On my calendar, there are 2 seasons: baseball and winter. Last night around midnight, the winter season began. As the White Sox finished off the Astros in one of the most evenly matched World Series I can recall, baseball for 2005 came to a halt. It’ll be 4 long months before pitchers and catchers head back down to Florida (or Arizona) and 5 months before Dad and I make our annual pilgrimage down to see the Spring Training baseball. I’m already excited about going.

Oh, and, Ozzie Guillen, if you’re reading this, you’re welcome in Atlanta. Maybe we can get rid of that boob of a manager we have and get past round 1 of the playoffs at least once this decade.

About 6:00 tonight, I got a craving for World Series food. When I was young, my dad and I kept boiled peanuts in the freezer specifically set aside for the World Series. As I was preparing to watch what will likely be a very exciting World Series, I began craving boiled peanuts. The problem: I’ve never made them.

I’ve watched Dad do it no less than several dozen times. Wash the peanuts, add water, add salt, taste, add salt, wait, add salt, wait, add more salt, add water, enjoy. Yeah, it seemed simple enough. Convinced I could do anything I rushed to Publix to get some peanuts for boiling. Several hours later, I’m out of salt and those peanuts are tasting pretty good. I’ve turned the heat down and am letting them soak up some of the water. As it stands now, it appears that my first attempt at boiling peanuts will be a successful undertaking. We’ll see soon enough, I guess.

Go Astros!

Tonight my wife and I are going on a quintuple date. That sounds strange.

I think it’s funny how things change. When you’re 16 and dating, you hate the double dating scene because of all the accountability that goes along with it. Then you get married and have a couple of kids. Then you start back up on double-, triple-, quadruple-, and even quintuple dating. The difference is that now it’s voluntary.

So at 4:00 I’m leaving work to go do a quick shuffle with children, car seats, and friends so that multiple sitters can later be shuffling children, car seats, and houses. The problem (that I see) with quintuple dating is that every babysitter in the church is now taken. Fortunately for us, they don’t seem to understand the laws of supply and demand. After all, if a sitter is harder to find, wouldn’t that make the sitter more valuable? I hope they don’t read my web site. (chances are good they don’t)

After the mighty shuffle, we’re heading to TN where we’ll get on a big boat, cruise around what my friend Lyndsay swears is the best city in the US, and eat a (hopefully) huge meal. We haven’t done anything “as a group” (i.e. quintuple dating) in a while, so it should be fun.

I even offered Wulfgar a chance at earning lunch on me every day for 2 weeks, but he - the wife-whipped little sucker that he is - more than likely won’t be dining on my wallet any time soon. It’s ok though…I’ve got to pay the sitters with that money.

We’re with my parents this weekend, and Dad and I saw this guy today while we were out. I thought this was funny. He had just left the local flea market, so we’re not sure if he bought that mailbox there or if he rigged it to use for additional storage. I know a guy who rigged an ugly box on his motorcycle so that he’d have his own little home made “trunk” on his bike. Bungee cords and a mailbox may have been the same idea in earlier stages.

Anyway, I told my dad that people like this guy are the reason we need camera phones. I didn’t happen to get a shot of the lime green bus full of Mexicans or the sign about “going out for business” while we were at the flea market, but at least I got this image to remind me of the laughs we had this morning.

I got my hands on a server this week. It’s a 2u rack mount box. It’s only got an 800Mhz chip in it and 512MB RAM, so it’s not the most powerful machine in the world. And it’s only got a 30GB hard drive, so it’s not going to be the best place for file storage. It’s not even technically mine, but it’s here for me to do with it as I see fit.

The problem is that I can’t decide what to do with it. Do any of you guys have any suggestions?

It’s time for a new look, so I’ve been digging through some canned themes available for use with this wonderful WordPress blogging software. I think I like this one, but there’s that little snail thing at the top of the page that I’m not crazy about. Maybe I’ll change that later.

I’m going to be working on a WordPress type site for my rock star pal Eric Peters, so I’ve got to figure out more specifics about WordPress. This site seems like the perfect place to start.

If you know of (or have) a theme that looks better than this one, let me know.

I’m fortunate, and my friend Brandy from Missouri would agree, that I live in an area of the country close to good venues for indie music. About 3 hours up I-75 from my home is a little cafe in Knoxville called New City Cafe. They’ve been bringing in quality musicians for more than 7 years, and there is absolutely no better indie venue anywhere. I’ve been to Knoxville many times in the past few years and have really come to love that place. Friday night I saw the last official show at New City (at least for a while).

Andrew Peterson and the musical genius Ben Shive played 2 shows at New City Friday night. Gabe Scott (the Legend) joined them, bringing back old memories of AP’s early years. Eric Peters opened the evening.

Eric gets better every time I hear him. Ben joined in on some of Eric’s songs and really did a great job of making the songs sound even bigger. Eric did a wonderful job, and he made me realize that I need to see him play some more. Eric told me a little about his new CD (that he’s currently recording), and I am really excited to hear it.

Andy sounded great as well. He played a good mix of all of his CDs (except the Christmas CD, obviously), and Gabe really added a nice new sound to the mix.

I sat there in that front corner seat, my foot resting on Gabe’s monitor (because of a severe lack of leg room), and soaked up every note I could. Those New City shows are always better than any other show. When I was listening through Andrew’s bootlegs for the “Appendix A” project, I could hear a difference: he actually plays and sings better at New City.

So farewell for now, New City. I hope you find the rest and direction you are looking for. I can’t wait to see what will be coming next from the folks in Knoxville…whatever it is, it’ll be amazing.