Murphy and more.

Thanks for the idea Deb. Ha.

Clint's new puppy Murphy.

Bad picture - I didn't want to wake him with the flash. Mix of black lab and ?? bulldog, maybe? A cutie.



Cubbie watching Rama. Whom is watching for young birds to take a tumble from a nearby tree.



Bob (the cat) watching our other flank. There have been coyote sighting lately. He's got to be careful.



So simple: I hang tray from one nail (one on each side of the pillar of course). Tray hangs crooked all year dropping potting soil when it get splashed.



Young unfettered mind: Clint hung the other tray on the other pillar. Two nails on each side. One in the bend - to the left. One above the hook. Hangs straight. (By the way, the two marks in the hook are old nail holes I made from last year.) Ha.



Mother's Day Flower. What a disaster. I took it back, got credit for another and got to keep the remains. Never throw anything out. I'll plant the good part somewhere.




New replacement. Someone help me out with the name. Starts with "N"?

I really like these but every year I forget they exist. I buy all the flowers I need earlier so by the time these bloomed and were ready for sale, I didn't need / or have any room for them.

Same this year. These are going to Mumsy.

15 Second video and Red blues.

Being a gardener is never ending. Once I get everything growing I have then committed myself to about a half hour a night watering after work. Real smart. Ha.

Following this is a bar clip of Geneva Red of The Original Delta Fireballs. Six foot of red haired harmonica playing woman doing the blues. Local artist. Made her High School's wall of fame.

Clint and I saw them in February for the first time about 4 blocks from home at the local bar. We had a front row table. Jackie 5 and 10 (Woolworth is his name) came up to me and introduced himself. Cool. He knew my sister and I guess remembered me from some of the parties we had thrown just down the street (Prairie Ave - ha). My mom still lives there. I remembered him after a little reminiscing. Something about pulling some beverages up the side of our house with a rope for a party. Small world. Things were different then. Or not.

Geneva Red puts on a great show. (Geneva being the name of nearby town.) Her version of Boz Scaggs Loan Me a Dime (not the original version but this link gives you an idea of the song - fantastic guitar - Gregg Allman) made the whole night worthwhile.

By the way, this wasn't the bar we saw them in but it could have been. People walking in and out, cars going by. Reminds me of Storefront Hitchcock. An excellent Jonathan Demme music video film

.

Geneva Red:

Lose some, win some.

Good news and bad news. Bob(the cat) probably didn't win. I needed to get an email today to confirm his selection. I checked and found nothing. I'm guessing we lost. Winners should be posted tomorrow. Bob (the cat) and I appreciate the support.

After work yesterday, Clint was paging thru the caller ID and found WXRT had called. That's a good thing. I had missed the call but called them back this morning.

Four years ago I won two "on stage" tickets to the Grateful Dead surviors (The Other Ones) at Alpine Music Theater at Lake Geneva. Clint and I went. We shook Phil Lesch's hand backstage, said hi, and ended up with our seats next to the wall of speakers ON the stage. In fact we sat on the empty speaker cases about 20 feet from the band (albeit in the shadows of the edge of the stage). Nothing could compare to looking "up" the hill of about 40,000 fans looking our direction. Not at us of course but we got the idea. I could see how being a rock star could be addictive.

This time I won tickets (lucky me) for Stevie Nicks and Chris Isaak. On the shores of Lake Michigan with Chicago as a backdrop. It's called Charter One Pavilion- Northerly Island. Walking distance (long) from the train with the Chicago Blues Festival also going on. I think we are going in early to catch the Blues Festival and then walk over to the concert (all in the same area - Grant Park).

Deja vu: I had to look it up, but my brother and I did the Blues Festival in 2000 and then went to see a highly desireable baseball game. Chicago White Sox vs the Chicago Cubs. Crosstown Classic. On the third base line, I sat next to a traffic reporter girl I heard everday on the Chicago news radio. Bonus was I knew of her (not everyone would have). Perfect except for the fact the game ran way late into extra innnings. So late...(Sox won by the way.)

