CYA

Last post for a week or maybe slightly more as tomorrow the vacation begins.

It's been pretty quiet as work is consuming most of my time at the moment. With that, I will leave you hopefully with a smile....


A bear walks into a bar and says, "I want a bourbon and............... coke"

The bartender asks "what's with the huge pause?"

The bear says, "I've had them all my life."

Now that's my kind of joke!

Song lyric of the day: "I'm so lame" Seven Mary Three

Until next time.

Ace

Celebrate good times c'mon!

So many reasons to celebrate today!

First off, I finally got into a class for this fall. It's a graduate level lit class, American Lit between 1830 and 1865. Looks like lots of Melville, Hawthorne, Thoreau, etc. I'm pretty excited about this because I'm pretty bad with lit since most of my undergrad English work was around writing. Starting off reading Moby Dick. The other sweet thing is I got all my textbooks online for a grand total of $20, including shipping. Much better than most classes, textbooks are a total ripoff.

Also, just a few days away from the big trip to New York. Probably stupidly, we are driving. It's nice to see the price of gas diving just before the trip, hopefully it will continue to fall. It's looking like somewhere around a 14 hour drive or so. I'm hoping that by driving overnight we'll minimize the pain for the kids and avoid traffic at the same time.

We're leaving Friday night and should be back late next week. We're going to check out a couple baseball games (one at Yankee Stadium and one at Shea) and I'm sure we'll do some other touristy stuff like Central Park and the Statue of Liberty. And I'm sure we'll spend plenty of time at the hotel pool, a favorite activity for the kiddies.

It will also be nice to recharge the batteries before work heads into the busy season, which is right around the corner. Sooner or later I will no longer have to dread the fall season - which will be nice, because it really is probably the best time of year in the midwest. Of course, that's a matter of opinion!

Anyhow, I'm sure there are many other reasons to be overjoyed but these are a few of the biggies.

Song lyric of the day: "It's party time / Let's have a ball / Do what you like!" Big Audio Dynamite

Until next time.

Ace

Men in makeup & coffeehouse styling

Well, I tried to embed the video but I clearly have no idea how to do it. So, instead click here for a partial version of Scott Lucas solo acoustic Friday night at a little place called Flatlanders in Lincolnshire. It's the song Halcyon Days, features pretty brutal camera work (think Cloverfield, puke!) and someone in the crowd singing along quite horribly. But what the heck, it's recorded documentation of a really cool show. It was less than an hour but well worth it. Highlights were recent releases Simple Pleas, the first half of The One with Kid, and What Would You Have Me Do, and sweet covers of Bad Moon Rising, Concrete Blonde's Joey and TV on the Radio's Wolf Like Me, which I'd never heard before but was a great finish to the show. Lots of fun, this guy does not disappoint. And the better half enjoyed it as well!

This came after a hectic drive up from our area where we had checked out the new Batman flic, Dark Knight. I've heard a lot of glowing praise about this movie, especially the now departed Heath Ledger's role as the Joker and was a little wary about it. I have to say that for the most part, this movie totally delivered. The only people who I thought weren't that great were Batman and the love interest. Everyone else was really top notch, especially Ledger and the dude who played Two Face. Really outstanding and fun, you could not tell it was a 2 1/2 hour + epic. And it was really cool checking out all the Chicago scenery in the film. We kept ID'ing places we have frequented at various points in our lives. Overall a great evening.

Good news on the school front also, I finally got into a Lit class for this fall so I'm good to go. Still contemplating adding one more class, it really depends on my grad school status. I need to figure that out pretty quickly, probably this week. Still no word on grades for the summer but I'm pretty sure I nailed an A.

Song lyric of the day: "Searching for the Dark Knight / Lurking in the shadows of the city" Method Man

Until next time.

Ace

Meet the Mets!

Is there a cooler mascot than Mr. Met? That's a rhetorical question, for it is common knowledge that Mr. Met rocks it like no other.

