Whaddya mean "smell my feet"?

When I was growing up, there were a few times I tried to make my costume for Halloween.  I don't ever remember these being pulled off very successfully.  One year in particular I was trying to do the Wolfman thing.  I had a book that I had bought from the Scholastic Book sales thing - you know, where you filled out the sheet of paper with the names of all the books on it, checking off the books you wanted and gave it to your teacher with your check or cash (when you could still trust people with cash)?  I remember always being so darned excited when those boxes of books came in!

Anyway, I bought this book telling you how to make all sorts of costumes, supposedly using tricks of the film industry's special effects and makeup people.  I got all the "ingredients" together; well, as many as I could find in southwest Missouri.  What we couldn't find we just guessed at what it was and bought something that was, in retrospect, probably something completely different.  I remember a couple of the ingredients were cotton balls, some sort of brown dye, and corn syrup (to stick the cotton on yer face).  We needed some sort of wax for the fangs.  I can't remember if we were able to find the right stuff or not, but I do remember really sucking at the art of making realistic werewolf fangs.  They were supposed to be relatively small and pointy, and just stick to your canine teeth with relative ease.  In all actuality, they didn't really stick to my teeth, and I looked like I was just sucking on two small pieces of pizza without any sauce on them.  In addition to that, my brown-dyed-cotton-ball "fur" looked more like I had just gotten a bad case of poison ivy on my face, and instead of using calamine lotion, I dipped all of the cotton balls I could find in the house into some shoe polish and stuck them to my face.  Not exactly terror-inducing.  Oh, well.  I suppose it was still better than those old plastic masks and aprons, like "Casper", or any of these lame, and occasionally really creepy costumes.

They're so cute and cuddly!

We never, as far as I can remember, really got into decorating the house for Halloween, though - maybe a pumpkin or something, but nothing that spectacular.  I've seen some really awesome things up here, though. The subdivision in which we take Jenny's little cousin and best friend to trick or treat seems to have a healthy little competition going on as far as biggest and best decorating goes.  They've got everything from just simple, fun, non-scary stuff to some downright creepy stuff, like this family who set up their entire front yard to look like an old haunted cemetery, like this. 

Ooh, Spooky!

Oooh, Ghosty Face!

Better, yet less creepy pic of the reaper dude.

This reaper-lookin' dude was awesome!

 I'm thinking that one of these days Jenny and I may start doing stuff like this, because both of us think it looks so cool, and I, personally, would love to scare the bejeebuz outta some of the little junior high snits on our block!  Man, would that be fun!


As much as I dislike Candy Corns (tm), I realize that they're kind of the unofficial candy of Halloween, so those are the colors I chose for today's stroke - orange, yellow and white.  Gotta go see if Jenny was able to snag any of the girls' loot tonight - I'm in the mood for a Twix!

And now...page two...

So with all of the huge, Big McLargeHuge games we see every week, such as (this particular week) the Missouri/Nebraska game (which Mizzou lost in magically craptacular fashion), we often forget about the "smaller" teams;  teams which have every bit of the talent as their bigger-conference counterparts. 

This week, we finally got a little glimpse of a university from the northeast section of Oklahoma - one that started out as a Presbyterian School for Indian Girls in 1882.  There have been several big names that have come out of (what eventually became) The University Of Tulsa, including Steve Largent,  Paul Harvey (And that's...the rest of the story), Mary Kay Place, and former Ram's defensive coordinator and current Chicago Bears head coach Lovie Smith. 

Another wonderful, beautiful, very talented graduate of the University Of Tulsa is my wonderful mother, Jo Ellen (Beeson) Fielding (love you, Ma!).  Because of her, and her affiliation with this university, I will always root for the Golden Hurricanes. 

Tonight these very same Hurricanes beat [supposedly] "America's Team", the Notre Dame Fighting Irish.  This was not only a huge win for Tulsa, as everyone just assumes that a "Big Team" like ND will just walk all over a smaller school like TU, but also for me personally, because I just really, heavily dislike Notre Dame!  They are among those big "storied teams" that I dislike so much, like Alabama's Crimson Tide, or the aforementioned Dallas Cowboys.  If you've had a movie made about you, maybe with the exception of Marshall University, I probably won't root for you. 

Anyway, tonight's stroke is for those wunnerful Golden Hurricanes of the University Of Tulsa:  I think with as much as they've developed in the last few years, and with the way things are going in college football in general, we could really see big things from this program in the future!  I hope so!  But then again, what do I know?

"You gotta rawk?" No, I got a rock...

Well, kiddies, there are only 2 days left until Halloween!  Have you got your costumes ready?  I figured I'd just go as a fat, graying dude in an OU sweatshirt again this year.  It's served me pretty well in the past. 

Halloween is also the start of the holiday season in general, and that means lots of specials on the teevee.  I know there are a whole bunch of new things on, which I don't really care too much about ("Larry the Cable Guy's Christmas Spectacular ", I'm looking in your direction!), but they always break out the classics, like "Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Reindeer" and "Frosty The Snowman". 

Halloween has it's share of specials, too, such as "Scared Shrekless", which is new this year.  Then there are the Simpson's "Treehouse Of Horror" episodes every year - those are some of the funniest episodes ever!  Definitely some of my favorites of what I consider my second favorite show of all time (second only to "Cheers").  By the way, I'd like to wish a very happy birthday to Dan Castellenata, the very funny man responsible for the voice of Homer Simpson.  Happy Birthday, Dan!

The penultimate Halloween special, of course, is "It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown".  It just doesn't get any better than Lucy showing how to draw a scary face on a pumpkin - on the back of Charlie Brown's head, Snoopy flying around in his "Sopwith Camel", Charlie Brown only getting rocks in his candy sack, and, of course, Sally yelling at Linus for ruining her Halloween by convincing her that the Great Pumpkin would rise up from the pumpkin patch giving them all sorts of goodies.  Of course he didn't. 

I went back to green tonight - kind of a yellowish-green, for Lucy Van Pelt's witch mask.  I'm gonna have to try to find that show online here to watch again - haven't seen it in so long!

A little Tim Allen and some Benicio del Toro...

