Category: Longform
You are viewing all posts from this category, beginning with the most recent.
Fun with Family
We had the whole clan over this weekend - well, almost the whole clan. Ryan came in from Chicago, Aaron and the folks from Wisconsin, Andrew from his job in Illinois. Becky’s folks were already here visiting. We were only missing Rebecca, who is finishing up her six-month DTS in Panama. She’ll be home in about 10 days - sure looking forward to seeing her.
We took a whole ton of pictures over the weekend and I’m in the process of uploading some of them to a Memorial Day Weekend set on Flickr. Here’s a couple samples. Enjoy!
iPod: the continuing saga
Took my iPod with the bad battery and service plan back to Best Buy today. They have to send it in for service, and gave me the option of either having my iPod serviced in about 2 weeks, or in the quick replacement plan where they send me a similar iPod, refurbished, right away - i.e. 3 - 5 business days. I opted for the latter option - the quicker the better, and I’m not tied to my particular piece of hardware - I just want something that works.
I’m hoping it ends up being more like 3 business days instead of 5, but then, I’m just awfully impatient sometimes. We’ll see how it goes.
iPod Blues
I’ve had my 3G 20GB iPod for two and a half years now, so it’s no surprise that the battery was about due to go. Well, it pretty well happened last week; I could charge it overnight and still not get more than about 30 minutes worth of play out of it. :-(
When I bought the iPod, I shelled out an extra $50 for the 3-year service plan, since the Best Buy associate assured me that it would cover replacing the battery, and I knew that batteries were the iPod’s weakness. So when I get a chance this weekend I will be heading to Best Buy to see what they’ll offer me for service options. I think it’s unlikely that they’d just offer me a replacement, though if they wanted to offer me $300 towards a new iPod I certainly wouldn’t complain. More likely they’ll tell me I have to send it in for service and be without it for a month. Ugh. I guess I’ll see. A month would be a long time to go without my iPod.
How quickly we get attached to these electronic gizmos.
Heading home from DC
Having been in DC since Monday night, I’m good and ready to be heading home. Our meetings have been useful but are winding down, and my flight leaves Washington Reagan at 2:30. I’ll head out of here, find some lunch, and make my way down to the airport. I heard a rumor that our next quarterly meeting might be in Seattle instead of DC, which would be nice for an August meeting. If not, I’ve got a couple hotels scoped out that would be nice to stay at when we meet back here in August.
It will be good to get home.
...leaving on a jet plane...
I’m headed out of town today; assuming that Northwest Airlines does their thing, I will be in Washington, DC by mid-evening. I’ll be attending two and a half days of RTCA committee meetings. Such fun! I should be home on Thursday night.
Happily, my in-laws are arriving this afternoon to visit. They will be good company for Becky and the girls while I’m gone, and since they’re staying for two weeks, I’ll get to see them too when I get home.
Chapter 11: In which Chris hears a familiar song in the unlikliest of places.
Last night was a date night for Becky and me. We dropped the girls off with some friends for a couple of hours and headed to Casa Las Glorias for the Mexican food I’d been craving all week. Darn tasty stuff. (What’s this white stuff on my nachos? (Sorry, square peg joke. Carry on.)) Unexpectedly, they had a musician strolling the aisles at the restaurant, singing and playing the guitar. He was singing what I’d consider to be typical Mexican restaurant music, and doing a good job of it.
He finished another song in Spanish, thanked the patron at the table next to ours for a tip, and then started on another guitar strum. This one sounded vaguely familiar. I was trying to place it, and then he started singing, and I was dumbfounded. “Well it looks like five thousand miles broke the camel’s back… but it’s not as though I had a plan to win you back…” At this point Becky looked at me quizzically, because she recognized the song, too. No way. NO. WAY. The strolling guitarist in Casa Las Glorias is playing a Caedmon’s Call song?!? What the heck!
The young man continued strolling and singing while we finished our dinner. He had an assortment of Mexican songs, but he was also verging into pop music territory with some John Mayer, Dave Matthews, and the like. When we finished dinner I gave him a tip and we discussed Caedmon’s for a couple minutes. He was surprised to find another fan in the restaurant. He admitted that the latest album he owns is Back Home, and I encouraged him to get ahold of Share The Well and that they have a new album coming out in August. Then we parted ways; he kept singing, we headed off to continue our evening out.
