What The Fuck
... am I doing on Livejournal? I haven't posted here since July 4th. The first thing I did when logging in was edit my last post to add the paragraph breaks I couldn't make in July.
The weather is fabulous! Sunny and 70 all week. Monday was the only work day this week so I've been able to enjoy the mild temps. Jeff is home for the holiday. His girlfriend Leanne is here too. We're having a nice holiday vaca.
My son is the sportswriter-photographer and editor for the sports section of the Paso Robles Press, his first real job after college. After toiling for college sports websites for nearly no money he finally got a shoes on the ground job, and it's a good one, not the money, the experience. He attends high school sporting events in the Paso Robles - San Luis Obispo area, photographs the event, interviews coaches and players, writes the articles, lays out the sports section for printing and uploads content to the newspaper's website. The Paso Press is a twice per week publication, small, but the kid is getting REAL reporting experience. He loves everything except for the living three hours from Los Angeles and Leanne.
2013 was an okay year, not great, not bad, just another year with highlights and lowlights. We spent a week in the Windy City for the Chicago Blues Festival. It was a great trip that included my first game at Wrigley Field, four days of music, an architectural river cruise and other touristy stuff. I had been to Chicago five times for business in the 80's and 90's, this was my first recreational visit.
We enjoyed Labor Day weekend in Austin, Texas, my first visit there. The main attraction was a Buddy Guy show at Austin City Limits but we saw several good bands at countless live music venues. It doesn't matter what music you desire, they have it live in Austin. It was hotter than PHX in TEX with 3X the humidity, but we survived the three shirt per day weather. We toured the Texas state capitol and took in a comedy revue... Ester's Follies. After 90 minutes of laughing my face hurt, it was that good.
Both Chicago and Austin trips offered new beers, ales and great food ... too many to mention. I drank every local brew I could find, BBQ in both cities, steaks, pizza and a real deal Jewish deli in Chicago that made my heart miss the east coast.
In the last few months we've laid low, mostly local activities but nothing grand. I won two fantasy baseball championships and this weekend I'm in fantasy football championship game. Yeah, I'm a winner in the fantasy world but in the real world, meh.
Since last year I've become a huge fan of Podcasts, especially WTF with Marc Maron. I have a dozen podcasts in my app, comedy, sports, news, interviews, some daily, most once or twice week. NO POLITICS. I spend most workdays plugged into my iPhone. It's a nice perk. When my isolation buds are in I'm in a productive zone, input and output.
I'm in the middle of my annual Bogie Week marathon. With several days off and a desire to not spend money after the holidays it's a perfect time to watch my favorite Bogey films. I've watched a couple of 'new to me' Bogies and a few of my DVDs. I have a handful to go.
My winter garden is lookng pretty good right now. We have romaine lettuce, basil, cilantro, two pepper varieties, kale, rosemary and tomatoes. A couple of other veggies haven't fared well but we'll be swimming in ripe tomatoes around Super Bowl Sunday.
I could promise to blog more in 2014 but I know those would be idle words. Happy New Year to any LJ holdouts that come across this rare entry.