So today, as promised, I continued the big home improvement trend, doing the caulking in the back room.  I actually learned that if you push the tube in front of you, as opposed to pulling it, the tube actually does a lot of the work for you, and you don't waste near the amount of caulk as you would otherwise.  Silly me.  I remember seeing that on a "how-to" page on the internet a while back, but for some reason I just thought that would be more of a mess - like it would just push the caulk out of the crevice, making for twice the work. 

This turned out to be quite a revelation, and I got done probably in half the time, and it looks friggin' great to boot!  Tomorrow we'll (hopefully) finish up this little project - gotta take all the furniture out so we can put in a new piece of carpet that we got from Jenny's dad when he moved into his new house.

We did do a little runnin' this morning, though - had to go to Lowes to get some different caulk, and we also went to the library.  Jenny had a couple of books that she had requested, and they were in.  I wanted to check out the movie selection, because it's SCARY MOVIE TIME!!!

I know it's cliche to watch horror movies around this time, but I've just really been in the mood the last couple of days.  I actually like them year-round, but right about now is when I really like the ghosty-gobliny stuff.  Right now I'm not so much into the hacker/slasher/kill-all-the-promiscuous-kids-at-the-summer-camp kinda stuff, although I do enjoy those from time to time.  Right now I want to be genuinely creeped out by something unexpected.  The last one to do that was "The Strangers".  That one scared the pee-woddin' outta me!  I think it was probably the fact that something like that actually could happen - in fact it claims that it was based on actual events.  Whether or not that's true, the fact remains that it could happen, and after I watched that movie I just about had to change my drawers! :-)

I've actually got "Nosferatu" on my waiting list, but it hasn't come in yet.  I'm excited to see that one - so many people still rave at how creepy of a movie it is, especially for the time in which it came out - 1922!  What I did come home with, though (which hopefully won't suck) was "The Wolfman" and "Drag Me To Hell" (the latter of which looks like it'll be cheezy, but probably dumb fun).  I really didn't see much else that grabbed my attention - of course I'm sure the majority of scary movies are probably all checked out right now by people who are also into being cliche! :-)

I figured that tonight I'd try something a little different - just didn't really turn out like I thought it would.  I put a little squirt of raw umber down there and tried to drag it side to side while I dragged the knife upward.  I forgot how much texture is on the canvas, though, and so my "wolfman" doesn't look like I had hoped.  Hopefully the movie itself fares better! 

Not too runny, not too thick...

Well I started working on the back room today, finally.  It's a four-season room, and it's in dire need of some major caulking!  We started off a few weeks ago caulking the outside, but found that water was still getting in.  No good. 


The first thing I needed to do in order to get this project done was to get rid of all the mold and calcification on the floor.  I had to get down there with my handy-dandy 5-in-1 tool and scrape it all out.  No biggie.  After that, I did a little research on these here intarnets, and came up with a nice little concoction to get rid of the calcium deposits: baking soda and vinegar!  I thought that might make a nice salad dressing, but that tells you how much I know about food!  I sure do love to eat it, but I know nothing about making it!  Turns out that when you pour vinegar into baking soda it foams up - it was almost like a 3rd grade science experiment in our kitchen, only I never learned that stuff back then (or if I did I have LONG since forgotten it, which is entirely possible!). 

We'll do the actual caulking tomorrow - we discovered that the caulk we bought earlier is prone to attracting mildew.  As my Aunt Phyllis would say,"This will not do!"  So tomorrow morning, I'll go to Lowes to grab some different caulk, and to grab some of that good old blue tape to keep my caulking looking half-way decent!

Anyway, I decided (actually, I got the idea from my lovely wife) to make today's stroke a white with some glass beads, to represent the little vinegar-and-baking-powder concoction I mixed up today.  It's all about friction, baby!  Get those calcium deposits off of there!  I got sick of calcium back when the whole "Got Milk" thing took off - I already know I like milk, I don't need a stupid slogan!  :-)

Save The Clocktower!

Well, apparently we had some hellacious storms last night, but both Jenny and I slept through them.  The winds were apparently strong enough that it blew down a wall on a building down on the south side of the City here.  The only thing it did to us was to make more leaves fall, forcing us to spend even more time out there this morning picking the damned things up.  Again. 

The storms coincided, though, with a very important date:  today, October 26, 2010 is the 25th anniversary of the fictional date on which "Back To The Future" took place.  As you know, "BTTF" is one of, if not my favorite movies of all time.  I have lost track of how many times I've seen it.  I remember about 10 years ago being so excited when they finally put the entire trilogy out on DVD!  Now, I guess to also coincide with the anniversary of that famous fictional date, Universal Studios has released the appropriately named "Back to the Future: 25th Anniversary Trilogy", containing original footage shot with Eric Stolz as Marty McFly, before they canned him and got Michael J. Fox.  I hate when they come out with new versions of films I already own with new extra crap on it!  I'm not buying that again - sorry, Amazon!


Thinking about all this BTTF stuff (and the fact that I heard it on the radio this morning) reminded me of a little comedic song by Thomas F. Wilson, who played Biff Tannen in the BTTF movies.   He said he got tired of everyone recognizing him and only asking him questions about that particular movie, and it's crew, so he just wrote a song about it.  


I did a yellow stroke tonight, for the streaks of fire that go through the legs of Marty and Doc when the Delorean first takes off.  I may have to watch the movie again!  G'night!

What in the wide, wide, world of sports is a-goin' on here?

If there was ever a day that flew by, it was today!  I got up a little later than usual.  Jenny and I lost track of time after the football game last night and didn't get in bed until about the time when they used to play the National Anthem, back when stations actually signed off for the night!

As I laid there, I remembered that J.C. Corcoran was returning to the airwaves today, and I really wanted to hear the first minutes - see what he had to say about his whole show on the other channel being cut with no warning last year.

He's been here in St. Louis, on just about every single station on the dial at one time or another, for about 26 years.  I didn't listen to him until just a few years ago, just because I simply didn't listen to morning radio, with the occasional exception being when Howard Stern was on here in town.   Well, I guess back in the day I would listen to Steve and D.C., but man, in retrospect, those shows were absolutely horrendous!

