Monday, June 25, 2018
What a weekend. Thursday, we closed on the new house. Which I believe I mentioned. What I did not mention was we also got an offer on our old house that day. It was not a good offer, thus my failure to mention it. But, we had no other offers, we were moving in two days, so rather than just reject it, S and I decided to see how much the potential buyers wanted to dance.
Sunday, June 24, 2018
Since Comcast can’t get their shit together and get us cable/internet, this is a test post to see if I can post from the iPad when using my iPhone’s hotspot. Cuz I gots to crank out the content, fools.
Friday, June 22, 2018
Hmmm, based on my test post, it looks like Spotify playlist embedding might be working again. Naturally I had a post based purely on videos lined up for today… Funny thing, all three times we’ve purchased a house, the third week of June has been involved in the transaction. Fifteen years ago we bought our current home in May, but moved into it the week of June 16–21. Six years ago we closed on the lake house on June 22 and headed down immediately after.
Wednesday, June 20, 2018
“Good arms vs. bad arms will win hands down, down…” Ten years ago today I was going through my normal morning routine of scrolling through my RSS Reader’s new article queue while the girls watched Disney shows when I came across a blog post that changed my life. The I Am Fuel, You Are Friends blog, which was one of my favorite music blogs at the time, published an interview with the lead singer of a young band from Scotland[1].
Monday, June 18, 2018
I had been sleeping better for the past couple weeks. Well, kind of. Instead of lying awake for hours making and remaking 1000 mental lists related to our real estate adventures, sometime about 10 days ago I began falling immediately and deeply asleep, not waking until morning, and then feeling as though I had only slept for half an hour or so. I’m not as exhausted as I had been, but neither am I feeling 100% rested like I normally would have 8–10 hours of deep sleep.
Friday, June 15, 2018
So frustrating that Spotify and Wordpress still don’t appear to be working well together. So I guess I’ll stick to videos for the time being, until I can figure out why playlists no longer embed. youtu.be/BmRovgZsv… “Africa” - Toto. The song that blew up the Internet a couple weeks ago. I have mixed feelings. It’s pretty faithful to the original. Which makes it seem a little lazy to me. But, then again, why try to remake what has been a classic for over a quarter century now?
Tuesday, June 12, 2018
I haven’t posted anything about Anthony Bourdain. Although he didn’t impact my life as much as Scott Hutchison did, Bourdain’s suicide still struck me deeply. I watched his shows for years, read several of his books, and was a fan of his overall approach to life. I’ve written before about the irony of my love of travel books given the general lack of traveling in my life. Bourdain lived a life, at least the one that we saw on screen, that I would have loved to have lived.
Monday, June 11, 2018
I’ve long documented on the pages of this personal website (aka weblog, aka blog) that Mother Nature is a bitch. She proved that to be true once again this weekend. After six weeks of hot, dry weather, she decided to unleash a torrent of heavy rains on central Indiana. Just in time to, more or less, ruin our weekend at the lake. We had about two good hours Saturday, between our first guests arriving and the first storms hitting, and then maybe 45 minutes Sunday between storm waves, to take kids out on the boat for tubing and boarding.
Friday, June 8, 2018
Welp, appears something between Spotify and WordPress is not working these days. So only a video for today. youtu.be/Naf5uJYGo… “Hey Ladies” - Beastie Boys. A classic. Free James Brown.
Tuesday, June 5, 2018
The first week of summer was exhausting. Not because we did a bunch of fun stuff. Rather because it was spent putting two houses onto the market. Our main home went on the market last Tuesday, although the sign didn’t go into the yard until Wednesday. So there was a seemingly endless list of cleaning and straightening and other tiny projects to make the house gleam as much as it can.
