Back Home Again

8 People Who Will Ruin Your Party

This is one of the funniest things I have read in a while.  Love the photos.  I have witnessed (or been) all of these eight people.  It reminds me why I no longer have parties. 

8 People Who Will Ruin Your Party.

Parish Picture - 1928

Today we had our group parish picture taken after Mass.  Dad and Mom were asked to sit on the front row since Dad was in the original parish picture taken on June 17, 1928.  There are only three current members in the parish left who were in that original picture.  Dad and Mom are also the oldest married couple currently in the parish.  Dad told the photographer if they only take these photos every 80 years, he didn't think he'd be here for the next one.  Dad wore a cap today.  Maybe they can PhotoShop out his black eye.   

Dad has a copy of this photo hanging in his office.  Another copy hangs in the parish hall.  It was a long photo (56"x10") that was a popular style in the 1920s.

This is the last known photo that we have of my grandmother Maggie.  She died of pneumonia six months after this photo was taken on New Year's Day 1929. 

Dad (age 10) is on the left side of the photo near my grandmother and grandfather (circled in red, left photo).  His brothers (ages 6, 7, and almost 4) were way over on the right side of the photo (see blue box, right photo).  We're not sure where the other three siblings were that day. 

I was able to get the whole picture in six scans.  Click on the photos below to enlarge.   

  

Another Black Eye

No, this is not a summer rerun.  Dad injured himself again yesterday.  He got the left eye this time.

Dad was moving some chunks of cement.  He was picking up something underneath the bucket of the bobcat.  He came up quickly, forgetting that the bucket was raised and banged his face. 

He quickly drove the tractor home.  The home healthcare provider just about fainted.  She contacted me and told me that Dad was bleeding pretty bad.  I went to their house and started cleaning the wound.  We have a whole shelf of bandages and wound dressings for just such occasions.  I was able to get the wound to quit bleeding a put a big bandage on it.  My sister took a look at it and we decided he'd better go get it checked out at the emergency room.  We went to the local hospital since they did such a good job stitching him up the last time.  Luckily, there were no patients in the waiting room.  We were in and out of there in an hour.  He got three stitches, one of them down deep.

Dad had a good time joking with the doctor and nurse,  "You should have seen what the other guy looked like."  Dad said it never hurt, but that the nurse practically drowned him with a rinse kit.  Dad has to go back in a week to get the stitches removed.  He plans on telling the doctor he didn't do a very good job stitching, since he was still bleeding.  Dad is on Plavix (blood thinner) and takes a baby aspirin daily. 

This morning Dad had blood all over his face.  One of the stitches must have leaked during the night.  I looked at his bed and sure enough....he had bled all over the pillow and sheets.  I forgot to tell the home healthcare worker, who was still squeamish from yesterday's adventures.  She went into his bedroom and got quite a shock when she pulled back the covers.  She said she half expected to find a horse's head with all that blood.  She wisely just turned the pillow over until the wound is no longer seeping. 

Dad is always a master of good timing.  We are having a parish group photo taken after Mass tomorrow.  I'll see if I can find Dad a sporty hat to wear.  One with a long bill (and a veil) to shade his face.  

Until the Night - Billy Joel

Title: Until the Night

Artist: Billy Joel

Composers: Billy Joel

Label: Columbia 7242

Year Released: 1979

Highest Chart Position: 50 (UK)

For some time now, I've been considering buying an analog to digital converter kit, so that I can covert some of my music on vinyl to MP3.  I've talked to Hammer about it but hadn't done much research.  I was in Radio Shack looking for something entirely different when I spotted a box for Inport Deluxe from xitel with the following sales pitch: 

Record from your stereo to your computer!

Installs in seconds!

Powerful software included!

Removes pops and clicks!

Plus, it was on sale for $49.99 ($20 off).  I bought it. 

It includes software, a small box that converts from standard red/white RCA cables to a USB port.  There is also a 50-foot set of RCA cables.  This is very nice for those of us who don't have their turntable right next to their computer.  The software has three parts: 1) LP Recorder; 2) LP Ripper: and 3) Wave Corrector DeClick.  The LP Recorder is designed to record an entire LP (or side anyways).  It even has an auto level button...sweet.  LP Ripper splits it into individual tracks.  The Wave Corrector DeClick gets rid of the clicks.  It was all pretty easy.  The bad thing is that it saves using the .WAV format.  Even one 4 minute song is about 44mg.  I used Audacity (free download) to convert the .WAV file to a 4mg .MP3 file.  This product was very easy to use.  I would recommend it to anyone looking to convert their vinyl to digital.

I'm gonna have some fun now blowing the dust off of those old LPs and 45s.

On a side note, my turntable has had a loud hum and sound was only coming through the right speaker.  I've swapped cables, receivers, and finally bought a continuity tester.  Hammer suggested it might be a bad cartridge.  I unplugged the four little wires on the cartridge (remember those?), and when I reattached them, the hum was gone and I had stereo sound.  Weird.

One of my favorite Billy Joel songs appears on the album 52nd Street, before he married Christie Brinkley and became a caricature of himself.  Until the Night was only released as a single overseas.  I only have this song on vinyl, and I really didn't want to buy it all over again on CD.  It is available now as a 99 cent download on Amazon, but what fun would that be?  So here's my inaugural digital transfer from my vinyl album 52nd Street.  Enjoy!