I've really liked his style of delivery, and the fact that he seems genuinely, well, genuine.  He doesn't sound processed, plastic, and watered down like a majority of the crap you hear on talk radio.  Sure he has his tirades and talks about a lot of the same things over and over, but hell, so do I!  I blame Anhueser-Busch, personally.  :-)  Anyway, he's still light years ahead of the stupid-ass "Bob and Tom Show", that originates out of Indianapolis, and is syndicated nationwide, including our beloved KSHE 95 here in the Lou. 

Anyway, got the bedroom all straightened up, bed made, etc., then came down to start looking for jobs again on the ol' internet.  Jenny took off for a while to have her car looked at (had one of those "Check Engine" lights on - it was just to get her to go in to get an oil change!  The car is fine - even the dude at the shop said so!)Gah!  What is it with these greedy jerks?).  When she got back, I really had no idea that it had been literally hours!  My whole day was pretty much wasted in front of this screen!

We did finally get out of the house to run an errand or two, and now it's time to go to friggin' band practice! Zoooom, I tell ya!  It's going by faster and faster every day!

Today I decided to do some more orange and yellow for the massive amounts of leaves on our lawn!  You know, the very same lawn from which I spent all that time yesterday picking up leaves?  Yeah, it rained like the devil last night, and now I have a fresh new batch!  Yay.

Well, hail!

Today was Round 2 of the annual "Operation: Suck Up All The Leaves" project.  I was runnin' my butt off, too, trying to get it done, because the good people at weather.com said that it was gonna start raining at 7 p.m.  You talk about close - I got done about 6:30, and it started raining at 7:08 - and hailing by about 7:11!  Only missed by 8 minutes!  That ain't bad - wish the dorks on TV could be that precise!  Shoot, I'm looking for work - I just may go down to Channel 4 to apply - I'm pretty sure I could do that well!  I tell you what, any other job, if you're wrong 60% of the time, you're probably gonna be standing in the Unemployment Line.  What the hell makes these guys so special?

Anyway,  it really wasn't too bad being out there.   I had on my big ol' headphones, so I was lookin' ultra-fab!  I'm sure the womens were just a-swoonin'!  I didn't care either way.  I ain't out there to impress anyone, just mow the yard and listen to some KSHE Buttrock (tm).  I love my big ol' headphones - enough so that they inspired tonight's yellow stroke. 

After breathing in all that crap this afternoon, I'm worn out - I believe I'll lay on the couch and watch some football.  Oh, by the way, just in case you hadn't heard, the Missouri Tigers did, indeed, take down my Sooners.  Stupid Rams piddled away a 17-3 lead to lose to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers today, too.  Whatever.  I should probably just stop watching sports all together - I take that stuff way too personally!   But I love it too much.  I'll just keep a good stock of blood pressure pills handy!  :-)

Tension...

Today my house is divided.  Today is the big game between Oklahoma and Missouri.  I'm rooting for OU, Jenny for Mizzou.  It's not very pretty.  :-)  Right now, my Sooners are looking like a bad Mighty Might team.  This is very upsetting.  If things don't improve, I may not be able to go to church tomorrow, or talk to Jenny's dad or brother.  I won't live this down for a long time.  :-/

Nonetheless, I did a crimson stroke for  the boys from Norman, OK.   Let's hope they pull their collective heads outta their collective backsides and start playing like I know they can.  Boy, does Mizzou look good, though - they're playing better tonight than I've seen them play in a long time! 

I'll let you know tomorrow what happens.  I will also be going door to door around my house tomorrow apologizing to my neighbors for waking their kids up by yelling at the TV all night.  :-)

A little music history and some "3rd-person" antics...

October 22, 1990.  The "Off Ramp Cafe" in Seattle.  A 5-piece band with no name takes the stage for the first time ever.  The crowd is absolutely in awe for their entire set.  A couple of months later they decide to call themselves "Mookie Blaylock", after the former University of Oklahoma point guard, who went on to be an all-star NBA player. 

The band ends up getting signed to a major record label, but in doing so, had to change their name. They settle on the name "Pearl Jam", and the rest, as they say, is history. 

Twenty years later, some dude named Dave is doing a paint project in which he paints one stroke a day for a year.  This particular day, he decides to paint a black stroke adjacent to Atala's yellow stroke from Thursday.  He does this for two reasons: 1) he has a copy of Pearl Jam's debut album, "Ten" imported from Europe, and it's jacket is that same yellow and black, and 2) that very same day he goes to the football game of his hometown*, Cassville, home of the Wildcats, who's colors are also yellow and black.  The Wildcats go on to stomp their opponent that night, the East Newton Patriots.  It looks like there's a good chance they may go all the way to the state championship game again this year, which would be the 3rd year in a row, by the way. 

The black stroke also serves another purpose.  This very same day, October 22, 2010, the New York Yankees are officially eliminated from the playoffs.  This makes Dave very happy. 








*Dave's hometown is technically St. Louis, since that was where he was born.  He also graduated from Southwest High School in Washburn, MO, so that could also be construed as his hometown.  Cassville is the town about 8 miles north of Washburn, in which his mother lives.  It's also the closest school with an actual football team, so he must live vicariously through them. 

Playin' catch-up (part 1)...

Thursday morning we went down to Cassville, where my mom lives (for those of you who don't know) to go see "The Show", which is a musical revue that she plays for every year, along with the band "The Hometown Sound".  She plays flute and keyboards, and occasionally sings.  They've been doing this show for almost 20 years now, during Cassville's big Fall Festival weekend.  Included in the Fall Festival is also a big Chili Cookoff and street festival on the town square around the courthouse. 

Every year for "The Show", there's a different theme, and this year it was "TV and movies".   They started off with a medley of old TV show theme songs, then went on to do another 2 hours of different songs from movies and such, including "Staying Alive" from "Saturday Night Fever", "(I've Had) The Time Of My Life" from "Dirty Dancing", and "Footloose", which my lovely and talented sister, Katie, sang. 

All in all I think this year's "Show" was probably one of the strongest, if not the best one they've done.  The band was really tight this year - they really had to practice a lot; especially the medleys.  They always had to be thinking ahead to the next song so they could keep it going without pause. 

