everyone that his music is available through Amazon or iTunes. (Or you can contact us if you want a cold hard copy of one of his albums). Either way, if you've heard his music and have an opinion about it, James would love to have you review his music on those websites, whether you are a music snob or not!