Enjoy!

Play (6.0 MB)      

Life Interrupts

I knew July was going to be a busy month, but August has been a whirlwind too.  Blogging has had to take a backseat to life. 

Here's some of the things that have been on my calendar this summer:

Blogmeeet in Nebraska over the 4th of July. 

A funeral.

80th birthday party. 

40th birthday party.

Baling straw.

Boone County 4-H Fair.

WWII reunion in Kalamazoo, Michigan where I lost my camera. 

One of the kittens is missing.

Lunch with an old friend I hadn't seen in 20 years. 

Moved my niece and family across town in Louisville.

Retrieved my lost camera from a friend in Indiana.

Hurricane scare in Houston.

Saw the new Batman movie.

Indiana State Fair.

School starts.

Computer virus.

Took Dad to emergency room for a head gash....he's fine.

Major system upgrade at work.

We now resume our normal scheduled programming....and blogging.  Now where was I?

Dinner in the Woods

Today Dad was working in the woods again, piling up fallen tree limbs.  It's about 1 1/2 miles from the house.  He wanted me to bring his dinner (lunch) to the woods so that he wouldn't have to drive the bobcat back and forth.

Usually Dad is parked by the road at dinner time, sometimes asleep on the bobcat.  But this time he was right in the middle of the woods, and couldn't hear me blowing the horn.  I drove the old beater back to where he was, dodging stumps and trees along the way.

I brought my camera but you may not be able to understand a word we say.  We're speaking a foreign language called Hoosier.  To translate:  I ask what is the best way out of the woods.  I hand Dad his dinner in a CVS sack (not bag).  I then ask him about a cane he left by the garage.  Dad asks me about Mom's caretaker.  Dad tells me not to run over a tree.  I drive off.

Computer Virus

I've got a bad computer virus.  It's the Antivirus2009, a counterfeit antispyware. 

I may not be able to get to the internet for a while.

Bastards!

Update:  It worked...Hammer Rocks!!!!

Upjohn Suite

Dad and I have returned from Michigan.  I'll post more about that later.  We stayed at the Radisson Hotel in Kalamazoo.  I had Google'd the hotel name when I was looking for directions to get there.  One of the first things that popped up was that 1960s singer Bobby Hatfield of The Righteous Brothers died in this hotel in 2003. 

Almost upon arrival to the reunion, I was busy.  We had to make a liquor run and restock the hospitality room, which was in the Upjohn Suite on the top floor, with a private card entry.  It was very swank, including a king size bed with a two step staircase up, and a jacuzzi tub. 

One night, Dad and I ate at one of the hotel restaurants.  On the way out we ran into the manager of the hotel who asked how our stay was.  As we were speaking to him, I got to thinking just how many rooms in the hotel would be fit for a celebrity to stay in. So I asked the manager where exactly Bobby Hatfield was found dead.  He told me of a room on the 9th floor, the Upjohn Suite.

So for the rest of the time we spent there, I would tell folks in the hospitality room:

You remember the Righteous Bros? Yeah.

The one with the high voice?. Yeah.

Well, he died somewhere in this room. Probably on that bed or in that bathroom.

Here's a video of Bobby singing his biggest hit Unchained Melody.  If there's a Rock and Roll Heaven, well you know they've got a hell of a band.  RIP, Bobby!

The Mitten

Dad and I will be heading north in the morning to the Mitten.  The 487th Bomb Group is having their annual reunion in Kalamazoo this year. 

I have only been to Michigan a couple of times.  I just don't like going north and being cold.  But it is supposed to be in the 90s according to the weather.  My first time to witness a Michigan summer...which only lasts a month.

So blogging will be light until I return. 

The Safety Dance - Men Without Hats

Title: The Safety Dance

Artist: Men Without Hats 

Composers: Ivan Doroschuk

Label: Backstreet 52232 

Year Released: 1983

Highest Chart Position: 3

Here's an ear worm from the eighties that I had almost forgotten about.  Any time there is an Eighties Weekend on a radio station, this one will definitely be played.  If someone mentions that they hate the music of the eighties, this song may be the reason why.

This song made it to #3 on the Billboard charts.  It was kept from the top spot by these hits from September 1983:  Maniac - Michael Sembello, Tell Her About It - Billy Joel, and Total Eclipse Of The Heart - Bonnie Tyler. 

Men Without Hats was a techno-rock group from Montreal, Quebec, Canada.  It consisted of brothers Ivan (vocals), Stefan (guitar) and Colin (keyboards) Doroschuk, with Allan McCarthy (drums).  The band did have several albums before and after The Safety Dance.  Of course none of them are remembered, only this one.  Forever.  The video for the song was quite strange too.  It was known primarily as "the one with the dwarf".  

I have also added the band's other top twenty hit Pop Goes The World.  Plus, a hilarious Safety Dance video from the TV series Scrubs. 

Enjoy!

Watch Video (The Safety Dance)

Watch Video (Pop Goes the World)

Watch Video (Scrubs)