Anyway, today's (well, Thursday's - couldn't get to a computer this weekend so now I"m playing catch-up) stroke actually has nothing to do with any of this.  Katie's oldest daughter, Atala, was there at mom's house (or "Oma", as the girls call her - German for "Grandma"), and any time she's around I let her help me with my daily stroke.  She picked yellow, and also picked where to put it - right in the middle of the canvas.  I even let her help me hold the brush!   Luckily I was already kind of thinking about using yellow at some point this weekend - more on that later!

The ONLY time being a Bully is good...

Yesterday before we went out to Jenny's mom's house for dinner and haircuts, Jenny made spaghetti.  Jenny makes really great spaghetti.  Her mom made an amazing beef roast, which we promptly stuffed ourselves with.  We would have also stuffed some of Jenny's spaghetti in there, but as we headed down the hill on Elm towards I-44, we realized that we had forgotten the friggin' spaghetti!

We figured that was okay, though, because we hadn't really seen her brother and sister-in-law in quite a while, so this would be the perfect opportunity to have them over for dinner.  So, that's what we did.  They came over this evening, and we had quite the spread with Jenny's pasta, plus her famous green beans, and a great Ceasar Salad that Kari made. 

So, for the second night in a row, we stuffed ourselves silly, then had a nice relaxing evening just chatting and watching a bit of the National League Championship Series, game 4, between the San Fransisco Giants and the Philadelphia Phillies.  Now a lot of people really don't watch baseball after their team is eliminated from the playoffs, but I don't get to watch that much baseball during the season, and I just love the game, so I watch when I can!  This is one heck of a game, here!  They've gone back and forth from inning to inning - one team will score a couple, then the other.  Man, do I love baseball!

Anyway, Jim and Kari brought over a 12-bottle-variety pack of Boulevard Beers from the microbrewery of the same name in Kansas City.  They're all in brown bottles, and a few of the beers themselves (especially the Bully Porter) are dark brown, so that's what inspired this evening's stroke of Burnt Umber.

By the way, as a side note, I'm going to be away the next couple of days, and I may or may not be able to get to a computer.  I'll have the canvas and paints with me, though, so at the very least I'll make my stroke, take a picture and take some notes, then play catch-up on Sunday.  Hopefully I can get to a computer, though, and we won't have to worry about that!

*HACK*, *COUGH*, *WHEEEEEEZ!*...

So Jenny and I worked outside again today.  She washed off the siding on the house (which showed us that I need to do a lot more caulking, unfortunately) and I played the first game of the "Pick-Up-All-The-Leaves-Including-The-Ones-Blown-In-From-The-Neighbor's-Yard" season.   It's not really that long a season, but boy are there a lot of games to be played!  I suspect I'll probably be playing what amounts to a double header in a few more days!

I really wouldn't mind it all that much, except for when I run over them with the lawnmower, our yard is so dry and sparse in places that I blow 10 tons of dirt, mold, dust, and every other allergen known to man everywhere!  I'm sure I'll be blowin' that crap out for days again!  :-)

I'm just glad I got it all done and don't have to worry about it for a few days.  I think it's supposed to rain some over the weekend up here, so maybe that'll cut down on some of the dust.  Of course that'll make everything heavier, and take twice as long to mow, though, too.  Crap.  Maybe what I'll do is just to leave all the leaves (get it? :-P) on the ground, killing all the grass, and then just pave over everything with asphalt.  Yeah, that sounds like a plan!  With all the time and gas I'll save by not mowing, the paving will pay for itself in no time!   I'll even paint it green, and it'll look like we have the best manicured lawn EVER! :-)

Yup, I think it's time for a little swipe of black, since I don't guess I'll be able to afford actual asphalt any time soon!  Maybe someday. 

Ain't no chance o' meatballs...

Ya ever have those days when you're just...a little...slow...and just...feel...like...you're head's...a little...cloudy?  Well, that's how I've been all day!  I really don't know what in the world the deal is - from the moment I woke up this morning, I just didn't want to get up (moreso than usual).  We went out to run some errands, and I just never woke up at all today.  I don't know if we've got rain coming in, or what - it was pretty overcast at times today.  Maybe that's it.  I have gotten to the age in which I can forecast the weather by whether or not my bones hurt.  Great.  Now get off my lawn.  :-)

I've only got a sec to do this post, though - I've got to get to practice tonight.  I lost track of time again whilst searching for jobs on teh intarnets.  Boy, it'd be awfully nice to wake up tomorrow, and not only feel great, but to have an inbox full of emails from places asking me to come work for them.  Preferably for a lot of money.  Maybe one that wants to pay me to play music, watch football, paint, and drink beer.  That'd be good.  :-)

For my little cloudy head today, I mixed up a little grey - just a touch on the purple side.  I didn't want to do too big of a stroke.  Kinda wanted to minimize the cobwebs today.  Maybe they'll blow away and won't be back tomorrow!

The Sausage King of Chicago...

I woke up this morning at exactly 6:13 a.m. with two words in my mind: Abe Froman.  Today was the big Sausage Dinner out at St. Paul's Lutheran Church way out Highway 109, in New Melle, MO, and, as you may or not know, Abe Froman is the  Sausage King of Chicago.   Jenny and I look forward to this dinner every year - we just love this sausage, and I especially love it with all the mashy taters and green beans and - ooh, the sauerkraut!  I love that stuff!

Directly after that, though, I had to race off to another gig - another in the big "weekend o' music".  I've been constantly on the run!  It's kind of reminded me of a Beastie Boys song!  I mean it hasn't been like my buddy Aaron's weekend a while back where he had 5 gigs in one weekend, but I've still been on the go for quite a while!  I'm just getting back into this after a long time - Aaron's lucky to have his lips intact!  He's the trombonist for the Funky Butt Brass Band.  Those guys are constantly working!   Like I've said before, I'd love to play music for a living, but for right now I think I'll have to kinda work into it!  This weekend has been quite a bit of work, but if I'm doing it all the time, I'm sure I'd get used to it!

I had a good time today, though, just playing a little bass.  We only had two practices, but I think it still sounded pretty good - the crowd seemed to really enjoy it, and that's all that really cares, ya know?  It was, however, very hot - for a mid-October day.  It was in the high-70s, and sunny as all get-out!  While I was playing, I was just standing there in the sun, dripping in sweat! 

