This is the end...

So after realizing that it had been almost three months since I last made an appearance here, I think it's ok to officially call it quits.

At least for now.

The thing is, I've fallen victim to Facebook and I find it much easier to update and keep up with. Anything that I find worthy of social commentary will be located there.

We may return at some point, but don't hold your breath.

Thanks to those that ever stopped by!

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/profile.php?id=1184196377&ref=profile

But I fell on black days... How would I know that this could be my fate...

Today I would like to talk about the tale of two musical acts. While I may be a bit premature in one judgement I feel compelled to talk about it now, so oh well.

Let me start with the bad news that I'm certain about...

Chris Cornell, what has happened to you over the last few years? We used to be so close and now I feel as though I hardly know you. In fact, I can barely even look at you. From the designer jean endorsements and "Billie Jean" cover to the tour with Linkin Park and your new album produced by Timbaland, where did we go wrong? Was it something I said? Did I piss you off somehow? If the guy that once melted my face with songs like "Hands All Over", "Loud Love", and "Slaves & Bulldozers" is now truly happy paying Timbaland a million bucks per track to produce so he can sing over loops and drum machines, then so be it. But if you think for one second that you are going to gain more fans than you are going to lose by heading in this direction you are way off the mark. I'm all about re-invention and not rehashing out the same stuff over and over again (i.e. Audioslave), but seriously...



And now to the good news!

Metallica, it's good to have you back. Granted I'm only basing this on two songs so far, but after years of empty promises it seems as though you have actually come through this time around. "The Day That Never Comes" sounds like it could have been on "...And Justice For All" and "Cyanide" seems to at least deliver the goods live, even though I have yet to hear the studio version. In a year where R.E.M. put out the comeback album of the century, it appears as though you won't be going quietly either. I am of course reserving the right to take all of this back once I hear the whole album.

So there you have it. In less than a day I have heard new music from two of my all-time favorite artists and it has left me with the mixed emotions above. One is now dead to me while the other seems reborn. I suppose it could have been worse if they both sucked horribly, but why couldn't they have both blown me away?

Now playing: "Bye" by Elliott Smith from the album "Figure 8"

It's only a quarter to three...

Well at least it was when I got here, but I am at work after all so I suppose that should take precedence.

- Why hasn't there been more of a fuss over the Chinese women's gymnastics team? They all look like they are 12 years old and cannot be a day over 14. There is hard evidence that supports this yet a blind eye is turned probably because somewhere somebody's family is waiting to be tortured if they take away their medals. But they're such wonderful hosts...

- Is that Jamaican runner's last name really "Bolt"? C'mon...

- R.I.P. Leroi Moore of the Dave Matthews Band. I've always been rough on the DMB but I always respected the talent of the guys in his band and Leroi was the best at what he did.

- Erin and I had a bit of a miscommunication through email yesterday that ended with her going ALL CAPS on me when she ended with "I HATE YOU!". We have now agreed to talk on the phone if at all possible.

- $5 Quizno's > $5 Subway

Now playing: "Freak" by Belle & Sebastian from the album "Storytelling"

I want to rock n' roll all night...

Keep It Simple Stupid

This will be my new philosophy, so let's get to it...

-Xavier is beyond walking now, almost to the point of running. While it's good to see that he's making progress, parenting has suddenly become a little more challenging.

-Barack Obama will be in our town tomorrow but tickets were basically gone before the word got out. That's probably a good thing knowing the kind of conservative nut jobs we have in our area.

-Michael Phelps should be the next Terminator, as he is clearly a machine and not human. I'm kicking myself for refusing to watch the first few days of the Olympics because I thought the coverage at night was all on tape delay. Of course once I realized this was not the case I was able to watch his last three events as they happened.

-My "rock" band played a show for the first time in years and had less than a week to prepare, but we actually pulled it off all things considered.

-My "church" band has been recording some originals for the last few weeks and hope to have something together for when we play Day in the Park on September 13th.

-Madden NFL 09 is actually pretty good and fun to play this year.

-Erin has discovered the series of books known as "Twilight", courtesy of our neighbor, and has become obsessed over the last couple of weeks and is finally on the last one.

-Eddie Vedder played two solo shows in Washington DC this past weekend and yours truly did NOT go to either one. Somewhere somebody named Erin is proud of me.

From this point forward, I'm going to list the song that's playing on my iPod when I get to the end of the post. Why? I'm not really sure, but since 99% of my posts will be made while I have my iPod playing, I thought it would be fun to keep track. For the record, there are currently 10,396 songs on my iPod and right now it's playing...

"Metal Heart" by Cat Power from the album "Moon Pix"

All these words that I hear spoken... just promises broken now

Hey look at that! Today is the 27th and my last entry was on the 29th, so I appear to be right on schedule.

I did make it to the Pearl Jam shows last week so that was a blast as always. Seeing Ed pull some 13-year old kid on stage to jam on "All Along the Watchtower" (with his guitar no less) was really cool. I couldn't help but think that how for the rest of his life he can tell his friends that he was on stage with Pearl Jam. Anyways, here he is in all of his glory:



This makes a total of 18 times I've seen them now and I have to say the DC show on Sunday was probably the best overall with the VA Beach somewhere in the 10-18 range.

Our house is still treating us well. Yes there are boxes that still need to be unpacked but overall things are in great shape. There will be a trip to Lowe's this weekend to get a weedeater and some yardwork tools, so that should be fun.

Our vacation to the beach is coming up next week. To say that I'm anticipating a long road trip with our son the day after the 4th of July may be an exaggeration, but I know once we get there and settled in it's going to be great.

I purchased a PS3 earlier this month, so the circle is now complete. While it doesn't have a ton of games to offer that I can't already play on my 360, it's nice to have a Blu-Ray player so we can add to our HD-DVD collection.

