Hows my little Orchestra?

Last night my Parents took the kids and their favorite significant others to behold the spectacle that is The Trans-Siberian Orchestra.

If the average age of the audience wasn't 40+ I would have fully expected all of the haze at the end of the show to be secondhand smoke of the herbal sort...

That said the concert was stellar, perhaps...interstellar... At first I had trouble believing that it was a live show because there were live strings and singers and guitars and a produced light show that floored me from beginning to end. Sometime before the end I found myself thinking wow, this is really well orchestrated, between the dancers the musicians, the lights and the music itself I was impressed, then realized since the band has Orchestra in its name it should be no less magnificent than it was. As you can see from my disjointed sentences I'm having a difficult time describing my concert experiences past enjoyable. Here are some photos from the show, hopefully you will get the idea.








One of the best photo of the night (of 161)







The weekend of the new year expect to see Laura and I in the land of ten thousand lakes. I feel like a boot and some Hefe...Care to join us for a bit of Polka?

Hows my little Excitement?

I am such a nerd.

Flogging Molly tickets went on sale for the congress theater in Chicago today at 10am. By 10:15 I had a pair secured in my name.

Of course I can't forget to mention the show is on St. Patrick's Day! It's going to be a sweaty good time, maybe I'll meet em again!

Hows my little tool?

All little tool jokes aside...

I've done it and I even now a week afterward, still can not believe what I've done. The dastardly deed has been pondered, questioned, answered, and argued over. I decided to make the leap and just go for it, after all, there really isn't that much harm in obtaining one of these:




As some of you might know I made a gamble on using body wash in the shower a few years back, to my surprise it was an invigorating success compared with the traditional shower bar soap. My favorite new excitement from this transition was while lathering myself up (which at the time mysteriously my fellow roomies did not do [didn't realize I wrote that in 2006, holy crap that took forever to find]) I was touching my entire body with my lathered hands, while I am familiar with my body I was not familiar with it on this new wonderfully smelling and sudsy experience. Of course since I thought touching myself all over was the bees knees I didn't want a loofah, which was fine, obviously I couldn't be the only loofah owner in a house dominated by women.

Since that status has now changed I've thought back to the rumors of males around the world owning loofahs and enjoying the cleaning experience associated with them. Since I was a skeptic I decided that since I was going to be buying a loofah I needed to find the most manly showering tool possible, a Black Loofah. While at the local Wal-Mart (ps that new phrase they are using...Awesome![pps, I still don't feel comfy in one of their stores])I found an even manlier version...Black AND Gray. Awesome.

My first loofahing experience...Borderline painful, I know females go through several circles of pain to achieve beauty, this step I was not prepared for. Using my loofah for the first time was like taking a shower with a cheese grater made of sandpaper. I swear my skin screamed while it was being slowly shredded off with each pass. I then added more lubricating wash and found it to be a less painful experience, I then thanked god. Lesson Learned.

In a typical shower soaping session I will begin with my arms, then my chest, belly, one leg then the other, around the twig and berries, and to my back, then finally my rump.

With the exception of my back the last two steps of the looftastic shower began. To all men who are curious and just can't quite scratch their kids just right in the morning, INVEST IN THIS TOOL! The loofahs skin peeling qualities also make it the perfect instrument for nut/chode scratching. It was during this first experience I realized that if I were a cat I would purr, If I were a canine my back leg would uncontrollably shake, and if I were a lion I would roar. Since I am man I simply smiled, Hung my new favorite washing mechanism on the wall and began anticipating my next shower event.

Hows my little Wilderness Survivor?

Howdy Kids!


Life has been a grand adventure lately! A couple of weekends ago Laura and I babysat Chip and what a great time it was, I got a great chance to take a nap with him and we had a really splendid time playing in the fall foliage Check out these pics of the fun!






This past weekend was grand too, we headed north to the Wisconsin Dells to hang out at a sweet place called the wilderness. If you haven't heard of it or been there it is quite the sight. First off it's huge, probaby comparable to the UMD Campus easily, with three indoor waterparks and I'm sure more than one outdoor one it is massive. And tons of fun, I couldn't even sleep the night before because I was so excited, I woke up at 6:30am just eager to start sliding. But boy were my rump and hips tight yesterday from climbing so many stairs. Favorite ride I could have done 100 times, The Hurricane, it was tragic the wait was so long for it though. The real highlight of the adventure was our room, we decided on a Deluxe Suite for the four of us. Definately the way to go because we had several places to sit stand cook eat and drink, and most importantly two separate rooms to sleep in. HOT!