The sun is what I based my stroke on tonight - bright, bright yellow and white!  My arm is almost sore from keeping it raised above my head, blocking the sun, for a good couple of hours!

Lo-o-o-o-o-o-o-ong day!

Man, I've played a lot of music today!  I started out practicing for a couple of hours with a young gal named LisaMarie that I'm playing bass with tomorrow.  We're playing as part of a music festival that's going to be over at the TGI Friday's over at Ronnie's Plaza (2 p.m., if you're interested in coming out!).  I think it'll go okay - we sounded pretty good today, for only having two practices and learning a 45-minute set of original stuff that I'd never heard before!

After that, I came home and changed (clothes, not personalities), watched the Arkansas Razorbacks football team completely collapse in about 5 minutes (one fumble, two interceptions literally in a matter of a couple of minutes, all 3 turnovers leading to touchdowns by Auburn).  They lost 65-43!  Wow!  That's high enough to be a friggin' basketball score!

Anyway, I could only watch that for a few minutes - and not just because I was upset about Arkansas opening up a big ol' can of "suck" - I had to get on up to the church for Boiler Room practice.  That was a couple of hours, then we had the actual Boiler Room "show" from 7 to a little after 9.  Now I'm absolutely beat!  What a long day!   I love it, though, no matter how tired and sore I get!  I just love playing music!  Maybe one of these days I might get to play music for a living - wouldn't that be swell (sorry to use such  an outdated word - it was kind of a tribute to Barbara Billingsley - "June Cleaver" from "Leave It To Beaver", and star of one of the funniest scenes in "Airplane" (one of my favorite movies ever, and one chock full of funny scenes!)

My stroke today is, in fact, an homage to another role Mrs. Billingsley played: "Nanny" on "Muppet Babies".  It's green (yes, again - hey, I am working toward something, believe it or not - plus, there have just been lots of things that have reminded me of green lately :-) ) for her green and white leggings.  RIP, Barbara!

Kr-oww-tins!

So Jenny and I got a little creative this evening.  We had a bunch of frozen bread in the freezer - some multi-grains, Italians, whole wheats, etc.  We cut them up into pieces, then mixed them with olive oil and a bunch of herbs and spices (3 different recipes - some with Tuscan spices, some with lemon pepper, and some with a really great peppercorn dressing powder - those are really good!) and now they're baking.  They take a long time to make because you've gotta bake them on low heat for over an hour, otherwise they just burn.  Anyway, I guess we'll be eating a lot of salad for a while - we've got plenty of croutons!

Now we're watching a new show on NBC called "School Pride".  It's just like the "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition", but with - you guessed it: schools.

I'm all for stuff like this, really - I always loved the "EM:HE" stuff, especially at first.  After a while it kinda became a parody of itself - you could tell what everyone was going to say and do, and exactly when someone was gonna start crying.  It just became very plastic, and seemed very forced.

I was afraid this was going to be like that, and, to a certain extent, it was - right down to the camera angles and the "Surprise, we're sending you all away for 10 days while we make your school over" speech.


Tonight's episode was about Enterprise Middle School (the Eagles) in Compton, CA, a really rough suburb of Los Angeles.  This school was so incredibly run down it's not even funny.  There were literally roaches and rats running around the place, ceiling tiles falling out everywhere, no school supplies, holes in the football field, etc.

The first (and the biggest) thing that I saw that made this show different from the other one was that they really were trying to improve the lives and situations of these kids, and trying to solve problems as to how things got this bad in the first place.  In this case, they actually sent a guy in to talk to the principal of the school.  He asked the principal how he could let things get so bad, and where the supplies were.  They actually had a bunch of supplies, but wouldn't let go of them.  The guy from the show told him flat out that if he wouldn't give the supplies out, he may as well not even have them.  He accosted the principal about some other stuff, but I didn't catch that - we had to go in to check the croutons! :-)  I do know that at the end of the episode it was stated that the principal had been replaced!  Wow!

The show even sent another dude to interview The Governator himself - Ah-nuld!  They asked him a bunch of the same kind of questions - who's fault it is about the state of schools, and what can they do about it.  Arnie admitted that part of the problem was government!  He even came down later on and gave a speech (containing the requisite references to his Hollywood past: the "I'm here to pump you up", and "I'll be back!", which I'm sure went right over the heads of all those middle schoolers, but I guess he had to do it for the teevee!)

Another thing that I liked was that, unlike the families on "EM:HE", who have sometimes gone on to lose their new houses because they couldn't afford the mortgages and upkeep, everything for the schools was donated by sponsors, free of charge.  Of course, the company's logos were prominently displayed and mentioned everywhere.  Hey, as long as it's going to a good cause, I don't mind that the science and computer lab was brought to you by Microsoft!

All in all, it looked like a decent show, and, like I said, the kids seemed to come out on top.  At the end of episode, they said that test scores were up 118 points, and they gave several examples of kids who had previously been struggling, but had gone on to attend really good magnet schools because of the improved conditions spurring on better education.


Anyway, I better go grab those croutons out of the oven.  Today's stroke is for the Eagles of Enterprise Middle School - green. GO EAGLES!

Random thoughts are random...

Holy cow, totally lost track of the time!  I honestly had no idea what time it was, then looked up at the clock, and here it is about 15 minutes before I have to be at practice over at the church for the Boiler Room this weekend.  The Boiler Room is about 2 hours of nothing but praise and worship songs, Rooftop style - with the full horn section and everything!  We always have a blast doing it, but it takes cramming a whole lotta practice into not a whole lotta time!  We'll practice for a few hours this evening, and then have another practice a few hours before showtime on Saturday just as a refresher.

Most of the songs I know, but there is one brand new one that Jason wrote just for this show, so I've got it on repeat right now hoping it'll sink in in the next 10 minutes!  :-)  He did all the drum parts on a drum machine - I hope he doesn't want me to duplicate some of the fancy stuff he's done on there!  I'll probably just wing it - it'll still sound great, especially with the "Rooftooters" (the horn section).

