Congratulations Commodores!!





#14 Vandy beat #1 Tennessee last night! Only two days before that Tennesse (then #2) beat #1 undefeated Memphis! What a shoot out in the state of Tennessee. I love watching these college basketball games as we heat up to March Madness.


Way to go 'dores!

Birthday Beast

It has become tradition that for my birthday my Mom cooks a prime rib! This is the third year she has cooked this fine cut of meat for the family. And, of course, she has perfected it. It was amazing! Thanks Mom!

Feast your eyes on the delicious, mouth watering beast of yummy goodness:

Cuba

Yesterday's news of the Fidel stepping down is historical. My hope is that Cuba will begin to open back up to the U.S. The embargo has gone on way to long and its really time to put that to rest. Since Fidel was really the face of the 'revolution' I'm hoping the U.S. can now use that to reduce anti-Cuba policy.

Nothing more was eye opening to me about Cuba then the Buena Vista Social Club. This was a project of Ry Cooder's where he went to Cuba and found all the great Cuban musicians from just before the revolution. Part of the project included an amazing CD as well as DVD. Watching the DVD is fascinating just from seeing Havana. Time has stood still since the revolution. All the cars are old 50s American cars. Such a contrast in beauty as well with the Carribean beaches and old city.

Hopefully one day I will get to visit Cuba...

Spring Break Approaches

Daughter #2 asked if we can boil crawfish on spring break. Heck ya!! Nothing like the smell of the crawfish pot. And nothing like Louisiana food! Just makes me think of going to jazzfest. Sure its got fantastic music but its the food that makes it. We eat constantly an the list of goodies is long:



Etoufee

Softshell Crab Po-Boy

Softshell Crawfish Po-Boy

Bar-b-que'd Oyster Po-Boy

Boiled Crawfish

Crawfish Pie

Crawfish Cheese Bread

Crawfish Monica

Cochon de lait

Cracklin'

Crawfish Sack

Fried Crawfish

Spicy Crawfish Sushi Rolls

Crawfish Beignets

Gumbo

Jumbolaya

Remoulade Shrimp Salad


....



oh man, I could go on and on, just like Bubba in Forest Gump.



So darned tasty, mmmm

Spring Try Outs

Yesterday the boy had his spring try out for 9/10 baseball. This is the first time he has ever had to try out. That was a bit scary. Plus he has barely picked up a baseball since the end of the fall season months ago. He did great though!

The try out had a little bit of everything. First he had to bat, 5 pitches. He fouled one and got an in-field fair hit on one. Then he had to run bases from home to third. Next was short stop, take 5 grounders and throw to first. He got all the grounders and had decent throws to first. Finally was left field for 3 pop flies then throw to first. He got 2 of them and had the 3rd but it leaked out.

Overall he did great and I was very proud of him! Can't wait for baseball to start!

Walking in the Desert with My Ears Plugged

Seems these days I'm carrying all my worries on my own shoulders. Nothing big really, just life. Kept trying to blog about it even but everything I wrote was whining. This morning as I woke up I realized what I was doing and really had to stop. Just stop and release my yoke to Him.

After that I arrived at work and realized today I have a corporate audit. Following that I have to tell an employee he is layed off. Talk about throwing the storms at me! Oh yeah, I'm also right in the middle of doing my taxes :-(

Its so easy to get buried in this stuff and just start to carry it alone. Why, I don't know.

Its fitting that I'm reading Jeremiah 12, no coicidence I'm sure :-)

HAPPY MARDI GRAS!!

Down in New Orleans
Where the blues was born
It takes a cool cat
To blow a horn
On LaSalle and Rampart Street
The combo's there with a mambo beat

The Mardi Gras, mambo, mambo, mambo
Party Gras, pambo, mambo, mambo
Mardi Gras, mambo-ooh
Down in New Orleans

Join the Chief with the Zulu gang
And truck on down
Where the mambo's swing

The Mardi Gras, mambo, mambo, mambo
Party Gras, mambo, mambo, mambo
Pardi Gras, mambo-ooh
Down in New Orleans

Tasty Bacon

If only such a machine really existed!

Escargot



Last night we went out to eat and the menu included escargot. Growing up this is something I ate from the time I was to young to remember. So it was never a big deal to me to eat snails and they are very tasty. But my kids have never really been exposed to it, they just figure its another one of those weird things Dad eats. Last night I coaxed kid #3 to try it. She said she couldn't do it. I told her she was 18 and needed to be more adventurous. After all she is getting ready to leave home in a few months to go off to college. Carpe Diem!