Sunday Laura and I decided to check out the "Lake" Delton area, many of you might remember from earlier this summer the lake just deciding it didn't like it's 80 year old man made walls and took off for the summer, taking several houses boats and many other things with it. If you don't remember Check out this:

You only need to watch the first half.



as you can see it wasn't a small chunk of land that washed away...quite the flood. Here is what it looks like now!

It pretty much looks like sandy a prairie




Here is the road that washed away allowing the lake to enter the river.


Even though Laura and I didn't know what it looked like before we still had lots of trouble imagining the entire lake just flooding out into the river, incomprehensible. From what we saw though they are nearly done with a new apparently bigger and better spillway to prevent future occurrences of this and the road was all done, I guess they might begin filling it back up this winter if all goes well. Check out the article HERE if you care.



and....WE GOT A NEW COUCH!
It is huge and full of awesomeness, I can lay out entirely on it without touching either arm, an impressive feat for this guy here. And today it is snowing like crazy, giving me blind hope that it might stay for more than 30 seconds. Life from Oakwood is grand.

Hows my little Changling?

Last night Laura and I decided we were close enough to Chicago to check out Obama's Grant Park Rally. And what a great idea it was.



After work we voted (Laura's first Prez Election!) and headed up to the windy city. We parked at Midway Airport and took the "el" downtown and met up with my pal Henry and his lovely girlfriend Clare...not after at least 35 failed phone calls and several useless shouts.

As for the night...it was stellar we got to the park just in time to hoot with the other 240 thousand people when the big jumbo monitors called Obama's victory. It was fantastic to be with such a large amount of people in the park sharing this historical event with one another as well as with the president elect himself. We encountered young and old, all sorts of different ethnicities, wealthy, poor, hippies and suits. The people watching was fantastic.

The energy within the crowd flowed through us and felt amazing. We were united because of one man and his ability to bring about a spark in millions of hearts. Last night as long as he won nothing bad could have happened in Grant Park. I was thrilled to be united with so many complete strangers. I would be a liar if I said that last nights events and experience didn't change me somehow. I'm not sure how yet but I keep thinking about the evening and how united so many different people are and were, which is a new feeling in America.

After his fantastic speech we took off hoping to beat the traffic, but since I think most of the people celebrating were from downtown there wasn't much of it where we were heading. I do want to commend the CTA with how efficient they were at moving so many thousands of people at once without a hitch (that I saw). It helped that the crowd was docile and extremely well behaved. That was probably because it was announced that every officer in Chicago would be working and vacations were canceled. All of which looked ready for a riot to break out at any moment. But despite the omnipresent patrolmen the reefer in the air was frequent and strong, which was quite surprising. We even spotted a sniper, which was super cool.

Congratulations America I look forward to a new chapter in our political lives. Lets just hope Bush doesn't "find" any more nukes in some other oil producing country in the next seventy days.

Check out some of my photos! most are best viewed at the tiny size right here:







Proof You can meet your friends at a Giant Political Rally:

Hows my little bi-report?

Alright now for my bi-yearly First Tuesday after the First Monday election ramble.

You NEED to VOTE.

I would be lying if I said I didn't care who you voted for but really, I don't too much as long as you get out somehow and vote for who you think could run your country best in your eyes. This election is an important one in the fact that it will be the first time Americans will have a minority or a female in the highest office of the state. There are also several other factors that you might be aware of which I hope everyone is aware of. BUT The worst kind of vote you can cast is an uneducated one, there are several un-biased sources online which will help you decide who your candidate should be.

I myself am voting for the progressive candidate, one who has promised to shake things up. I've voted blue in the past and it got me a 700 billion dollar tax bill that I have to pay, I'm not excited about it whatsoever, and that has influenced some decisions. Who ever wins though I'm confident they will be able to help change America for the better. (If not I'll be learning french and the art of wine somewhere in Bordeaux)

Look for me on TV tomorrow night though, Laura and I will be in Chicago hopefully celebrating.