Friday, June 1, 2018
open.spotify.com/user/224a… “Sugar & Spice” - Hatchie. Man, Hatchie’s five-song EP which came out a week ago is sneakily one of the best things I’ve heard this year. “An Air Conditioned Man” - Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever. Speaking of Best of 2018, based on two early singles from their up-coming album, RBCF are poised to become one of the great bands in indie rock. “Sleep All Summer” - Neko Case. Funny how I included the original Crooked Fingers version of this last week and today Case’s new album arrived with this cover, complete with vocals from CF’s Eric Bachmann.
Thursday, May 31, 2018
I’ve never checked out the infield portion of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway during the 500 mile race. I’m likely too old to do so. Or at least too old and with too low tolerances for drinking in the heat. But it’s good to know that even if tamer than in its glory days of the 1970s and 1980s, the Snake Pit is still a den of debauchery and mayhem on race day.
Wednesday, May 30, 2018
My reading pace has come to a nearly complete stop over the past few weeks. That’s a shame, because I’m pretty sure I was on pace to have my best reading year ever. George Brett didn’t hit .400 the entire summer of 1980, so I guess I was due for a slump. Manhattan Beach - Jennifer Egan. I read this three weeks ago, so I’m not sure how much justice I can do to it.
Tuesday, May 29, 2018
Our summer is off to a very hot and hectic start. Remember back when I was bitching about how cold it was in April? Mother Nature was paying attention and has punished me, and others in Indiana, who complained about her April offerings. This month is almost certain to clinch the hottest May in Indianapolis history. Yesterday was the hottest May day here in 107 years. It’s stupid. I’m assuming June is going to be wet and in the 60s.
Friday, May 25, 2018
About an hour ago I dropped the girls off at school for the last time this academic year. And, as M pointed out, this is the last time we will ever take that route to school. Next fall our drive will be about eight minutes shorter. Some songs for the occasion. open.spotify.com/user/224a… “Summer of ’69” - Bryan Adams “Summer Nights” - Van Halen “Summer Teeth” - Wilco “Sleep All Summer” - Crooked Fingers
Friday, May 25, 2018
M’s kickball career has gone like this over the past three years: Fifth grade, advanced to the City semifinals and lost by 5 or 6 runs. They would not have beaten the team that was waiting in the City finals but it was still disappointing. Fall of sixth grade, went undefeated in the regular season and lost in the City championship game 26–1 in four innings. Blech. Spring of sixth grade, went undefeated in the regular season and lost in the City championship game by 9 runs after having a one-run lead going into the 7th.
Wednesday, May 23, 2018
Most of my kid posts are a little braggy. But this one is even more braggy than usual. L wrapped up her soccer season over the weekend. They were playing a crappy team they had played earlier in the week, and this time the other team was missing so many kids that we had to loan them a couple of ours. L had a couple of really nice goals in the first half, both of which involved her beating a defender one-on-one and then ripping a shot from 10–15 feet away from the goal.
Tuesday, May 22, 2018
I have been struggling with insomnia lately. Several nights a week, despite often being absolutely, physically beat, I will go to bed, fall asleep for 30–45 minutes, and then wake up and be unable to go back to sleep for hours. This is mostly because my brain has been working overtime of late. I’ve been teasing you with references to a big family project for a week or two. It is that project that has my brain unable to shut down at night.
Friday, May 18, 2018
It’s been a rough music week. As you can imagine, I have been listening to a lot of Frightened Rabbit’s music. Their songs always had a difficult quality to them. Those elements have been amplified since Scott Hutchison’s death. But it is time to move on, so here are some new tunes for you. No video this week, as I’m waiting on our fourth visit from AT&T this week and videos aren’t loading right now.
Thursday, May 17, 2018
It’s a wacky, wild time around here right now. I’ve been busy with a bunch of outside projects, we’re in the midst of a big family project I may be able to announce officially soon, and then the end of the school year has brought a bunch of during-the-day and after-school events that have filled up my calendar. Oh, and our Internet has been bugging out all week and AT&T can’t seem to figure out the problem.
