Who Taught You To Live Like That?

Sloan is fast becoming one of my favorite bands of all time. It seems no matter what, when, where and how they do it, they do it right and they leave a trail of ass-kicked fans gushing over their live show, which is second-to-none. Their last record took some time to grow on me and now here I am, thinking it might be their best yet. Really. With each album, they seem to get better. So rare these days.

In trying to define Sloan, I could type for hours but it wouldn’t do it justice. So I’ll do it through video. “Flying High Again” (from their latest) isn’t their best song ever and their energy in this video isn’t even 10% of what they’re like live, but it’s a great little minute-and-a-half ditty that showcases what I like so much about them – four singers and four songwriters who all take a turn during this one little song. Check it:



Now, take a look at this little mini-infomercial, where you get a good sense of the light-hearted personality of the band and a better sense of their talent – they all play each other’s instruments, too – when you see them live, at least once or twice during the show it’s like a Chinese fire drill when everyone drops their instruments and switches it up. Anyway, this video is a great microcosm for the group:




…..and finally, here’s the first Sloan song I ever heard, called “Losing California.” What a way to get introduced to the band!

A Few of My Favorite Things

Here’s what’s awesome:

– Seeing friends you haven’t seen in a while
– Band of Horses
– Having a two-car garage
– When it clicks with a potential customer
– Having family nearby
– A good piece of salmon
– Tortilla chips in sandwiches
– Fig cookies
– When the first sip of beer goes down
– It’s almost time for spring training
– Hearing your kids belly laugh
– Symantec Ghost (see yesterday’s post)
– “Lost” is coming back this week

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Now playing: Drive-By Truckers – Monument Valley
via FoxyTunes

Is There A Ghost In My House?

I’ve been lucky over the years to never have “lost” a hard drive. Until Friday. After turning on my computer, I kept on ending up at the famed “blue screen of death,” no matter which way I booted the machine up. I was scared. Oh, I back everything up to my external drive, but only once a month or so, so I was dreading the thought of all the pictures and music I may have lost.

Enter Ed Sterling, who runs a little company in Bolton, MA called PC House Calls. Here’s a guy who basically goes around to people’s houses and fixes their computers for half the price of the bigger computer fixits out there. He rolled in and the problem was a little more extensive than we had initially thought – a power outage in Maynard had effectively ruined my hard drive. Then he pulls out something BartPE which allows the computer to boot directly from a CD-ROM and on that CD is a Symantec product called Ghost.

To spare you all the boring details, Ghost basically pulls all your data from your machine and moves it to your external drive. Then you can replace your hard drive and Ghost will move it right back to the new drive. Awesome! I was lucky – ALL my data was saved. And I learned how to install a new internal hard drive.

For those of you in the Central Massachusetts area, Ed is your man. GREAT service, affable guy.

Now, remind me to set up weekly backups instead of monthly.

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Now playing: Rilo Kiley – Paint’s Peeling
via FoxyTunes

Tommy Can You Hear Me?

I had a childhood flashback last night. I think I must have been about 9 or 10 years old. At the time, I was really into building car models, mostly old muscle cars, but occasionally newer cars of the time as well. I had this grey Indy Pace Car Mustang that I had built and I think because it was one of the ones that came out really well, I displayed it on my dresser in my bedroom. Here’s where the flashback takes an odd turn. One morning I woke up and there was something in my ear. I remember freaking out and thinking it was a bug, but since it wasn’t moving I quickly realized it wasn’t a bug. After some deft manuvering the mystery “thing” revealed itself – a positively ENORMOUS cluster of ear wax. Gross, yes. I had never seen anything like it. It was sort of hard and dry and I wasn’t sure what had really happened. So not knowing if it was important or not (hey, maybe the doctor needed to put it back in?), I placed it gently into the passenger side seat of the Mustang model, where it must have stayed for months.

There. Have a nice day.

Babies Are Gross

You always hear about projectile vomiting with children, but until you actually see it, no words really do it justice. One of the, um, joys of having twins is that if one is sick, it is a damn good bet that the other one will be shortly thereafter. This theory was deployed flawlessly here in the house this week. Zachary’s projectile moment came a week ago Friday – I was working, so I missed it. However, this past weekend I had a front row seat for Nathan’s projectile vomit debut – right in his chair as he was being fed – and it was really something. All I can say is that during the gastro episode, it appears as if a small alien has taken over your child’s body. Their face looks more stunned than anything else. When the puking ends, there’s no crying, no tantrum, no befuddled baby. He’s just sitting there, looking around as if what had just happened was no big deal. And it isn’t, because YOU are the one cleaning it up and freaking out.

Look, I used to be a little mortified about the prospect of cleaning up child vomit. Or a very messy diaper. I always thought that if I saw vomit of any kind, I’d follow shortly with my own version of it. But each time something gross happens, I’m stunned to find out that it doesn’t really affect me. Perhaps I’m just too dialed into the health of the kid to really think about how gross it is. Or maybe it’s just less gross than I always thought it was. I’ve always been afraid of puke. Don’t know why. But my suddenly iron stomach is….well…..a pleasant surprise. I mean, I won’t be scouring the internet for disgusting moments or anything, but…….it kind of feels like progress.