New poll: Guilty (Music) Pleasures

Popular music is very dynamic...it is constantly going in and out of style. Good music, though, will always be good music! I was thinking to myself, "Self, what albums have I enjoyed for the longest?" I still regularly enjoy Blues Traveler: Four, Crash Test Dummies: God Shuffled His Feet, Smashing Pumpkins: Siamese Dream, etc. (Enjoying my entire collection of albums has become much easier since I converted them all to electronic form and organized them on my 'puter...I highly recommend it!) What albums have you bought in the distant past, but still regularly enjoy? Please let me know by leaving a comment!

I blinked and missed July...

Well, I must have missed the entire month of July, because it completely passed by me. I think I remember some bright exlosions in the sky and some presents that Erin unwrapped. I do remember what we did last weekend though! Ashley flew out to visit us (because she's a famous young jet pilot and all of that). We had a great time! It's been a few months since I've been around midwest folk (outside of work, that is). Here's Ash in "downtown" Simpsonville.

One of the first meals we had with Ash was my favorite Chinese place: Dragon Den. MMMMM! Their credit card machine was broken, which left me sad. Soooooo I went and made a free debit withdrawall from Walgreen's so that we could have it!


On Sunday, Erin and I went to Charlotte for some excitement. We had no problems finding our way downtown. We didn't find any excitement there. We were in Char-town there to see NightBeat, a big drum corps show nearby. I was super dissapointed that there were no Buffalo Wild Wings in the area :( I have been craving some B-Dubs!! We had some free time to take a liesurely walk around downtown.

Here's the excitement! It is fun to remember when I was on this field competing 9 years ago. Here are the Cavaliers performing Samurai. What a great show!

I was especially excited to see Pioneer perform, since that was the corps I marched with. They did a great job! They are not after any medals this year, but for a young group of kids, I think the show arrangement was great and the new horns sound gorgeous. I have some strong opinions on the corps' direction, but out of respect, I'll hold it down for now.

For Erin's bday, we went to Arizona Steakhouse. It was great! Since smoking is still a state requirement, it was a little hazy, but not too bad.

It was so fancy, even the fancy ketchup came in fancy metal cups. Fancy!

Erin got the ribs, I got a big cheeseburger. Man oh man were they good, and not terribly expensive, either. Even with three people, we kept it around $30.

While we were in Charlotte, Erin and I went to Northlake Mall. it was huge!

For dinner, I scarfed down some Sbarro's "pizza by the slice". It had been a while, but I looooove Sbarro.
Erin, Ashley, and I spent Saturday evening down in Simpsonville. They have free music under the clocktower every weekend.

The band was great, and overall, I'd say we got out money's worth!

I hadn't mowed in almost a month (not because I didn't need to, but because things and stuff and weather would always get in the way). Finally, I made some time after work to do it. The lawn is beautiful! Thick and green! I dscovered a few or 5 or 6 new fire ant mounds, but they were pretty small, so I should be able to knock 'em out. Can you believe that since I have been down here, I've only used a gallon and half of gas to mow a half acre? Woohoo!


We also went to see The Dark Knight. Overall, it was pretty good, but I didn't like it as much as Batman Begins. I especially didn't care for the new Gotham City, which was based upon Chicago. It made the story more believable, but I miss the dark, Gothic, epic city from the last movie. It felt too...too...normal.


Everything else is going well. Erin is still working at the bank until the end of the summer and she starts her new teaching job next month. In the afternoons, she is going to build her studio back up and teach and accompany as a regular job. That will give her more flexible hours and more time at home, which is good for everyone!


If you'd like to come visit sunny South Carolina, please let us know. We'd love to have you and I'm itching for find reasons to take some time off. That's all I have for now. Seacrest out!

Have you looked in your cereal box lately?

I was stunned to open a box of Shredded Wheat brand breakfast cereal to find a real, honest to goodness prize. I had given up on cereal box toys....long ago replaced by mail in rebates and coupons for lame things. To my surprise, mine had a glowy spoon from the Indiana Jones movie!!! Sweet! Now I can do what I've always dreamed of: eat my delicious wheat cereal in a tropical, dark cave from an overrated movie!


Erin has been hard at work at Mauldin UMC, setting up her new classroom. It's not the biggest room in the building, but hey, the little goons are only like 2 ft. tall. I helped her put up some decorations. I need to brush up on the material, because I got a couple of 'em mixed up. Here's a picture of Mrs. Palmer and her wall 'o music education.

