Week 4 could have gone better for me but it could have been worse so I will refrain from saying that this week was my least favorite…at least for now. With my love of music I was completely excited about the sound assignments for this week. My age apparently has caught up with me though because my inability to navigate and/or figure out how to get any of my 1147 songs in my iTunes library into anything I could make a ringtone or a mashup or a greatest hits list with. Very disheartening for me because music is normally my thing. I did end up downloading the Audio Copy app onto my iphone though and made a really cute (or at least I think so since she is my baby girl) sound file of my daughter and me talking about the quote that I make her say every day before she gets out of the car when I’m dropping her off at school. Normally she says it with a little bit of an eye roll (which can definitely be heard in her voice) but she refrained from using that tone when we recorded the assignment. I guess I’ll take the non-sarcastic recording and run. It might be awhile until I hear it without an attitude. Even though I couldn’t figure out how to make a song go backward myself, I was able to listen to Syd’s creation and guess the song. Sweet Caroline never seems to get old. That is the sign of a classic song.

Twitter was quite the hub for social media for me this week. I began following John Meadows, Syd Bauman, and Paul Bond this week. I also tweeted quite a few status updates during the radio broadcast of The Wire on Tuesday. What an experience that was only listening to the episode without being able to see it. I had never really paid attention to the little things like the sounds coming from the streets or the song playing in cars until I heard the broadcast. Loved the Mary J. Blige playing in the background as it was one of the first CDs that I ever had (yes I said CD and yes I do know that I am old). Hearing the episode without being able to see it actually made me concentrate in a different and intriguing way and I hope that we do it more throughout the semester.

I also did the Daily Creates required this week and uploaded them to Flickr. Since I am totally into dressing my dog up in silly outfits and snapping pix I had to do the National Dog Day create assignment and responded to the comment that Mdvfunes left on my post. Then because I live in an apartment and have most of my stuff packed away in storage, I used my daughter’s books to create a store of her interests in the Book Stack create assignment.

I agreed to join Melinda’s group for the radio show and then blogged about ideas that I had for it. If I could tie The Wire to a “dusty muffin” I might be the happiest student at UMW this semester. I also watched Jen Ralston’s interview and blogged about it. There is no doubt that if sound is your passion that you could make quite the career out of it. Even if it’s just charging to do the sound in the student movies of your fellow classmates at NYU.

This week’s episodes of The Wire seem to concentrate on the theme of American ideals and foundations deteriorating which is opening the door for the criminal element to creep in. From the references to the decline of unions and steel mills as well as Griggs not being able to fully investigate cases, the concentration of the homicide of one girl when 14 homicides are pending, and drugs resulting in overdoses right under the prison guards’ noses are just painting a grim view of the breakdown of the exact opposite of what life in American is supposed to be. It is even more ironic that all of this is taking place in a city in which our national anthem was written. Just goes to show that everything is not always as it seems.

Well that’s it for now. I will totally be hitting up Jim Groom this week for some audio guidance because I refuse to let this get the best of me. Until next week…