Procrastination

When I was in college, many, many years ago, I created a procrastination behavior scale and administered it to psychology freshmen.  The resulting paper was accepted to a national conference for undergraduate research and in addition to presenting it in Salt Lake City, I learned to ski for the first time.  I was fascinated with this behavior, as we are usually fascinated with behaviors in which we engage frequently, ourselves.  I often put off starting a paper until the wee hours of the morning, entering the computer lab when everyone else was leaving for the night.  Somehow the thrill of pushing the limits made the completion of the assignment much more rewarding.

So it is no surprise that I am up late working on John's birthday CD - his fourth b-day party is this weekend.  I started googling around his theme "Snakes" today and put together a playlist tonight, which I have memorized, since I wrote it 23 times on the back of jeweled CD cases.

I was wondering why John was so fascinated with snakes, and has been requesting a snake-themed party for months, until Ike and Sicily left for a ski trip in March.  I took over reading time for John and he repeatedly pulled a snake encyclopedia off of the shelf that Ike had bought and been reading to him since Christmas.  It was interesting - full of valuable snake facts, but each species was accompanied by a cartoon of that snake violently attacking a human or an animal.  Hence, the obsession, which I am happy to indulge, even if John has a skewed image of the reptile kingdom.

I wasn't going to do a CD this time, but the kids expect it now, and John has been asking about it for weeks.  It is difficult to come up with appropriate snake-themed songs for his age group, I discovered, so I had to loosen the motif a little.

Gitarzan - Ray Stevens

Sweet Singin' Birds - The Peekers*

Crocodile Rock - Elton John

Bein' Green - Frank Sinatra

Trashin' the Camp - Phil Collins and Rosie O' Donnell - Tarzan Soundtrack

Sneaky Snake - Tom T. Hall

Lorau - Igbal Jobi and Party - original snake charmer music

Talking to the Animals - Sammy Davis Jr.

Mah Na, Mah Na - The Re-Bops

Wild Thing - The Troggs

George of the Jungle - The TV Players Theme Group

Snake Lake Blues - Derek and the Dominos

I am proud of the result, if somewhat last minute.  I was really sad I couldn't find Count Dracula's version of "How Many Snakes are in My Pants?" on youtube or itunes.

Random Snake Thoughts:

I dated a guy named Snake in college.  I was Lizzard.  We were the reptile couple.  He looked like Kid Rock.  We dated 2.5 years.  I recently befriended his wife on facebook - he has returned to his given name Paul and has two beautiful girls.

After I extricated myself from that relationship, I bought two pet snakes.  Daisy was a Florida kingsnake and Jupiter was an albino cornsnake.  I fed them live mice weekly for a year, until I finally gave into multiple requests from a group of guys in Martin Hall and let them go to new owners.  I learned they died of vodka poisoning - someone put it in their water bowl.  I wonder if it was an accident.  I still feel guilty about it.

*I am in love with The Peekers.  It has been a musical week - I got 50 new albums in my itunes and loaded as many as would fit into my nano.  It makes for hazardous treadmill running, since I will hear a random song and wonder what it is, trying to read the small print on my nano armband while running rapidly.  Wolf what?  Wolfmother?  Dr. Who?  Oh, Dr. Dog!  Thanks, much - Matt.