Rise, Together We Rise, Together We Rise

Yesterday a buddy of mine from work and I went to Chicago to see the Flobots at the House of Blues.

The show was at 6:00. We both took half days and headed up at 1:00.

First we had to drop off like 5 gallons of frozen breast milk to a woman from Detroit.

Seriously, you can’t make shit like that up.

Somehow this woman got in contact with my wife and a bunch of women from Peoria donated the milk for this woman and her baby. The plan was to do it at a Burger King in McKinley Park, but when we got there around 4:00 she was heading East on 90/94 which was out of the city during afternoon rush hour. We told her to head towards downtown since she was never going to make it to us in time.

We managed to get her the milk and found a place to park near the HOB. We grabbed some bar food and this nice little hole in the wall bar.

We got in and found a place to stand about 15 min before the first opening band came on. The HOB is a cool venue. It was pretty small, I think I read it held 1000 people. We ended up like 15 feet from the stage.

Redneck Poets (or something like that) were OK. They were 3 MC’s and a DJ. Nothing incredible, but cool. They did some spoken word poetry a’La Def Comedy Jam.

People Under the Stairs came on next. They were fucking awesome. Two MC’s from LA. They were full of energy and got everyone worked up. I’m going to have to check out more of their stuff. It was pretty awesome.





The Flobots came on a little after 8:00. They also put on an incredible show. This is the smallest venue I’ve ever been to for a concert, and it was cool being that close to the band. The played pretty much everything off their current album and threw in a few I didn’t know which I assume are from Platypus. They saved Handlebars and Rise to the end of the show. After the little instrumental solo in Handlebars and the lyrics kick back in everyone was going nuts. For an encore their Viola player took the mic and covered Heartbreaker. She rocked it out. The show got over at about 9:30. It was one of the best shows I’ve ever been to.

I got home at around 12:45 AM. It was a good time. I’d never been to a hip-hop show. It was cool.

Saying something important is never easy, something that will echo forever.

It’s almost Friday, and it will have been seven long days of traveling, three left.

I’ve gotten some money for Xmas. I’ll blow it on hockey gear or tattoos. Either will be nice.

The internet, myspace and facebook, makes for one giant continuous class reunion. I wonder if people look at me, if they even care, and say, “What the fuck happened to him”. Then they either feel better or worse about their own lives.

I hope my son doesn’t wake up in four hours, eight would be better.

Tomorrow there will be 6 little children running and or crawling around a 3 bedroom house.

In addition to shoveling snow, I find driving when it’s kind of dark and my one ear is plugged and/or swollen so I can’t hear well, and my wife and child are asleep, and all I can hear is the rush of air around the car and the four cylinder engine straining to keep the frame and the sheet metal and us and all the crap we’ve brought with us going 75 miles an hour, quite Zen.

Well, I’ve failed, but much like Steve, posting random shit can be just as entertaining as a well thought out narrative.

I tried not to think of the words Searing or Flesh

All you suckers who have to work today.

I'd almost rather be freezing my ass off on a pipelayer than having took my dog to the vet after he got bit by another dog.

I remember why I hate dogs. They're annoying, they piss and shit everywhere, they cost money, and they like to bite things unexpectedly.

Last night I watched in awe as ragged 15 year old Skitch was chomped on by a stupid young dog five times his size.

All I could muster was a "Jesus Christ" as three relatives tried to pull the dog off Skitch. He seemed OK at first, but then this big hard mass swelled up on his neck. Blood was pooling under his skin from the puncture wound.

He survived the night and the vet says he should be fine.

I have a cold, my ear hurts, my kid isn't sleeping well, and my dog had a brush with death.

Four more days of restful vacationing.

I am a travel God

This past weekend my wife’s college roommate got married. The wedding was in Fargo, ND. That’s 670 miles away from Peoria. That’s 11-12 hours of driving. That’s 23 hours out of 72 that I spent driving. Luckily most of it was through the beautiful, wondrous state of Wisconsin.