Friday, May 11, 2018
Normally on Friday mornings one of the first things I do is start combing through my playlist of newest music to put together the Friday playlist. I can’t do that today. News I had been fearing for several days was confirmed just moments ago: the body of Scott Hutchison, lead singer of Frightened Rabbit, was discovered in Edinburgh overnight. Hutchison sent out some cryptic Tweets Tuesday night (our time) and then disappeared.
Tuesday, May 8, 2018
We are in the midst of our two busiest weeks of the spring. Last week the family had a combined eight kickball games in four nights. We swept all eight of them, the closest game being the first of the week. L’s team, which played without five players because of injury/illness/conflicts, came from 10 down to win by one. Most of the rest of the games were comfortable, with a couple run-ruled wins in there.
Thursday, May 3, 2018
Today is the St. P’s annual day of service. I’m signed up to join C’s class at a local food bank and we were scheduled to leave very early, so this was actually posted Thursday night. Last month was the 10th anniversary of my favorite album of this century, Frightened Rabbit’s The Midnight Organ Fight. I have not posted anything about that because I’m saving my recollections for the anniversary of when I first heard the band.
Tuesday, May 1, 2018
Chart Week: April 21, 1984 Song: “Time After Time” - Cyndi Lauper Chart Position: #36, 2nd week on the chart. Peaked at #1 for two weeks in June. I recently read an article suggesting, based on an analysis of information from Spotify, that for the majority of us, the music we listen to between ages 11–16 form the basis for the music we listen to as adults.[1] I suppose this helps explain why I so love the music of 1984; that was the year I turned 13.
Monday, April 30, 2018
The City of Mirrors - Justin Cronin This was my spring break book, the final in Cronin’s super virus/vampire trilogy. In this book, thought it took him a long time to get going, offering a lot of background in the first half or so. Some of the background, that which centered on the life of Tim Fanning and how he came to be Patient Zero in the outbreak, was quite good.
Friday, April 27, 2018
open.spotify.com/user/224a… “Breath In, Breath Out” - Melody’s Echo Chamber. Such good news that Melody Prochet is returning this summer after suffering serious injuries in an accident last year. Her new album was all recorded and set for release before her accident but was delayed pending her recovery. Glad that she is back. “AZ” - Now, Now. Mother Nature keeps pushing spring back. It might, MIGHT, be up in the 80s here next week.
Thursday, April 26, 2018
I suppose I’ll finally take my head out of the sand, hold my breath, and write about KU’s name coming up in the most recent FBI indictments related to shoe companies, college hoops, and recruiting. Over spring break I was only mildly tuned in to news of any kind. At the end of the day, while the family was taking turns getting showered and ready for dinner, I would check Twitter and scroll back just an hour or so to make sure I didn’t miss anything big.
Tuesday, April 24, 2018
Lazy ass. That’s what I’ve been. Well, to be fair to myself, we do have a couple potentially large projects in the planning stages that have dominated my attention of late. Should they proceed, I shall share them here at a future date. But I’ve also just been lazy. Freaking weak-ass weather isn’t helping either. We got the boat in the water last weekend. All went well in every aspect of that process.
Friday, April 20, 2018
A week away means there’s a glut of music to share, so I’ll expand this a little bit this week. Oh, and there’s an absolute monster track that appeared last night that will wrap this up. open.spotify.com/user/224a… “Cali” - Ride. Ride’s comeback album, Weather Diaries, was released nearly a year ago now. At the time I was a little more enamored with Slowdive’s comeback disk. This song popped up in my Discover playlist recently and I’ve fallen in love with it.
Thursday, April 19, 2018
It’s been a weird week, trying to get back in the swing of things after our vacation. The weather hasn’t helped, with the cold mornings robbing me of motivation to do much of anything. I have a couple posts mentally prepared but just can’t sit down long enough to bash them out. So I guess I’ll share some links. My main man John N. sent me this link, to an excerpt from Chris Nashawaty’s upcoming book about the making of Caddyshack.