I am pleased to report my favorite baseball squad has somehow managed to survive the firing of their manager, several heartbreaking defeats in the late innings (including a real crusher earlier this week against the then-first place Phillies), and a plethora of injuries to find themselves in first place heading into the weekend. It's been a tough rollercoaster of a ride this season but I'm very happy to see how resilient they've been. I sure hope they keep it up, especially when we're out there in a couple of weeks.

As an aside, I've managed to take over one of my fantasy leagues and I'm absolutely dominating. There's still a lot of season left but I'm optimistic about winning the whole thing. And I haven't had to trade away much of my team to accomplish it. In the meantime, after deciding to give up for this year in another league, I made a trade that was quite controversial. We'll see how it turns out, it definitely brought a lot of criticism from fellow owners. Fantasy football is also gearing up and it looks like I'll be in 3 or 4 leagues this year. Last year was a good one, with 1 win and another cash out of 3 leagues. Good times!

A little geeky sports heavy today but wanted to celebrate the Mets climbing back up top!

Song lyric of the day: "Meet the Mets, meet the Mets / Step right up and greet the Mets" Mets fight song, full lyrics here (quite hilarious actually).

Until next time.

Ace.

Groaner

Every night, Frank would go down to the liquor store, get a six pack, bring it home, and drink it while he watched TV. One night, as he finished his last beer, the doorbell rang. He stumbled to the door and found a six-foot cockroach standing there. The bug grabbed him by the collar and threw him across the room, then left.

The next night, after he finished his 4th beer, the doorbell rang. He walked slowly to the door and found the same six-foot cockroach standing there. The big bug punched him in the stomach, then left.

The next night, after he finished his 1st beer, the doorbell rang again. The same six-foot cockroach was standing there. This time he was kneed in the groin and hit behind the ear as he doubled over in pain. Then the big bug left.

The fourth night Frank didn't drink at all. The doorbell rang. The cockroach was standing there. The bug beat the snot out of Frank and left him in a heap on the living room floor.

The following day, Frank went to see his doctor. He explained events of the preceding four nights. "What can I do?" he pleaded.

"Not much" the doctor replied. "There's just a nasty bug going around."

Song lyric of the day: "I got bugs / I got bugs in my room" Pearl Jam

Until next time.

Ace

Numbnuts

I really cannot wait until I'm teaching. At least then the people I work with every day will have at least a sixth grade intellect. I never cease to be astonished by the lack of brainpower and proliferation of ineptitude I get to witness on a daily basis.

Enough about that nonsense. Let's get to some good stuff. First off, a big congrats to W & J for the birth of their little dude Evan, who despite some hospital staff ineptitude, is doing great. And a big happy bday to a couple of my boys - JTB, sorry I missed the boat, literally and figuratively, and Baboo, sorry I haven't talked to you in a million years. But you're both one year closer to retirement!

I'm also excited to report that for our little guy's 2nd bday in October, the whole family is taking a trip for an up close performance by the Backyardigans, a popular kids show on Playhouse Disney. I got excellent seats that I think the kiddies will enjoy. And since that is an insane time at work usually, it will be a nice diversion. Oh, and I tricked the better half into going to see Scott Lucas of Local H acoustic with me Friday night - yippeee!

Summer break part deux is going well. Our trip to New York City begins a week from Saturday and I'm greatly looking forward to it. We've got nice seats at Shea Stadium for our Mets game and I had to break the piggie banks just to afford cheapies at Yankees Stadium. Scalpers are scumbags, huh? Anyhow, we got the hotel for free using some club member points and are driving out, so hopefully the trip will be cost effective. And the kids are happy since the hotel has a pool. On the off day, we'll probably try to do a few things like see Ellis Island or something like that. Anyone have any tips on cool stuff that's family friendly?

I also got my application for grad school in. Still not registered for any fall classes, I really need to square that away. But also getting some stuff done around the house that's been awaiting completion. And really starting to get geared up for fantasy football, looks like I'm moving up from 3 to 4 leagues this year. Since I finished ahead last year financially, I am experiencing delusions of grandeur. Maybe I'll put a poll up to help me pick a sweet team name, I kinda like that idea. Pop some suggestions for consideration in the comments section peeps.