Anyway, tonight's stroke has absolutely nothing to do with anything I just wrote about - I just happened to have some money left over on my Dick Blick gift card the other day, so Jenny and I went in to look around, and they had this amazing color called "Bright Aqua Green", so I had to have it.  Therefor "Bright Aqua Green" is what we've got here tonight!  It really is a great color - I'll have to do some sort of a tropical beach scene with it sometime soon.  It'll be getting cold soon, and I'll be jonesing for the beach, so that can be my inspiration!

Orange you glad?

Do you remember hearing that joke as a kid: Knock, knock. Who's there?  Banana. Banana who?  Knock knock.  Who's there?  Banana.  Banana who?  Knock, knock.  Who's there?  Who's there?  Banana?  [ugh!]  Knock, knock. Who's there?  Orange.  Orange who?  Orange you glad I didn't say "Banana"? :-)   

Well, I guess it's a lot better if a) you hear it, and b) you're in 5th grade.  Dunno.

Well, as I've said, we've been going out to Jenny's dad's place quite a bit lately, helping him to move back up from the Lake Of The Ozarks.  From our house, it's best to go out 44 to get to his house - quite a ways - so we've gotten to see the trees on all the hill sides change little by little the last few weeks, and that's been really cool!

Today we went out there and there were a few more trees that have changed, but there were, more importantly, a bunch of trees that we saw, that just absolutely looked like they were on fire!  We're not exactly sure what they are, but I know we're gonna find out, and probably plant some in our yard!  They are so incredibly beautiful when they change like this! 

Save us, Radio Randy!

Well, I spent a good chunk of the day outside scraping out old caulking and sweeping it all up so I could re-caulk it all.  Just wanted to get the back room a little more guarded against the elements, especially before the elements started in again this winter!  This caulking is some nasty ol' stuff, too - not exactly something I wanted to do while in my Sunday best!  I loaded up on rags, though, and I had my trusty 5-in-1 tool, and I was set.  I tell you what, that tool is amazing!  I'd like to buy the guy who invented it a beer!

As I was doing that, Jenny pointed out that the window sills out there also needed a new coat of white paint - it's been over 5 years, and some of it was starting to peel a little bit.  So I think we tracked down the bright white paint we need for that, to go with the bright white caulk (which, I know, should have been clear, but hey, what are ya gonna do - I'm using stuff that was already here!).  I did do a white stroke today just for all this white - figured maybe it was a sign! :-)

One thing that made the day go by faster, and made this little task a little more bearable, though, was the rock.  I was in a classic rock mood, so I put on PlanetRadio.us, which is a new online radio station put together by Randy Raley, a former KSHE jock who, like most of us, was just sick of how corporate and just plain boring and sucky commercial radio has gotten over the last 15 or 20 years.

He was sick of how radio stations can't play whatever they want now, how they're completely run by having "focus groups" to decide what songs should be played, and most of all having only a couple hundred songs in the entire playlist!  I mean honestly - you can pretty much tell the time by what song KSHE's playing these days - there's Guns and Roses - must be 9 am (or 10 am, or 11 am).

You can't even call up a radio station to request a song anymore - most times there's no one even there!  It's all automated now!  And the "people" you hear talking between the songs?  Yeah, they recorded that stuff in Akron,OH, or wherever, and sent that out to about 50 other stations, too!  Man, it's just sickening.  I really miss old radio.  I mean, granted, you can't exactly call up and request something online, but Randy has plenty of places on the website for you to comment, and make suggestions for his ever-expanding playlist (which, I believe, has several thousand songs right now, and he's always adding more - no worries of hearing the same thing over and over, that's for sure!).

This station is almost as good as the only other saving grace on the airwaves, KDHX, 88.1 here in St. Louis.  I'm pretty sure I've told you about them, and I'll probably talk more about them at a later date, but I've ranted enough here, and I need to go get ready for art class! :-)  Ta ta, and happy listening!

A room with a view...of the street, maybe a couple of neighborhood kids, I dunno...

Today marks the end of an era: the "no closet doors" era.  That's right, I finally - finally got 'em put up!  The room actually looks like a finished room for the first time in 6 years!  We had to go to Lowe's and pay $5 for a friggin' pack of spare parts just to get one particular screw to replace one we somehow lost, but we did it!

Because of the decor (the aqua-ish blues, tropical flower paintings, etc.), the room kinda looks a bit like one of those cabanas you would see on vacation in the tropics somewhere.  We joked about renting the room out to people - maybe putting some sand and a kiddie pool out back! :-)   I guess if we ever finished off the loft part of our barn outside (which wouldn't be that hard to do, really - just takes $$$ that we ain't got!) we could rent out the whole house on weekends, or whenever, like that dude up in Chicago does with the house in which we stayed for Bethy's wedding.  Lord knows we could use the extra cash!  I don't know how many people would wanna stay in Affton, as opposed to downtown, or at least closer to the highway, though.

Doesn't matter.  Probably ain't happening, anyway.  As much as I'd love to finish that loft area, chances are this ain't gonna be the house we live in for the rest of our lives, and I don't know if I want to go through all that work just to move away.  Of course, I guess if you look at it that way, that's exactly what we're doing to the main house, with all the little improvement projects we've done over the years - [hopefully] making the house that much more attractive to buyers. 

Anyway, I thought about doing a brown-ish, kinda pecan color today, but I just really don't like brown all that much.  Too drab.  Instead, I thought I'd do some cheerier colors: a couple of tropical blues and a magenta (there's a little magenta umbrella hanging in the bathroom - looks like a giant drink umbrella!) to go with our cheery resort cabana-style bedroom.  And hey - if you want to stay here, just gimme a holler - it ain't exactly the Ritz, but we've got reasonable rates!  :-)

The maple's want more sunlight and the oaks ignore their pleas...

So today was about relaxing and just painting a little bit (not the walls - had enough of that lately!).  When we were over at Jenny's friend Anne's house yesterday for her little boy's 1st birthday, Anne reminded me that she would love it if I would paint a picture of this single tree that lives off in the distance below her house.  It's a really cool old tree, just off all by itself.  I'm really looking forward to painting it - just have to figure out exactly what I want to do with it, how big to do it, etc.