The weekend really went pretty well. We left at 2 a.m. on Friday. We traveled north to Madison, my favorite city, to pick up The Poop Queen so she could watch Carter during the wedding and we could drink and stay late. By the time we got to Minneapolis, it felt like we should be there. Unfortunately it’s another 4 hours to Fargo.

When we got there we checked into the hotel. When The Poop Queen made reservations, they didn’t have any suites available. I asked them again when we checked in, and they did. It was an extra $60, but it ended up being totally worth it. It had a door that divided the bedroom from the living area so we were able to put Carter to sleep and still do stuff in the other room.

We went to the rehearsal dinner. I was kind of hesitant since I’m completely socially inept, but I took some lessons from the best and put my learning to the test. Mr. Fresh taught me to find something I find mildly interesting about a person and keep asking them questions about it. People always like to talk about themselves and the stupid shit they find interesting. The dinner was good.

The wedding was supposed to be outdoors and it rained like hell the day of. They had a church backup, but the reception was still under tents. It was also pretty cold, like 50 deg.

The wedding was like every other wedding I’ve ever been to, other than my own. The reception was pretty fun. My wife was in the wedding party, so The Poop Queen and I sat with the boy at a table with some fun other people. One of the girls was in her 20’s and was tattooed and pierced. She was fun to talk with.

After I took The Poop Queen and the boy back to the hotel so the boy could go to sleep, I started drinking heavily. I again exercised my new social skills, and, in an affirmation of how good I’d become, got offered some Hash by a dude in the wedding party I had met the day before. I respectfully declined since my wife doesn’t approve of illegal drug use.

As I got more and more drunk I became more philosophical. I waxed on about the nature of time with a dude I knew from college.

Even though it rained, it was a good time.

The next day we had to leave by 9 a.m. since it was another 12 hours home. I felt good, no hangover. I think it was the taco bell the night before after the reception.

When we got home I was exhausted. I still was yesterday.

I’m almost fully recovered now.

The Battle of Alpine Valley (At least the roads leading into it)

Saw Rage Against the Machine last night. We left for the 7:00 show at about 6:00 with an hour and 15 min drive. When we got to the exit for Alpine Valley, the traffic was backed up onto the freeway. We saw license plates from Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Illinois, Wisconsin, Ontario, and Missouri.

There was about 2.5 miles to get to alpine valley. It took us until 9:15 to get into the concert. It didn't really matter. I didn't buy the ticket to see Queens of the Stoneage. It was either sit in the car and wait, or stand in the mud with the drunks. (Southern Wisconsin has gotten tons of rain the last week, and Alpine Valley is a steep slope.

It worked out well, we got in, went to the bathrooms, and 15 min later Rage started to play. There was no rain, and it was a pretty cool night.

They were fucking awesome. We were pretty far up the hill, but it didn't matter. I'm too old and have a kid so I don't want to be in the pit getting punched and muddied. Tom Morello is a guitar God. The band sounded great. Zach decided to tell Fox News off as well. Below is the second part of a speech he gave. It started by him talking about saying that Fox News reported that he said the Bush administration should be assassinated at their reunion concert. He said they were Fascists and always get it wrong. He said that he had said the entire Bush administration should be TRIED, HUNG, and THEN SHOT. Then the video picks up the rest.

They closed up the show with Freedom, and Killing in the Name. Since we got there so late, we ended up getting in like the VIP parking area. We ended up getting out of the show pretty quick. It wrapped up at like 11:15, and got back to Hartford at about 2:00 AM after stopping for some taco bell. I read some other blogs about people getting stuck in the mud in some of the other lots they parked in early in the day. (The people that didn't wait hours to get in). They ended up having to wait 2 or 3 hours to get out. I was happy we waited on the front side.

Anyway, awesome show. My life feels a bit more complete now.

