Lunchtime phone call

Me: Hi, Son.
Son: Hello, daddy.
Son: Are you a coppaju, daddy?
Me: I don't know what that means.
Son: (mumbles explanation)
Me: What was that?
Son: Daddy?
Me: Yes son?
Son: I love you, daddy.
Me: I love you, too.
Son: Daddy?
Me: Yes son?
Son: What are you doing?
Me: I am at the office.

( Son puts phone down, wanders away)

Son: (From some distance away) What are these, daddy?
Me: I can't see what you are holding.
Son: What the white one is, daddy?
Me: I can't see what you are talking about.
Son: (Returns to phone) What's the one I'm pointing at?
Me: I cannot see what you are pointing at.
Son: OK Daddy, Bye.
Me: Bye.

4-0

My thirties were a roller coaster ride, a real screamer at times. It will be interesting to see what my fourties are like. I'm still two years younger than my dad was when I was born.

Here is what I wrote to myself last year via futureme:

Dear FutureMe,

Today is my 39th Birthday. I hope that you have been keeping up the good work. By the time you get this I will be 40, I guess. What an age! You are finally old enough that you could just keel over dead one day and nobody would be shocked. Anyway, make the most of your special day. Because they are numbered.

You and your wife celebrated your 5th wedding anniversary a couple of days ago. She has been approved for citizenship and is waiting to take her oath.

Your son is 4 years old. He is starting preschool this fall. It has been taking forever to toilet train him but at long last there is light at the end of the tunnel. He is very intelligent and constantly challenges you by saying the opposite of what you are trying to teach him (E.g., "I want to smoke cigarettes!" "Makeup is for boys.") and watching you for your response. He is also obsessed with his civil liberties and continually asks to go to the park ("Go parking"), the mall, and any other store that has ever handed out a free balloon.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. You are currently memorizing this scripture:

Romans 12:1-2
1Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God - this is your spiritual act of worship.

2Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is - his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Do you still remember it?

I do!

Yonder Can

"Yessuh, they're a fine bunch a boys. They sang in the yonder can and skeedadled."

"Hey mister! I don't mean to be tellin' tales out of school, but there's a feller in there that'll pay you ten dollars if you sing into his can."

"These boys is not white! These boys is not white! They ain't even old timey!"

-Assorted Characters from O Brother Where Art Thou?

Yesterday our little band had the opportunity to record at the Institute of Production and Recording in Minneapolis, MN (Across the street from this place). A friend of a friend is going to school there and needed a guinea pig for his project. Well we were it! It meant four hours of FREE studio time for us to crank out some songs.

They recorded us on this great big 36-channel Digidesign system.

I pretended to know what I was doing, but...

Really it was these guys who were the masterminds.

I had no idea that recording involved so much time sitting around,
waiting for the techs to get the levels right.

Eventually we got to play.

While they were setting up to do the vocal tracks,
I took some photos of the guitars.

Here are some shots of the singers setting up in the isolation booth:

This is a poor-quality video I shot of the singers laying down a vocal track. You cannot hear the instrument playback that they were singing along to.

And when we exited the studio,
the Minneapolis skyline greeted us!

Stay tuned for when we get our songs back from production.

Queasy Rider

It all started with a storm.

Last Friday night as I was cooking dinner for my family a big thunderstorm system moved through our area, wreaking havoc on small towns west of the metro. Fortunately for me our community was unscathed. A few hours later I was riding shotgun in my friend Al's car, leading a caravan of four cars across Wisconsin, with the lightning still receding off to the East.

We were sharing a charter on the "Angler Managment," a 32-foot Trojan, out of Kewaunee, Wisconsin. We arrived in Kewaunee right at 6AM, when our charter was to begin, but because of the recent high winds we decided to delay until 8 to let things die down and to get some breakfast. When a Great Lakes charterboat captain suggests that you wait it out a bit, you don't really argue.

I wish now that I had actually eaten some breakfast in town -- But as it were, I had some greasy sausage sticks and other assorted pogey bait that I had brought along. I munched hungrilly on those sausage sticks as we motored out of the protected harbor. Out on the lake it was better than I expected but still pretty rough seas. After about 15-20 minutes of wave crashing I began to feel very very hot and very very queasy. I looked over at Al and he was worse off than me

I have only been seasick one other time in my life, and it also involved a hastily-scarfed breakfast of dubious components. I had to hurl a couple of cookies over the side but by and large held together. Thankfully my friend Faron had some Dramamine with him.

