Busy July

Our month of adventures (and spending!) continues. We just got settled back home from a weekend in Pittsburgh. What a lovely city it is. We were really impressed. We spent Sunday at PNC Park to see the final game of the first half of the MLB season there and my Mets won the last of the three game set. We originally had outfield seats but we would have melted has we stayed there. Instead we headed up to the 300 section under shade. Here was our view

Those sunny seats in the lower right hand corner of the photo were our assigned seats. Technically there were better than where we sat, but we were comfy and had a great view of the game. Dillon Gee was fantastic and I have now seen the Mets three times this year and they won each time. What's ridiculous about this is that the three years I lived in Jersey I saw them live a total of two times. Really missed out on being a baseball geek during my time there. I guess it's cause I thought it would last longer than it did.

Date Night!

The wife and I were fortunate enough to land an overnight babysitter for our kids (who are not babies anymore!) and we whisked off to Philly for an outdoor concert. The openers were my favorite band Yo La Tengo and the headliners were Belle & Sebastian who are on tour for no particular reason since they have no new songs to back. It was my first time seeing B & S (about my 10th for YLT) and it was a blast. Fun to be out with the wife, beautiful view of the downtown skyline, good beer, good food, GREAT music. Below are a couple of tastes of what we experienced last night.

This is a live version of the last song from YLT's most recent album. The tune is called Before we Run and they played a beautiful version of it last night.

This is a crazy video of Your Cover's Blown one of the highlights of last night's set. There were many.

Woke up super early to drive back home but it was well worth it. Humid, sweaty, bouncy, night of singing, dancing, and clapping along.

Baseball Summer

So, we found out relatively late in the planning game that the lovely wife would not only have the 4th off, but also the 5th as well. We decided to get out of the valley for a little family trip. We headed to Aberdeen to catch a 4th of July baseball game between the Ironbirds and the Brooklyn Cyclones. The home team won and one of their players (a 19 yr old 1B named Hector Veloz) put on a power show with 2 HR and 4 RBI. We stayed the whole game and caught a fireworks display at the end of the night. The next day we made it to Baltimore and visited the national aquarium there. Had a great time, but we were not the only ones with the idea of visiting there for the holiday weekend. It was packed! Visited family in Harrisburg on the way back and we are now recuperating with a lazy lazy family day at home. I have now visited four ballparks this summer (our hometown Rail Riders, the Phillies, the Phillies' AAA team in Lehigh Valley, and now Cal Ripken Stadium) and we are visiting another one next week as we head to Pittsburgh. Add in a visit to Holman Stadium while I am in FLA and it's looking like a great baseball summer for me. There's still an outside chance of a Binghamton game as well as I'd love to see Noah Syndergaard before he heads to Vegas.

Steve and Edie

Here is a lovely performance on one of the songs they played last night

Highs and Lows

Yesterday I had the opportunity to go out with my lovely wife and with some good friends to see Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers play. We went out for snacks and drinks and then were treated to a fantastic show. Steve Martin recently released an album with Edie Brickell and she joined the band for a number of songs. Great night, the band played like crazy, Steve peppered some comedy in between songs and we rejoined our pals after the show. While we were out my phone buzzed and it was my little brother calling. I knew I could not talk at length so I let the call go to voicemail. When we got home I checked my voicemail and my email. Well, my joyous feeling from the evening disappeared quickly as I was notified that my old pal and boss from my record store geek days died of a heart attack yesterday. On my brother's message he mentioned that he heard this news through social media. I have, for some reasons I think I can articulate and for others that I cannot make sense of completely, avoided this world. Last night, I was sad about the news regarding Chaz as well as the fact that I was not tapped into a world where people would be sharing lovely memories of the man. My friend that sent me the news article knows I am not part of that world and I appreciate him sending me the news. Here is a passage regarding my friend Chaz - this piece is written by another old record store pal Gary Gordon

Charlie "Chaz" Scales, also not in Bill's article, is still one of Gainesville's most incredible guitarists. I met Chaz at The Alibi when the Archer Road Band was playing there. He came in with the lady who would later be my wife (now ex). Chaz replaced me in the Archer Road Band when I quit. A year later I hired him to work at Hyde & Zeke Records when I was manager. A few years later he became manager after I left. Now he owns the place. We worked together a lot in various versions of The Archer Road Band in the late 80s (and in The Band That Never Was with Don David and Bob Harris) and to this day I have no idea how he thinks on guitar. He is clever, inventive and thoroughly unpredictable. He plays the tune. He's got the right tone. But his leads are his leads, like no one else. Enjoyable, moody, exciting, climactic. It is wonderful to hear him play.

Feels Like Starting Over

So, we've asked the boy to take up the discipline of writing regularly to record his ideas and keep his grandparents posted on life. He has encouraged me to start doing the same again. July started yesterday, feels like as good a reason as any to start working on this myself. I think I can find 5 - 10 minutes every few days to check in with the world. The summer has been more relaxing than I had planned since the class I was supposed to teach got cancelled. As a result, I have taken more time away from work than I usually do and I am already thinking ahead to make sure that I start doing some of the prep I have promised myself I'd do. I am going into my fourth year here (!!!) and will be teaching Stats for the fourth time. I am comfortable enough with the course now that I can start doing some serious advance prep for it. We've had some local fun with friends recently and are starting a month of family adventures this weekend with a Maryland trip. I'll post about it after we return. Here are some recent family photos.

Winter weary

This is what our building looks like today. On Friday afternoon it was in the 60s and people were outside playing frisbee and throwing a baseball around. This is what kids were doing today. I would wave a white flag but no one would be able to see it. Oh yeah, it's another snow day where school is canceled. Either four or five now for the high school, I am too tired to remember the count.