A new restaurant review! Woohoo! I know you love my restaurant reviews (YOU DO LOVE THEM, RIGHT??) Good. Anyway, we stopped at a sub place called Firehouse House (Make note for Uncle Mike) since it is nearby the church. The employees were nice, but a little hard to understand because the cashier decided not to open his mouth while talking to us. He must have been enjoying his incredible meatball sub. Here's the front...

OMG OMG this was the best meatball sub I have ever had. Even better than before Quizno's got stupid and cut theirs from their menu. The Doritos were crappy, though, not the fault of the restuarant. Plus, they had about 50 varieties of hot sauce. Dad, you know where you're going to eat when you come down!!!
I was walking by the fountains at the Hampton Inn and saw some kids enjoying some waterfall action. It looked like a lot of fun. I was so jealous.

HOLY MOLY! Pardon my language, but this is a new record. I bet it's higher back in Illinois, but Golly Ned (Sorry again). That's almost as expensive as my Venti Mocha Frappacinos!! Gas isn't expensive enough, though, because you still see people lining up in the drive through at fast food joints. When wasting your gas in line or buying more junk food don't cause financial hardship, I'm afraid we will see higher prices yet. I'll say it now and say it again: It still doesn't bother me that much. Americans will never change their way of life unless forced to.

I came back to City Hall last week, finding myself parking on the TOP of the parking deck. What is this crap? 5th floor!!! It takes me longer to drive in and out of the parking deck than it does to drive to my destination. I can't park at City Hall, else I will get a parking ticket after an hour.

Erin and I decided to stay in last night and make dinner and eat at the big kids table. One of our favorite meals is a chicken strip horseshoe (AKA Snowshoe). Mmmmmmmm. Healthy? no. Tasty? Absoluteley.

In other exciting news, my almost-quartet finally found a bass! He's actually a college buddy of our Lead and is a very active, young singer. We sang for a couple hours on Friday night and really liked what we heard. There is enormous potential for us. I'll keep your posted on that.

Erin's been posting some great stuff on her blog, including a guest spot from yours truly, so check it out. Erin and I are looking forward to going to Charlotte next Sunday for a big drum corps show (I played at that show 9 years ago....wow). Pioneer and 6 others will be there, so it should be a blast. Maybe we can go to B-Dubs (BWW or Buffalo Wild Wings).

We're really looking forward to having guests down here, so if you or anyone you know is looking for a cheap vacation spot, we have a room (and air mattress) waiting for you.

Erin's birthday is Thursday! A good husband remembers when his wife's birthday is, but always forgets how many she's had. With that, you know where to find me! Talk to you soon!

Lazy Saturday

I'm bored. I realize that there is not much you can do for me, and I accept that. I've read Erin's Blog. I've added more friends in Facebook. I've read the iPhone 3G reviews on Gizmodo so many times, I practically am bored of it and I still haven't owned one yet. Since I have a few new things to share with you, it would be an opportune time to do so. Time has seemed to slow to a halt for me today....I've been tired and lazy all day. Each time I look at the clock, I wonder "Has it only been 15 minutes?" My free time seems to vanish too quickly lately, so I guess it's a welcome change anyway.
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Work has been crazy. The other 2nd level tech was moved to a different site, so we were down 50% of our team last week, since Maureen was on vacation and we still haven't filled the other network admin spot. I thought for sure the week was going to be a disaster but, to my surprise, it actually got better as the week went along! Erin has been so good to me, listening to all of my stories and challenges. Maybe I keep stuff bottled up too much, but you can't blame me, I am a manly man, after all. Sometimes, I think we just need a picture of a spinning puppy to cheer us up.

All better? Good.

Erin actually made me take the next picture at the grocery store. Sorry, couldn't resist.

I always envied Todd's desk location, next to a window, out of view of the front door. He left on Wednesday and it hit me suddenly on Friday, that I could take it. yes! Great success.

This morning, Erin and I drove across Greenville County to get her new driver's license and plate. When she realized that, yes, they would be taking her picture, she flipped out. Forgot about that part. Let's just put it like this: She wasn't exactly dressed up. You looked fine, though, really, Honey. Now she's officially a South Carolinian! (and I took the look-at-me-I'm-from-Illinois plates off as soon as we got home.)

