• Dog-ish Days

    The Dog Days of Summer are supposed to come later, say very late July into the early weeks of August. That gap when the heat really kicks in, the newness of summer activities has faded, and boredom starts to kick in. But, I realized this week, they really should arrive sooner since kids go back to school a lot earlier…

  • Weekend Notes

    What a weekend! I assume a lot happened in the world, but last weekend was a live period for college basketball recruiting, and there were several massive tournaments in the Midwest. We played against or saw teams from Pennsylvania, Washington state, California, Colorado, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Michigan, Georgia, Illinois, Connecticut, Virginia, New York, New Jersey, Nevada, Kentucky, Ohio, Kansas, Missouri,…

  • Friday Playlist

    After taking a break for the holiday, I’m offering you an extra jam-packed playlist at no extra cost. “Rain In The Summertime” – The Alarm After the remnants of Hurricane Beryl rolled through this past week, there’s a chance of rain every day for the next week. I won’t complain, though, as the showers will be scattered each day and…

  • Weekend Notes

    Holiday Weekend Not a bad Independence Day weekend at all. S’s sister who lives in Denver and her family came to stay with us from Wednesday through Sunday. We had a couple cornhole tournaments (L beat her cousin in one, and she and I beat the cousin and his dad in the other).The kids went and played mini-golf in the…

  • Monday Links

    C and I are off to Bloomington for a campus visit today, so weekend notes will have to wait. To tide you over, a slew of links, including three oral histories. I’m rarely at the beginning of any trends. But I did get my first Livestrong bracelet right around this time 20 years ago. I was wearing it when M…

  • Friday Vids

    No true playlist this week. Instead I’ll share two fun videos I’ve been sitting on for a few weeks. First, clips of classic Peanuts cartoons edited to somewhat match the classic Boston songs “Foreplay/Long Time.” https://youtu.be/qxtgJIQk1Ec?si=wfCl8mz0f5SIIhuD Next, someone recreates New Order’s “Blue Monday” using a staggering variety of Casio instruments.

  • June Media

    Movies, Shows, etc The Americans, seasons one and two I’m finally doing it: devoting this summer to re-watching one of my very favorite TV shows. My original plan was to try to knock all five seasons out in June. But as I can’t watch more than a couple shows a night, even if I love something, and there were a…

  • Independence Day Playlist

    Here we go! One of my favorite music days of the year! Two new songs for 2024. We’ll see if any of you can pick them out. No fair peeking back to last year’s post: it’s the same Spotify playlist so the posts for the last five years all update to show the new additions. Happy Fourth of July to…

  • The Bear, Season Three Review

    We knocked out season three of The Bear over the weekend, binging six episodes Friday and four Saturday. Before I dive in, a couple preliminary notes. First, I had not heard official word that there will be a season four until after we finished. I believe I heard there might be another season, but not that it had been confirmed.…

  • Weekend Notes

    Originally I planned on taking this week off. We have family coming in on Wednesday, holiday activities the rest of the week, and a busy two days before all that. But plenty happened over the weekend and I have a couple other posts nearly ready to go, so looks like we’ll slide into the holiday on a nearly normal schedule.…