Insight from Ellie Simone

"Daddy? I was thinking... Sometimes, your bathroom smells kinda funny."

Who the F@$% are YOU?

So, every so often I sit down and hit the YouTubes for some musical entertainment. My lovely wife sent me a link to the always awesome Christopher Guest troupe doing "Mighty Wind." After cruising through that to some Bach shredding, through some Thin Lizzy, I landed on the Who.



After watching this (and, in particular, Keith Moon), it made me remember why I got into music in the first place. It kind of reminds me of the physics joke about turtles... When you watch Keith Moon play, there is nothing but Keith Moon all the way down. Someday, I will be able to make my music so that it's me all the way down.

Long, Strange Trip

It's been a while since I rapped at ya...

So, for some cruel reason unbeknownst to me, a meeting was scheduled for 11:30 this morning in Manhattan to present to one of our clients on usability. It's cruel because that meant I needed to get up at 4:00 a.m. the day after a holiday weekend.

Since it was a holiday weekend, that meant there was fireworks going off in our neighborhood. Not bottle rockets, but real commercial ordnance. That meant a restless night for the Bean. So, she was in bed with us and not asleep. When she's restless, she likes to pull on my ears and claw at my back. I don't think that's an indication of some underlying psychological issue, but it's still weird. Weird, and it kept me up 'til after 1:00 a.m.. I was already up late due to nerves about the presentation, this just prolonged the awake-ness and the nervousness.

The alarm went off at 4:00 and I got up. I got ready and the boy got up 8 minutes before my cab showed up. It was actually kind of nice that I got to spend a few minutes with him (getting him back to sleep) before I left.

When we got to LaGuardia, air traffic decided to have us fly in a circle for half-an-hour before we landed. We still made it in plenty of time to meet for a bit before we presented. The room we met in directly overlooked Ground Zero. It's a pretty sobering sight to look down on this massive scar (literally and figuratively) on the face of America. The crews were working full speed, and it's still largely a big hole.

The meeting itself went well. I'm glad I was there for it. Afterward, I was able to walk around SoHo and grab lunch before I headed home. My attempts to get Laura to move to SoHo tonight have all failed.

The flight home was delayed a bit, so I got to see more of LaGuardia than I really wanted to. Buddy George offered to pick me up at O'Hare, which ruled. He wanted me to meet him between terminals where the traffic is lighter. So, I walked down to the end of Terminal 1 and began waiting. While I was standing there, I noticed four agitated cops standing outside a limo. After a while, two of them left and an ambulance arrived moments later. The remaining cops and the paramedics moved what appeared to be a person largely devoid of vitality from the limo. While my heart goes out to the family of the passenger, I actually felt pretty bad for the livery driver. His day was much stranger than mine.

When I got home, the kids were waiting and we danced and discussed the merits of BLT sandwiches. It was good to have things get back to normal.