Steve West

To start, this is some crazy fly that was sitting on the wall of the porch. It was there long enough for me to go in an get the camera, put on a lens and come out and shoot a number of pictures of it. I kind of thought, one picture would suffice.

Holly got back from her trip to the desert with her sister about 5:30 am. She drove them staight through, about 1100 miles only stopping for a nap in the middle of the night for about an hour and a half. She went to bed when she got home and got up about 10:30. So after futzing around the yard and telling us all about her trip, we set up the hammocks to enjoy the warm but breezy afternoon. She passed right out and slept for about 2 hours.

Then about 830 we loaded up the bikes and rode to downtown for the fireworks at Centennial Park. We ended up walking around and getting a spot to sit on the lawn between the Georgia Aquarium and Coke World. It was a pretty good show and where we were wasn’t too crowded. After show though was a pretty good sized mess of people rushing to their cars to wait in traffic for who knows how long. We got on our bikes but ended up walking them most of way across downtown before hopping on them and riding the rest of the way home.

We got home about 1045 and called Chin Chin 2 for some Chinese delivery and all of us were in bed by 1230. I woke up about 8 to the little dog crying and decided to post the pictures, have coffee and work on clipping out images for Mary Jane Bags.

The first sign that traffic was going to suck this morning was when I got about 20 ft onto the on ramp and everything came to a stand still. So we moved along slowly. Then as I was getting out of the underpass and it was getting smoky. This is what was right past the underpass.

So I was looking at the Eyedrum website over the weekend and ran across an upcoming concert. There is a woman who is apparently famous for her gemmed sweaters. After she racked up a huge internet bill for exceeding her bandwidth, so she turned to rap to make some money to pay her mom back.

So I was telling this to Holly and she was all over it. She knew all about Lesley Hall and her rapping videos on youtube. Since the tickets are only $8 in advance, we’ll be having a quality family evening out.

Now, we just got back from an afternoon at the Greatest Show On Earth. It was good time with the show at 3pm, so it wasn’t too packed. Holly got us the really good seats that let us get out on the floor to dance with the performers then get in the cart and ride around the rink. After that we rolled up to Marietta for some pasta then stopped at Kroger and bought the fixings to make banana splits. So I’m full and the tv’s on.

So the great thing about getting the Sunday Times is the Arts Section. This weeks great new thing was Gonzalo Rubalcaba’s album Avatar. He’s a Cuban pianist and this is his 20 something album. He’s playing with some young musicians on this album and it’s good, not smooth. I haven’t heard of him before  and this is all I’ve heard but I liked it quite a bit.  Now for a something slightly off the topic. For Christmas, Alec got The Penguin Guide to Jazz for me and they had a good bit to say about Rubalcaba and the writer really speaks well of his album Supernova. So I may eventually get it.

Seems like there was an article on Kenny G.  Smooth jazz, oh dear Lord, there’s just no reason to listen to it especially past 9 am or so. They play it on WCLK in the mornings as well as off and on through out the day, but what makes it okay before 9 am is that it doesn’t require much from the listener. After 9 WREK switches from classical to jazz. They switch it up between pretty straight jazz to free jazz. Now free jazz requires a lot from the listener and honestly, most times I’m not that listener, I really just like my jazz straight ahead.

Now in the back of the book section there was a review of an interesting biography of Harold Humes who was an American author in Paris thru the late 50s and 60s. The book talks of his mental decline to paranoia and talking to himself and delusions of the CIA. Turns out it wasn’t all in his head. But that’s not the book I’m interested in. They talk about his first book The Underground City and his brilliance, that’s the one I want to read. He co-founded the Paris Review and overdosed on LSD given to him by his friend Timothy Leary on top of all the other things like going to MIT, being at the party when Norman Mailer stabbed his second wife and so on. The book has been re-released by Random House in paper book which fits perfectly in my budget.

I’ve been waiting for a month and half for tonight to finally get here. Tonight at the Tabernacle is…Ween. I’ve been wanting to see them in concert since I was in college. So when tickets went on sale last month, I was on it. Tonight when they take the stage at 8, I’ll be there with the girl because a Ween concert is what all 4th graders need on a school night.

Here at the house it’s early morning and I’ve gotten the girl off to school and I’m just killing a little time before I have to roll into the office. Other than that things are rolling right along. The weather’s been up and down and now it’s supposed to rain today. I’m working on a brochure and package design for a guy who’s making hats as well as an email blast layout for a nation union’s support announcement and a logo for a clothing company. School’s going well too, teach my type 3 class this quarter. I usually have 9-10 students in the class but this quarter I’m loaded with 13 but so far it’s going pretty well.