When the flip-flops come off, you know the music's getting serious. Yet, Kennedy and Hanley keep their flops on.
John Hanley Band
For all of you fans of the band. Here they are in all of their glory. They packed the Around The Corner patio. Lauren had technical issues with her violin
Confused (& Probably Just Tired)
It’s the end of the week for me and I’m confused.
I have friends who are playing right now at “Around The Corner”. I should go.
I haven’t worked out today. I should.
I got some sleep during the day but I don’t feel like it was enough. I’m not going back to sleep for now.
I haven’t biked since the first day I was out because it was raining yesterday and Tuesday I worked out. I’m biking to Tremont tomorrow to go to the bank. (Robbers, I will have no money before or after I visit said bank so don’t even try. You will just be wasting your time and risk me running over your butt with my bike. I’m warning you I will do it. Seriously, don’t try!) Seriously!
I have a lot planned this weekend. I have a lot planned over the next three weekends. At the end of the week, it catches up with me, the lack of sleep, the “to-do” list grows out of control. Why can’t we have eight days to a week where we get three days off? I’d just probably plan more things on the extra day and ignore all of the little tasks I really need to accomplish.
Tomorrow night promises to be fun with the Ingenuity party that Cool Cleveland is hosting plus, I’ll be hanging out with a new friend. One of my out of town friends is visiting Cleveland. It’ll be good to see him since he’s sort of fallen off the face of the earth.
Saturday night will be fun. I’ll get to see one of my best friends as he hosts his annual pool party. I’ll have pictures probably posted via the cell phone. It’ll be a blast, I promise.
Okay, enough stalling. I’m going to Lakewood to “Around the Corner” to wish one of my friends happy birthday. I’ll work out tonight, I promise. Make sure to ask me tomorrow if I did, that way I won’t be able to skate on that promise.
Alas, the weekend cometh… At least that means a night’s sleep,
Dolly Hits The Valley
It’s been strange, to say the least, seeing people I know (community leaders) from South Texas appear on television talking about the impact of Hurricane Dolly.
I may be just as strange to see landmarks I remember from living there underwater or damaged.
I’m glad to report my friends are safe and there is minimal damage to their homes. From my view, Dolly did a lot more damage to the Valley than Emily.
I talked to my friend, Phil, this morning. He was up around 5am CDT, looking for a cup of coffee. He doesn’t have power at his place. I felt like I had to talk fast because not having power means not being able to charge your cell phone. Phil doesn’t have a car charger either. I get one every time I get a new phone. Dang those Samsung people for making the Instinct with a proprietary connector and not USB. I have about a thousand USB wall chargers around my house.
Phil told me Harlingen for the most part weathered the storm. He said he saw a lot of palm tree fronds on the ground. The apartment building near his place sustained some damage to the roof. Part of the fence around my friend, Beau’s apartment suffered some damage. KGBT is reporting more than 150,000 customers in the Valley are without power. I know everyone at my former station did a lot of work and worked a lot of hours covering Hurricane Dolly. They have a lot of work ahead of them with the coverage of the aftermath.
Dolly was the real deal with winds strong enought to make the storm a Category 2 when it hit the Texas coast. I’ve tried to get through to Phil several times today. I’m sure he’s okay but his cell phone battery may not be charged. I hope he found a place to get a car charger.
I’m just glad everyone I know is okay,
Well, Hello Dolly!
That’s something I wouldn’t be saying if I still lived down in the Rio Grande Valley.
Right now, the storm on track to hit the area I once called home. I have several friends down there. They should be okay because it’s only forecasted to hit as a Category 1 storm. I looked on my old station’s website. The headline blares “Hurricane Warning In Effect.” It already lists where people can get sandbags. Home improvement stores are selling out of plywood to cover windows. Some people have put tape over their windows, even though they say it really doesn’t help.
The area is under a Hurricane Warning. If you don’t know what that means, it’s the National Weather Service’s message to you that you’d better prepare for a storm.
I only had one brush with a hurricane when I lived in Harlingen. Emily threatened the area for days only to wiggle south of the Valley. I can remember getting up to see what the next forecast was for the storm. I questioned the meteorologists at my station. I watched the latest models trying to figure out if my place would suffer damage.
My friend and former co-worker lived in Florida and went through some of the toughest hurricanes to hit the state. The pictures of his home will never leave me. There was nothing left. Everything was scattered everywhere. I remembered those pictures when I was down in the Valley. I didn’t want to come home after covering the storm only to see the damage it left.
Luckily, I just got to see a lot of rain and experience some heavy winds during Emily. The surfers loved the waves on South Padre Island. There wasn’t even that much damage to SPI.
I hope the storm passes and there is little or no damage and certainly no one gets hurt.
Blizzards or hurricanes? I’ll take a good ol’ fashioned Ohio blizzard anytime than to have to deal with the anxiety and the aftermath of a hurricane.
Football Season… Bring It!
Football season will mean the end of summer but fall will be just as exciting here in Ohio. The Brown will be back in town and Ohio State is geting the buzz.
