New Year's Eve

We have a tradition on new year's eve -- we go to the market to the mongolian bbq early, then go see the fireworks, which are at 7. i guess omaha is really that provincial that we have the fireworks at 7 instead of midnight like real people -- it's for the families. but anyway, that way we can get home before there are too many crazies out and then just watch tv or something until midnight, if gordi can stay up until midnight. so that's what we did again. and the mongolian bbq was great. and the fireworks were amazing. we were very close and they were all very boomy. the concussions set off all the car alarms in the area -- so we had noisemakers all around, from the fireworks and from all the car alarms. it was cool. then came home and watched the ball drop in times square at 11 (central time) and gordi did fall asleep before midnight but at midnight (central time) i made sure he got a new year's kiss. happy new year.

i've unofficially started Oscar-quest. the nominations do not come out until January 22 so i have to guess what might be nominated. i'm looking at the Golden Globes as possibilities and checking out the buzz. This week i saw Slumdog Millionaire, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and Milk. and i thought they were all great and Oscar-worthy. Slumdog Millionaire really blew me away. it's about a poor kid from the slums of Mumbai who gets on a game show and knows all the answers. the host thinks he must be cheating, because how could an uneducated kid from the slums know this stuff, but then we see in flashbacks from his life how he knows the stuff. it's fascinating. I had thought Benjamin Button might be hokey, but it wasn't at all. I'd also heard that Kate was great and Brad wasn't all that, but i disagree there too. i thought both acting jobs were wonderful and you really get the sense of the despair at the futility of the situation. and the acting in Milk was great too -- Sean Penn was wonderful in the title role, but Josh Brolin was also amazing as the antagonist, i ended up seeing him as a victim too. Even if these films are not nominated (but they probably will be) i don't regret the time spent at the movies. Last year gordi complained because all the Oscar movies were really depressing, and while all of these have their happy and sadder moments, they are not depressing at all.

bob the bridge

We walked across the Bob bridge today and it was cool. we were singing, "we're on the road to nowhere" while we did it, but we still had fun. it's about a half mile bridge, so parking at lewis and clark landing, walking to the bridge, across the bridge, pausing a minute in Council Bluffs then walking back across the bridge and to the car was about a mile and a half. There were lots of other people on Bob, the bridge to nowhere, along with us. It was really windy, but lots of people were walking, walking with their dogs, riding bikes, skating or skateboarding, pushing people on wheelchairs etc. I can't say for sure it was worth everything it cost, but it seems to be a popular destination for a windy sunday afternoon.

Alice Cooper

My very first concert ever, when i was 13 years old, i went to see Alice Cooper "Welcome to my Nightmare." it set the bar pretty high for future concerts. My second concert, when i was 15, i went to see KISS when they were in full make-up. i've seen tons of concerts since (6 this summer) but i always had a soft spot for Alice, since he was my first. So when i found out he was coming to the casino this summer we bought tickets as soon as they were available. and the show was great! Maybe the best show we've seen this summer (and we saw Ringo and Tom Petty and Neil Diamond). it was outside so they couldn't do quite so much video/lights stuff. but there was action. alice changed costumes at least partially 5 or 6 times (including a bit in a straitjacket). there were 2 'executions' (one followed by a rousing crowd chorus of "i love the dead"). the band was awesome. the lead guitar guy was amazing. Alice's wife and daughters were the backup dancers and they were great. His daughter Calico is the main dancer and choreographer. He sang his big hits ("only Women Bleed," "No More Mr. Nice Guy") some stuff from the new album ("Vengeance is mine") and ended the encore with "Elected." I'd vote for Alice -- he's a troubled man for troubled times!

computer update

ok, i've calmed down a little since my last post. gordi fixed it so my stuff looks way more like it used to. i'm tweaking the preferences to get them the way i like them. there are still a few differences and glitches, but i don't hate the new computer update. and i finally got all my emails out of email limbo and that makes me feel tons better!

computer update

we're updating my computer, and i know it really needs it and it's overdue, but i hate it!! i hate xp. i hate the updated firefox and thunderbird. i hate the updated office. everything looks so weird and ugly. i can't find any of my stuff. every time i want to read an email i have to click like twelve things -- are you sure this isn't junk? if i want to download images i have to add sender to address book -- there's at least 3 more clicks. every time i send an email i have to click whether to send it plain text or html (how outdated is that?) it kept trying to put my new message at the bottom where no one could ever find it. everything used to be so easy; now nothing is easy. i used to love my computer. i loved spending time with my computer. i would spend hours playing on the email, surfing the web. it was like a ballet -- we were in total synch. now everything is icky and awkward. nothing looks right. nothing acts right. i don't have any of my bookmarks. i don't have my address book. i seem to have misplaced the past 4 years of emails. and i really need some of them. i want my old system back. i want my old life back.

