The Lake of the Ozarks

What a great weekend at the lake. I think we had some of the best margaritas known to man. At least if I remember correctly. Woowee! We had some great food as well. Everyone’s favorite, I suppose, was my baked black beans. They were good, but so was everything else we ate. The margaritas were good, too. Hahahahaha! Did I already mention that?

Blue and Chili got to swim together for the first time, and I can pretty much guarantee you that Blue is at home right now dreaming of the lake. He hates….HATES! coming home from there. You could leave him enough food for a week and he’d be just fine living on the dock. As for Chili, he took the award for getting the most air.

Margarita Recipe:

1 12oz. can of Minute Maid Frozen Limeade (save can)
1 12oz. can of Diet 7-Up
1 Bottle of Corona Light
8oz. or 3/4 of the Minute Maid Can of Jose Cuervo
4 Capfuls of Cointreau

Uncle Gene

Sometimes boredom at work can lead to good finds on the Internet. About a month ago, I started typing the names of all my friends and family members in Google to see if I could come up with any information. As you can tell by the Jeff Snodgrass post, it's sometimes shocking what I find. However, affter typing my uncle Gene’s name, I came across a site that had several photographs he’d taken in Colorado (and one in Missouri). To my surprise, they were damn beautiful pictures, and so I thought I’d share a few of them with the rest of you.


Table Rock Lake 2002 (with Linda)


Lincoln Creek above Aspen


Mini Forest


Storm Clouds


Untitled

The Knife & José González

Recently I have been obsessing over a song called “Heartbeats.” The first time I heard it was by the Swedish folk singer/songwriter José González (yes he’s Swedish). The other day I was reading an article about him and it mentioned the fact that he had actually covered the song, originally done by The Knife (also Swedish).

What makes this so interesting is that each version represents a completely different genre. One is folk and the other is electronic. Usually the quality of the song suffers on a remix or cover, but not here. Each version of “Heartbeats” is amazing, although I have to lean more to the José González side. He’s simply amazing at what he does with a guitar and a voice.

So check out these two videos and see for yourself. Maybe you’ll like it, maybe you won’t. But it’s still fun to hear the contrast between the two.

The Knife - "Heartbeats"



José González - "Heartbeats (cover)

Mr. Snodgrass

Some of you may have met my good friend, Jeff Snodgrass, at our wedding. He was one of my groomsmen. Well, not long ago he made an appearance on the David Letterman show to perform “Stupid Human Tricks.” His trick was that he could hold five cans on his face by using suction. Don’t ask me how he does it. What’s so funny is that he never told me he had this talent. I guess sometimes you just don’t know your friends as well as you’d like to. I’ve been told that Jeff didn’t win the competition, but he did receive free dinner and lodging. Congratulations Turdball!!!

Cinco de Mayo 2006

It was another successful party at the Starrs this past weekend when we celebrated Cinco de Mayo with some close friends, classmates, and co-workers. There were plenty of margaritas, mojitos, beer, and salsas to enjoy. Although I think we needed more of just about everything at the end of the night. Kristen and I will take that as a compliment.

Damn that Stedman!

Hello from the Windy City! So, I was up at 4:30 this morning to catch my plane for old Chi-Town. Everything was smooth as silk: the flight, the rental car, finding our hotel....

We had lunch with some Sprint people at a restaurant in Itasca called Shula's. We then went to meet with some trainers in another office and had a conference call. Slight kink: we were supposed to have a meeting downtown but due to the immigrant rally, which had a turn-out of 200,000 people, we could not make it down to the store. Therefore, we went back to the hotel for a couple hours before meeting downtown at a great restaurant called Shaw's Crabhouse.

We were told at Shaw's that part of the restaurant was shut-down because a lot of the staff didn't show up because of the May 1 immigrant boycott, but that the wait should be approximately 15 minutes. Thirty minutes into the wait, in walks Oprah's main squeeze.....Stedman Graham. Boy, what a scene. Women were pointing and taking pictures. Stedman was like "back up off a brotha." And then, wouldn't you know it, 10 minutes later, Stedman and his entourage were SEATED! Before us!!! Unreal. To which I say - "Damn that Stedman!!!" All in all, though, great crab cakes at Shaw's!

The Lonesome Boys

Kristen flew to Chicago today for her segmentation project with work. She'll be there until Thursday night. The boys and I already miss her. We'll be counting the hours until she returns safely. I have class tonight, so Blue is going to be getting a lot of "alone time" today. He'll need it, though, after his busy weekend with his new best friend, Chili. They had a ball retrieving the dummies. As for Sony and Yoshi, they can't even get out of their bed due to their depression. They miss their momma.