I have a feeling it’ll be many days before I hear a Caedmon’s Call song sung in a restaurant again.
A Post In Which Chris Elaborates On Two Unrelated Songs
I’ve had two songs running pretty much on repeat today. This happens to me on frequent occasion; I get stuck on some song and I will just loop it over and over. It usually takes a day or two for the compulsion to go away.
The first one is Nothing Left To Lose by Mat Kearney. Why this song? It gives me a feeling of calm; laid-back, content, happy. Not so much that it makes me calm, content and happy, but that it reminds me that it’s possible. I’ll admit right here that it doesn’t have a lot to do with the lyrics - I probably couldn’t sing along with the song if I wanted to - it’s more to do with the music, the melody. Good stuff. Why is it stuck in my head? I think it started back on Sunday while we were eating breakfast at McDonalds while waiting for the rain to stop. This song came on over the McD’s muzak system, and my brother Andrew and I both pretty much simultaneously started singing along. It was pretty cool
The other song is Coldplay’s Swallowed In the Sea. Again, I haven’t taken a lot of time to try to figure out the lyrics. What I love in this song is the way they build it sonically. It starts out pretty sparse, just some keyboards and a little bit of pad. Then they build it in, first with the drums, and finally with the guitars and vocal harmony, until at the end they’ve built up this massive sound… it’s so… there.
Am I the only one that suffers from this compulsion? What songs have been stuck in your head lately?
Devil's Lake Camping Trip
Yes, as promised, we went camping last weekend up at Devil’s Lake State Park in Wisconsin. My brother Andrew pretty much organized the whole thing; his girlfriend Heather is visiting and it was good to get to see everybody. Some thoughts from the weekend:
- Devil’s Lake is a beautiful park. Dave, if you read this, yeah, it’s worth going for a day trip or an overnight. Lots of nice hiking, the water is beautiful and crystal-clear.
- What the park service considers “paved, flat, and level” in a hiking trail isn’t so much what I’d consider “paved, flat, and level”. It scares me a little bit what one of their “difficult” trails would look like. :-)
- Tent camping when it gets down to 40F at night is kinda chilly.
- Tent camping when it rains overnight is more of a pain.
Now, mind you, I don’t want to sound whiny. It was a fun weekend, a good time was had by all. Many pictures are available on my Flickr site, and I’ll append a few of them here. We had a fun time just crashing around the campfire, playing on the beach, and hiking. We enjoyed watching the rain whilst sitting indoors at McDonald’s eating breakfast on Sunday. :-)
Overall, it was a good weekend, but good to be back home, too.
Camping!
When I was a kid, we went camping as a family all the time. I think some of my siblings enjoyed the out-of-doors more than I did, but still, it was a good time for the whole family and a cost-effective way to go on vacation. :-) After we got married, Becky and I went camping a few times; most notably we were in Colorado camping when 9/11 happened… but that’s a different story.
Fast-forward to today. Well, to tomorrow. Tomorrow morning we will pack the van and head out to Devil’s Lake State Park in Wisconsin for two nights of camping with my family. Andrew’s girlfriend Heather (hi, Heather, do you still read this thing?) is visiting for the next 10 days, so Andrew has organized pretty much the whole camping trip. (“Remember to bring your softball equipment” x 100 or so. :-) ) I’m hoping the girls will enjoy it; they’ll certainly enjoy seeing all the uncles and grandparents again. How well they sleep in a tent will be an entirely different story.
I’ll be sure to take a bunch of pictures and post them here once we get back. This weekend starts what will be a whirlwind month and a half for us; this camping trip, I have a trip to DC, Becky’s folks visit for 2 weeks, I run a couple of 5ks, and then we go to Orlando for the better part of a week while the girls stay with their grandparents. It’ll be fun, but it’ll also be a relief to have it slow down in July.
(Yikes! Did I really just say July?)
24 Hours of the Hubbs: A Celebration of the Mundane
When I decided to do 24 hours of Flickr, I wasn’t really sure what my Saturday would entail. Nonetheless, I gave it a go. As Saturdays go, it was fairly basic. We went to some neighborhood garage sales, cleaned out the garage, went shopping, and watched a movie. So while some of the pictures are cute, none of them are particularly artsy or profound. Oh well.
Here are a few samples of the pictures; you’re welcome to visit the whole set on Flickr.
