Best Albums of the Decade - an 'off the top of my head list'

This is nowhere near complete, but since it's late in the night and I have insomnia, I might as well start throwing these out for my pick for 'albums of the decade' - I'm giving myself ten minutes to come up with as many entries as I can think of that will land in the Top 100 in no particular order. The other rule - don't think, just keep writing. Here goes...

Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion
Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
Outkast-Stankonia
Radiohead - Kid A
Radiohead - In Rainbows
Neko Case - Blacklisted
Beck - Sea Change
Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
YeahYeahYeahs - Fever to Tell
Bright Eyes - I'm Wide Awake It's Morning
The White Stripes - White Blood Cells
Jay-Z - The Blueprint
Sleater-Kinney-The Woods
Kanye West - The College Dropout
Arcade Fire - Funeral
LCD Soundsystem-Sound of Silver
The Strokes-Is This It?
Tool - Lateralus
My Chemical Romance - The Black Parade
Yo La Tengo-And Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out
A.C. Newman-Get Guilty
Pulp - We Love Life
The New Pornographers-Twin Cinema
Drive-By-Truckers - The Dirty South
The Hold Steady - Separation Sunday
Blackalicious - Blazing Arrow
Lucinda Williams - World Without Tears
PJ Harvey - Stories From The City Stories From The Sea
Gorillaz-Demon Days
Eagle*Seagull - s/t
Bob Dylan - Love and Theft

Editor's note - 1:39 a.m. - wow...this is harder than I thought...

Eminem - The Marshall Mathers LP
TV On the Radio - Return to Cookie Mountain
Coldplay - A Rush of Blood to the Head
Sufjan Stevens - Illinois
Spoon - Kill the Moonlight
Tori Amos - Scarlet's Walk
Spoon - Gimmie Fiction
Neko Case - Middle Cyclone
Sigur Ros - ( )
The Shins - Oh Inverted World

Okay...that's all I could think of - I know there are tons more out there, but that's what I could think of at the top of my head on an early Thursday morning

Unemployment - 2 weeks in

I'm listening to Titus Andronicus' The Airing of Grievances and nursing a coffee while searching for any company that will have me. I took a bit of time to work out yesterday and realized the wreckage a job can have on you. I'm not blaming the company, but it certainly fe...

Just got a call from a company - awesome! They're sending my information to the hiring manager. One step, but at least it's momentum.

Anyway -
I'm not blaming the company for my softness, but it certainly didn't help. Long hours at a desk with chairs not designed for sitting in for long hours does a major number on your back. Long hours also makes you more likely to want to sprawl in front of a couch and veg instead of doing some laps in the pool. The stress of wondering if you have a job or not does wonders on your diet as well - as I went from a 'cauliflower and broccoli-eating' unit to a 'organic sea salt and vinegar chips with a vodka tonic before bed' unit.

It didn't take me overnight to go from 225 to 165. Now I know it's going to take me awhile to go from 200 to about 175. A lot has happened though since that 225 weight. I was just out of college, filled with energy, vigor and even desperation. Now, settled into early middle-age, it takes a lot more to energize - and when you're energized, such as when I saw Neko Case in concert a few weeks ago, that euphoric momentum you left the concert with has a much shorter shelf life. And that euphoric momentum is so critical to drive you to blog, to write a cover letter that doesn't sound like the other 70 cover letters you've written and to track down any freelance writing chances you can get.