Saw my favorite bike outside of the jail yesterday. I wanted to jump on it and steal it for a spin, but I don't want to get shot.

Finally time to have my teeth worked on. Two replacement fillings, one of them to correct a very very painful tooth. So far so good. Hey, if I can avoid a root canal, I'll try it. They're a new type of filling that match my tooth color. FANCY SMANCY

The time passed by quickly, because I could geek it up, watching the History Channel.

We tried Jack in the Box. Oh did I say that? I meant to say Crap in the Box. You can surmise how we felt about it. The store was empty, all the tables were dirty, and the cashier was a space cadet, who decided to come out and apologize for her boyfriend's foul language and tell us that they are going through a tough time. Don't care. The food was OK, but definitely at the bottom of the barrel. It made a Big Mac seem like a Hardee's Thickburger. (Gotta love the fast food comparison scale)


At least they has funny pictures of Jack. It wasn't a complete waste of time.
Speaking of wasting time, thanks for reading my blog. I'm happy to be seeing lurkers from other states find me by mistake. (Probably stalkers) Not much else to report...Erin is having a pretty good time working at the bank. The weather has been warmy, but stormy. Erin's birthday is coming up on the 24th, so make sure to call her or send her a card or motorcycle or something. (Ditto for me) We hope to make it up to Charlotte in a couple weeks to see a big DCI show (Pioneer will be there, too!) Still waiting for a new iPhone, but it will probably be a little while. Oh well. We can always call family to Google something for us while we're on the road.
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Til next interesting post. Peace.

Is it over already...?

As the fabulous Independence Day weekend draws to a close and I begin to think about the upcoming work week, I figured I've leave ya'll with some other observations. The pain in my mouth finally reached the breaking point...that is, I'm "suckin' it up" and having some more dental work done. You may or may not remember that back in January, I had my first root canal and crown. I was actually very pleased with the entire process...the intense pain was suddenly gone, leaving a large "hole" of no-pain up there. The crown looks fabulous, too. In the end, only my jaw and wallet felt any real pain. Well, if you know me really really well, you also know that I have a mouth full of weak, old teeth. Several of which are ready to be executed. I have grown to the age where I take extremely good care of them (brush, floss, Listerine all twice a day) but it's not enough to reverse time and now the old fillings and the what-have-you are wearing out. BUMMER. Here's my new dentist's office, right by my house.

The staff there are extremely friendly and the rooms even have a tv! I've been telling Dentists for YEARS that I'd rather watch a TV than avoid eye contact with the good lookin' Dental Hygienists.

For dinner Thursday, Erin and I took recommendations and tried Anthony's Pizza. GOOOOOOOOD stuff. The staff are extremely friendly and the food was delish. We have many more pizza places to try before we can make official recommendations for the families and friends that should visit us.

Here's an adventure for us. Do you know how easy all ya'll have it in Illinois? If you want alcohol, you walk to any convenience or grocery store and plunk it in your shopping cart. Any time of day. Well remember how we can't buy beer or wine on Sundays? THAT'S NOTHING. You have to go to a handful or crummy little liquor stores (not even labeled as liquor stores) before 7pm on the other days if you want any other type of adult beverage. We went to three different stores at three different times to find Margarita materials. I guess there's a silver lining, they make it so difficult to buy liquor here, it must definitely curb the consumption, disturbances, alcoholism, etc. We just noticed the other day, that we could only name one or two "bars" in the entire metro area. Nothing like that around our city. Bartonville has, like what....6? Here's the store by our house:

On a differene note, my lawn is slowly developing. I've been fertilizing a little bit and watering weekly, too. That's GREEN GRASS folks! Most of that is grass.
War of the Ants: Update: Out of 33 original fire ant mounds, only 4 remain. The Over-N-Out really did work. I am convinced that the reason it hasn't worked completely was that I underestimated the size of our enormous new yard, which you might notice has some grass too :) Long story short, I will have to buy %50 more killer next year and probably have to manually kill the remaining ants. *&^($#(@)!

I was in Sears yesterday and was looking at the smoke detectors. One model popped out for some reason. Can you see it? "One of these things is not like the other" Ewww It's like the Sears had a fire and they are selling them anyway.

We have been having a lot of Thunderstorm activity here lately. That's fantastic! I even cleaned the pine needles out of the gutters yesterday.

