Another Basement Find

So, I've written here before about finding some good books in a box in the basement. Well, I'm still cleaning out the overstuffed storage space in the house, and this past weekend I found a real treasure: Wally Pleasant's Houses of the Holy Moly. I haven't heard this music since (my restless) college years, and I couldn't wait to try the tape in an old boombox. It worked.

Yup, a tape that had sat in a box in the basement for 6 years (the box was labeled 2002) worked, and I sat back and took a break from housework on a Sunday afternoon and listened to some wonderful, funny old songs, like "Stupid Day Job," "Dysfunctionally Yours," and "I'm Nice." It really took me back....

To 1996, when I was first introduced to the music of Wally Pleasant by a coworker who was also nice enough to copy the Holy Moly CD onto a tape for me. A few nights later, I went with a bunch of my coworkers to a bar at 9 Mile and Woodward where Wally was playing. We tossed back a few (too many) brews, and enjoyed an evening of comedic college alt-rock-folk. It was something normal to do, when you're 22....

Listening to this tape, it seems that Wally really captured something of those years. It felt good to hear it again. I wonder if I'll ever find the Wally Pleasant CDs I bought in the late 90s? I think they died in the car accident, though...

If you want, you can check out some samples of Wally Pleasant's music here. It's definitely worth a look.

The Toast of the Town

The other night, my parents came over and stayed with the kids, while my wife and I got out for a while. We played a game we hadn't done since college. We call it 'Toast of the Town,' and it goes like this:

Go out late at night, to all of the late-night breakfast-type restaraunts you can find, and order toast. You can order coffee with it, but no meal. I'm talking places like Denny's, or Ram's Horn, or Sunshine Cafe.... any of those chain-type places, or the Mom-and-Pops that sometimes take their place in smaller towns and suburbs. IHOP is particularly good for this.

See how long you can go on toast and coffee, before you start feeling nauseous. Of course, back in college, there were a couple of bottles of Boone's Farm to go between breakfast places, and at the end, that famous Moons Over MyHammy if your stomach hadn't completely turned yet, but you get the idea. Eating wasn't the point.

I'm not sure what the point was, anymore. We didn't get very far. At the second place, we stopped and ordered pancakes and scrambled eggs and hot chocolate, and sat around remembering what happened when. It would have helped if the scrambled eggs were better.

Anyway, none of that matters. It was another sort of date night, at one in the morning, and every couple really needs that. It doesn't just keep you together; it's also fun.

A Day With the Kids

So I'm home from work today. The kids have chicken pox. Both of them. At 5 and 3. Oh, the joy is never ending. And yeah, that's sarcasm.

My wife escaped to her job. I have more sick time piled up, so I'm with the kids. I took them to the doctor, who confirmed that, yes, they do have chicken pox, and no, there's nothing much I can do about it, and then I brought them back home. We stopped for calamine lotion on the way, and now they're covered with little pink dots. They each have some footed pyjamas, which is good, because those'll help stop them from scratching everything, and spreading it more. In the meantime, they itch. And scratch.

And ask questions. Like this one: "Daddy, what is a chicken pox?"

That was fun to explain. "Well, it's a disease..."

"NO!"

"...that lots of children get when they're little. Even your Mommy and Daddy had it."

"What does it do?"

"You know the little red bumps on your body? And your sore throat?"

"Yes."

"That's what chicken pox does. And once one kid in a school gets it, they all get it."

"You mean the one kid shares?"

Sometimes, it's really hard not to laugh. But I managed to keep a straight face, this time, and told her that this isn't really like sharing, even if she did give it to her sister. Ah, well, she'll learn. I'm gonna go set up the oatmeal bath.

File Sharing

Sometimes, I'm a little behind the times. That's OK, though, because my wife is usually right up to speed. To give an example:

We've all heard of file sharing, music downloading services, and other fun internet based bypass routes around copyright laws. You know, things like Napster. I never got into that, mainly because I'm not that computer savvy, but also because, as a writer by profession, I have a certain respect for copyrights. Anyway, my wife is not a writer, has no such qualms, and is more computer-knowledgable than I am, so she found some free file sharing services and set them up on our home computer the day after we lost our CD collection in our stolen car (which is a whole 'nother story altogether!).

Yesterday, she sat me down and showed me how it works. Today, I have a dozen great tunes that I'd thought I'd lost forever, unless I shelled out the dough to buy the CDs again.

We had some fun last night. She showed me how to search the file sharing service, how to set up the server, how to select songs for download, how to connect to the system, and then we sat down and looked for our mutual favorites. I didn't expect to have a good time doing that, but I did.

And then she showed me that the same system can be used for movies and TV shows. Never again will I have to be without Star Trek!