In the mean time I wanted to practice up a little bit, so I did a couple of small (2 1/2" X 3 1/2") tree paintings.  These trees really didn't take too long - about a half-hour a piece, really, if that.  They probably wouldn't have taken quite that long, but I was busy watching the Rams lose to Detroit (Really, Rams?  Detroit?  Really?)

Anyway, I just liked the greens I was mixing up for these pics, so I figured I'd just do a quick swatch of that today.  Today's stroke is for Geddy Lee.

A little word association...

So today is John Lennon's birthday.  He would have been 70 years old.  It's been 30 years since that jackass, the same man who had just obtained an autograph from Lennon a few hours prior, waited in front of the Dakota (the apartment in which Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono lived) and shot Lennon to death.  

Thinking about this today, and seeing the multitudes of my friends on Facebook posting "Happy Birthdays" and videos made me want to do a little play on words, so as a joke, I said, "I thought that Lenin's birthday was in April. Do Russians have 2 birthdays?"  Thinking of Lenin made me think of Karl Marx, which made me think about Groucho Marx, which then led to Harpo Marx.  I then skipped the obvious reference to Oprah Winfrey (whose production company is named "Harpo") and just thought of harps.  This, of course, led me to think about my late Aunt Phyllis, who was a harpist, as well as the Director of Education at Carnegie Hall.  She was also one of the founders, in 1974, of the Three Rivers Young People's Orchestra, which is still around today.  

Anyway, I decided to pay tribute to Phyllis today with a harp-inspired gold stroke.   I really miss you, Aunt Phyllis!  Oh, you too, John.  You were okay, too.  :-)

Nigel Tufnel said it all...

Okay, so I really don't have a lot to write about tonight - Jenny and I went on a nice little ride around the city, but that was about it - the stop at Target was pretty much our "high point"!  We did find a couple of cute things for Halloween gifts for the nieces/cousins.  This is always a good thing.

After that, though, we came home, and we haven't done a whole lot!  Well, I tried on some pants to see if they fit, but that's about it.  Yeah, we're interesting that way.  Woo Hoo!  Pants!   For those of you keeping score, 6 of them fit (okay) and 2 of them were just not good fits at all - very baggy, if you must know. 

After that, I decided that I wanted to start on a new art project.  I can't really describe it here, so I'll just tell you it's black and white, and I'll post it one here as soon as I'm finished.  I think I'll be pretty proud of it - it's gonna take a buncha time, lemme tell you - very time-intensive.   It will definitely be a test of my patience! 

Well,  I'm gonna just keep this short today and say that the stroke (much to my painting teacher's dismay) is black.  In fact it could be none more black!

Ya feels me?

So this evening I get to do something I very rarely get to do on a Thursday night: sit and watch "Bones" with my beautiful wife!  I usually have band practice up at the church on Thursdays, so we don't get to watch it together very often anymore.  Seems like all the shows we love to watch together have either moved to Tuesday, which is my painting class, or Thursday, so we really don't get to watch any of the shows we really like to follow together, which really sucks!

Anyway, we had some time today after running errands and such, so we sat down and caught up on the couple of episodes from this season that we hadn't seen, and now we're watching the new episode live. 

While watching the second episode Jenny commented that it was kind of funny that during every episode, she always finds herself  eating during the parts where they're showing all the dead, decomposing bodies on the slab.  I didn't think much of it, but sure enough, during this episode (which happens to be all about the guidos on the Jersey Shore - quite funny!), as soon as she walked in with a plate of sausage wontons, there was the victim, bigger than life (no pun intended) on the screen!  We both had a good chuckle over that!

Anyway, watching these moronic guidos did serve one purpose - it gave me my inspiration for tonight's stroke: orange.  These guys (and gals) fake tan so much they are literally orange sometimes!  And they really do think it looks good!  I tell you what, that's one group of people I will just never understand.  Oh, well. 

Happy Happy Cake Cake!!!!

Today is my little niece, Morgan's, birthday.  She's 2 years old.  She is also one of the funniest people on the planet!  I saw a video of the celebration (more specifically the eating of the cake and ice cream), and it was honestly one of the funniest things I've ever seen!  Katie asked her if she could sing her happy song, and she started dancing around in her chair, singing "Happy Happy Happy Happy Cake Cake...OOH, CAKE!!"  :-D

She was alternately attempting to use a fork and just picking up the ice cream with both hands to shove it in her mouth.  I'm sitting here giggling just thinking about it!

I'm anxious to see what this little beautiful little girl, my grandfather's namesake, is like growing up - she seems to be the exact opposite of her big sister, Atala (which, I suppose, is normal for kids).  Atala is very girlie, very much a little princess, and Miss Morgan seems like she's gonna be a bit of a s*** disturber!  I love it!  She is her daddy's girl!

Today I did a nice little blue stroke - some Phthalocyanine Blue, to be exact.  I grabbed it a few weeks ago up at Joanne's, and I do believe it's my favorite color yet.  Blue also happens to be Miss Morgan's favorite color, too, so I thought it appropriate to use today.  Happy Birthday, Morgan!

Hoo-ray for Katiewood!

Well, my little sister, Katie got to do something that a lot of us will only dream of:  she landed (read: won in an auction) a bit part on the teevee show "The Mentalist"!  How cool is that?  I'll let everyone know when the actual episode is going to be on.  I believe she got to play an auctioneer at an upscale auction house.  Don't know what kind of crazy antics ol' Patrick Jane will get into on that particular episode, but I know I'll be glued to the TV!  Shoot, maybe we'll even have to try to get it on DVD when that comes out!

I would have been happy just with a week out in Los Angeles, but that is awesome!  She made a heckuva week out of it, too.  She went out with a friend of hers from Grove,OK, where they live, and they stayed in some little run-down shack down by the slums.  I'm sure they went around through some of the rummage sales and I'm pretty sure one of them bought a saddle - said they were going to some sort of rodeo. 