The first four hours of our charter were fruitless. In all that time we had one bite, which my friend Jet lost. It wasn't for a lack of trying; the skipper threw everything he had in the water save for Al's puke bucket. It was getting to be so bad that I suggested that we anchor the boat and fish with bobbers. About then the next bite hit. I was up.

At first I thought I was into the fish of a lifetime. He certainly felt that way. But as it turned out there was a problem with the planer board on my line, and I was basically trying to reel in my fish with the planer board turned sideways in the water. Making it worse we were still maintining trolling speed; so once the skipper saw what was wrong he slowed up the boat a bit and that helped. I boated the first fish of the day, about a 7 or 8 pound king.

The action picked up after that, and Jay, Faron and Al each boated fish. It was starting to look like things were picking up, but when we got back to the top of the order, it was Jet's turn and we didn't get anymore bites. So in the end we returned to port and Jet was empty-handed. Poor guy.


Here is the full group of us. From Left to right: Jeremy, Siegfried, Faron, Yours Truly, Jay, Al and Jet.

Siegfried and Jeremy were on a second boat with Sieg's grandkids. They boated three, so they didn't do much better. We're a pretty diverse group: A South African, a German, three Americans and Two Filipinos.

Here's a photo of yours truly with the skipper and his mate. Ironically the guy dressed for fish cleaning is the skipper, and the more 'skipperly'-looking fellow on the right is the mate.





Here is a picture of Faron and his King.
Faron took a lot more pictures than I did (I wasn't really in the mood once I started puking) so maybe he will get some more photos for me to post at a later date.









Here's me with my king.
Easily the smallest fish, he was pretty easy to find at the bottom of the cooler.








Big or no,
he sure did make for a tasty dinner.









Charter fishing is not really fishing.
Oh, some fishing does go on, but it is the skipper and the mate who do all that. That's what you pay them for. All you do on a charter is reel fish in. If there aren't any fish to reel in, then all you are left with is pretty much an 85 dollar an hour boat ride. I booked this trip before I knew that I was getting my boat. I probably wouldn't have gone if I hadn't already committed a non-refundable deposit. I would have spent the money fishing around home.

I function better as my own skipper, and my rates are more reasonable.

Independence Day Massacre

On July 4 during the day I did a little yard work, which included hosing off the cobwebs & dust from around our entry way and the patio area out back. I rinsed everything down to ground level and then used the hose to wash it all away.

Well apparently this activity rubbed somebody the wrong way:

I have never been afraid of the local ants found in Minnesota, but I am not ashamed to admit that bugs in general creep me out, and bugs around my home mortify me. If you listen to the audio closely you can hear my Darth Vader-like breathing. Not so much like an ominous tough guy, more like Woody Allen, having a panic attack.

Needless to say, shortly after the video was shot I went inside and got my WMD and nuked those suckers. I beat my fist on my chest in a territorial display and bellowed, "This is MY House! MY House!"

I don't know what the ants thought of it, but my neighbors got the idea.

One of the things that always bothered me about Darth Vader was that clearly the guy was intubated, yet he was able to speak clearly. Based on what was shown at the end of Return of the Jedi, Darth Vader was apparently the recipient of a tracheotomy, since obviously no tubes were running into his mouth. Still the guy could not only talk, but enunciate like nobody's business.

I get it that the deep voice was an amplified projection with special effects to sound scary, OK? What I mean is that the amplified projection should have sounded like a scary amplified person who was trying to talk with a hole in his larynx. But I guess that wouldn't have sounded so scary. Weird that a civilization capable of greater than light speed travel and genetic cloning would have to rely on bionics to put people back together.

That night at the local fireworks display retribution was exacted upon me and my family. Later the boy and I slept out in the tent in the back yard as an intermediate step in the slow transition to a lifetime of camping. We lay together, safe inside the netting and fell asleep as father and son, looking at the stars and dreaming of galaxies far far away.