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!