The Bushrod Chronicles

i had a fun little adventure with the kiddies on friday… uh… mainly mackenzie i suppose…

first a little background i guess… before i met, fell in love with, married, and started having the chilluns with love-of-my-life karen i lived for a while just down the street from greenlake in seattle… and i used to play in a band called cousin phil with my amigos tom and sarah… i was doing this when karen and i met and one of the coolest things, for me anyway, was when karen would come see us play…

so cousin phil was an acoustic trio… we’d all swap instruments and stuff although i usually played acoustic guitar… we’d all sing… and we were big on audience participation… lotsa folks played percussion with us as the urge struck ‘em, we had guest guitar players a fair bit, and our amigo al used to play harmonica with us quite a lot…

oh yeah, and we were initially called clayton park which at the time we all thought was a rather cool name until a dude actually called clayton park popped up and threatened to pursue legal action against us unless we ceased and desisted using “his name”… after that we didn’t think it was such a cool name any more… hah… so we had a contest at a gig one night and became cousin phil after that…

so flash forward to the present… we had taken mum to work and found ourselves heading home when our normal route was blocked by a morning rush hour stall and the associated morning rush hour traffic… so we took a little detour… and i got to show the boo my old apartment building pre-getting-married… and after we saw that we took the route that i used to take two or three times a week from seattle to kirkland for practices and gigs…

and it was pretty friggin’ cool on a number of levels… i got to drive it again which brought back all sorts of fantastic memories… i got to tell mackenzie about an aspect o’ dad that she hadn’t heard of until then, not in much detail anyway… and we all had a pretty relaxing drive instead of being stuck in traffic for an hour with a bunch of other ticked off drivers…

a fine start to a friday methinks…

my blog looks like crap
css gives me vapors
stylesheet doesn’t work

so amigo steve was kind enough to invite me back as a guest on his excellent podcast a brit abroad last eve… we drank beer and talked about music, the band, our pals, a little geeky stuff, and vasectomies… fun was had…

get it here or better yet subscribe to a brit abroad via the podcatcher o’ yer choice…

so in attempting to revamp what this site looks like i managed to completely hose everything… got it back to some slightly-off not-quite likeness of where it started… then hosed it again… a rather bogus and frustrating experience…

so here it is in bare bones form for a couple of days…

new redesign coming soon!!!… hah…

i hate it when i can’t sleep… every now and then i go through a phase of sleepin’ troubles and it totally throws me off… and as i understand it lotsa folks get truly horrible sleep virtually all the time… no wonder there’s a lot o’ buttheads out and about on a daily basis…

good chance to write a blog entry though… i’d probably do a lot more of these if i wasn’t wranglin’ chilluns all day long…

first and foremost i’d like to give a big ol’ f. you to all the wankers who are inundating my blog with comment spam… i’ve already turned off trackbacks due to some truly ugly crap that was showing up… is the ability for folks to comment the next rather useful feature to die???… i hope not… i’m certainly trying to keep on top of it all with the spam tools i’ve got but golly folks… can’t ya just go eat a weenie and go advertise all yer crap in a little more forthright a manner???…

on a more positive and dowright exciting note i’ll be rejoining my pal steve, guitar playing cohort in spank, for a podcast this eve… this’ll be the second time i’ve been his guest on his most excellent production, a brit abroad… we had a hoot last time so it promises to be a fine evening…

speaking of spank… the band’s getting all worked up into a lather o’ joy about our upcoming gig at the central club in kirkland… or maybe that’s just me… we’ll be playing there on wednesday 11/16… hopefully lots of folks will join us for an evening o’ joy… the last time we were there was for our cd release party and it was too much fun… really… 12 people expired from sheer happiness…

and the family has just passed a milestone of sorts i guess… its been six months since i began my oddysey as a stay-at-home dad… ’s been lotsa fun, presented a few challenges along the way… uh… daily, been more rewarding than i can say, and has thus far proved itself to be a good decision for the family i reckon… i’m compiling my thoughts in a little more detail for a post coming soon…

i like sushi… a lot… not for everyone i know… and there’s a few places within the realm that i’ve yet to dare to venture…

however… since coming to seattle 10+ years ago and being introduced to sushi by a friend of mine i’ve developed a taste for the stuff…

karen digs it too… and on the advice of our pal kristen we’ve got a new favo(u)rite… izumi… we’ve been there a couple of times and i’ve gotta say it raised the bar pretty significantly from all i’ve had before…

highly recommended…

again a rather long stretch between the posts…

and a fair bit has happened… the offspring and i spent the first bit being rather sick… tugboat had his first ear(s) infection(s)… kenzie got a rippin’ cold as well… and as they both spent their days sneezing and coughing on me i got the gunk too…

however, after a week or so of that we all got somewhat better and grand adventures took place… for the last few months we’ve had a family vacation planned to the oregon coast… we’ve been to visit family with the kids a few times but its been since karen’s and my honeymoon… three and a half years ago… that we’ve actually had a true vacation…

and it was grand… karen’s mum flew out for a visit and came along… we loaded up the hot-rod minivan and headed to seaside oregon and stayed at a house right on the beach… we were there for four nights and had a blast… kites were flown… sandcastles were built… mucho guitar was played… mucho mucho red bull & vodka drinks were enjoyed… and karen and i even had the luxury of a couple of date nights… awesome…

karen posted a few thoughts and pics of the big trip on her blog…

and since then it’s been kinda getting-back-into-the-flow time… unto which i now believe i have arrived back… uh… into…

doth heretofore whilst forthwith and whatnot…