*Set List Edit*

Set: Testify, Bulls on Parade, People of the Sun, Bombtrack, Vietnow, Bullet in the Head, Take the Power Back, Tire Me, Guerilla Radio, Calm Like a Bomb, Sleep Now in the Fire, Wake Up > gov’t rant > Wake Up, Freedom > Township Rebellion* > Killing in the Name

Swim parallel to the beach…

Alright, I’ve found some time to recount my trip to Florida.

We left two Thursdays ago around Carter’s bedtime. The drive was pretty pleasant for the first 5 or 6 hours. I listened to The 40 Year Old Virgin through the auxiliary jack on the Elantra. We stopped somewhere in Tennessee and my wife took over driving for a bit. I had a hard time sleeping since we hadn’t brought a pillow. So I took over again since my wife hadn’t slept either and was getting a bit tired. The 2:30 to 4:00 am shift was rough. I had to stop once so I didn’t fall asleep and kill us all. I did some jumping jacks in a gas station parking lot and splashed water on my face.

Once day broke it was better. We were somewhere in Georgia and decided to stop at a Cracker Barrel. The service was fucking terrible and we were surrounded by Southerners (imagine that).

We hit Atlanta on the tail end of rush hour and it kind of sucked. After that my wife took over and drove us the rest of the way to Fernandina Beach. It took us about 20 hours. It should have only taken about 16.5, but the shitty service at the Cracker Barrel and Atlanta slowed us down. Carter was not happy the last hour or so. He didn’t want to be in the car anymore, none of us really did.

We stayed at a friends place. I took a long nap when we got there.

The next day we went to a park and played and enjoyed the nice weather. It was sunny and about 82 with a cool easterly breeze. It was actually hotter in Illinois the whole time we were there.

Sunday we went to the Jacksonville Zoo. (see the below pictures) It was a really nice zoo. There were kind of elevated walkways in places were you could walk above the animals. Carter had a good time. He would point and say ohhhh or ooooo when he saw an animal he didn’t know. There was also a small water fun area for kids to run around in and get wet. He loved splashing around and climbing on the fake dolphins and stingrays. There were also some goats to pet, which he didn’t smack. (He’s in a bit of a smacky stage.)

The next day we went to the beach. Rip currents were in full effect. A guy died the prior day due to the current. The waves were pretty large too. We stayed about waste high. Carter was more interested in digging in the sand for the most part. He would run into the low surf every once in a while, but was still pretty wary of it. I walked around and looked for fossilized sharks teeth. I ended up finding about 6 of them.

Tuesday we decided to head down to scenic downtown Fernandina Beach. It was kind of cool, but we did go into this massive antique store and found “Answer Me Jesus”, which is basically a Magic Eight Ball in the shape of a giant pink Jesus. It kind of looks like a sex toy of some kind, but it’s super cool.

Me, “Will I go to church next Sunday Jesus?”

Jesus, “Not a chance in Hell”

He’s so benevolent

Wednesday was beach day again. Found a couple more sharks teeth and just playing in the sand with the boy.

That night we had our friends watch Carter and My Wife and I went out for dinner to celebrate our 4-year wedding anniversary, which will be June 14. It was the best seafood dinner I’ve ever had in my life. Started out with some muscles and a vodka stone sour, then an awesome Caesar salad, the wife had shrimp bisque. The main course was seared scallops, asparagus, and sweet potatoes. My wife had swordfish. It was delicious. We walked a bit through downtown Fernandina Beach to an ice cream parlor for desert.

Thursday we planned to head back home at night so we played it low key during the day. One of our friends works at White Oak Conservation Center so late in the afternoon we packed up all our stuff and headed north to check it out. It’s not open to the general public so we got a behind the scenes look at all the animals. We got to feed some giraffes. It’s pretty cool being only a few feet away and this big head comes down and grabs a branch of leaves out of your hands. They’re much taller at that angle, and muscular. We also got to pet a couple rhinos. Their skin is crazy tough, but where their joints are the skin is very silky and smooth. We also got to see some cheetahs, zebras, and all kinds of elk type animals (don’t recall their names).