Stevie:

My ex and I saw her in Fleetwood Mac at Alpine in the late 70's. Not with Peter Green (he was already having issues). The thing I remember most was a guy peeing from a tree on the hillside next to us. Never forgot the sound of dribbling. Our smuggled in drink of choice: Ripple Wine. The bottles fit nicely in the sleeves of my army surplus jacket.

Chris Isaak I like. He seems like a regular guy. I watched his Showtime show. My brother played the hell out of this song. I got sick of it but I still like it in moderation.

WXRT: Source of my musical inspirations for over 30 years. Gotta love them but if you don't know them this is boring.

"I'd appreciate your support," Bob (the cat).

Hi. I'm Bob (the cat) and I'm doing a guest blog. I'm a little nervous. Posting an entry isn't as easy as it looks.

I'm running for cutest cat in the Chicago Tribune's Petpalooza and would appreciate your vote.

I don't know how exclusive the contest is because there are tons of entries; anyway, if you want to vote for me do this: click the word CATS on the Trib's page (not the picture of a cat) I'm about a quarter of the way down drinking out of a chair.

Personally I liked the "sleeping in the window" picture but I had no say on the matter. By the way, if you click the cat picture it will take you to adoptions / sales (wrong place unless you want to get a cat).

Thanks.

Bob (the cat)

(In the spirit of Chicago politics I'd say vote early, vote often BUT they are accepting only one per household.)

15 second video. Saturday planting with Wilco.

Peace.

Excuse the lack of enthusiasm in my voice. Planting flowers is relaxing but also a long drawn out task. This was after about 2 hours of cleaning out / digging out areas for bulbs. Amy always gives me too many things to plant - she has a terrible concept of gardening space (room). I always make them fit somehow. Ha. She just enjoys the cuttings later in the year. Kids.



NPR is my station of choice on Saturday afternoons but it also scares me a bit because I used to associate it with older people. Saturdays have Car Talk, Whad'ya Know?, 3 hours of Blues from Northern Illinois Dekalb, Prairie Home.

Anyway, maybe its catching up with me. Wilco (described as a Chicago alt band - with the "alt" out of touchingly mispronounced as "alt" in altitude) was featured on A Prairie Home Companion. That made me feel better - I catch so much crap from my kids when they hear one of the "banjo" or "fiddle" type groups that are more the norm.


Happy Mother's Day to all it applies to. I'm walking over two yards to celebrate Mumsy's at my sister's house in about an hour. Hope it warms up some. I'm feeling guilty being inside but I needed to let my deviled eggs warm up to room temperature. Sooo good. Sooo bad for you. Or so "they" say - I'll still enjoy them with potato salad and burgers today.



Rock and Roll Mumsy 5-13-2007.

Spring plann(t)ing.

I'm so behind. Spring came early; 70's then snow. Lately it's been cold, then as it warmed up, wet.

I have dahlia bulbs to plant pretty soon. They spent the winter in the basement. Each spring I hope they remember to start growing sprouts. Sometimes they are late but never have they failed.

I also have to start some morning glory seeds. Soak them in water a couple days till they sprout - score them with a knife first.

An old sandbox in the yard is perfect for wildflower seeds. I like the poppys best.

The hardest thing is figuring out what are wildflowers and what are weeds.

An acquired taste.

Sunday was a liberal arts, culture type day for me. It started with a play at Carthage College. Carthage is just over the border into Wisconsin, right on the shores of Lake Michigan. Talk about lake effect weather; the temperature dropped from 79 to 61 in the span of 10 minutes (and about 5 miles).

Anyway, a friend of ours is a senior there and earned one of the main parts in the play, Uncle Vanya, by the Russian playwright Anton Chekhov (1899). So 13 of us took a road trip to see her and the play.

