Stupid Fitbit ionic

You save and pay for the cool toy and then it doesn’t work.  Thank you impermanence.  I’m hoping it’s just the charger but I have the feeling this tracker is the Windows Vista of the Fitbit world.  Useless.  When a new one (versa) is released within six months its a bad sign.

I’ve come to depend on it for steps, for rehearsals, for lesson timing, for inspiration.  Garmin to the rescue.  It doesn’t hold any tunes like the ionic.  It also doesn’t have a timer with which to cook my food and I can’t put a picture of my hey lets be healthy friend on the screen but it’s getting the job done. 

Most annoying request from the Fitbit helpline.  "We need to have a 15 second video of you trying to reset it with the case number on a piece of paper next to it."  Um... o.k. But as I have already pointed out it s completely out of charge and will not respond in any way.  "We need it anyway."  Sign number two of faulty products? Ridiculous hoops to jump through to get it replaced.

Not a huge deal in the scope of the world but annoying.

Music appreciation update- we had to listen to country singers today.  Jim Reeves, George Jones.  Ugh.  I said it was torture for me just like Gregorian chant was torture for them.  I did have some Patsy Cline for my own sanity.  

Kasey said "we should watch an episode of Hee Haw." And he is correct.  Today they each did a slide on famous stars that we didn’t get to. Tomorrow we will present them and finish talking about country music of the 80's to the present.  We also might try to learn a walking bass line oft found in Boogie Woogie.  Because as far as I can tell the only thing that makes something boogie woogie is in fact that walking bass line and the use of the word boogie woogie in the lyrics.

I let Quin (who seems to enjoy the country music unit as much- or as little- as I do) pick the next genre. She picked Rap.  She doesn’t really strike me as a rap music fan.  I think she did it just to see what I’d come up with.  Come to find that a Yale fellow named Henry A. Rhodes at the Yale institute of teaching or something or other in New Haven did extensive and interesting historical research and connected it to specific events in the Bronx and Jamaica as well as to the graffiti artists of the time. (Google "the evolution of rap" if you’re interested in his article-with lesson plan activities What the Actual what? Included.)

Finally I allowed myself to see exercise friend's posts again only to have Sarah Huckabee Sanders' picture appear with the words "I love her...she'll be the first woman president." Sigh.  I’m hoping if I don’t follow her and we never acknowledge the existence of politics we can at least be exercise friends.  She’s the first person who's really forced me to question the sanity of our world with her dichotomous beliefs