On this day of Thanks.....

By allaccounts it was a wonderful Thanksgiving! A hardy "Well Done" to Win for the success of hosting his first Thanksgiving in his apartment. The trip down for us (mom, grammy, cleo and myself) began late in the afternoon on Wednesday, an attempt to beat the snow storm that had mom doing her best "Nana" routine. As it turned out, we not only beat the snow, but traveled with it, thru it and along side of it for many miles/hours. Cleo, as expected, didn't notice. All in all, I was glad the next morning, not to have to make the drive. Since we had everyone together, we took the opportunity to turn the visit into a birthday celebration for Emmalee and mom. Complete with "My Little Pony" birthday cake. After a trip to the Barter Theatre (Miracle on 34th Street) for the ladies, and a trip to the Cine-mall for the guys ("Walk The Line") we all sat down for cake and ice cream. I hope you all enjoy the pictues, there are many more that will surface from time to time. I'm especially fond of the 4 laptops going at once. Since Andrew wanted it known that there were 5 laptops going, I'll own up that I did put mine down to take the picture. Happy Andrew??? As always, posts are encouraged and welcomed from all.

Fun on the "Set"

Way to go Andrew....you made Aunt June's day! I thought you would all get a chuckle out of Aunt June's visit to the Nancy Grace set while visiting CNN. This was from the tour she went on with the cousins from Maryland. Looks like a good time was had by all!

News From Browntown

I have just had a very interesting conversation with one of our IBEW members who is getting ready to go to Miss. to help build a "camp" for relief/construction workers. He is going with a Presbyterian organization that has been there since the hurricane hit. He is taking three weeks off from work to go and will be back home just in time for Christmas. His sister just got back after being there for a month doing the same work.

It is so nice to have such an unexpected, inspiring encounter that can restore faith in humanity.

So much of the time I feel like I should be wearing that T-shirt that says "I See Stupid People"...

If You Have An Hour To Spare....

At the risk of sounding like Im shamelessly plugging CNN, I would advise anyone who has a chance to watch the special CNN Presents "Inside The Secret State: An Inside Look At North Korea" at some point.....It's indredible, and worth the hour for sure. I watched it Saturday and got up angry at the folks in DC (as usual) Mom, you'll especially dig it I think....So yeah, check it out, so Win and Dad, go ahead and Tivo that bad boy......

Somebody was up late

News From Browntown

Hmmmm, what were you kids in Atlanta doing up at 3:36am this morning? That's right! even from THIS distance I can see what you're doing :)

News From Browntown

Just got through with my Group Presentation for my writing class. Not only did I have to do group work (I do not play well with others anyway much less from a "distance) we had to do a power point slide presentation - all from a distance! Interesting... anyway, only a couple more major papers and then on to final exams!

News From Browntown

News From Browntown

Clearly there is a need for guidance and assignment here if we are going to get this Turkey off the ground (yuk, yuk...).

Assignments:

Win
1. arrange for 20 or so pounds of cooked or partially cooked turkey (note: better have two 10 pounders than one 20 pounder) to be available on Thanksgiving Day by the time the fam arrives.
2. clean your bathroom
3. let me know how many dishes, utensils, serving and cooking items I need to bring to supplement what you have

Emma
1. bring sweet potato casserole
2. bring blanket and/or sleeping bag for o'nite at Win's
3. miscellaneous fill-in the blank

Andrew
1. Bring whatever cranberry sauce you want for yourself and enough for everyone else to have some too!
2. bring blanket and/or sleeping bag for o'nite at Win's
3. bring Inside Africa tapes ***** Very Important!!!

Grammy
1. bring carrot/raisin salad
2. bring pumpkin pie

Mom
1. bring mashed potatoes, broccoli, succotash, dressing,
2. other miscellaneous groceries

Dad
1. bring the van with us in it

Cleo
1. bring yourself

Any requests that need to be filled or any other suggestions at this point????

Harry Potter Mania!!!

Just wanted to let everyone know, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire opens tomorrow night at midnight. Audrey and I are going to a midnight show at Phipps Plaza. No, we are not wearing costumes. I guess the movie will have to suffice until the new book comes out, and that won't be for a while...

Little Walter? No. John Popper? Maybe....

So I had my second harmonica lesson this morning....The teacher is a nice guy, kinda young, and plays well. (Well, as far as I know he does) He says Im not a complete failure, so who knows, maybe one day Ill be able to play real music. Ive bought two harmonicas so far, since there are 2493490 different ones, in all different keys...I wanna have the carrying case before long, so I can carry them all around and look really cool. Ive been practicing, and Emmalee is asking me every day if I have practiced...I try not to do it to annoy the heck out of Jarrett and Emmalee but they swear it doesnt bother them...Ill see if thats still the case in a month. So I have had two lessons, and he has given me homework, and I like to think Ive made some progress. All I want to do is to be able to play some blues riffs and jam with people when guitars are broken out. Anyway, thats whats going on in my world at the moment, hope everyone has a good weekend......

