HOW ARE YOU DOIN MILWAUKEE!!???

HEY! Hi, and how everyone's doing? Hopefully great, or at least pretty good. Lots to discuss. First off, the weekend was quite busy. Friday I took off for Summerfest, but before then, I did some finishing touches cleaning the house before Jill's surprise birthday party. Friday night, my sister and I met up and took the ol' bus down to the grounds for Tegan and Sara. Since it was Friday, it was incredibly busy, but we made our way to the Briggs and Stratton stage. A local cover band was playing when we claimed our spot 8 rows from the very front. They were quite boring. 4 guitar players, two dudes playing keyes and of course one bass and drums with a female doing back up vocals. They were covering Bon Jovi, country crap, Matchbox 20 and other typical cover band tunes. The opening band for T&S was a group from Canada called Soho Ghetto. Right away I could easily tell the singer was another Springsteen fan. His look and the way he sang was a dead giveaway. Their first couple songs were tolerable, but that was about it. An unfortunate woman passed out at some point during their set from too much beer or alcohol. Security kept rushing in and eventually stretchered the girl out. Finally it was Tegan and Sara's turn to light up the stage. Literally.

They knocked out a good chunk of songs, mostly favoring their newest album Hearthrob, but they dabbled into their back catalog a bit playing some hits off The Con and did a couple songs from Sainthood. It was a total dance party the entire time. Tegan goofed up some lyrics during a song (that I can't remember at the moment) but Sara was going to punish her by making her sing the National Anthem. Didn't happen, but they restarted the song and she nailed the lyric. Some songs that were played were:
The Con
Back in Your Head
Walking With A Ghost
Closer
Goodbye Goodbye
I'm Not Your Hero
Dark Come Soon
plus many many others. It was deffinately worth the 3 1/2-4 hour wait. The only song missing from their set list was "Hell", one of my all-time fans because it sounds like an Alkaline Trio song. After they finished up, we made our way through the hoards of people lingering around. There were fights breaking out at the Five Finger Death Punch show, and some how we got on the bus. This is one of the reasons why I don't go down to Summerfest that often. The crazy amount of people everywhere. Luckily the bus ride wasn't too bad. A lot of older people looking at their photos they took of the bands they saw. I took a few good photos, but had to shoot in b/w to make a desperate attempt of getting some detail in the shot. If I had our DSLR camera, that would have been slightly easier to get some good color photos. I remembered the Hanson show I shot for the Rave/Eagles Club and how it was a pain in the ass fighting the low and ever-changing lighting.

Saturday was Jill's party. Gonna keep it short. It went quite well, despite the fact that it was meant to be an outdoors one, and we got rain (which lead to muggy air) so we all stayed inside. I had the Brazil/Chile game on (which was intense to the end) Jill loved her sushi-looking cupcakes and sashimi crispies. The gift was what I was most excited about. Her very own KitchenAid mixer. She's been wanting one for almost a year now. In fact, Sunday when I came home from work, the neighborhood smelled like fresh baked goods. MMM!!

Tuesday, the USMNT played Belgium. Two teams I was hoping would do well this World Cup, so this was a difficult game. In the end, Belgium won (which is what I predicted) and at the hands of two Chelsea boys, but US gave them hell. Tim Howard, who's now a household name, had 16-17 saves that night which is a new record. I've watched the highlights and it was definately a nail-biter. We may not have gotten out of this round, but we proved that they are a team with a lot of fight. And any Donovan fan can say "well see? We should have played him, we would have won" all they want, you really don't know that for sure. Most likely, he'll be too old for the next WC. Looking forward to the next games (if I can watch them).

Lastly, my friend Nicole and I took our kids to the zoo Wednesday. Despite the rain, they had a great time. Mia decided that today would be the day she'd conquer her fear of the zoo train. "I promise I won't cry Daddy" and she didn't. In fact, she LOVED it. I was so proud of her.

Okay, that's all for now. Thanks for reading :)

Best Imitations Of Myself

Hey! Hope every one's enjoying this rather strange week. 4th of July on a Thursday is a bit strange. Some people are getting a full 4-day weekend, others (like my wife) get just Thursday off. Me? I'm not off. Didn't take the holiday off. Used to back in the day when we would go to to catch Less Than Jake every 4th of July at Summerfest. Lots of fun, but as time went on, I just stopped wanting to go to Milwaukee's famous fest. Loss of interest. Would take a lot for me to go now. The Lawrence Arms would guarantee me to attend, as well as probably Ted Leo & The Pharmacists. Okay, that's enough of that.

Over the weekend, we drove down to Illinois Friday after work.  After we gassed up and got on 43, Mia fell asleep rather quickly watching her new favourite movie "The Princess Frog". While driving through Huntley, there were cones and cops everywhere with floodlights in a parking lot. I swear, it looked like border control. Well, they were stopping every single car and did a "safety check", which of course meant they were checking for drunk drivers. Great idea, but crap, they just HAD to shine the flash light in poor sleeping Mia's eyes.  She fell asleep soon after we went on our adventure. Saturday morning, we drove to the Shedd Aquarium. LOVE LOVE LOVE driving through the city. Leanne (one of Jill's friend's) came with too. It was a great time. Was quite blown away by how amazing the beluga whales are. I've seen them there before, but every time we go, they impress me more and more. The string ray touch thingy was actually better then the Milwaukee County Zoo one. Why? Well, the cow-nose rays were SUPER friendly. They swim right up to you like a dog would rub their head. It was pretty amazing. My favourite part of the Shedd (besides the awesome penguins) still is the Reef animals down stairs. Plenty of awesome sharks swimming. Nice 6 foot ones too. A rad part of the experience, was Mia was enthused to shoot some pictures of the coral and fish with our DSLR camera. "Daddy, I take a pictures of this" *CLICK- CLICK- CLICK- CLICK* All in all, great time at the Shedd. I figured something out why Chicago residents drive rather defensive in Wisconsin. In the city, its "drive defensive, or be crushed" as my bro in law puts it. Everyone in the city has to be on their toes to get to where they're going. Cutting people off to make a turn is just part of it. There's no hesitating or middle fingers flying when someone makes a bold move to get in front of you. It's their way of life. So with that, I have 0 hatred for "FIB drivers" here in good ol' Wisconsin.

 Anyways, so Thursday is the holiday. Jill's taking Mia to the fireworks in Waukesha with my parents. We heard some neighbors shooting some off today and it peaked her interest, but of course they stopped. We put on the local news channel that had the fireworks on and I said to Mia "hey, look fireworks" and she responded "Daddy, I'm learning Spanish!" Well alright then! Saturday, we're going to see Wicked. Should be fun. Jill's parents got her tickets for her birthday. I've heard only great things about the play/musical for quite a while so I'm anticipating a wonderful evening. PLUS after work Sunday, I've got soccer. It's been a few weeks, so I'm stoked to play again.  Before I finish this, I gotta bring up this new thing Mia does every once in a while. Maybe once a day. Sometimes when we ask her about something such as for example "what would Daddy say if you fell off the swing?" Mia responds with this hilarious impression or imitation of me saying "Oh no, Mia fell off, don't cry Mia" She imitates Jill and Remi all the time too. HILARIOUS! That's all for now. Thanks for reading!