Advice for the Birds

There is a bird making a nest in my bathroom window.
I have been watching her, for about a month, bring one piece at a time.
She never seems worried or stressed.
It must be nice.
I believe animals have a purpose no different than ours.
The only difference I have found is that animals never forget or are confused
About their purpose in life.
They know what is truly important.
I respect that very much.
This little bird has reminded me how to live my life...
One twig at a time.

Many Windows
Windows are important

The cold winter air came one night.
It froze the dew that had settled on the leaves of the plants.
The plants that had once made my yard so beautiful and full.
Now my garden that is a yard is brown and the leaves droop.
I must wait for the sun, once again, come to a closer proximity
To warm thing and make them green again.

It is cold and grey today
Yet, I have the blinds pulled high,
Because, I am thankful, still, for having a house.
No more apartments:
No more midnight rendevous "concerts" in the bathroom with the surrounding neighbors.
No more concern of the volume of myself
No more concern of the volume of others
No more waiting in line at the mailbox
Or the laundry room
No more worries about my parking spot.

I have a yard
I have a house
and...

I have many windows to watch the sun rise and fall!

I like old people
Because I like tea and cookies.
I guess I like the British, too.
I don't know who I like most.
Both have interesting stories,
Both smell and speak strangely,
Both can bore you to death.
Maybe you have a better chance
Keeping conversation with the British,
With subjects like Mtv.
I am not sure why I would even want
To talk about Mtv.
Just the thought of it now
Leaves me feeling
Confused and betrayed.
Maybe old people might be the
Better choice...
Just a thought,
Pass me some honey.

LollapaIllustrated

Every few years I get a chance to go on a vacation. I always try to go somewhere I have never been before. This year I chose Chicago, mostly because of Lollapalooza Music Festival. I invited my girlfriend, Nancy, and her brother and my best friend, Ben, to come with me. I am glad they did, we had a lot of fun together.

The last time I went on vacation was to Maui, Hawaii in the summer of '99. I had a relaxing time there, and I wanted the same on this trip. Stress at work has been ever increasing since my last vacation, and mostly what I wanted was a place far away to relax. I certainly found that in Chicago.

We decided to drive, because, despite the gas prices, it's cheaper than flying. Also, I really needed to see some country side. I assure you, we saw plenty of that. We drove by nearly six hours of soybean fields. Missouri and most of Illinois can be boring, unless you really like the sight of soybean field after field after field. We, however, don't.

Chicago is a very interesting town, as most of the northern metropolitan areas are to us down here in the dirty south. They have many things that we don't have. One of the most interesting things is parking underground. We got lost the first day looking for the parking garage, because we didn't see one, it was under the streets, buildings, and parks. Chicago prides itself as being pedestrian friendly, which was a very nice change from trying to play "Frogger" across Johnston St. Another interesting thing they do in the north is to ask you what kind of "pop" you want. We got asked that at Connie's Pizza, we had to explain to our waitress how to go about asking southerners what they want to drink. Procedure is as follows:
"Welcome to our resturant, my name is so and so, what kind of coke can I get you to drink?"
"What kind of cokes do you have?"
"We have Pepsi, Coke, Sprite, Rootbeer, Lemonaid, Icetea..."
"I'll take a Sprite"
We also told her that you can substitute the word "soda" for coke if you happen to be in a more-than-casual environment, or if you are in the company of old folk. We only hear the word "pop" in the movies. The word "pop", to me, sounds like they are trying to give me drugs.

Anyway, the rest of the trip is highlighted below in an illustrated/narrarated sort of way. Enjoy, comment, be happy, and wish you were there.


List of Bands(In order of appearance)
☆Deadboy & the Elephantmen☆Aqualung☆eels☆Jeremy Enigk☆Umphrey's McGee☆The Racounteurs☆Violent Femmes☆Ween☆Built to Spill☆Sonic Youth☆The Dresden Dolls☆The Flaming Lips☆Thievery Corporation☆School of Rock☆Sparta☆The Second City(comedy)☆Manchester Orchestra☆Moses Mayfield☆Matisyahu☆Queens of the Stone Age☆Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Illustrated story (Click on pictures to enlarge)
Chicago is a beautiful town with a recognizable skyline, not to mention the United State's tallest building, the Sears Tower.


So, we made it to Grant Park where Lollapalooza was held, and we were very happy to be there.

Well, at least, I was happy to be there.
There were a lot of other people there, too.

With all those people there we were bound to run into some interesting, "hippy-type" shirts.


The weather was very beautiful, although, it could sometimes get hot.

There are a few things you could do to beat the heat.

1) Take your shirt off.

2) Put a shirt over your head.

3) Go hang out with Squirtboy!

or 4) Go to a shady spot. The shady areas there actually are cooler than sitting in the sun up there. Down here, the shade only keeps you from getting sunburnt.

The shaded areas are nice places to take a nap.


One thing you have to do while you are on vacation is to take pictures while standing in front of things.
So, we stood in front of this very large water fountain in the center of Grant Park.

And we stood in front of this Dairy Queen in a town outside of St. Louis.

Standing in front of things on vacation is romantic

Gas Prices are not romantic.