After her long, grueling day of shooting the episode (apparently she had to get up at 2:30 a.m.!) the hard work was done, and they spent some well deserved vacation time by the pool.  They also took a drive up the Pacific Coast Highway - one of the things I really enjoyed doing when I was out there a few years ago.  I hope they went a little later in the day than we did, though - there's always a haze that makes the sky (and everything else) look grey until after noon.  It really is a gorgeous drive, though.  You can take it all the way up to San Fransisco, but the furthest we got was Oxnard.  Yeah, it was just that exciting.  :-)

Anyway, I'm so glad my leetle seester got to go have this great adventure!  I'm also green with envy!  Hey, let's make that the stroke of the day!   I'll just tell everyone it's green for the PCH road signs!  They'll never know the difference!  :-D

The fastest thing on two feet...

Well, the other day at the library I "rented" (or should it be "borrowed"?) a couple more movies.  One of them was a hilarious movie, featuring Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder, called "See No Evil, Hear No Evil".  I saw it when it first came out on video (yes, VHS, kiddies) over 20 years ago, and I don't think I'd seen it since.  It was still as funny as it was back then!  Pryor and Wilder were absolutely hilarious together, as always! 
It made me think of the other movies they were in together, such as "Stir Crazy" (which, I swear, was on the ABC Saturday Night Movie once every 3 weeks!) and "Silver Streak".  I haven't actually seen "Silver Streak", but it is on my [very long] list of movies to see!  Even though I hadn't seen it, I was still reminded of it when I was at Joanne's the other day with Jenny, 50%-off coupon in one hand, "Iridescent Bright Silver" paint in the other.

It's awfully nice to be able to buy a tube of paint for a couple of bucks - even if it's not something I'll use all the time, just something that's fun to play around with, which is exactly what I did for today's stroke.  Now off to band practice!

Oh, by the way, after today's blog, there are only 100 days left!  How do you guys think it's going?  Anything you'd like to see?  Let me know!  :-)

Leaves are falling all around, time I was on my way...

This weekend was the annual "Best Of Missouri Market" at the Missouri Botanical Gardens.  And while I know that Autumn officially starts about a week or so prior, we go to this market every year on Sunday, and that day is when fall officially begins for me. 
We were afraid that we'd be seeing just the same stuff again this year, because the past few years have kind of trended towards that, but there were actually a lot of new booths, and, more importantly, new foods to try!

There was one company that had different dips and pretzels made with a pepper called "Bhut Jolokia".  Don't ask me how to pronounce that.  This pepper is considered the hottest one on earth.  And they made dips out of it.  Yup.  The ones we tried, though (and eventually ended up buying) were really very good, though!  You can actually taste the flavor of the dip before the heat comes, and even after that you can still taste the actual flavors - it's not just all heat like some dips and sauces I've tried.  That's just no fun to me - it has to have a good flavor to me!

There were several companies there which were very new, and which got started through help from an organization called "BEGIN - New Venture Center".  This is an organization run out of St. Patrick's Center downtown, that helps people get small businesses up and running - focusing primarily on working with homeless people.  We'd never heard of this organization and were both incredibly impressed - not only with what they've done with the businesses, but the products made by these businesses in general!  We had some of thee best cookies ever (not better than Jenny's world famous chocolate chip cookies, mind you)!  And everyone was so friendly, and really proud of the organization, telling us all about it - even saying we should come down to find out more about it possibly for working with "Jennydoll"!  Ya never know!

Another of those upstart businesses was one named "del Carmen Foods", specializing in Cuban foods - including the best black beans and rice I've ever had!  Wow, was it awesome!  We picked up two frozen bowls of that, which will probably translate to several meals!  We knew we didn't have a lot of money, so we really treated this as a trip to the grocery store, and tried to find stuff that we could really stretch into several meals. 

After we went through all four tents and figured out what all we wanted to go back and buy (we go back right before we're ready to leave and buy whatever we want so we don't have to carry it around all day), we went outside to the music pavilion where some friends of ours, the Jenny Kavanaugh Band, were playing.  They had just recently reformed, so we hadn't heard them play in several years!  It's always good to see old friends!

So today was the first  day of autumn for us, and as such I was inspired to do a stroke of red, orange and brown - for the leaves we'll no doubt be raking up very soon.  Now it's time for me to ramble on. 

Sympathizing with Daniel-san...

Whew!  Man, I tell you what, I'm getting too old for this work crap!  After day two of helping Jim paint his new house, I'm sore as hell!  Up the ladder, down the ladder, stretching up, bending down, crouching tiger, hidden dragon, etc.

I used to hate painting with every fiber of my being, but any more I really don't mind it - in fact it's a bit therapeutic.  I had most everything taped yesterday, so I just went in today and started slinging paint.  The biggest hurdle we had to jump today (besides the cable guy, which is just a whole other asinine story) was moving the big-ass TV and entertainment away from the wall - that took quite a while.  After that it was pretty much smooth sailing.  Plus I got to watch my Sooners beat up on the stupid Longhorns!  Woo Hoo!  That made me so very happy!

Anyway, it's late now, and Jenny and I are just beat - and we're getting up early in the morning to go to the annual Best Of Missouri Market at the Missouri Botanical Gardens before we go back for more painting!  Today's stroke is some Unbleached Titanium, which is roughly the color I was using today.  All day.

Froggy went a-paintin'...

Man, am I worn out this evening!  We got up early this morning and went out to help Jenny's dad set his new house up - cleaning and painting and stuff.  We got there (after dropping off some cupcakes to a "Jennydoll" customer) about 10:00 a.m. and started to work immediately.  Moved in a bunch of supplies, then started taping up the trim.  That really takes the most time - it didn't really seem to take that much time at all to do the actual painting in the master bedroom.

After the bedroom, I knew it was getting later, and there wouldn't be that much daylight left, so I just started taping up the rest of the house, so I could just go in tomorrow morning and start busting all the painting out.  Gotta make some good time because the "Red River Rivalry" (the annual Oklahoma-Texas football game) is on at 2:30, and you know I've got to be able to watch that!  Even if I'm not finished painting, though, it's okay - he's got the cable company coming out in the morning, and he's got a big ol' friggin' TV, so it'll almost be like being at the game!

Anyway, since I pretty much taped up walls today, I decided to paint a stroke in the color of the tape we used.  It's a new product called "Frog Tape" - it's green tape, and it supposedly doesn't let any paint bleed under it like some of the old blue stuff did.  I guess we'll find out tomorrow when we paint.