News From Browntown

Thank heaven Virginia voters showed some sense! It was good to wake up to Governor Kaine et al this a.m.

Voting in Browntown was different. I used a paper ballot instead of the touch screen. I really do not trust the programming of those touch screen machines and there is no back-up in case of malfunction. A poor system designed for failure, devalues the entire voting process and sends a clear message that individual votes don't actually count anyway - and we wonder what has happened to our Democracy??!!

Anyway, the results were good this time around and we can only hope that the Democrats get over their "cult of personality" obsession with Hilary Clinton long enough to nominate a real candidate for '08. Although maybe the country will be such a mess by then that no one will want to win the Presidency - anyone who comes along to mop up after the Bush disaster will certainly be a one-termer. Then the Dems can get over Hilary with a sacrificial candidacy in '08 (she is sure to lose at the national level), watch the "winning" Republican struggle to pull us out of the mess their party created and then Dems can start anew in 2012. If the Dems will use some sense and work to rebuild from the bottom up during the next few election cycles it is possible they could have majorities in both houses of Congress and some other good foundation groundwork (like Va. with Dem. governor) laid out to position for a solid presidential victory in 2012.

It is clear that Republicans can win elections but cannot govern. That has been proven over and over again. Of course, the ethics involved in their "wins" is always questionable but nevertheless...

News From Browntown

The news from Browntown is that it is election day and I have not voted yet! I usually perform that civic duty in the early a.m. but I was running late this morning and so will do so after work. I am thinking it will be weird this year without the big hulking voting machines with the lever-operated curtain! Warren County has touch screen machines according to reports. I guess they have been pre-programmed to vote Republican so I will be voting with a paper ballot as allowed by law.

Dad voted last week absentee as per usual and is now in North Carolina. He is on an extended "tour" this week and will not be home until Tuesday next. His birthday was quiet but nice with phone calls, gift cards and a drive-by visit from Win - he treated us to lunch. The gift card was great- we went to Lowe's over the week-end and blew all but $1.87 of it! It was fun!

I studied most of the week-end for a test that ended up being scheduled for 8:50 P.M last night!! The class is scheduled 7:00 p.m. to 9:50 p.m. and the prof. scheduled it so that we had lecture on new material before the test and then the test! That is much too late for me to take a test and I think I am going to pull a "special needs accommodation" request thing. I cannot work all day long, sit through an hour and half lecture and then still be alert enough to take a test at a time of night when my body clock is telling me it is time for bed!! The prof. himself was yawning through the pre-test lecture. Oh well. Guess I will see if I can get some "accommodation" for future tests in his class. I could have gotten an A if I had been alert enough to have full brain function.

So maybe I want to be a teacher again...

I went to a clinic yesterday with Audrey, and got to meet musicians from the ASO. It was very cool, like meeting rock stars. For the second year in a row, the Atlanta Symphony has had this clinic for middle school students, where they offer tutorial sessions for kids who are auditioning for all-district band. The ASO musicians work with the kids on their solos to help them prepare for their auditions. It's a great program, these middle school kids are getting top-notch small group instruction with professional musicians. I wish I could have participated when I was a kid! So while the kids are doing their clinics, they also have clinics for the band directors. (I posed as a band director for the day). Cinnamon, my bassoon student, went to participate in the clinic. I'm really glad she had that opportunity. The prinicipal bassoonist and the contrabassoonist were both there. They worked with Cinnamon, and I got to network with them. It was very cool. They were impressed with my student (as they should have been) and one of the guys knows Chris Ulffers. I also sat in a clinic with one of the ASO horn players, which was very interesting. It was an excellent day, I was really glad to be able to participate. It was cool to learn about new teaching strategies, it kind of made me wish I had students to use them on... until Audrey got trapped by one of her crazy band parents. That brought me back to reality.

Vegas Pics-Only Took 15 Tries

News From Browntown

Viva Las Vegas....Well, Not Really, This Place Is Lame

Well, I didnt have internet access at the ultra classy Sahara Hotel (complete with roller coaster that ran around the place at all hours of the night) so I am going to try and recap all the festivities while I sit here in the airport enjoying the fruits of their wireless network. Ill start by saying this: if not for the bsolutely incredible amount of music that was going on here this week, I would have hated the trip. The city is a dump, it's glittery, it's too flashy, and Kacey and I decided that the mantra among rela estate developers is nothing more than "Make it bigger and glitzier than that one"-so with that said, here is a rough blow by blow of the trip:

Day One: Arrive in Denver, then off to Vegas, where I am three hours earlier than the folks coming from California. Kacey arrives, my sleep pattern is ALL KINDS of wack....We go to the Jimmy Buffett Margaritaville, and watch the strip from the balcony. Interesting, to say the least. Then its back to the hotel, where we kind of set the place up, and Kacey's good friend Emily from SD shows up. Emily is actualy from WV as well, and happens to live in the same complex as Kacey. Really cool girl, and her boyfriend, a Navy Chopper pilot arrives as well. Soon after, Emily's brother Ben, and his lady show up, they live in Johnson City, TN, and flew in from Greenville,SC. Cool people. They go gamble, Kacey and I head off to the Aladdin for a night with Trey Anastasio of Phish. Nothing funnier than dirty hippies standing in casinos trying to score tickets, and whatever else they are looking for. Kacey and I watch Trey, and while Ive never been a huge Phish fan, the man can jam......It was a "latenight" show, starting at midnight, by 1:45, Kacey and I had both fallen asleep....I had been up for what I counted as 27 hours.



Day Two: Up and ready to roll, off to day one of th Vegoose Music Festival....We arrive, set up in the stadium (where the UNLV football team plays) and get set up in time for String Cheese Incident. They jam for a good while, but began to overlap with Govt Mule, so I leave everyone and run over to catch Mule. Win, as usual, they rocked. Kacey and Company left and headed over the stage where Mule was rockin.......cant remember who we saw after that, but we did go see Col. Bruce Hampton shortly after, and as usual, Im amazed at how good those guys are. Makes me feel fortunate that they are hometown ATL boys, and play down the street a couple times a month. After Col. Bruce was done, we headed back into the stadium, and Dave Matthews hit the stage. I said it once, and Ill say it agian, as much as everyone loves to hate on Dave, he is good, and I really enjoyed it-it's a love hate thing I guess. Trey Anastasio came out and jammed with him, those two are two peas in a pod, thats for sure. They rocked out, and then day one was done-Kacey and I and the rest of the crew headed back to the hotel, and Kacey and I hit our next late night show. We were warriors, I gotta say...late nights, and lots of music. This time it was Moe.-Great band, who Jarrett is a huge fan of, and who opened for the Allmans last month. They rocked out for 3.5 HOURS.....They went on stage at 1 AM and didnt wrap up until almost 4:30-So tired would be an understatement.


Day Three: We all head back over for day two of Vegoose, probably the best day of the two-We hit the festival and found Moe onstage, once again, less than 10 hours from the end of the show the night before. It rocked though, as they always do.After some Moe, we headed over and checked out The Meters, funk based guys from New Orleans, who are awesome-They jammed for almost two hours-After the Meters, it was off to a little early 90's alternative with the Flaming Lips, who, not many other than Win may have heard of....They are downright weird but it was quite entertaining for sure. A little Jack Johnson after that, and back into the stadium for the hilight of the day, three hours of Widespread Panic. I had never seen Panic before, and it had been ages since i had been to a big stadium show, but it was the hilight of the weekend. I think it may be a tough thing to admit, but Panic may be the best rock and roll band on tour-after the ABB and Feat of course. Dad, if you like Billy Payne on keyboards, JoJo Hermann from Panic would be your man too, he is an awesome piano player, and of course as Win can attest, Dave Schools on bas is about as bad as it gets. They rocked for three straight hours, wearing all of us out. After the show, Kacey and I had tickets to another late night show, with Galactic, but after Panic, we were so tired, everyone ewnt back and fell asleep, and forgot to get up in time for latenight with Galactic.

Day Four: Emily, Ben, Donnie and Tara, the other folks with us, all left and headed back to California. Kacey and I spent the day on the strip, looking on in horror at how gawdy everything is, and how there isnt an ounce of taste in the entire place. It's madness, pure madness. Walked through the Bellagio, the MGM Grand, the Circus Circus, and were just amazed at how the place is so umm, well, you get the point. Basically we were killing time until the grand finale of the weekend, a Halloween show with Widespread Panic at the Thomas And Mack Center, where the UNLV basketball team plays. She and I were dressed up, I was a doctor and she was a nurse and we looked hilarious. Im gonna try and poste a bunch of pics on here, as soon as I figure it out. Panic once again rocked the entire place, and solidified my opinion that they may be one of the best bands on tour now. Win, I dont thinkyou have seen them yet, and while their crowd is alot of the hippie kids we have all grown to loathe, they are all there for the same reason, and its worth dealing with to see Panic. Rocked the place for three hours, and Dirty Dozen Horns showeed up as well and jammed with them. They covered I Put A Spell On You, and the hilight of the entire night, the old motown classic "Nowhere To Run To" I think by Martha Reeves maybe? Who knows, either way it was way cool, and everyone was in costume. Was an awesome way to end the weekend. So we got back to the hotel, crashed out, and here I am at the airport waiting to get on the plane. Gonna try and post some pics, if I can get it figured out......