We said goodbye and started the drive home. I decided to go a different way back since Atlanta sucked so bad last time. We went up through the Carolinas, then over through Tennessee, and up Kentucky to Cincinnati, then over through Indianapolis. It was much better. It was cool driving through the Great Smokey Mountains during a full moon with a bit of fog. It only took about 16 hours. All told the gas only cost me about $160 roundtrip.

It was a good vacation.

I really don't want to go back to work tomorrow.

Here are a few pics from the vacation. It was sweet. I'll go into more detail tomorrow when I don't want to do anything at work.


@ the Jacksonville zoo


@ the beach... the boy didn't like it at first, but after a bit he liked the sand and the water.


In the historic downtown area of Fernandina Beach

Lawryde will be out of the office until 6-4-07

Tonight my brilliant son, beautiful wife, and gimpy dog are heading to Fernandina Beach, Florida for a 7-day vacation.

Everyone who reads my blog regularly will have to go with out my razor wit and critical observations of the corporate world for 7 long days. Don’t worry all you people who just come here for the spiderweb.jpg from google image search, it will still be here. (It’s amazing the traffic that photo generates.)

The plan is to relax on some sunny beaches, go to the Jacksonville zoo, relax on some sunny beaches, take a slow drive along scenic A1A (Vanilla Ice didn’t mention it in Ice Ice Baby for nothing; awesome views and multi-million dollar homes), relax on some sunny beaches, and further relaxing on sunny beaches, all the while finishing up Cat’s Cradle, and Rant.

I’m sad that I’m going to miss two summer hockey league practices and the first two Stanley Cup Final games(Go Ottawa), but I’ll be back in time for the first league game and for the final games for the Cup.

I’ll leave you a few things to ponder about life while I’m away. I’ll expect one page essays on each topic, 12 point font, single-spaced, and don’t just copy the Wikipedia entry because I’ll fucking check.

• Will the future you have tomorrow be the same future you had today?
  
• Are you today, where you thought you’d be 10 years ago? (I just got the freedom to drive 10 years ago) Do you have the job you thought you would? Do you make as much money as you thought you would? Do you have the family you thought you would? Do you live where you thought you would?
  
• At what point did your parents realize you weren’t the perfect, defect free copy of them they hoped you would turn out to be? Did it really bother them, or did they accept it?
  
• Will you always be reading this? Is there a now?
  

Take care everyone (That doesn’t mean fuck off. I always thought it just meant I hope you take care of yourself while we’re apart so we can speak again, but in some circles it doesn’t). I’ll bring you back a sand dollar from the beach, and some shark teeth (Fernandina Beach is full of them).

Well, I say let Harvard have its football and academics. Yale will always be first in gentlemanly club life.

Ah what a vacation. It was one of the all time best vacations I’ve been on. It was relaxing, but we still did lots of things. We flew to Hartford from Chicago last Tuesday where we were met by my sister and brother-in-law picked us up and drove us to their home in New London. For the next two days we just relaxed, went to some parks, ate some good seafood, and played with my new nephew. After that we went to New Haven to my wife’s friends apartment. It brought back bad flashbacks of cramped college apartments with no central air conditioning.

On Friday we toured around Yale. It was really cool. The architecture is amazing. We went to the Yale art museum. It is the first and largest college art museum in the country. It had Picassos and Van Gogh’s and ancient roman sculptures. It also had a collection of John Trumbull paintings. You know the picture in your high school textbook of the signing of the declaration of independence? He painted that, along with several other American Revolution paintings like the one of George Washington standing for a portrait. Then we sat in the park in old campus and had several freshmen tours pass by us. Ivy league freshmen definitely look like you’d think they would. One kid was wearing a white polo shirt, seersucker shorts, and deck shoes. What a douche!

On Saturday we went to the beach and spent the day taking in the sun and swimming in the cool refreshing ocean (sound). On Sunday we went and had a really good brunch and then while my wife and her friend went shopping, her husband and I played 8-bit Nintendo for several hours, nothing like a bit of nostalgia.

