A Nice Present

Earlier in the week, I got an email from my friend Tom at "Now Hear This" in Kirkwood (my favorite music store for the last twenty two years). My long awaitied and highly anticipated order came in.

In 1971, this was probably one of the albums that I played the most. What a warm, great sounding record. At this time, Dave was at the top of his game and the addition of Cass Elliot was truly inspirational. Apparently, Cass' sister Leah Kunkel was living above her garage and all sorts of folks would drop by. Stills, Crosby, Nash, Joni Mitchell, etc. It seems that musically, Cass and Dave drew together and Cass said she would produce his new record. Her brother Russ Kunkel got keyboard great Paul Harris and his bass player and away they went. Dave was just coming off "Alone Together" and was on a hot streak. Cass not only produced the record but jump in as well. You can say what you want about Cass, but the people around her worshipped her and she had some of the greatest pipes ever. It's too bad this didn't sell well. It only got as high as number 49 on the top 200. While doing some research, I found it very interesting that Dave NEVER had a top 25 release. I lost this LP somewhere many years ago in one of my countless moves and this has never been released on CD. Until now. What a treat! "Walk To The Point" is on here, so is "To Be Free" and "Here We Go Again", along with some old friends I have reaquainted myself with this morning. There are a couple of fillers "Next To You" but the rest is two great friends, both at the top of their game and a fun, warm re-creation of the end of my freshman year. Good to see and hear an old friend again.

11:00pm Friday Night

Here I sit at my computer, margarita in hand, I contemplate the last week. Excellent progress has been made but we are nowhere near where we need to be. That is all.

John Edwards, what a cad. Man, you are an embarrassment. Leave.

I must say how incredibly impressed I was with the opening ceremonies at the Olympics. In the past, I have had little interest, really The choreography of 15,000 and the precise arrangements with great, progressive visual effects along with...fireworks made this one cut above the rest. The Olympic theme song has been with us since childhood and it' s a very familar sound. I can't help thinking that something is going to go wrong. I hope not, but color me paranoid.

I need to drop a few pictures from my hard drive so, here ya go, some pretty funny signs (hey, I'm out of space)...

And your own caption and play along at home, kids

Another Great Old Gas Station

let me know when you've had enough...

How Weird Is It?

I am sitting in my office, getting some work done, listening to the Ipod. "Baby...Please" by Dave Mason is playing in the background and I wonder how the hell I got here. Really, thinking back to when that song was prominent in my life, I was driving from East Moline to Milan to work at Miller Container when I was 17. I did the third shift and went to high school. In my town, there wasn't much talk of college, that was for rich kids. Schmoes like me went straight from high school to Miller Container or Farmall or John Deere or JI Case. We never went into "management". We certainly didn't get into managing something we love so much. So, here I sit, about 35 years after Dave was in my eight track and I have a corner office. With big windows, no less. Through it all, I just about gave it up a number of times, but why did I still keep on keeping on? Because I knew, deep down in my heart that someone, somewhere would give me a shot to teach and manage. I have been doing this for 32 years, picking up good and bad habits along the way. It's now time to use all this crap in my head to make the owner happy. I intend to do just that.

On that subject, I found out one of my competitors (who I shall not name) was someone who mistreated me a few years ago. It will be a pleasure to see him move on. Karma's a funny thing.

Of all the cities in central Illinois to live, this is one of the best. Very progressive, forward looking. These two towns are like suburbs without a big city. They remind me sooo much of Moline/Rock Island and I don't know why. It might be the architecture or the way the streets are laid out. For some reason, these places are VERY familiar.

It's ALL good.

Here's the new crib:

I am among the State Farm minions. There are a lot of them here.

Not Posting Much

I haven't had any internet access other than work, and I wrote this at lunch.
I am proud, as a former domer's father, that we just signed to be an affiliate for Notre Dame football.
I will post more later, maybe after work.

Your Look...Your Look on Drugs

Started off attractive enough....