Mandy makes her own pasta. She uses an attachment for her avocado green KitchenAid mixer. It’s pretty spectacular. And today, I was the pasta maker! Well, I helped. A little.

Yes, folks, today was another day off in sunny Salt Lake City! But the pasta was fun. I’m not sure if this is how big companies make their pasta, but it was pretty great. The attachments for the mixer are sort of pricey, so I can’t really imagine myself doing this, but Rati has this kind of mixer, so I wonder if she’ll be jumping to do it.

We found out that with nonegg pasta (which is what most pasta is, but Mandy mostly made fettuccine, which is eggy) all you have to do to cook it is dip it in the boiling water for a few seconds. Not for a few minutes. No no.

In other news…

A few days ago, I had a new MP3 player sent to Mandy’s. I was in ABQ when I ordered it. It’s the Cowon iAudio D2. First, I had to overlook the iAudio thing. I’m come to hate almost anything that starts with “i,” iPod especially.

I learned about the Cowon D2 via Anything But iPod. I was looking for an MP3 player that would be treated as an external drive by my computer.

See, I run Ubuntu and finding an MP3 player that doesn’t require incredibly crappy software to load songs onto it is a tough job. The iPod has iTunes and it’s iAnnoying and iCrappy and only available for iMac and iWindows. I could load stuff onto it using a program made for Linux, but then I wouldn’t be able to load stuff from other peoples’ computers.

So I got the D2 and love it. It’s holds 4GB and allows for SD cards. I have a 16GB card in it, bringing the total storage to 20GB. Not bad. I’ll be picking up a 36GB card when they’re cheaper. It’s supposedly got 52 hours of battery life. Seriously, skip the iPod thing.

I loaded all the music I had on it and even some of the new stuff.

And yesterday I said that I’d post some more music. Here you go.

Let’s hear from the Monks again! “Boys are Boys”! This is from their demo. On the demos they used a church-sounding organ (get it – the Monks?).

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Hey, how would you like another Monks song? This is also a demo. Here’s Space Age!

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And again from Mrs. Miller doing the smash hit “Downtown.” A reviewer at allmusic.com said about her: “Her renditions … exist somewhere between opera, yodeling, and the blood-curdling screams of Guantanamo torture victims. It’s still better than your average Toby Keith record, but not by much.”

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And another Song-Poem, here’s “Jimmy Carter Says ‘Yes’” Listen to the amazing lyrics.

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Oh heck, how about another one, my favorite, “Beat of the Traps”.

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I’m feeling pretty giving today. Here’s a track from Flight of the Conchords. “Bowie” – It’s basically amazing if you’re into Bowie. Otherwise, you won’t care. Oh, and a bunch of fun on the end.

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