After our 3 day weekend in the park listening to some of the better bands out right now sitting in the breezy sun and the breezy shade that Chicago is known for, we had to leave for Louisiana. We left for Louisiana at least twenty times cooler, just look!

Somebody slept a lot on the way back.

On the way back we stopped in St. Louis to see the Archway to the West.


After I got home and devoloped these pictures, I decided I thought these looked cool.


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This one is so true that I had to share it with you.
Click on image to enlarge-- it's entirely worth it.



From Quantz dot com.

Day 5- Like a rolling stone... rolling home.

9am, Tuesday, August 8th, 2006- I am in my bed. I am going to attempt to write this blog, then I will fall asleep, for many hours... I hope.

Let me just start off by saying, Lafayette needs to get on the ball. As we are driving around Lafayette looking for a place to fill the gas tank in the rental car, as well as, get it vacuumed and washed, we turn on the radio hoping for the best. 96.5 plays one decent song(I believe it was The Offspring), then it plays a bunch of crap in a row. We start flipping stations: crap...crap...crap... Tracy Chapman's "Give Me One Reason" catches our attention as the most enjoyable song on the radio. After we gave her at least five good reasons not to listen to the song anymore, we flipped back to 96.5. They were advertising the "BIG, BIG" shows coming up. They were: Stained, Nickleback, Hoobastank, and some other band, who probably sounds exactly like the other three bands. Come on now! This is very disappointing especially since the last band I saw play was the Red Hot Chili Peppers, after seeing about 25 other bands that are very talented. If you ask me, the radio stations around here are ball-less and greedy. The promoters, especially at the Cajun Dome, are ignorant in what seems to be music in general, and, also, what people over here are really interested in. The only reasons the people that do go to those shows go to them are because they are force fed crappy music by ignorant people, and because there is nothing else to go see. God forbid they go to a local show, that's scarry stuff, right? Or is it really highly entertaining? Yes, and especially if people are there and are interested. Go get involved people!

Ok, so the ride home, now. We slept in until about 10am to be able to check out by 11. Then we drove down to Denny's and had a very good breakfast. I stuffed myself with the Ultimate Omelete, and cake for desert. Then we got on the Highway. We decided to take the scenic route back home this time. We followed Highway 45 all the way down until it intersected with I-55. We took I-55 all the way to I-10. On the way we stopped in St. Louis to see the Archway. We marveled at it for a few minutes, then we went down to the museum. We read all about the Lewis and Clark Expedition and about the Wright Brothers and their airplane. After about an hour and a half we decided to leave, but first we had to stop to get some gas. We stopped at the first gas station we saw. It was in the midst of quite a few abandoned buildings. I went to go pay inside, and as I was inside, a woman and three or four men walked in. They tried selling us an open carton of cigarrettes. It doesn't do me any good; I don't smoke. They made me a little nervous, but I made it out alive, so it's all good. After that we were getting back on the interstate; on the on ramp some kids had recked their car into the wall. The car had caught on fire and there was trash and clothes strewn all accross the on ramp, don't know why the clothes, though. We asked if they had help coming, they said yes. Good... I left. I did not really want to hang around in case it was going to explode. We left St. Louis, and had planned on eating in Memphis, but then we saw it... a Dairy Queen sign! We don't have one here, of course. So we stopped in, ate, and, naturally, ordered our favorite flavor Blizzard. We flipped them upside-down to see if they passed the test, and they did, so we ate them. The rest of the trip was dark, tedious, and tiresome. I am completely exhausted, so I will sleep now.

I did take some pictures. After I get them developed, I will outline the trip's highlites with them. Peace! I'm out, for quite a few hours, I hope.
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Day 4- Ending Festivities

Yesterday, we spent most of the day walking back and forth to make sure we could see all of the bands we wanted to see. Today, the schedule worked out in our feet's favour. Our schedule was as follows:

¤ School of Rock. The real school of rock, and can those kids rock. They have excellent technique and they learned all of the famous poses and tricks that made rock... well, rock.

¤ Then we moved on to the main stage to see Sparta. They are very lively and make great music, naturally, being parts of The Mars Volta.

¤ Next, we were of to The Second City. They are an improv comedy group. Funny, witty, and everything that goes along with it. The Second City is well known for giving head starts for SNL and Who's Line Is It Anyway?

¤ That was enough walking already for us to want to take a nap, so we did. We went by the BMI stage, laid a blanket down, and took a nap, while listening to the end of Manchester Orchestra. Nancy and I walked to get something to eat, then we came back and napped some more while we listened to Chicago's local, Moses Mayfield.

¤ Our walking around was over for us, at this point. We set up camp at the main stage, so we wouldn't have to move for another five hours. The weather was as perfect as it could possibly get. It was warm with a cool breeze. We watched Matisyahu, the Jewish Rapper. Then listened to She Wants Revenge, followed by Queens of the Stone Age. While Broken Social Scene was playing we went to grab a bite to eat, and came back and secured our spot for the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

¤ The Red Hot Chili Peppers. Such an amazing show they put on! The field was completely packed with people, imagine three baseball fields packed solid with, I would guess, 30,000 people or more.

That was the end of the festival. Tomorrow, we leave for home. I will post again after I arrive. It will be my second to last post in my Lollapalooza series. See you all soon!
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