When it rains, it.....keeps raining every day. Bleh.

Well, it's that time of year! Fall is when the family comes out to visit and cloudy, rainy days seem to go on for weeks. Now, I'm not complaining, but I was a little disappointed in the weather situation for my parents' visit from Peoria. I mean, they're used to that kind of weather and I wanted to give them a break (It's been nicer up there this summer than it has down here, so I guess they get the last laugh...)

One of the things I wanted to do most for their visit was to go to the BMW plant in Spartanburg since I've never had the opportunity.

Here is the front entrance to the Zentrum.

The back of the building. (Looks like a big crescent roll to me!)

From the front.

Flying the flags.

My lovely wife relaxing by the pool..er..fountain.

I want one for my front yard!

Inside the museum.

These were our favorites! I call them the Steve Urkel cars.

Here are the folks, enjoying themselves! (I think)

Another couple having a good time.

A closeup!

Motorocycles! Now, we're talking.

Wouldn't this be fun to ride across the continent?

Wouldn't this be fun to ride down the street? (In the dark)

Taking my parents to Waffle House for the first time.

Mmmm, a nice steak sandwich and hash browns for breakfast. They'rrrrrrrrrre Grrrrrreasy!

Had to show the folks Whole Foods, the creme de la creme of grocery stores.

My happy wife picking up some organic thingies.

I tried to add some culture into my parent's life by treating them to tickets to the free County Art Museum. Okay, I treated them to a ride...

We'd been there before, but all of the exhibits had changed. Man, those artists were nuts...*whistles*

A visit to Falls Park at dusk.

Sam did the same thing he always does: beg for food, sleep, and wait for affection. Kinda like men.

Went to Moe's, of course. What is a trip to my house without a Joey Combo and hot sauce?!

That's a happy Josh on the left.

And even happier when he got an early birthday gift: an iPhone speaker dock. I can finally jam out to Black Eyed Peas in the shower. Or fall asleep to some soft sounds. Ahhh. 

Dad took me to Northern Tools for the first time. Better than Harbor Freight, IMHO.

Dad and I tried out some cool doo-rags. See, that's me being, nay, trying to be all badass.

We rounded out the evening with a trip to Liquid Highway, where I made them try Frozen Mochas. Yum.

Thought I'd update you on the hotel constructioon next to City Hall. It's really coming along.

Alot of brick and windows are finally up. Still another year to go on construction.

I couldn't believe my eyes when I found a brand new pair of shorts on eBay, identical to my favorite shorts I've had for 5 or 6 years. You can't find shorts like these anywhere!!

I've ben experimenting with a new iPhone app called Colorsplash. It allows you to add color to specific areas of a picture. Here's my first attempt: 

Erin took me to a new favorite pizza place of hers: Moretti's in Mauldin.

Any place that has Malt Vinegar is A+ in my books. I'll have to try their fish next time.

The restaurant is small, but wasn't full.

Free bread...pretty yummy.

Cheesy garlic break...very very cheesy.

 I split a pizza with myself. The pepperoni was the best half. Sorry, Sausage.

The verdict? Excellent, we'll definitely be going back. They had a lot of different foods, like fish, wings, sandwiches, etc. After dinner, we went up the street to Downtown Coffee.

I sampled their cookies and frozen mocha. The drink was pretty good, but the atmosphere was very nice. They have full size leather sofas, tv, tables, you name it. It's a nice place to come and sit down and relax.

We had a wonderful time with my parents, and the weather has finally changed back to normal. We've had the windows open for the first time since April and it feels great! This is my last week working in Greenville, and from next Tuesday on, I'll be reporting to my next job full time. I'll miss  the people at the city, but not the craziness. I like to be laid back, so my next job is a nice switch. Hopefully, a position more suited to my experience will come along soon, but for now, I am grateful to have a job.  October is going to be a busy month, but I'm looking forward to the cooler weather. Thanks for waiting patiently for this post and I hope you enjoyed the pictures! More to come!

Back from Ra-cha-cha!

