Thursday, September 13, 2007

Let's Get Un-Busy

Cripes, it's been a hectic last few weeks. Let's see...

Nicole and I took the girls to a ballgame - well, really, they took us, because they won the tickets through the library's summer reading club. It was Ava, Veronica, and Nicole's first trip to the new stadium. Of course, Ava's too young to remember her lone experience at old Busch. In retrospect, taking a ten-month-old baby to a Cards-Cubs game was not the greatest idea - the noise freaked her out and Nicole had to leave with her during the first inning. Even though she's three now, we almost went through the same thing this time. Ava made it through the top of the first without getting spooked. It was the cheers for the Cards coming up to bat that started the waterworks. We had just managed to get her calmed down when Albert Pujols came to bat. Of course, he promptly hit a home run - probably the only time I've ever rooted for an Albert Pujols fly ball to stay in the park. The place went nuts. More tears, but she handled it OK and we got to stay. The calming presence of Veronica helped immensely, I think. I found myself sighing with contentment, sitting there with my family at the ballpark on a hot but lovely summer night. It's not so bad, this whole fatherhood thing.

One of my favorite things about my neighborhood is the Festival of Nations at Tower Grove Park. This year the girls and I watched some Vietnamese lion dancing, some burly Scots in kilts tossing the caber (a big log, basically), and an Appalachian musician playing her autoharp and hammer dulcimer. And the food, by jiminy, the food... We got the delicious Argentinian empanadas we always get at these things, some Albanian tiramisu that was just OK, and some of those Mexican fruity drinks (watermelon and mango). We also went to the Japanese Festival at the Botanical Garden. Since we went in the morning and one of us is pregnant, Nicole and I skipped the boxed sake this time. But not the pocky.

The Help played a show on Sept. 2 at the Bluebird with the Humanoids and the Nevermores, two bands I'd been anxious to rock in close proximity to. Decent-ish turnout, hot lineup, and we all got paid. You can see a video clip of two of our songs at LoFi St. Louis (we're playing "All I Want For Christmas Is A Billion-Dollar No-Bid Contract" and "Pyongyang Fun City") - thanks to Bill of lofistl for adding the news crawl of companies that received no-bid contracts for the war in Iraq. Brilliant idea.

I guess this is Soccer Week. This past Monday I went to the Collinsville City Council meeting where they voted on various items related to a possible MLS stadium there. Looks like we'll soon have our own MLS team, probably, it seems, I'm hoping. I joined some of my Internet soccer peeps to chant like a fool afterwards - if you looked over Roche Madden's shoulder on Fox 2 that night, you could just see me in the crowd of goofballs behind him. Tonight I'm probably going to see SLU play Loyola, which'll be the first SLU game I've seen in a couple of years.

Otherwise, it's been all work, work, and work again. Woot is exploding (we just launched our partnership with Yahoo! today - scroll down to see it on Yahoo! Shopping). I'm tired, but at least I'm not bored.

Next post: pictures!