Tick Tock...Tick Tock

It's 9:15 AM and I am just counting down the minutes. I get to leave work at 10:30 today to go to a vendor hosted gold outing at The Bog up in Saulkville. The weather is a perfect 65 degrees and sunny, according to my computer. I obviously don't know that for a fact since I sit in a box that barely has enough room for me to turn around in, so I'll have to trust my computer is telling me the truth.

What is it about those times when you're just waiting for the start of something, golfing in this case, but the clock doesn't seem to move? I want to get outside and golf! Well, I kind of want to. Last weekend I hurt my back which doesn't bode well for golfers. It's been feeling better everyday but it still hurts. I threw some ibuprofen down my throat this morning and I'll have a couple beers when I get to the course so hopefully that will carry my through. Even if it hurts, it will still be better than work right? Wish me luck and I'll catch you cats tomorrow...

The Next Vacation

Updated @ 8:25 AM: Ginormous picture of Amy has been removed since she finally left a comment on this blog.

Well, we said good-bye to Bonnaroo but as you can see on the sidebar, the countdown to the next vacation has begun. Next up for us is a trip to Miami to check out the Green Bay Packers beat the crap out of Daunte Culpepper and the Miami Dolphins. I am very pumped for this since going to an "Away" Packers game has been on my "to do" list for a number of years now. I haven't even been to a game in Chicago yet.

We haven't booked any trip specifics yet as we're holding out a little bit to watch airfare prices. We are however planning on spending a few days down near South Beach and making an actual vacation of it. You can bet I'll be on the lookout for one of my favorite TV characters, Horatio Caine, from CSI: Miami.

At the game, we'll be joined by 18 others including my good friend Amy and her friend Ashli which is very exciting since I don't get to see Amy too much anymore after she picked up and moved to Dallas for a high-flying job at a large financial institution.

I'm looking forward to tailgating before the game to see how other folks do it. Obviously people around here have that art pretty much mastered. In Miami they probably just eat sushi or vegetable platters. There had better be some burgers and/or brats there with plenty of Miller!

More details to come!

(There's your post, Amy. Now I expect a comment or two!)

Bonnaroo Review Part 3 of 3: The Lookback

So looking back Bonnaroo 2006 was just an incredible experience and worth every penny and the long trip. We are already talking about going next year and what we would do differently and things like that. Our desire to go back is matched only by our desire to try something different so who knows, we may go to a different festival next year. There are tons of them like the All Good Festival in West Virginia and the Wakarusa Festival in Kansas. Or who knows, maybe we'll be "with child" by then and this whole decision will be moot. (that's pretty doubtful though, sorry honey). Seriously though, if you've even thought about going to Bonnaroo, do it. You won't regret it.

Like I said the other day, I could have written a book about the Bonnaroo experience. I left out so many good things out of the blog posts but I just didn't have the time to put them all in. Okay, so it's actually just because I'm pretty lazy but you get the idea. So with that I bid you ado, Bonnaroo. The music was great, the people were great, the drive was not great, and we'll see you next year, I hope.

Back to our regularly scheduled program...

Bonnaroo Review Part 2 of 3: Saturday - Sunday

Rise and shine! Time to get rolling for day two of the Roo! Yea that's right, I rhyme. We awakened after less than a solid sleep and took note of our supplies. We needed ice. Off to the ice truck I go...

...the line was pretty long when I got there but even longer when I grabbed my 3 bags. While in line, a nice your lady walked by with an interesting top on. Oh wait, that's not a top, that's paint! I'm telling you, the people watching at this festival is some of the best around. Pretty funny. She acted all shy as she walked by and pretended to be upset when a guy asked to take a picture with her but come one, you have nothing but paint on and you're um, enhanced. Like you didn't expect people to stare. Anway, I got my three bags of ice (@ $3.50 a bag, one of the suprisingly few things I felt gouged about) and back to the campsite I went. After a quick breakfast and a couple beers, off to Centeroo we went.

Saturday turned out to be our "big" day of music. We started it off with Buddy Guy (pictured) where we relaxed on one of our key purchases of the weekend, a Bonnaroo blanket that folded up with handles. This thing was great. We bought it for $20 from one of the dudes that was walking around the campsites selling stuff. The same blanket was selling inside the festival for $35 so we felt pretty good about that. Anyway, Buddy Guy was great. One of the cool things about almost all the other bands that were at the festival was that they all commented how honored they were to play at a festival like this. Not Buddy Guy. He's just too damn old and experienced to be honored or impressed like that. His first comment after rocking his first song was "damn I feel good. y'all are going to have to drag me off this stage today." Definitely got the party going.

