Read it and weep

I think I got videos to work! Party time!
First video: Elmer chewing on my shoes. He absolutely LOVES biting my shoelaces. And the drawstrings from my hoodie. And my jacket. And my jeans. And my toes that day I wore flipflops. Not doing that again!
My favorite part: towards the end he looks like a panda.


Round 2: Playing fetch.


Round 3: More shoes!


So yeah, that's awesome. You can wipe the tears of joy and jealousy off your faces now.
The weather is nice, the doggies are good, and I'm back to giving group guitar lessons at the school nearby. Those kids are so smart and enthusiastic, they're bored with the standard songs in our lessons plan (Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Happy Birthday, Mary Had a Little Lamb, even Smoke on the Water!), so last class I wrote out Iron Man and the Zelda theme.
Still recording with Bricklayers Foundation, and I decided I'm going to record another solo album. Not sure how many people remember/were aware, but in the summer of 2004 I formed "A Hand" and recorded my first album, "High Five." It had some good tracks, and some not-so-good tracks too. Anyways, I got the idea because since I've been in Chicago I've written a few classical/instrumental pieces as well as some more pop-oriented tunes for the bands I'm in. I thought it would be cool to combine them. We'll see what happens!

I finished the Spanish Bow, which was surprisingly good. Like I said, Mom bought it for me solely because it is about music and Spain, but it was a winner. Kind of an epic journey through 20th century Spain, constantly mixing the political and musical worlds. After that I tried The Devil in the White City, given to me by our very own Eleanor Sullivan. Another fantastic book, it reminded me of Sister Carrie in its portrayal of turn of the century Chicago. Nice job of juxtaposing the inspiring story of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition with the serial killer who lived blocks away. So cool.
Now I'm on to the Fountainhead. We watched the movie in our Humanities class at Boston Latin, but the book is really good. It looks like it's 800,000 pages long, but that won't stop me! I'll probably be reading it for the next thirteen years.
Hopefully the videos worked, but in case they didn't, here's a peak at some chili my buddy Justin made a while back.
We're turning it into a weekly barbecue session. He loves cooking, and I love eating, so we go over, drink beer, fill our bellies, take in the nice weather, and maybe even catch a little Star Trek. Does it get any better than that?
In sports news, Game 3 of the Celtics series was awesome. I hope everyone got to watch it, I hadn't been that excited in a long time. Bring it on Cavaleotards!
As for the Red Sox, we hit a rough patch, but things are slowly moving in the right direction. Anyone else notice how our wins are always by one run? That's a dangerous trend to continue, but hey, we're a .500 team again! Party!

Time for some pictures

Chicago is beautiful. The weather has been amazing recently, and it makes being outside all day just wonderful. Randomly it would shoot up to 70 or 80 degrees, which just boggles my mind, so Justin and I were hanging out by the water, just soaking up as much sun as possible.

That night we went to his place and grilled some chicken on his barbecue with some friends, it was glorious. Even though the legs were enormous and not always cooked all the way through, they were drenched in Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce which makes everything better.
Friday I came home with a craving for mac n cheese, but I decided to live on the edge and try baked mac n cheese. I think it was an awesome first try:

Then there are my doggies. Here's a new guy named Chief, he has way too much energy to be living in a studio apartment, but I guess that's what I'm there for. Anyways I am not picky with big dogs, I just love not having another tiny little guy I have to worry about stepping on.

And here's the coup de grâce: my bulldog puppy. His name is Elmer, and he's literally too adorable. Like borderline illegal. Basically everyone on the street stops and tells me how cute he is. He's just irresistible.

So you know, I got that going for me. Other recent events include watching the Red Sox Opening Night on my laptop (very exciting game, the beginning of a new season always makes me jump for joy), watching Butler almost defeat Duke (crazy game, still proud of those guys for almost single-handedly writing Hoosiers 2), and seeing Julian Casablancas live (great show, I'll never get tired of that guy's voice).
In terms of books, I finished Sister Carrie which was incredible. The story takes some totally unpredictable twists and turns and never ceased to amaze me with its brutally honest look at metropolitan life in the 1890s. I just finished Player Piano, Vonnegut's very first novel. This one is based on his experiences working at General Electric, and details a future in which we basically have machines do everything for us. On one hand it's great, as technology and mass-production are streamlined without any human faults. At the same time, the average human feels worthless and expendable, unless they have a high enough IQ to be an engineer or manager. As usual, I loved it. I just started The Spanish Bow, given to me by my adventurous mother who bought the book for me without knowing anything other than it was about Catalonia and music. So far so good!
And that about wraps it up. Far Things is playing a show Sunday night, Bricklayers Foundation is still in the studio, and hopefully my calypso guy will come back from Florida soon so we can get back to jamming! Go Sox!