Buckeyes’ head coach, Jim Tressel is entering his eighth season as head coach and a lot of people wonder if he can bring a national champsionship home to Columbus this year. The professional handicappers say the Buckeyes will win the Big Ten this year. The big question is if they can get to the National Championship and if they can actually win it this time around.
ESPN College Football Live interviewed Tressel about the upcoming season, his star recruit and the Big 10.
The Big Ten went three and five in bowl games last year. Jesse Palmer asked Tressel if the Big Ten was a weak conference. “I think anyone that’s ever played against the Big Ten would refute that. The Big Ten is not a weak conference, it’s a strong conference. Did we lose the last two National Championship games, yes. Did we lose the last two Rose Bowls, which is a BCS venue, yes. And that gets the most notorioty. So I think you have to look in the mirror and say if you want respect, you have to win those games and so I don’t know if you ever get respect in debates, you get respect in action and 2008 is on the way,” Tressel replied.
Ohio State will have a high school standout on the field this year. Terrelle Pryor will cross the Pennsylvania/Ohio border to play for the Buckeyes. Tressel said he couldn’t wait to get Pryor teamed up with the other players and see what he had to offer.
One of the biggest match-ups this year will be September 13th at USC. People are saying if the Buckeyes can get past that game, they’ll head to the championship.
I’m looking forward to the upcoming season, even if it does mean the end of a Cleveland summer. Let’s go Browns and Buckeyes in the fall.
The Flats Flattened
I was out biking today. I couldn’t resist (more on that later. btw, Kevin, I really owe you big!) I wanted to see what the East Bank looked like from the other side of the river. Check out the pictures above for yourself. It is amazing. I think the Basement is one of the buildings still standing. I am sure it’ll be gone soon too.
While looking for a map of what would have been the old East Bank of the Flats, I stumbled across the Wolstein’s Group’s website of what the new East Bank of the Flats will look like.
Weekend Recap
Good times so far this weekend.
I got my new computer up and running fully. I have to do some housekeeping inside the machine; tie-wrapping cables, installing the hard drives in their bays, putting the cover together. I will probably spend some of the day getting software installed on it. It runs Windows Vista like a champ. Basically, the freeze problem centered around the fact that I was running a hard drive and a cd-rom drive off the same IDE bus. It’s well-documented that you can do this but for some reason my computer/mobo didn’t like it and pouted (read: froze up!).
I’m writing this blog before I officially start my day. I’m going down to my friend, Kevin’s house to get my new bicycle. What a friend! He’s giving me the bike. Of course, I’ll ask him like 50 times if I won’t take any money for it and he won’t but that’s how we roll. I’ll probably have to stop at Target for a bike lock and cereal.
I got to meet Mel, a fellow blogger, whose place on the Internet garners a lot more attention than my little space. Say it ain’t so! You think she’s awesome from reading her posts? Try meeting her in person. She’s great and a laugh riot. ‘Nuff said for now.
Housework definately is in the plans for today. I have a load of clean laundry sitting in the dryer. Thank God, I have an iron. Oh, and there’s another load of clean laundry that somehow found it’s way on the floor. {looks around like he doesn’t know who did that}
And there’s sleep… I’m in early for the next two days at work to help with our morning newscast. One of the producers is off so I’m going to be a writing machine. My fingers and typing skills are going to get a workout.
Speaking of that, I don’t know what I pulled on the right side of my chest but it hurts like a mutha. I suspended my workouts for about four days and tried working out Friday and it seems to have come back. It HURTS! When I sneeze, I have to hold my hands to my face to stop from jerking forward, otherwise it feels like someone suckerpunched me in the ribs. Zowie!
Okay, seriously, I have to get going else all of the aforementioned things are just either not getting done or they’re all going to back into one another.
So, I’m off…
My nephews
They just got back from OBX and they wanna look like surfers. They are already wearing ‘product’ in their hair. What has uncle started?
Cereal Freak!
Okay, I admit it, I LOVE cereal. Maybe because I’m a bachelor, maybe it’s because it’s easy, maybe because it’s always been my comfort food.
I eat it for breakfast, I could eat it for lunch, dinner and even before bed. A trip to the store with me includes a trip down the cereal aisle. I get obsessive compulsive about cereal. I go through phases. There was the time when I ate five bowls of Raisin Bran one day, I won’t tell you the consequences.
Then there is Cap’n Crunch… I believe it is the Devil’s cereal. You can leave a box in the back of your cupboard and it’ll stay crunchy. There isn’t the slightest bit of staleness. You can soak it in milk and that stuff stays crunchy. It also does the Devil’s work… you can eat it and it’ll tear the livin’ heck out of your mouth. I still love it, especially with Crunch Berries.
The cereals I love:
Cookie Crisp
Fruity Pebbles
Golden Grahams
Kix
Honeycomb
Raisin Bran (Kellogg’s Only)
Apple Jacks
Sugar Smacks
Corn Pops (Thanks Matt for reminding me!!)
(I think I could go on…)
The cereals I hate:
Chocolatey cereals
Peanut Butter cereals
cereals that look like they include tree twigs
I’m off to get another gallon of milk,