Nicki played Yelena (the pretty, younger wife) and did quite a nice job. It was 2 ½ hours long with four acts. A brief synopsis of the play is below:

Uncle Vanya consists of a series of interchanges showing the disruptive effect of a summer visit by an ailing Professor and his young wife Yelena to the country estate he inherited from his first wife and managed by Sonya, his plain looking daughter from that marriage, and her Uncle Vanya. The social, cultural and romantic repercussions of that visit affect the entire household which, besides Vanya and Sonya, includes Vanya's mother, a tea-pouring and wisdom spouting old Nanny and the doctor called to treat the Professor's gout whose house call lasts until the end of the play.

Since everything seems to be on the Internet, I found the play in its entirety along with the set descriptions that matched the ones that were used at the college.

I don’t expect anyone to read it. This is more for my reference.

(Act three had a nice rant by the Astroff (the doctor) about the environment. He planted trees as a hobby. He felt too many trees in the countryside were being cleared, disrupting the rivers and wildlife. I never would have thought people would have been worried about the same things over 100 years ago. Way to go Astroff.)

I also found out that it was a TV movie with Rebecca Pidgeon playing the part of a Sonya, the plain looking daughter, giving me a chance to post a couple gratuitous pictures of her. (the one below from her album)



She is a favorite of mine; I’ve seen her in Heist, The Spanish Prisoner, Edmond, and a few episodes of The Unit. Not surprisingly, she is David Mamet’s wife (since those are all works of his).

He also wrote the screenplay for a little seen movie based on it, Vanya on 42nd Street. She wasn’t in it though. I wonder why?



Sunday night, flipping through the dials, I found Masterpiece Theater’s Bleak House, starring Gillian Anderson. (Lucky for me Clint wasn’t home, otherwise it would have been The Family Guy on Fox.)

I think this is the second go around for it. It was on last fall or winter.

There are six episodes with the first showing Sunday. For a period piece, it’s very engaging. I watched for an hour before realizing that was Gillian Anderson, which is a good thing.

Looking for something different to watch this spring? I highly recommend it. It shouldn’t be hard to catch up.

From WTTW – the local public TV station:

Acclaimed writer Andrew Davies turns his talents to one of Charles Dickens' most brilliant novels, arguably the greatest ever depiction of Victorian London -- from its splendid heights to its most wretched depths.

Honored with a Peabody award and ten Emmy nominations, Bleak House features some of the most famous plot twists in literary history, including a case of human spontaneous combustion and an infamous inheritance dispute that is tied up for generations in the dysfunctional English courts.

An epic feast of characters and storylines, Bleak House is Dickens' passionate indictment of the convoluted legal system that is as searingly relevant today as it was in the mid-19th century. The court of Chancery becomes the center of a tangle of relationships at all levels of society and a metaphor for the decay and corruption at the heart of Victorian England.



Starring Gillian Anderson, Charles Dance, Alun Armstrong, Ian Richardson, Nathaniel Parker, Richard Griffiths, Phil Davis, Joanna David and Carey Mulligan.

Happy Birthday Flo.

I the pop sound. Maybe that explains my fondness for Death Cab for Cutie but way back then there was The Turtles.

Nowadays, my tastes for music lean more towards new than retro but I always thought The Turtle's songs were enjoyable to listen to. (I hear the name Eleanor and think of Adam Cohen's Low Million's version but there was an earlier Elenore). Note from Wiki: The blissful-sounding "Elenore" may be the only Top Ten single to contain et cetera in it's lyrics. Ha.

Flo turns 60 today.

Mark Volman Born: 19-Apr-1947

Birthplace: Los Angeles

CA Gender: Male

Religion: Presbyterian

Race or Ethnicity: White

Sexual orientation: Straight (I don't remember this being a question 40 years ago. Ha.)

Occupation: Singer

Nationality: United States

Something to talk about.

Sorry Sanjaya. This is how it's done. (I'll kind of miss him though.)

041607.

The kitchen table is our bulletin board. We leave notes for each other on the newspaper and on the back of envelopes. Amy left this for me since our paths haven't crossed yet today. It sums up my feelings.