My student Gary Paine leads singalongs at the Phinney Community Center on the first Sunday of the month.
They’re low-key, with lots of great folk and kid’s songs, and brownies afterwards—perfect for families. Lyrics are provided. Check it out!

Details:
Gary takes the summer and Christmas off.
First Sunday of the month at 3:30 in Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Oct, Nov.
Phinney Neighborhood Association, 67th and Phinney, Seattle

More info at Gary’s site.

Over this past week I’ve given the Notebook a much-needed overhaul. I’ve upgraded the Wordpress software to its latest version (2.1), which has allowed me to finally install some comment spam protection. I’d been getting about 40 spams/hour—a veritable deluge of processed pork product—so this has been a long time coming.

The stream of spam has gotten so unmanageable these past few months that I haven’t had time to sift through it all. While I’ve able to pluck out the majority of the comments that were not of the canned meat variety, about 30 legitimate comments slipped past me, and have been stewing in my inbox (with about 9000 spam messages) until tonight. It’s a great relief to have finally set fire to all that spam, but I hope I haven’t permanently damaged my soul in the process. I’m afraid I’m going to be counting free mortgages, pissing ringtones, and cheap trannys instead of sheep all night tonight.

I apologize to those of you whose questions I’ve ignored, and I’ll be responding soon.

Another feature I introduced to the blog is a plugin that facilitates posting articles on social bookmarking sites. If you comment on an article, for example, you’ll see icons for the del.icio.us and StumbleUpon sites. I decided to do this after I started getting all these traffic to my site from people who were using the “Stumble” feature on the StumbleUpon toolbar. If you haven’t stumbled yet, check it out—it’s a lot of fun!

Finally, please let me know if you have any comments or recommendations concerning the recent changes. I want to continue to make this blog, and my site in general, as pleasant a place to visit as I can.

Remember Connor, the 7-year-old whose recording of “Wild Thing” I posted a few months ago? He’s preparing the song for a school talent show next month, and he’ll be standing on the stage (at the altar actually—the show is being held in a church) and singing into a mic, so he needs some practice coordinating playing, singing, and strutting about like Angus Young. I decided to film him so that he could review his mic skills—moving in close during the whispered parts, and backing off when he hollers.

As you can see, he’s a natural. I hope he doesn’t blow out any stained-glass windows…