My new found respect for "The Sound of Music".

First, a few apologies.

1) Yep. This year is going to be a little anemic for posting here. I've been suffering from a bad bout of Brain Drain as well as a severe lack of imaginative inspiration.

2) This post is going to come off a little sappy, not a motif this blog usually dwells upon.

3) This post has little to do with any geekines.

4) I'm doing this from my smart phone while at a Starbucks and haven't figured out how to hyperlink text. So wiki or google terms and titles you don't get. The spellcheck is a little wonky also, and you all know my lack of spelling skills.

Now that that's all out of the way, I can tell you that something pretty frackin' cool happened to me a few weeks ago. I became "Uncle Zangz" when my sister gave birth to my niece, "Lil' G". And I'm pretty stoked about being a first time uncle. I get to hang out and enjoy the cuteness and as soon as the screaming or bodily functions that newborns spring out on us start to hit the fan, I can hand her off to Mom, Dad or Grandma. No fuss, no muss. A luxury most of us single uncles and aunts are blessed with.

Anyhow, I recently had a wonderful experience involving me new niece that put a bit of a lump in my throat.

Before I go on with the story I have to emphisise how I previosly had a strong dislike for the classic musical film "The Sound of Music". First off, I loathed how saccharine and silly it came off as being. I mean the movie starts out with a goofy singing nun flailing around out in the mountains of Austria wailing away about "The hills being alive with the sound of music...". I mean, c'mon!

Then there were the Von Trapp kids. These kids were so Goody Goody that the Brady kids could have beaten the living crap out of them. When they weren't whining about something, they were breaking into song every five minutes.

One of the main reasons I had a grudge against the film ist that when my sister was a kid and I was away from the house she decided to watch the movie on my Betamax machine. The tape got jammed in the heads tearing them to shreds leaving the piece of video history a useless hunk of junk. Not cool.

The film seemed th plague me ever since. I was forced to watch it everytime we went to visit my Grandpa in the nursing home since it would be playing on the big TV in the main room to placate the residedents who hardly new where they were half the time. Up until recently that movie reminded me of watching my Grandpa slowly slip away into dementia didn't help it's popularity with me in the least bit.

Yet for some reason my Mom and Sis would force me to watch it every Easter when it is played on the Family Channel annually. This past Easter was no exception. I was able to make a deal. If they were going to have that on, I should be able to tool around with my new smart phone without any complaints. Surprisingy they agreed.

So as I downloaded nerdy- geeky podcast after nerdy-geeky podcast I tolerated the Von Trapp's caterwauling in the background. Lil' G was in attendance gurgling and moving around as newborns do.

At one point my Mom was holding her and that's when it happened. The song "Edleweise" came on and my Mom started rocking Lil G and sang it to her. My Mom is no singer by any means, but something about this hit me like a rock in the chest.

The whole vision put a great big lump in my cold hearted Sound of Music hating heart and cleared all the animosity I had for the film away in one magic moment.

I hid the swell of emotion from the others in the room and sucked up any tears that may have been welling up. I realized that from this moment forward "The Sound of Music" would no longer represent broken Betamax machines or old folks homes. I would now bring emotions of family love and the birth of my niece and the sweetness of a Grandmother singing to her grandchild.

Now I can tolerate the film. I can probably even watch it without any nausea. Sometimes it truly is the little special moments in life that can make a difference.

Told you this was going to be sappy.

Until next time, Doe.... A deer... A female deer.......Beeeeeoootches.

Zangz.