Little cars go in the compact spot

After weeks of waiting, I'm off for New Hampshire tomorrow. I'm extremely excited. It will be fun to be somewhere else for the summer and get to be in a part of the country I've never been before.

It will also, though, be tough being away from Amanda for two weeks. She's not able to come up until school's out, obviously. I think the longest we've been apart since a couple months before we got married is two or three days, and that's only been three times.

So I get to figure out where all the good places to eat are and she gets to hang out with the dogs (I'll miss them too). We'll be having a houseguest for a lot of that time, so that will be good too.

So now I'm off to pack, then I leave early tomorrow for Dover, with an overnight stay in the Electric City. MaybeI should check out the Anthracite museum.

Old School Hollywood Baseball

As I was mowing the lawn today, and, as usual, struggling with what mix of songs to play on the mp3 player, I was reminded of Brendan's recent journal entry about songs he listens to while running.

When I exercise, I'm not very picky about what I listen to. As long as it has a decent tempo and a melody or rhythm I can get into, I'm fine. But mowing is a different story. For some reason, the only thing that can propel me to keep pushing that godforsaken machine over all of our exposed roots is an upbeat theme album, straight through. I say "theme album" rather than "concept album" because it's not quite so strict. As long as the songs on the album are loosely connected by a story, mood, or whatever, it will qualify. It was this way even as a kid mowing our yard in Fulton. Then it was Nine Inch Nails' The Downward Spiral. Now, it's either American Idiot or System of a Down's Mesmerize. I'm not extolling the virtues of Nine Inch Nails or Green day as great pieces of art or anything, but they make mowing more fun. (System of a Down, by any metric, though, is a very good band.)


Even albums I otherwise love can't keep me mowing if they're too disjointed, spacy, or mellow. I might try Brian Wilson's Smile, since it seems to fit all the criteria, but I can't hink of anything else to use.

Any suggestions?

Roses and Jay Farrar

Anniversary

Dogs!

There is no excuse for this

We somehow managed to have a fairly productive weekend while watching six movies on television. It struck me just now that the order in which we watched them is probably* also the exact order of increasing critical acclaim.

- Drive me Crazy
- The Sweetest Thing
- So I Married an Axe Murderer
- Kill Bill volume 1
- Kill Bill Volume 2
- The Godfather part II

We really covered all the bases there. I mean, critically, does it get any better or worse than those?



*Definitely

Why I love my wife

Amanda and I went for a walk this morning, after which we stopped for lunch at a local eatery. When we first sat down, John Legend was playing on the sound system. Fine. Then came James Blunt's "You're Beautiful." I made the requisite comment about how I couldn't see any girl thinkning that song, or that guy for that matter, was sweet or attractive or really anything other than whiny and annoying.

Of course, James Blunt was followed by Five For Fighting. I asked Amanda who would win in a wuss-off between James Blunt and Five for Fighting:

Me: Five for Fighting does use drums in thier songs, which gives them a point.

Amanda: But they also have a longer history of wussiness.

Me: True. (pause) I'm trying to envision a Five for Fighting concert, but I can't imagine the crowd. Who is it?...Businessmen? Housewives? No, they don't go to concerts.

Amanda: Fifth-year seniors. In college.

Me: And they're DRUNK!

Amanda: And sad. And they bring their girlfriends but don't pay attention to them all night.

Life Lessons from Huey Lewis (and the News, too)

1. It's hip to be square.

2. You don't need a credit card to ride some particular train. (The train of love, perhaps? The train of the power of love? I've heard of starting a love train, but I also thought love was a roller coaster.)

3. The heart of rock & roll is the beat.

The Perfect Storm

Today is:
1. The 1st anniversary of buying our house.
2. Derby Day
3. Cinco de mayo

We are celebrating by going to see the new Spiderman movie and we will eat popcorn.

Middle School Lessons

This week I hope I cleared up some racial issues at school:

1. If you are not hispanic, you should not refer to people as "SA" (also spelled ese, but comes from the abreviation for "Spanish American").

2. You should not name your fictional restaurant, "Cafe galleta," trying to say "Cracker Cafe" in Spanish because, according to the student, that's "something white people call each other." Sorry, sweetie, we don't call each other that.

3. Mexican is not a language, and no, it's not funny to refer to Spanish as Mexican as a comment on the number of hispanic people now in NC.