concert time

we've been to 4 concerts in less than two weeks. and they were all wonderful. we started out with feist free in the park. and feist was good -- we like that 1234 song fromt the ipod commercials, but i thought the opening acts were at least as good. the first act was a local band called 'the good life' and they were sort of punk-emo and very engaging. then juana molina, an Argentinian folk singer, came on and she had a beautiful voice. we went to her website and got some free downloads, so now we have a free mini-album. www.juanamolina.com
then the next day we headed up toward minneapolis to the ringo starr concert (and i've blogged that trip on my website). the concert was amazing. ringo was wonderful. the all-stars were: edgar winter, billy squier, colin hay (from men at work), hamish stewart (from average white band), gary wright. ringo did some ringo solo stuff and some beatles stuff. all the all-stars did some of their own stuff. everyone played for everyone else. edgar winter did a really kick-ass 'frankenstein.' the concert was two and a half hours solid, and every minute was great, but it would have been great if it was even longer. i would have been happy for some more ringo stuff, but i wouldn't have wanted to miss any of the all-star stuff either. it was all good.
then we had tickets for Tom Petty in Omaha the next week and Steve Winwood opened for him. and Winwood was really great. after the hour opening set Gordi said he thought we got our money's worth from the tickets. but then Tom Petty came on for two hours and it was very great. he did most of his old stuff, and some new stuff (and Steve Winwood's new stuff is very good too. i think we will get his new album). there was a screaming girl sitting behind me, which was the only downside. it was sort of noisy. the show was very energetic. the light show/video show was pretty awesome too.
then i got free tickets to see neil diamond thursday. i had seen neil diamond a few year ago (also on free tickets) so i knew he was a good show. he did not have a stage back, so there were seats right behind the stage too. and he had mostly lights for his show, but they did some additional video stuff on the jumbo-trons too for a couple songs. he sang some new stuff and some old favorites. i liked the old stuff best. and this was weird -- we'd seen 4 shows in the two weeks -- one a festival in the park, three rock bands, and neil diamond -- you would have thought the park festival or the rock bands would be the rowdy crowds with security issues, but at neil diamond, a couple drunk guys came in late and sat in our row, and then in a bit a woman rushed out of the row and came back with two security officers saying that the drunk guys were being rude and obnoxious and pawing her -- but the cops didn't do anything. they looked over and said the guys looked liked they'd quieted down (sure, with the cops there) but the woman was afraid to go back to her seat, so she sat on the aisle for a while and then found an empty chair from someone who left early. and that was the other thing -- people kept coming and going from the diamond concert. no one it seemed got to the concert and stayed -- they were up and down, coming late, leaving early, going to the bathroom, going to get snacks. it was a continuous flow. it was nuts!

woodchuck

we had a woodchuck in the yard today. i call him chuck. he's very cute. it is so amazing to live in the forest and have deer and turkeys and woodchucks wander through our yard, to have raccoons knock on the door every night for supper, to have so many different birds fly past our windows. i really love living in the forest.

crocs

i bought a new pair of crocs today. i now have seven pairs of crocs. i never thought i was all that brand specific (except for pepsi) until i got a pair of crocs and now i won't wear any other shoes. I have black with holes, tan with holes, black no holes, brown winter crocs (with khaki fur lining), black mary janes, and now two pairs of sandals. the new sandals are the cleo style with khaki soles and brown straps. they are way cute. not that i actually need more shoes, but i think maybe i needed these. we've been trying to reorganize my closets and it turns out i really have a lot of clothes and a lot of shoes and just a lot of stuff in general. i have both master bedroom closets plus a linen closet plus a dresser and my stuff is still over flowing. gordi has a small guest room closet and a dresser and room to spare. i also bought a new tshirt today, not that i need more tshirts, except i needed this because it's a beatles tshirt to wear to the ringo concert monday!

remote control

ok, so we wore out the fast forward button on the dvr remote. i guess that's the downside of forwarding through all the commercials. it was getting increasingly harder to get the forward button to work and we were resorting to odd contortions to press the button down and get it to register on the cable box. i had a better touch with it than gordi so i was in charge of the remote especially during Jeopardy! luckily, it was an easy fix. i took the worn out remote to the cable office, and they gave me a new one. we didn't even have to program it. now we are zipping right through the commercials again at break-neck speed!

summer vacation

I am enjoying being on vacation -- too much. This is the first year in forever that i haven't done summer school or something. and i really like not having anything i have to do. and i seem to be filling my time up. i'm not sure how i had time to teach (but i guess i'll figure that out come fall). i'm doing lunch. going to the movies. playing on line -- a lot. i've become obsessed with a goofy little game called dyno-mite. it's hard to describe, but there are dinosaur eggs, and you slingshot the eggs up to the egg board and if your red egg hits two other red eggs they break out and you get points. if the egg board gets down to the bottom, the dinosaur steps on you and the game is over. i know that sounds too weird, but the game is oddly engaging. if i'm not doing anything else, i'm playing dynomite. i should be reading more. i'm working a little on my free lance editing job. i'm doing surveys like crazy for points. i'm spending quite a bit of time earning points for one thing or another. i'm watching my story and the judge shows. i'm doing much of the shopping (and i should be doing more cooking i guess but i'm not). anyway, summer vacation is awesome.

Fourth of July

For the fourth of July we went to fontenelle forest to the board walk overlook to see the fireworks. It was sort of far away, but it was an excellent view. and we could sort of see over the stadium so we could see the 'ground' displays too. the fireworks were beautiful, but maybe even cooler was walking back through the dark forest afterward. the forest was very dark except for the fireflies. we sort of got dizzy watching the fireflies blink and not really knowing what was firefly and what was sky between the trees. we lost any sense of horizon and sometimes couldn't see anything except firefly fire. the forest blinking with fireflies was as cool as the whole fireworks display!

Welcome to my blog

This is my everyday ordinary blog, as opposed to my movie blog or my travel blog. this is where i'll post ordinary day to day stuff. You can still access the other blogs (and this one too) from my website. Welcome to my blog. Welcome to my world.