She tried it, and she liked it! And she had another. Go her...

The Big Hole

Few things can prepare you for actually gazing upon the Grand Canyon. No picture does it justice. The immense size and grandier overwhelm your brain. You just look out and go 'wow'...

Joan and one of the kids went to northern Arizona last weekend. It was a college visit to NAU. They made the time to drive up to the canyon as well. Whether she goes to that college or not the trip to see the canyon alone is well worth it.

Little Children

The innocence and simplicity of little kids is always so refreshing. After a disagreement there are no mind games, no complications, no expectations. Just I'm sorry, I love you. and lets laugh again.

The Dream

You know, my friends, there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression. There comes a time, my friends, when people get tired of being plunged across the abyss of humiliation, where they experience the bleakness of nagging despair. There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life's July, and left standing amid the piercing chill of an alpine November.

Out of the Blue, Into the Black



In 1979 I moved from California to Arizona. I would start my sophomore year at a new high school in a new state. And as it would turn out I would only be there to complete my sophomore and junior years, two short years. High school is hard enough normally so these were trying times.

With a late registration there wasn't much left for electives so somehow I ended up in yearbook. Talk about oil and water, this was no fit at all but I had no choice. In the same class would be Ken who was also in the same predicament. Very quickly we gravitated to each other and would remain inseparable for two years. (Ken is on the right in the first row and I'm on the right in the second row above).

This would be a friendship deeper than any. And in two years Ken taught me more about life than I had even known possible. He was a very quiet person but incredibly intelligent and talented in many things. We had adventure after adventure.

The desert was our playground. A 10 minute drive and we were in the middle of nowhere. So we went out to play everyday. Ken got me into hunting. Bird hunting mostly. We would go out in the desert and shoot skeet to practice. Then when dove season rolled around we scouted orange groves shooting doves and dodging pellets. Right outside of Phoenix was a quail preserve for hunting as well. We would spend hours marveling at how a stupid bird could be so smart as we chased them in endless circles. More rabbits died at the hands of frustrated quail hunters than quail did.

Ken and I camped at many lakes in Arizona and tried to catch fish. We never did but that didn't stop the pursuit. Just being out in the wild was enough. Our favorite lake was Lake Pleasant. The lake had the infamous cliffs that we stupidly jumped from for amazingly scary thrills.

I bought my first bass in Arizona. Ken had a Gibson Les Paul with sunburst finish just like Jimmy Page had in the Song Remains the Same. We had big Sunn amps and learned how to jam for hours in the key of G. Our theme song was the Neil Young song "Hey Hey My My" . We played it just like on Rust Never Sleeps, real loud and real distorted!

Ken bought himself an Apple II computer. Back then having a computer was not even something you knew was possible. But not Ken, he had been studying and dived in. He was programming graphics and games in assembly language all on his own. He told me he was getting it before he did and I didn't believe him. $1200 was a lot of bread in 1980 for a high school kid. As usual he told me I never believed what he said. And he always did what he said.

He drove an old blue station wagon his parents gave him. We saved all of our coke bottles on the floor. That way when we coasted into the gas station out of gas we could cash the bottles in for another tank! A few months later Ken's dad bought 7 Corvairs just as a hobby to restore them. Ken got a red one. That was a strange car, a '68 Corvair Monza, standard shift, flat six in the back. You learn real quick how to put the belts back on... Many a dough nut was had in our desert playground.

So much more packed into two years, two of the best years of my life. I moved away, Ken eventually moved away form Phoenix as well. After I graduated from college I took a job in Tucson. Ken was going to U of A in Tucson then so we reunited. He was the best man at my wedding, I was the best man at his wedding. After only 3 years I moved back to the south and Ken went to California.

We would see each other again only twice over the next 20 years. But he was always my best friend. Two years ago I got a call from a friend of his saying Ken had died of cancer. He died 2 years ago today. I didn't even know he was sick. It was like a kick in the stomach.

Ken truly loved people and he always looked at life as an adventure. These are things he showed by the way he lived. These are things I will always remember when I think of him.

Revolution?