Song lyric of the day "Drivin around town with a soda between my legs, I got numb nuts, numb nuts" Reptile House

Until next time.

Ace

High Rolling

So much to write about!

First, class is officially over for the summer. I get a few weeks off until fall starts up, although, at the moment I'm not signed up for any classes. I'm quite sure that even with my 2 week absence I'm going to get an A in this class. Teacher liked my work and as always I was very talkative in class. Just can't keep my trap shut. I'm planning to post soon on some more of what we learned, which I think many here will find interesting and some may even find useful. More to come, what a tease!

Second, trip to San Francisco is complete. Out the door at 5:30 am Tuesday and back by 2 pm Wednesday. Now that is a quick trip! Too bad, because the weather was absolutely perfect in NorCal, sunny, about 70 degrees and a slight breeze. Some day, when I win the lottery, I will figure out a way to live there. The purpose of the trip was to meet with a longtime client of mine in preparation for a big project this fall. The meeting was fine, as usual. Afterwards, we went to this very high-fallutin' (sp?) Italian joint called Prima in Walnut Creek, CA, a town that was very Napervillian in nature. While the place was nice and it had all sorts of esoteric food on the menu, I found the food to be pretty below average. I had quail for dinner and, wait for it, it tasted like chicken. Should have gone for the squid pasta, oh well. I have to confess that it was not the ideal way to spend All-Star Tuesday (with MLB's all star game going on), at dinner with 9 women. Sheesh! I didn't even get to swing by the In N Out Burger during the trip!

After dinner, my colleague and I head to our hotel, Le Meridien (is everything in SF so snooty?). My colleague, quite into nice hotels and such, picked the joint. I don't really care where I sleep as long as there aren't any bugs. Anyhow, we get there, and she checks in. I step up next and apparently all the regular rooms are gone, she got the last one. Turns out they have to stick me in a hospitality suite. As you can tell from the pictures above, the hospitality suite is absolutely sick! I could have hosted a small Central American country in that thing. 3 rooms, gigantic screen TVs, an enormous, fully stocked bar. It was insane! And, party machine that I am, I managed to stay awake in this palacial room for all of about 30 minutes. The next morning, as I'm checking out, the dude working the counter told me the nightly rate for that room is actually $1200 per. Holy smokes!

One thing about travelling from the midwest to Cali is that the flights are LONG. Since I didn't have any schoolwork to do, I thought it would be a great time to catch up on some pleasure reading. I actually managed to finish two entire books between the two flights.

First up was a book called Freakonomics, written by a guy at University of Chicago named Steven Leavitt, and a NY Times writer named Stephen Dubner (BT, I just googled the dude and found he is an App St grad!). This book is basically about Leavitt's brilliance. And I really mean it. The guy is incredibly smart and creative. Basically, he takes data and uses it to answer all sorts of bizarre questions (and others that aren't quite so bizarre). For example, an entire chapter (probably the worst part of the book by the way) is spent looking at first names for children and evaluating whether or not Afrocentric first names harm the child's future in terms of limited opportunities (the authors conclude they do not). Much more interesting is the writing on match-fixing in Sumo, the inner business workings of a crack dealing operation and the link between Roe v Wade and the drop in crime rate. Readers here will likely appreciate the section on real estate agents and the difference between how they sell their own homes vs their client homes. Required reading for anyone using a realtor to sell a home. This book is very well-written, very interesting and highly recommended. I hope there is a sequel - the authors set up a blog to continue discussing the issues in the book and others they feel like bringing up. I'll have to check it out.

