Last Borderline Edward?

GP's band played at the Night Owl Pub last night. This may have been their last show - the practices have been few and far between.

Best Dog Ever

This week the best family dog that ever lived passed away a month shy of being 15 years old. 

She was a natural part of our family from the day we brought her home. She was one our kids. 

The boys grew up with her and cannot remember ever being without her. 

We will miss her.

New Dryer Parts

Last year the heater element went out in the dryer. This year, it's the drum support rollers. $25 to Amazon for new rollers (and a belt) and an hour of help from GP, and we have a nice quiet dryer again.

Winter Won't Go Away

Local Artist

While visiting one of our suppliers in Lincoln, I noticed this painting and recognized it immediately. It's the same one that one of the guys at work has hanging above his disk. His wife painted it for the state. Now the governors hand them out for special events.

Bowie in NYC

Last week my business travels took me to New York City and Connecticut to visit a supplier. There's no easy way to get there from here so we ended up with half a day to kill. We headed down to the Brooklyn Museum to see the David Bowie exhibit.

I had no idea how diverse Bowie was: music, fashion, videos, film. He released his first album at age 19 and went up from there.

Of course, you can't visit the east coast and not take in some of the local favorites!

Band Practice Date Nights

GP's band practice is half an hour away, and it usually only lasts for 90 minutes, so it's a waste of time for us to take him there, go home, and then go back. We were going to the mall and wandering around, but that got old. Our new thing is to try a new restaurant each week. It makes for a fun date night!

Easter 2018

We had our 9th annual Easter Saturday brunch yesterday. We had old neighbors, new neighbors, and a couple of friends, too. JP has been preparing all week for this. It's really fun being able to set up a table for 20.

Everyone brought something (organized by JP so we wouldn't get duplicate dishes). My favorite is always deviled eggs.

JP's favorite is her frittata. 

New Band

GP started playing with a new band a couple weeks ago. Friday night they performed at the Night Owl Pub in Lincoln and really killed it. The guitarist in the new band is amazing, and it's stretching GP's abilities to play with him (which is a good thing).

They played Your Decision by Alice in Chains, Plush by Stone Temple Pilots, an original one by the guitar player, and my favorite: The Trooper by Iron Maiden.

Wearing the Green

JP was out of town for St. Patrick's Day, so the G's took me with them to the big party downtown at Mc Kinney's. Last year it was scorching hot and sunny. This year it was in the 40s and cold, windy, and grey. Nonetheless, we had fun.

La Paloma

JP & I went to a fundraiser at La Paloma (84th & Holdredge) for our friends' brother's cancer treatment. The Mexican food was second to none. JP wouldn't let me take a photo with a sombrero, so I had to wait for an opportunity when she went to the restroom.

Oven Cellar

Saturday night, we went out with both our current and former neighbors to The Oven; it's an Indian restaurant down in the Haymarket. The food was amazing! I had something that was bright red and super spicy. Not sure what it was, but it was tasty. Afterwards, we discovered that they have a really cool wine cellar in the basement. The girls all enjoyed the wine vending machine.

C

This weekend we focused on CP's programming class. He's learning a programming language called "c". It's the same one I learned 30 years ago. We spent six hours Sunday afternoon working through his assignment. V helped hold papers down.

Cheap

The girls next door brought home a chick from school. JP LOVES it!

Rat's Nest

The cables in the music room finally got to an unmanageable knot. I spent the entire weekend rearranging everything and cleaning up the cable routing. 

Rockin' Duffy's

GP's band played again at Duffy's. They are getting pretty good.

Gnawing Suspicion

The buttons on the washing machine stopped working last weekend. We've had an abundance of mice this year, and JP was convinced that one was to blame for this. She was right! As we popped off the front control panel to get a view, I spied a little grey friend hiding in the panel. I was able to put the panel back in place before he jumped out, but JP saw me shudder and she let out her mouse scream that could be heard in Omaha.

After I cleared her out of the room, I tried to catch the little guy but he got away and under/into the dryer. That night, we put out a trap and put up the dog food. In the morning, our friend neatly put himself in the mousetrap for us.

Fortunately, the mouse had only chewed through one of twenty little tiny wires. If he had chewed any more, it would have been tough to figure out which one went where. It took all of five minutes to fix the wire, but half an hour to clean out the mess the mouse left in the washer. He had been feasting on dog food and had amassed quite a stash in his nest.

Pickin & Grinnin

For my B-Day, I had a guitarish theme. We took our friends out to a new bar & grille behind Campbell's, called The Local.

Thanks SB for the cool Iron Maiden guitar picks at Christmas!! I love them and they have made me a better player, too.

I pooled my b-day $$ and hit the used guitar shop and picked up a sweet used Orange tube amp.

I feel like I missed out on dealing with high-voltage vacuum tubes and TV repair, so I'm looking forward to fooling around with the innards of the new amp. Nothing like 400 volts DC!

The tubes really make a difference in sound, so it was also time to reconfigure the pickups on my Strat. Trying out some Fender Highway Ones.

Fire Hazard

JP's Birthday cake warmed up the kitchen pretty well when we lit it up.

CES

For years I've dreamed of attending the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. 

This year I got to go! 

The realm of autonomous vehicles is here. This is a car that participates in the Robot Racing League. The company that runs it makes graphics cards for the kids' video games. Turns out that the processors are also really good at driving cars. All of the major automakers were showing autonomous cars and saying that kids born today probably will never learn to drive.

Gibson Guitars had a huge tent full of their axes. I got to play a $13,000 guitar.

Yamaha was showing off their road racing robot as well as a self-balancing bike and crop spraying robotic helicopter.