Then on Monday we went to New York City. We took the commuter train from New Haven. It took about two hours. We sat near this college age girl who was talking non stop about art and photography and blah, blah, blah. She just wouldn’t shut up. The guy who was listening to her never said a word. I think he was just zoning out and staring at her chest. The train passes through Harlem and then underground to Grand Central Station. From Grand Central, we took the subway over and down to Battery Park.

Luckily we had reserved tickets for the Statue of Liberty otherwise we would have had to wait in line to get tickets. So we went through security to get onto the ferry to take us to Liberty Island. It was very much like airport security, metal detectors and X-rays for any bags you had. Luckily it was a nice day 80’s and cloudy with a light breeze so we went to the upper deck and got a nice view of Manhattan and the statue as we approached it.

When we got of the ferry we figured we had plenty of time before our tour at 12:45 of the inside of the statue so we got lunch and then meandered to the entrance of the statue where we were disappointed to find that we had to got through a second security checkpoint. This one moved slower than the first because they had these machines that puffed air all over you to smell if you had bomb residues on you. By the time we got into the statue we were so tired of standing in line and all the bullshit that we went straight up to the lookout in the upper base. It was worth it though to be able to see the insides of the statue and then the view from the upper base.

We decided to skip Ellis Island because we were both tired and were in no mood to view museum type things. It was 3:00 by the time we got back to Battery Park.

Then we took the subway up a couple stops and walked up to where the World Trade Center used to be. We saw the large hole, and the girder cross. It’s pretty amazing that there used to be two giant buildings there and now there’s just a hole. Crazy shit. I can’t image how it was when they collapsed. It must have been chaos.

We got back on the subway and headed up to Times Square. It was really busy, and it was only 4:30 on a Monday afternoon. It was cool to see though. We went into the Huge Toy’s R’us and used their bathroom and then moved on. We went up to Rockefeller Center and sat for a while because we were both tired of walking. After about a half hour we went up Fifth Avenue and went in Sachs. We looked around at all the overpriced clothes and ended up buying a baby music thingy to hand in the crib. It was cool because it didn’t just play twinkle-twinkle little star. I can’t remember now what song it plays, but it’s nice.

We continued up Fifth Avenue and went in to Tiffany’s and looked at all the expensive and amazing diamonds. I had never seen a “Good” diamond until I set foot in that store. The crap they have on display at your local jewelry store is garbage compared to the fire and clarity of the diamonds Tiffany’s has. It was incredible.

Then we went up to Central Park and walked lazily around and people watched until we got to Tavern on the Green. We had reservations at 7:45 and had a nice dinner. My steak was overcooked, but overall it was a good meal. The interior was really nice.

After dinner we took a cab back to Grand Central and caught the 9:07 back to New Haven. The next day we flew back to Chicago and then drove back to Hell. It’s too bad I’m not rich. I’d live in Manhattan if I was, and do much more vacationing than I get to now. Ah well.

Saint Patrick's Day: The Aftermath.

Yesterday, I went on a Mcpub crawl to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. 9 bars in 4.5 hours. It was lots of fun, other than my wife not enjoying herself. We can never have fun at the same time. It's some sort of unwritten rule.

As I got drunker and drunker I started to talk more and more like Hunter S. Thompson. Since his death I've been reading tons of his work and watching all kinds of movies and documentaries about him. Also there is the title of the blog.

I don't know what it all means. Maybe I can't deal with who I am right now so I choose to project into someone else.

Last night I dreamt about fucking, but two nights ago I dreamt about my car not starting. More crap ass dreams. I should just dream about working, that way I could do it for 16 hours a day. It's been nice being on vacation for the last 2.5 days though.

I just finished reading "Choke" by Chuck Palahniuk. He's an amazing author. All of his protagonists are anit-heros that you grow attached to throughout the book. I highly recommend reading one of his books: Fight Club, Survivor, or Choke. It will broaden you horizons.

Tomorrow I get to see my best friend from high school. I'm looking forward to it. Hopefully tonight I won't dream about waiting in line at the post office. Fuck, now I will...