Erin and I went out for coffee yesterday. This place was in Mauldin. They were supposed to have music on Saturday nights, but none of the employees knew anything about it, even though there were signs in the store telling about the music on Saturday nights.

Now that I can beat Erin at Srabulous, she feels the need to pummel me at chess. She checkmated me in like 4 moves. I told her that my Queen would sacrifice herself to save the King, but I guess that's not allowed in this version. At least the cake was good! overpriced

The atmosphere was great, too.

We went to the traditional service today, very nice. We also attended a 20-something Bible Study, where we met people our age. After church, we took advantage of some downtime to accomplish some chores. I changed my oil with my new floor jack, fixed a leaky showerhead and mounted my table vice. I'd say I was very productive :) Erin doesn't know how lucky she is to have a manly guy like me around. I sweat pure testosterone.

Boba Fett does Flashdance

Funny....but disturbing

Mandalorian Dance
by PatrickBoivin

Dell to ship in Apple Manilla Folders

it was bound to happen, right?

Happy Independence Day!

I will, from this point forward, refer to the 4th of July as Independence Day. The reason is fairly reasonable...I heard someone on the radio express offence at the fact that people refer to the day as 4th of July because servicemen fought and died for Independence and that fact is much more important than hamburgers and fireworks. For me, it's like referring to Christmas as X-Mas or Buy Your Spoiled Kid Lots of Crap day, so I completely understand... UPDATE: My sister shared the definition of X-Mas with me, so I no longer feel the animosity that I once did: "Xmas has been used for hundreds of years in religious writing, where the X represents a Greek chi, the first letter of , "Christ." In this use it is parallel to other forms like Xtian, "Christian." But people unaware of the Greek origin of this X often mistakenly interpret Xmas as an informal shortening pronounced (ksms). Many therefore frown upon the term Xmas because it seems to them a commercial convenience that omits Christ from Christmas"

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On that note, we've had an exciting weekend so far! I even have lots of nice pictures to share! For the 4th...err Independence Day, Erin and I had our own cookout at home. We ate REAL hamburgers (given to us after the smaller-than-expected block party). I, of course, overcooked them, but "hey...better overcooked than undercooked" I always say. We didn't head downtown until about 8:30, but that was good timing, cause we would have been kinda bored after a while anyway. On our way down, we went through an isolated heavy downpour, but it didn't last long and it was dry by the time we got downtown. Parking was no trouble, but getting out of there was exciting. Luckily, I am getting really good at knowing all of my routes in the Greenville area, so we just took the long way around :)

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Here's the first shot of the night, a beautiful view of the bank at the end of McBee street. Don't forget to click to enlarge my pictures if you want to see the larger version!

I liked it so much, I took another, just to frame it differently. And I really wanted to get the green light to signify Greenvile :) How cheesy.

We stopped for some coffee at Port City Java. It was awesome! I really liked mine, even though it was coffier than I normally like it. Maybe I'm developing a taste for it??

We heard trombones, and that caught my attention really quickly. We walked up Main Street and found this New Orleans-ish brass band jamming away. They were great! The lead trombonist was incredible. I couldn't get very good pictures, so this'll have to do :P

I got a great video of this girl dancing in front of everybody, but I haven't gotten around to posting videos here, so use your imaginations.

Part of the festivities was a nationwide meet of Honda Goldwing riders. Main Street was lined with Gold Wings and Valkyries(sp?), as well as large parking lots full of 'em. You know, the rambuxious crazy retired Goldwing riders.

Greenville's finest! (My customers, too.) They were stationed all over the downtown area directing traffic.


This was a jazz concert going on near City Hall.

Speak of the devil, here's City Hall.

There was beautiful lighting on many of the buildings, too.

This was a neat view from the pedestrian bridge. loooooots of people. Since this is the place to be, Erin and walked around until we found a good spot to sit.


Here's a view of the bridge from Falls Park.

Here's another concert: The Army Ground Forces band. That made it like 4 or 5 shows going on at once, from what we saw.

Here's the hotels from up the river. Sorry, many of these are very blurry, but I did my best with my limited tools.

And here are some of the better shots of the fireworks. The show was incredible! It was very loud, with the booms bouncing off of the river and buildings. The Grand Finale was mind blowing, but those pictures didn't turn out right...The sky was too bright :)

Thanks for letting me share our holiday experience with you! Hope you had a happy, safe Independence Day at home. Be on the lookout of more posts from me very soon! PEACE