Thursday, August 11, 2016
Summer is done. At least the school vacation part, that is. The girls went back to school this morning. They were excited to see their friends, find their school supplies on their desks, and get back into their routines, I think. There certainly wasn’t any grumpiness this morning. I bet that changes early next week. Sixth, fourth, and second grades this year. Good times. School Shoes So how was the summer of 2016?
Monday, August 8, 2016
This will be a week of catch up. Before I begin diving into all the things that I’m behind on, first a confirmation that yes, I am keeping some casual notes as I watch the Olympics. There will be Olympics posts over the next couple weeks!1 But now let’s knock out the first, and biggest, piece of catch up: the camps and birthday of two weeks ago. As you may recall, we dropped M off at summer camp three Sundays ago.
Wednesday, July 27, 2016
So after this month,no more VCRs will be produced. Wait, they were still making VCRs? I guess there are probably some folks out there with shelves full of movies - purchased or taped from TV, professional and personal - who were never interested in buying them all again in a digital format, or didn’t want to invest the time and effort to convert them to digital. I know I still have some tapes stored in a cabinet in our basement.
Tuesday, July 26, 2016
We are deep into baseball’s silly season: the 7–10 days before the trade deadline. In the era of Twitter, fake “insiders,” who create accounts with names that look very similar to real “insiders” like Buster Olney and Tim Kirkjian, claim to break made-up deals that get the webz a buzzin’. That made it the perfect time for this “profile” of an account set up to parody both the fake and legit writers who are peddling rumors.
Monday, July 25, 2016
It’s a weird day in our house. Today is M’s 12th birthday, but she’s not here to celebrate. We dropped her off for her first-ever week at a summer camp yesterday. So our phones, or rather her phone, will not ring with calls from relatives looking to talk to her and wish her a happy birthday. There’s no special dinner planned for tonight, or cake for dessert. Kid birthdays are supposed to be big, all-encompassing days all about them but today our house is quiet.
Thursday, July 21, 2016
It’s been awhile since I wrote about the Royals. The biggest reason for that is because the last time I wrote exclusively about them, they went in the shitter for the next week. My life without superstition would be empty and meaningless. But here we are on July 21, the trade deadline is 10 days away, and the Royals sit 47–47, nine games out of first place, six games out of the Wild Card spot.
Monday, July 18, 2016
Summer continues to fly by. We’re just three-and-a-half weeks from school beginning. Today is our annual trip an hour north to watch the girls’ cousin show his pigs at his county fair. Taking the city kids to the county fair is always fun! Last week we watched Apollo 13. The act of watching it was nearly as epic as the flight of Apollo 13. One of the girls learned about the flight at school way back in the winter.
Wednesday, July 13, 2016
Well, that was a pretty good All-Star Game. I mean, it wasn’t the total Royals takeover from last year. But Ned Yost was still making the lineup and calling the shots, Kelvin Herrera had a nice 1–2–3 inning in relief, and Eric Hosmer and Salvador Perez had the two biggest hits of the night. Off former Royal Johnny Cueto for added KC flavor. It was a good, competitive game to watch that really summed up where baseball is today: the team that got to the middle of the game with the lead had an immense advantage as they rolled out one dominant reliever after another.
Tuesday, July 12, 2016
June Books Time for our mid-month review of last month’s books. Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me - Steven Hyden. I’ve been waiting for this one for quite awhile. Hyden has been my favorite music writer for some time now, going back to when he wrote for the AV Club and Pitchfork. His Grantland profile of The War on Drugs before the release of their masterpiece Lost In The Dream album is the modern standard for the epic band piece.
Monday, July 11, 2016
This morning I was thinking about where we were in the summer calendar. Then I took a look and realized the girls go back to school one month from today. Yikes! So much still to do. We better get cracking. This weekend was much better than last, at least weather-wise. Perfect lake weather during the days as we hosted our good friends the Heberts. Saturday night was clear and pleasant as we dropped anchor to watch our lake’s annual fireworks show.
Thursday, July 7, 2016
Between swim practices and meets, family visiting, daily errands, and general laziness, I somehow started two posts late last week that I never got around to posting. So much for using interesting links as the jumping-off point for my own writing! We’ll get there, pop. We’ll get there. Anyway, a couple sports notes. KD to GS Man, color me shocked when Kevin Durant announced he was signing with Golden State on Monday.
Tuesday, July 5, 2016
We had big plans for the holiday weekend. Unfortunately Mother Nature got in the way. The Fourth of July weekend is normally a family gathering time at our lake house. This year we had our family from Boston coming in, along with most of the locals. Which meant we added a one-year-old to the mix. Plus two babies. In a small house. And then it rained most of the weekend.
Thursday, June 30, 2016
This is year 13 of this site.[1] That’s kind of crazy. Over the past maybe year or so I have, for the first time ever, struggled to find things to write about. It’s not because I lack time. I have plenty of that. It’s not that I don’t want to write. That’s still something I feel compelled to do at times. And since I don’t enjoy phone conversations, this site has always been my way of staying in touch with friends who are scattered about the country.
Tuesday, June 28, 2016
We’ve been lucky through our first two lake weekends of the summer. Excellent weather both times: hot, but not oppressive, and free from rain. Excellent company both times, kids relatively well behaved each weekend. This past weekend was a little extra special, though. L finally went tubing. To reset, despite being our most athletic, most daring kid, L has had issues on boats and water. It all goes back to a ride she took on a friend’s boat four years ago.
Thursday, June 23, 2016
I’ve written about storms a few times in this site’s history. Here are three past examples: Some New Action Storm Chasing The Lost Week Time for another entry in one of my favorite things to write about. It’s been awhile since we spent a night in the basement. We broke that drought last night. For two days the weather folks had been warning of serious storms Wednesday night into Thursday morning.