"Ra-cha-cha..." That's what cool people call Rochester, NY. I just got back from DCA finals a few days ago and finally have to strength to post an update of how my weekend went! The trip was great! The bus ride up to NY from Atlanta was long, but uneventful. We kept ourselves entertained by watching movies and sleeping...and eating junk food. In total, the drive is about 22 hours, but the nice buses made it go by pretty quickly. We left on Wednesday night and arrived at the hotel at dinner time on Thursday. We then immediately grabbed some dinner and lined up in the parking lot for a standstill brass and ensemble rehearsal. On Friday we had a full day's rehearsal. The weather up there was unbelievable: Sunny,  breezy, 75 degrees: perfect weather for Drum Corps! I wish I could show you pictures from Niagara Falls, but since one of our buses wouldn't start, we didn't go. That sucked. Oh well, Saturday was prelims so we had a morning rehearsal and went to the show. We definitely had the best performance of the season that night, which placed us into Finals the next night. It's really incredible that this was the corps' first year in DCA open class! We had another short rehearsal on Sunday morning, and then packed our things for the show and for the trip back late that night. Well, the finals performance went even better than the night before and we moved up another position, into 8th place. That's something to be very proud of! Late that night, we drove back home and I climbed into my own bed about 1AM Tuesday morning. I took all of Tuesday to get rested up and get ready to get back into the real world. There's a lot of momentum within the corps now, so I will definitely want to go back next season. The staff wants to add 15-20 more brass players to give us a full line, so that's going to be incredible!

Click here to see a clip from our Finals perfrmance!

Did you see us on CNN??

Here are some shots of the show, courtesy of Drum Corps Planet.

Got my corps jacket ready for some pride displayin'.

 

Left ATL around 11:00 on Wednesday night..at this point I really didn't know everyone very well.

I woke up in the mountains of West Virginia. It is so pretty up there!

We stopped for breakfast and our first of many bus repairs.

As I was walking out of the McDonald's, I noticed something peculiar. Yum!

Here's our practice field, on a crisp morning.

Our bari and euph stack:

Our killer battery warming up:

Here I am, walking about before the warmup. Talk about a man with a mission!

Hanging out at the hotel, talking with Dave.

 

I didn't have much opportunity to snap pictures at the stadium, but the Rhinos' stadium is actually for soccer.

Here's a quick pic of the corps that was performing at the time, with the next corps waiting to go onfield.

My friends and I went to dinner at Friday's, and got the cool room in the back! 

 

I ordered a meatball sandwich. Verdict? Not next time.  

I was so excited that the gas station next to our hotel had Godfather's! That's something I miss from Peoria that we don't have much in my part of the country.  

My mom loves pink, so I thought I'd find a hat for her in West Virginia.  Merry Christmas!

 

My bus hit a big bird on the way home...made a loud "crack!" sound.

Of course, the cracking got much worse on down the road, so the driver had to keep adding tape to keep it intact.

Well, that was the trip! I made a lot of close friends along the way and am excited to get back to the corps this winter. The greatest thing is that since DCA is all age, I could potentially do this as long as my body holds up...we'll see, I'm approaching that magic 30 number and I'm aleady one of the oldest in the corps!

Before I left for the trip, I met Erin at a local restaurant in Simpsonville: Pasta House.

Kind of reminded me of La Gondola from the inside.

I started out with some Lentil soup.

Moved on to a Italian Hero with pasta salad. 

And topped it off with Brownie Pie.

The verdict? The prices were great, service was good, and the food was good. The problem was that I was hoping to find a new "Avanti's" but failed again. Not a lot of the food was up my alley, but I'd be happy to go back and try something new.

Time for Josh Updates!

My parents are coming down next week, so that's going to be a lot of fun! Erin and I have been talking about remodeling her bathroom, so that's a pretty big project that we'll  be kicking off sometime soon. I've been enjoying my new job at CAT. Oddly, It's been very "soothing"...because my family knows I need to recover after my last job. Our weather is finally starting to cool down, 80 degrees is feeling nice, but a little chilly at times :P The biggest advantage of the cooldown is that riding my motorcycle is going to be a lot more comfortable! And I can start wearing my corps jacket all the time! Speaking of, I gotta go kiss my wife because I haven't seen her much in the last month... talk to y'all later.