A new Look

There are so many things happening in life right now, it's hard to capture them in words.

1. The camping season is over so we are actively seeking winter storage. We are hoping the finalize where we will store the camper within the next week.
2. There were repairs that needed to be made to the camper. We are also actively seeking to have those resolved prior to taking the camper to storage.
3. Alex's basketball season will kick off next week, the Thursday after Labor Day. We will have fewer kids than last year so each player will be expected to contribute.
4. Work is insanely busy as I push to get my work done that must be completed prior to the update being released to clients. After a co-worker finishes a task, I will have (roughly) 3 days of work. That was my guess. I hope it goes a lot quicker (like 1 morning :>)) but I don't want to jinx myself.
5. We added a third driver last week (actually, the license arrived this week) so I will be starting driver's ed (go to an empty parking lot before getting into traffic) soon.
6. Played drums @ Mass on Sunday @ 11 and it was fantastic! There were 14 high schoolers singing their guts out and two guitarists along with piano and clarinet. It sounded great. I'd really like to start recording the way we sounded!
7. We go to the Brewers/Cubs game on 9/12 but are leaving 9/11, the day of the Iowa/ISU game. Tentatively, we will go to the Miller Brewery tour on Saturday. The assembly line fascinates me.
8. My father-in-law, Karen, our neighbor Mike, and I hung cabinets in the laundry room. We have more to hang in our storage room, but it's probably going to be a month before I think about it. Seriously.
9. The CDs to review keep roaring in. Wrote a review of Emily Shirley's 5 song EP. Liked it. I have a "Classic Albums" DVD of Black Sabbath's "Paranoid" and I hope to get Avenge Sevenfold's new one along with the "Big Four" DVD (Metallica, Anthrax, Slayer, Megadeth) soon. I have a large backlog. I'd like to say I'm going to write a review a day for the month of September, but I'm not sure if that's possible.
10. I have been dabbling into songwriting again, something I kind of gave up in 1995 when it just didn't seem like I could write anything else. I've put together nearly 30 songs with some ideas for music on a yellow legal tablet. Some of them were written just to write them, but a couple of them have potential. Some of the titles are "Your Moment to be Dead", "No Rhythm", and "When You Say Die," and "No Return to Sender". I don't have my notebook next to me to even say if these are all ones I would consider having potential. I know "Your Moment to be Dead" and "When You Say Die" have some musical ideas written down on the rough draft of the sheet of paper. I am transcribing them into a single notebook and, actually, have written a couple of others. I'm not taking it too seriously but I would like to think that if a guitarist called me up and said, "Hey, let's do original music" that maybe some of the ideas I've written down in July/August might be interesting to try out.
11. I'm working on a couple of personal projects involving efforts to improve myself. I have lost 20 pounds (going from 244 to 224) and I would like to lose another 20. I'm trying to make smart choices regarding food and drink less Pepsi, though some days, that is really hard. I am also trying to pray more and to thank God daily for his blessings on my life and family. There are also prayers for my wife as she deals with me , my daughter who is dealing with being a teenager, and for my son who is dealing with his sister being a teenager. I also have added prayers for my mother in the nursing home with AD, for my father who is dealing with a wife of nearly 50 years deteriorate in front of him, for my brother and sister-in-law who are expecting a baby girl in December. I also have been saying prayers for my co-worker's daughter who was found dead in February, for my co-worker who was struck on her bike by a truck, and for my manager's mother who was buried earlier this month.
12. On a lighter note, I got to sit at the electronic drum set at West Music on Monday night during Alex's lesson. It felt so good to play drums! It was so awesome! It really, truly, is a highlight of my week. I put on headphones, press a button to take out the prerecorded drum part, and pick a genre like "LA Metal" or "Rock and Roll" or even "Country" and just jam out. No one can hear me except for the tap tap tap of the pads. It is so much fun.

And with that, good night. I hope to have more posts in the month of September than I did in August. What's the point of a blog if it's never updated? Exactly! I think maybe tomorrow night I will purge my inbox, like I wrote about last time.

Or not.