The other was a baseball book that I was highly anticipating reading. It's called Getting In the Game: Inside Baseball's Winter Meetings by baseball play by play voice Josh Lewin. As loyal readers know, I'm a big baseball fan and at one time even pursued broadcasting as a career. So I was very interested in hearing about the process of people trying to break through and land in the bigs. The book purports to follow the trek of three job-seekers as they attempt to land a job. While it does that to some degree, it is also muddled with a large amount of diversions, including history of the names of minor league teams, a whole chapter on mascots and other completely unrelated topics such as bat manufacturers, etc. These topics are quite interesting but are really off topic and dilute the ability to tell the story. Additionally, it's about people trying to break into Minor League Baseball, not the majors. Beyond this, Lewin's writing is just awful. He needed to find a co-author, someone with the ability to smooth out the story. Instead, we are left with a number of cliche'd comments and Lewin's attempt at delivering witty one-liners that almost always come across as forced and ultra-cheesy. It's too bad, because this topic had great potential. This is not recommended reading. The good news is it only took me about 3 hours to chew through it.

Next up is an extremely lengthy bio on Neil Young. In the early going, it's really good. I'm looking forward to finishing it.

Song lyric of the day: "She's super-freaking, yow!" Rick James, beotch!

Until next time.

Ace

Leaving on a Jet Plane

First things first, a big happy bday to my mom. She turned 29 again last week and is celebrating in fine style in lovely central Illinois.

I am pleased to report that I finished up my final project over the weekend for my class. Tonight I will make the presentation, which should be a piece of cake. The topic of the presentation is bullying in schools. I spent a lot of time reading up on the kid who the song Jeremy by Pearl Jam is based on as well as the Columbine attacks. Chilling reading, friends. I have to tell you, while most of us took for granted the impact of bullying in school, it really is something that can cause significant problems. Research has shown effects ranging from higher drug/alcohol use, teenage pregnancy, dropout rates, crime rates, etc. for both the bully and the victim. As a future teacher, I'm glad I learned of this now so that I can effectively address this in my classroom when the time comes. I finish up class Wednesday night by watching some other people present their final projects - sweet!

I'm also doing a touch of travelling this week, heading back to scenic northern California for a client trip. Sucks that I lost my premier status on the airline since I don't travel too much - they've got me stuck way in the back in the eat-your-kneecap seats. This is one of those times where it does not pay to be tall. I'm strongly considering a visit to the In-N-Out Burger while on my trip since those opportunities are few and far between. Hopefully I can find one while travelling. And it appears my hope for some visiting during the trip have been sabotaged by a client dinner scheduled for tomorrow night. Bummer. Oh well, hopefully it can be done another time.

Musically speaking, I'm excited to announce upcoming shows with Smashing Pumpkins and Eddie Vedder solo(two separate shows). The Pumpkins are playing at a new casino theatre in the area, which should be fun. And Eddie is having Liam Finn open for him. I wrote of Liam and his exploits in this post . That should be fun. And I even managed to score some tickets to take the kids to see the characters from one of their favorite TV shows, the Backyardigans. I actually got really good (but expensive) seats. Should be a great 2nd bday gift for the youngest monkey in our family.

Song lyric of the day: "Clearly I remember / picking on the boy / seemed a harmless little $*&%" Pearl Jam

Until next time.

Ace

Sprint to the finish / Slummin'

Class is almost done! Three more sessions, including a group presentation tonight. Then my final project is due Monday, despite not having started it yet. Looks like Sunday is going to be a long day! But I'm sure it will be fine, I'm just glad to actually be caught up finally. Next step will be to apply for the graduate program.

Did I mention I'm a slumlord? Most of you already know this about me but the better half and I co-own several rental properties with our friends Tom & Trish. As it turns out, we are in the midst of purchasing a monster home, a gargantuan $35,000 home. Anyhow, that's adding to the madness that is occurring right now. But the good news is, we're taking out a 10 year mortgage so it'll be taken care of fairly quickly.

And the eldest turned six on Monday. Wow, we are getting really old. A big party will ensue as dozens of friends descend on our house this weekend. Hopefully it doesn't go the way of Gulliver's travels, with me tied up and carried around by the munchkins.

Have to run for now.