I won't be making any more promises about how often I will visit, especially with a vacation right around the corner - but here's hoping I can find some consistency.

There's so much to tell you, so little time...

Well rather than wait an entire month to catch up on things, I figured since it was a slow day at work that I would remind myself of what this whole blogging thing is like. I won't use the fact that I haven't had internet at home for the last couple of weeks as an excuse, since the majority of what little I have done on here has been while I'm at work.

So anyways...

We were able to get out of our old house and into our new one without any major incidents. The moving itself was a pain, but that's unavoidable. Had it not been for some great friends and awesome family, I really don't think we would have survived or been out in time. We still have a good number of boxes that we haven't gone through and we've been there almost two weeks.

But these past two weeks have been soooooooo nice...

This is probably the third time in my life that I feel like I have really accomplished something. The first was marrying my wife who is probably out of my league and the second was becoming a father when our son was born (I'm listing these in strict chronological order in case you haven't figured that out). I mean I always had plenty of "things" growing up and had a good roof over my head, but I really feel like I'm living in someone else's house right now. Just to be clear, it's not THAT extravagant. It's just SO much nicer than our first home it feels like we're both out of our league right now.

There's still a lot to be done as we haven't even brought our dogs home yet, but for me it has made our last house a distant memory.

I'll leave it at that for now, but I promise there will be more to come for those of you literally on the edge of your seat.

Your Light Made Us Stars...

I found out today that a guy that I went to school with who was a couple of years behind me passed away yesterday. He was found in his bed and apparently died in his sleep. I last saw him at a friend's wedding and he was as nice as ever. He used to come into the music store I worked at for so long and would talk music with me. He truly could light up a room and was genuinely a super-nice guy. I wish I had a better way to honor him, but for now here is his Facebook page where others are sharing their thoughts:

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=507026673

Livin' After Midnight...

Yesterday brought with it some fun and interesting events. The coolest thing by far was taking little Xavier to his first baseball game (Thanks for the tix, Johnny!). As soon as we stepped foot out of the car a foul ball came rolling right to us so we immediately had a neat little souvenir to remember the event by and to date accordingly. The Hillcats did lose 8-7, but they were down 8-1 in the 8th inning, so they made a great game of it and almost pulled off an amazing comeback. All in all it was a good time had by all.

About 15 minutes after we got home, our power went out. Now we noticed some police cars up the street when we got home but figured that there was just an accident. It turns out that electric poles can just ignite and catch fire, leaving almost 1000 people in the dark. It wasn't that big of a deal since Xavier was already asleep and we have already eaten, but it was still annoying to know that I would have to set the majority of our clocks again.

Now I have my hobbies like anyone, but the one I get the most grief for (not necessarily from my wife, for the record) is playing video games. Never mind the fact that the average age of a gamer is now over 30, it is still viewed by many as being for kids and that it's an immature waste of time. Regardless, I only play at night after everyone is on bed, so I'm not taking time away from anything else. Well last night marked the midnight release of Grand Theft Auto IV, and even though I knew I would be going to bed almost immediately after I got home IF I did go out, I am still fascinated at these events and always end up going, even at the last minute like I did last night (our power came on at 11:57, which ended up motivating me to go).

If nothing else, going to these midnight sales reassures me that I am certainly not the only one dumb enough to go out at a crazy time to pick up a game that I had reserved and that would still be there the next day. And it definitely reassures me that I'm not the oldest guy around playing video games. I'm curious as to what the early sales numbers are for this game, as many have predicted that it will keep people from going to see the first "blockbuster" in theaters this year, Iron Man. If this is true then it just further cements the legitimacy of video games as entertainment and art, just like music and movies. It was a bit alarming to hear people talking about how they were planning to stay up for hours on end or calling in sick to work just to play the stupid thing. I may be guilty to some degree for being there in the first place, but for me it's more about seeing some familiar faces that I no longer run into since I have stepped out of the world of retail. And yes, I was in bed within 15 minutes of getting home.

It's so easy, easy...

Well it turns out that this whole house ordeal may end up getting done almost as quick as the pregnancy, so I'm hoping that my wife's next project is for us to win the lottery.

And yes, the house is ours and papers will probably have to be signed daily for a while to get everything completed for the sale of our house and the purchase of the new one, but there will be a day when all will be said and done where we will just be able to sit down in our new home and reflect on what we accomplished in a ridiculous short period of time.

I hope you like it babe, because we're not doing this again unless Xavier makes us rich one day.

The waiting is the hardest part...

Well, a lot has happened since I last chimed in, so let's start from the the top.

All that hard work that weekend seems to have paid off as we sold our house after only two days on the market. Woo-hoo!!!, right? The problem is, we didn't go house-hunting because the last time we put our house on the market, nobody made a single offer in over two months, so we figured it was be silly to get hooked on a house only to be disappointed and not able to buy it. We figured that it would be a nice position to be in after what we went through last time. Now let me address a vicious rumor that's going around the news regarding the current state of real estate. At least in the Lynchburg area, it is NOT dead. In fact, it seems to be a super-awesome, never-been-a-better-time-than-now, ideal time to buy AND sell a house. The first 3 or 4 houses we asked our realtor to look at were all under contract within days of being on the market, so there you go.

Now after looking at a number of houses last weekend, we finally decided on the first one to make an offer on. Now the catch is that someone else had put a contract on it, but they haven't sold there house yet. Since we have sold ours, we would like to think that gives us the edge (the sellers agree), but the other buyer has 48 hours to decide if they want to risk paying two mortgages for however long or to just let it go to us.

So the 48 hours will be up tomorrow morning at 9:45. At that time we will either be on our way to actually pulling this off in a very fast manner, or back at square one. I for one hope that I can start memorizing what our new address will be at approximately 9:46.