Tuesday, June 21, 2016
The girls and I are headed down to the lake today to take care of some administrative tasks and hopefully get a swim or two in if the weather holds. Seems like the perfect day to clear out the queue of links I’ve hoarded over the past three weeks. We’ll begin with a couple older, and lengthy, pieces I held on to for our Boston trip. To kick things off, Tom Verducci’s wonderful profile of Vin Scully.
Monday, June 20, 2016
One of the odder aspects of my life is how, although I love sports and have written about them for money over the past 7–8 years, I watch a lot less sports than I used to. I still watch a lot of football and basketball, but significantly less than I did a decade ago. I watch/listen to probably 80% of Royals games. But I almost never watch the NBA or golf anymore.
Thursday, June 16, 2016
It’s becoming habit that I wait well into the new month before I share the list of books I read the previous month. Which, as I always say, makes it hard to write about the books I read six weeks earlier. I’ve been doing this over 10 years, and I still always put off writing my summaries until well after I have finished the book. Old dog, new tricks, etc.
Wednesday, June 15, 2016
A few random notes. Swimming The girls swim season is off to a solid start. L moved up an age group this year, and is now swimming full, 25-yard lengths of the pool instead of the 6-and-under, 12-yard lengths. It’s been a good challenge for her. We were especially proud of her last night. The team we were swimming against has a family that we’ve had a minor conflict with over the years.
Monday, June 13, 2016
The first lake weekend of the summer was a success. It was just about a perfect weekend, weather-wise. It was up in the high 80s, low 90s both days without being too sticky. The water was still surprisingly cool, but was refreshing given the air temp. Saturday night was clear and beautiful. We had three families from St. P’s down, so nine kids total. They were all pretty well behaved for the most part.
Thursday, June 9, 2016
Summer got off to a quick start for us. The girls wrapped up school last Wednesday. Thursday afternoon we were flying to Boston for our summer trip. This was my third trip to Boston, but first one that I would be spending most of my time in the city proper. Overall, we had a fantastic vacation filled with several firsts and lots of great memories. The first first of the trip was our family’s first Uber ride.
Wednesday, June 1, 2016
I realized last week that I hadn’t documented my thoughts on the Royals season since early April. Which isn’t much of a surprise given it took me awhile to get into this season. There was missing the first week of the season while we were on spring break. There was the coming home to four nights a week of practices and games, which meant the girls stayed up a little later than normal, which meant some nights I flat forgot to turn the game on.
Tuesday, May 31, 2016
We had a very solid, if slightly less hectic than usual, Memorial Day weekend. L and I kicked it off Friday with her class field trip to [Conner Prairie]. This is the one field trip I’ve done with all three girls. As always, it was a lot of fun. The forecast has us worried we would get wet, but the storms never popped up and while it was warm, it never got super hot like it did for M and I four years ago.
Wednesday, May 25, 2016
I can’t seem to sit down and knock out a couple of the ideas I have for longer posts. I have a few projects around the house. I spend some time each day on my sports coordinator activities. And, let’s face it, I’m an epically lazy person; I can put shit off with the best of them. So rather than finish one of those ideas this morning, I’ll take care of something else I have not done in far too long: share links!
Tuesday, May 24, 2016
They’re the worst. Two stories of awful people I’ve encountered recently. A couple weeks back I was at the grocery store. I rounded one aisle and turned into the next. A woman - probably 45–50ish - was looking at some items on the shelf. She had her cart parked so that the entire aisle was blocked. The way she was facing, she should have been able to see me clearly; it’s not like I’m a small dude.
Friday, May 20, 2016
Finally back to mixed media. Our Spotify playlist features some fine tunes for your listening pleasure and our vid is a (very) old-school jam that is sure to brighten your day. open.spotify.com/user/224a… “Save Me” - Fernando. A pretty fabulous rootsy track from the Argentina-born, Portland-based artist. REM alum Peter Buck helped out on his latest album, and this track. “The Only One” - the boy i used to be. These cats are from Portsmouth, England, UK.
Thursday, May 19, 2016
You know what you all need? You all need a damned spring sports update, that’s what you need! Kickball This was our first season with two kickballers. Which made for all kinds of scheduling fun, believe me. Fortunately, thanks to having friends on both teams, the girls always got to all of their games, even if S or I couldn’t be there. M had her best season yet. She was very excited that, since no St.
Tuesday, May 17, 2016
Well, well, well, we now have two double-digit kids in the house! C turns the big 1–0 today. A birthday divisible by five means you get a big party in our family, and C cashed that in on Saturday. She had five friends over for the requisite pizza, cupcakes, and then a very special spa evening. After a week of thorough cleaning and a couple well-placed tarps on the floor and against an especially grungy garage door, our garage was magically transformed into a nail salon and spa.
Monday, May 16, 2016
I had a very busy Friday; I left the house with the girls in the morning and didn’t return until after school. Then I had to dive right into the yard work as C’s birthday party was Saturday and we had a softball game plus bad weather to work around. So apologies for not sharing any music Friday. To kick off this week, I thought I’d share this mini-movie of the scenes before a recent Tyne-Wear Derby: the rivalry between Newcastle and Sunderland in the British Premier League.
Wednesday, May 11, 2016
Yikes, I forgot to share my April books. Which is kind of understandable, as it was just a two-book month. A beast followed by a palate cleanser. My Struggle, Book 2: A Man In Love - Karl Ove Knausgaard. My feelings about this mirror my feelings about Book 1: I keep wondering why I’m enjoying it so much. Why am I spending three-plus weeks to wade through Scandinavian navel-gazing? Something about it is compelling, that’s for sure.