I'd rather be montaging

4:54 is where the defining moment of the music starts. Check it.

The music during the fireworks display tonight reminded me of this from last week. 

I finally found it on the web. One of my favorites, mostly the last half.

Aldi

Things I like about Aldi:

1) If you manage to spend $100 there, I guarantee you it won't fit in one basket.
2) If it takes more than 45 minutes to shop there, something is wrong.
3) PAPER BAGS! Welcome back old friend....
4) You have to bag your own groceries, which on the surface sounds not so great, having done it myself I will say it's much easier than the archaic lazy suzzanne bag setup WM has. It's not as fun as having someone from Kroger do it for you, but I don't mind it at Aldi.
5)The store has all of the staples in a very small footprint - basically you don't feel like you've been thru a Gauntlet when you get to the car.

"We are!!??"

We watched the olympics a lot this week. There were a lot of political ads during the commercials. My 7 yr old is coloring while she lays in the floor, she's waiting on Nastia Liuken to come back on. A Mccain ad that has played about 3 times already comes on, and about half way thru it the voice over says "we're worse off than we were 4 years ago". 

All of a sudden coloring stops and I hear "WE ARE??!!" 

This is news to her, and she's quite surprised by it. I get an unexpected laugh and smile out of her sudden concern for such matters. The tone in which she asks it and the look on her face when she's looking back at me for confirmation suggests that she thinks the speaker is full of crap.

In her world, this kind of statement makes no sense.

I can tell you that when your child confirms everything is okay in their world, it makes the "worse off" adult stuff seem not so bad. 

It happened again last night. This is about the 6th time in a year. Each time has its own visuals and subtle differences but the overall theme is the same. 

This time, I'm 2 stories in the air overlooking Battery Park. I'ts an exciting ride, but I'm on more for the view it provides than the thrill. Everything is in color which is unusual for my unconscious adventures. It's as if someone has picked up the 4 story sphere-ride from Navy Pier and rolled it in front of her to amuse her or distract her from her steady gaze over the water. She is unflinching as she holds tight to her document and light. The friends I have just met are motioning for me below with excitement. It's as if they have just got up on Christmas morning and they want to race me to the tree. As my basket climbs to the top I grab the railing to brace myself and as my head and shoulders rotate my eyes blaze past her.. All I see is the blurred faint trace of light green. I hope she doesn't think that I'm ignoring her and remembers I've shot an SD card full as she modeled for me 3 years ago. Today, I am there to see her big brothers. I almost fall out of the basket looking for them, but like the other 5 times, they are not there. Maybe they are hiding behind the multitude of their other relatives, and besides it's probably to foggy to see them from here. A quick moment of disappointment is replaced with knowing I will join my friends and we will go find them together. As I'm let off the ride, I wake up.

When I was a kid, I would dream almost every night. It was usually good and sometimes bad, but never just average. Now that I have aged, I dream less and it's usually just an everyday event with nothing too exciting, good or bad. I don't know why I keep looking for the Twin Towers. For some reason I seem obsessed with them. I do like dreaming about them and the search for them. As I write this, I'm thinking perhaps it could be that I'm searching for life before 9-11. Not the low end security at Memphis International, or gas at $2/gal, or the economy or even the war issues. A certain innocence to life in my own mind, perhaps even an oblivious approach to the hard facts of life. Even in the age of technology, the more I know, the more I sometimes wish I didn't know.

I don't know what the latest is with the Freedom Towers, but perhaps they will bring me some visual closure with my own 9-11 timeline.

Blog Continues with Marlowe's

The Apple blog I was going to use is too much trouble. Imagine that. So, I will continue to post here.
It was death week in Memphis. Usually I wouldn't go near the Graceland area, but one of my new customers is on EPB, and I needed to go see them. I was with a co-worker in from Nashville. He had heard about a Nike Outlet Store and wanted to go. This is a great place to buy Nike brand shoes or shirts of any kind at a great price. Not the greatest area of town, but worth it if you like Nike clothes.

I had heard about Marlowe's restaurant on Food Network. On TV the placed looked stuffed with Elvis memorabilia and some good Memphis food. I am always looking for a new place to eat so we went. From the outside we saw 3 pink limos and there was only 1 other car in the parking lot. Taking this as a bad sign at 11:45 we almost left. I noticed a sign saying "now open at noon for lunch" so we went in. Turns out that they just started opening for lunch and we were a little early. The service was great and the food was good. The waiter recommended the ribs before we even looked at the menu. They fell off the bone and the sauce was good. Flavor left a little to be desired but was still pretty decent. The prices were in line with the value and I will go back at least once more to see if they have the official Elvis peanut butter and naner sandwich with 2 sticks of butter on the menu.

The attached picture was from Google Images.

Last Post Here

New blog site on the way. Will post address here in a few days.

107 heat index

Woa, is it hot. Me and the kids went swimming this afternoon. It's about the only thing you can do in this kind of heat. I saw some lady running for exercise on the way home. I guess she is trying to see if she can cheat death.

The water wasn't cold at all so we got snowcones to cool off more. I got a strawberry cheesecake with cream on top. It's still my favorite kind.

We had to leave 15 minutes early because there was an unusual clap of thunder and they closed the pool. Still no rain but it's clouding up.

Should be an interesting week at work. Stay tuned..

Vacation Day

I took yesterday off. What a day!

First I started working on getting everything to "IN". It's an organization concept from the Getting things Done book I recently read.  It says that if you will get all of your stuff organized into a system that he gives you the workflow for, then your mind will no longer be concerned with all of your internal lists. It works! I'm not even done yet but just starting the process has made a big difference.

Second, I decided to use the Massage gift certificate that I got for Father's Day. Massage Envy in Collierville is a great place. I've been here once before and it was a worth the trip, but nothing like this time. I don't know if the experience changes with the massage therapist, or if I was just more tensed up than last time. It's probably both but I was feeling no pain when I left there yesterday. It was unbelievable how much better I felt and even how much better I could breathe. It wouldn't take much more convincing to get me to go on a regular basis. Of course that is exactly what they want you to do, claiming on their literature that once a month is good for your health. I'm starting to agree.

Last, we went out for ice cream after the sun went down, which was about 8:30. We took the dogs because at Brusters they give you a doggie scoop. A lot of people were there. One group showed up with a collie about 10 times the size of our dogs. Our dogs immediately started barking and going into attack mode. The collie stood still looked at them and had a look on his face like.. "riiiight"

This morning I woke up to a very loud edger being used by my neighbor we have correctly named "tool man". This guy never goes inside. He's always in the garage or the yard and he has every tool known to man. The other day when the storm came and the power went out - 5 minutes into the darkness I hear this distant hum of a large air conditioner. I looked out the only thing I see, is his house lit up like Christmas. Tool man's got a generator going. This pissed me off for some reason, I guess I was jealous. This morning I actually enjoyed the 7:30 wake up call from his edger. I like a good Saturday workday and the sites and sounds that go with it.

Stormy night

These are regular shots - no photoshop or filters.

We had some really bad lightning and thunder last night.

I took these pictures after everything was over. 

Power was out for 2 hours.