Song lyric of the day "Our house - in the middle of our street" - Madness (appropriately named)

Until next time.

Ace

Trip report: Seven Mary Three weekend 6/27 & 6/28

This weekend saw a fun-filled journey to visit one of my very favorite bands.

Friday night was a trip to Rockford, aka Little Nashville. Never mind why, it's a stupid story but I enjoy calling it that nonetheless. I gathered up 3 of the fellas, Joe, Duch and Q, and off we went. After a fun filled trip to our old greasy food hangout Nicky's for gyros (what a horrible idea with four people on a roadtrip), we were on our way. Thx to Q's iPhone, we were able to peruse hotchickswithDbags dot com on our way (great site that lives up to its name) and even actually figure out where we were supposed to go for the show.

After a $174 drive, we finally arrived at JTs or TJs or whatever the place was called. As far as Rockford goes, it actually wasn't too bad. The place was decently sized, with a bunch of different areas, including a stage with a dance floor type area. Strangely, the band had to walk through the crowd to get onto the stage, thus no encore type scenario, which I actually kind of liked. Unfortunately, the crowd was abysmally small despite a pretty staunch showing from area band diehards. There were roughly fourteen opening bands (actually 3) so the fellas didn't come on until about midnight. The setlist was filled mostly with greatest hits but had four songs from the new record and a sweet cover the band has been playing lately called Big Bird, although I can't for the life of me remember the name of the original artist. During some of the hits, the people who know one or two songs gravitated towards the front and I made new buddies with some high-fiving mother f'ers.

Funny story after the show, it was about 1:45 and the bar must close at 2. So, several of us were standing around chatting with a couple of the guys from the band when the waitress starts trying to hustle everyone out of the joint. I asked if she was going to kick the band out and she replied "Oh no, they're all downstairs". With 2 of them standing right next to us talking. It was worth a chuckle but I couldn't argue with her logic, could I? Trust me, in little Nashville, you don't argue with the waitresses. So, off we went and the band members actually did wind up going downstairs. Long drive back, with lots of inebriated and horrible singing and I rolled home about 4 am.

After some recovery time and way too much homework, it was off to beautiful Round Lake, IL for the village festival, where 7m3 was headlining the affair. This place was a haul from the homefront, much further than I expected. I was excited because it was an outdoor show that started early in the evening so I was going to bring the 2 oldest kids (6 & 4). As we're pulling out of the neighborhood, the oldest says she's not feeling well and wants to go home. She was up super late the night before and spent all day swimming at the neighbor's pool party so she was just physically wiped out. Fortunately she wasn't really sick, just tired but it knocked her out of the trip. That left me and the four year old for her first concert experience.

After the lengthy drive, and nearly being run over by some numbskull walking over to the stage area, we met up with Wudchuk and were ready for action. The stage was quite large and like most of the area village festivals, was set up in a parking lot area, surrounded by beer tents and food booths, etc. The weather was really perfect, about 75 degrees or so. However, the mosquitoes were crazy!!!! Fortunately, one of the big fans of the band was willing to share his bug repellent and it was very helpful.

This was a free show so there were a LOT of people, probably 500 to 1000 people overall, with 100 to 200 around the stage once the music started. Again, a nice turnout from the band faithful with a few different faces than the previous night. The setlist was quite similar to the evening before with a couple of differences, including favorite Southwestern State and swapping cover songs. Instead of Big Bird, the band finished the set with Neil Young's Rockin in the Free World. Always a great performance, this was enhanced by the fireworks display beginning while the song was being played. Very cool, they should do that at every show!

The four year old did pretty well at the show although she was wiped out by the time the show actually she started. The music was too loud so we moved WAYYYY back by the sound booth. She stayed on my lap for the remainder of the show and nearly fell asleep. We crept back up towards the front at the end of the show and she seemed to really enjoy it (or so she tells me!). All in all, it was a great time.

This concludes today's lengthy broadcast.

Song lyric of the day "You've got no taste in music and you really love our band" Local H

Until next time.

Ace