The use of the Beatles songs for commercials does bring up other thoughts. Certainly John, Paul, George and Ringo didn't write songs to later be used for Target commercials. I know this came to a head a while back when it first occurred for a car commercial. But the former Beatles don't own the rights to their own songs and had no say. I think Michael Jackson actually owned them and he allowed a song to be used for a car commercial. That certainly caused a break between Ebony and Ivory.

But would Paul and Ringo object today to this happening? I would say probably not. The idealism of the 60s is long gone. Buried in the mess of the 70s and me generations that followed. John's revolution was a generational revolution against the Vietnam war. Would anyone today dare put up billboards in NYC saying "War is Over - If You Want It"? How many people really care? The war is largely ignored. Its not humanized to any degree. Rarely do you see news stories about war in Iraq. Instead the coverage is about Wall Street and recession.

It seemed you used to be able to discuss politics to some degree and look at issues from both sides. Now you are either Red or Blue. Speaking from the wrong side gets a revolt against you, usually in a personal manner.

You tell me it's the institution,

Well, you know

You better free your mind instead.

Will it be alright? Dunno. Maybe its easier to sell products to the institution at Target then it is to free your mind. And just dont' worry about the rest.

Hello Goodbye


I saw a Target add yesterday that used the Beatles song "Hello, Goodbye" as it's theme. This was instantly recognizable. When I was a kid everyone knew the Beatles and everyone knew their songs. My brother was the huge Beatle fan, he still wear's a Beatles belt buckle. I gave him a Beatles record (yes, the the vinyl kind) every year for Christmas during our teen years. He was John or Ringo and I would have to be Paul or George. We would have conversations in our best Liverpoolian accents! My brother is a drummer. His very first band played in our school's talent show and the song they played was Day Tripper. He cried real tears of sorrow when he found out John Lennon had been killed. For many years after the Beatles broke up they were still reveared as the pinnacle. So many wondered when they would get back together.

I bet anyone over the age of 40 could rattle off at least 10 Beatles songs at the snap of a finger and could probably sing along with more than that. Its hard to imagine any other band that could have so many songs that so many people know.

The Beatles have finally faded. Those were different times. But the path they made was remarkable, just remarkable. And there will always be those songs that one can instantly recognize and sing along with. Even if its in a commercial....

Welcome to the new year

Every year the new year is brought in by a visit from some old friends. This bird is the Cedar Waxwing. I see a small flock of them once a year. These are some very unusual looking birds. They come in to eat berries. I assume the birds must be migrating as I only see them usually one day or just a day or two during a single week of the year. Then they are gone. What is weird is I always seem to catch seeing them each year even though they are here for such a short time.

On Saturday the waxwings were in our cherry trees. It was good to see them again.

Louisiana State University Tigers
2007 National Champions

2008 Setting In

Back to work for real now. Everyone is back, people are asking for things to be completed, all systems are ramping back up to bullet train speed as we speak. The American work ethic is still alive and well.

So how does corporate America start a new year? First with the annual January lay-off rumors followed by the 'they are changing the servernce package' rumor. Never fails. And the while the former is usually true the later never has come to furition. Its unfortunate that this is what it all boils down to these days but its always a subject close to the surface. It doesn't help either that we have a new CEO who started last week, the stock is dropping like a rock, and recession talk is in the air...

After a few days though things will get busy again and the gloom and doom will move to the back of the mind. Then the focus will be on each day as it comes.

Resolutions?

Usually I make a resolution and stick to it. One year it was to learn to like beans, another year it was to give up drinking anything with sugar in it.

But this year I'm wishy washy on resolutions. There are several I need to do but they center around things that I've always failed at (which can only mean excerise and money :-O )

And now add the cliche resolutions middle age men make, I will make my golf score lower! Yeah right...

Well here they are, best as can be said although they are very non-specific....

I will work on my Robert Lewis Authentic Manhood efforts to show my wife how much I really love her.

I will commit to work on my Dave Ramsey snowball.

I will go to the doctor(s) (includes dentist, ug).

I will lower my golf score to at least 100 (haha, you think I'm joking don't you)

There, now it said. Here is to 2008!

Re-entry

Well today is back to work day 1 after Christmas vacation. The last day I worked was Dec 18th so that was a good 14 day run of no work! How I could easily get used to that! Things at work are still in slow motion so re-entry isn't to bad. By Monday the bullet train will be back to full speed and the holidays a faded blur.