From there we started the "walk around" for lack of a better term. There were a lot of bands to check out so we started the trek around staying for a couple songs at each starting with the ever popular Blues Traveler. They were great as you would assume and the crowd was really into it. John Popper looks like he put a few of those pounds back that he'd lost and he was really tearing up the harmonica. They played some of the favorites and then we moved on to check out Les Claypool and then to the small Budweiser (booo) sponsored "Troo Music Tent" to check out a band called [golden] from Atlanta. They were really great. Reminded me a lot of Dave Matthews Band with their "jamming" and lyrics. We ended up purchasing their CD and I got a T-shirt.

The main event of the night was of course Radiohead, one of my personal favorites. The concert was great, as expected, but not without its drama. I ran to the bathroom and to grab a quick beer before the show started and got "lost" coming back. I could not find Kirsten for the life of me. I got a little nervous because I left her with our new found friends from Ohio high on who knows what and we weren't smart enough to come up with a common meeting place before hand. Who needs that? It's only 80,000 people. So I spent the concert searching for her, taking breaks while each song was played (sorry honey!) and they sounded really good. Near the end of the show I headed back toward the campsite hoping she at least found her way back there and sure enough, she and Randy were hanging out knocking down some cocktails. After a few more it was off to bed for day 3.

Sunday I was feeling rough after a dozen or so beers and some questionable pizza Saturday night. We went down to Centeroo and checked out some of local merchants and got a look at the hippie gear they were selling. I picked up some new sunglasses since Kirsten can't stand my 5-year old Oakleys anymore. We also checked out the Brooer's Village which was a tent where you could buy tickets to sample beer from all over the country. I sampled 5 beers for $1 each. All were very different and some I liked a lot. My favorite was a Pale Ale called "#9" which was by the Magic Hat brewery. After taking another lap around the Centeroo grounds, we headed back to the campsite. It was about 4 PM and though we planned on staying until Monday morning, we decided to head back home. We'd had our fill for the weekend. So we waved good bye and packed up our weekend "home" and off we went. The trip back was very long and uninteresting so I won't bore you with those details. We made it back safe and sound and that's all that counts.

Stay tuned for Part 3.

Bonnaroo Review Part 1 of 3: Thursday - Friday

Bonnaroo is listed as a three-day festival but it officially started on Thursday. Kirsten and I decided to approach it a little differently and go down to Nashville for Thursday night and hang out and see a couple of sights. We left Milwaukee at 5:00 AM...

...and arrived in Nashville around 3:00 PM just in time to check in to the hotel. We stayed at the Millennium Maxwell House which is near the famed 2nd Avenue where there are a bunch of restaurants, shops and of course bars playing live music. The hotel was nice and offered a shuttle that will take you anywhere you wanted to go.

We went down to 2nd Ave. and walked the street one time and then settled on eating at the Hard Rock since it had a nice outdoor patio. Our server's name was Schoon, who was a 20-something white boy who was really cool. He had been to the Roo the past 2 years so he pulled up a chair as soon as he found out that's what we were in town for. Really friendly and polite guy. A running theme in the South. I had the BBQ pulled pork which was incredible.

After that we decided on B.B. King's place to catch a couple drinks and some music. The band was called B.B. King's Place Rockers or something like that and they were quite good. Really got the crowd going and played some great soul and blues music. The place was relatively full when we got there which was early, 7:30ish I believe, but heads started turning when a tall, paunchy looking fellow with a ponytail came walking through the place. None other than Steven Seagal (pictured) apparently is a part-owner and also has his own band which according to the many locals in the place, is extremely good. Also, be on the lookout for Under Seige 3: Plane Danger which is to be released next year. No, that's not a joke.

Friday morning we headed down to the Roo early in the AM and apparently we were one of the few. There was absolutely no traffic getting in which was sweet considering we heard reports of 15-mile backups to get in on Thursday. Once we were there, we almost immediatly combined "campsites" which is the 10-feet of room behind your vehicle, with our neighbors, Randy & Joe who came down from the New England area. These guys were great and definitely made our experience more enjoyable. It was Randy's second year there so he had the inside scoop on a lot of things to do, where to go, how to get the free stuff, etc. They are both very into music and knew a lot about the shows that were there and gave us some background on some to check out. More to come from those guys later.

Kirsten and I headed down to Centeroo, which is where all the stages and things are. I was about to type "where the action is" but that isn't really true since there is PLENTY going on among the various camping areas. The first act we caught was Andrew Bird over at the "That Tent" who is an extremely talented musician who is labeled as a "Songwriter, whistler, glockenspielist, guitar player, singer and violinist." He was great. From there we went over and caught Ben Folds who was rocking over at the "Which Stage." After that, the drive and 95 degree weather caught up to us a bit so we headed back to the site to catch a nap.

We awoke in time to head back and catch the Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers show which was incredible. Stevie Nicks joined them on stage about half way through and sang a couple songs including "Stop Dragging My Heart Around" which was great. Both Tom and Stevie just look rough but they sound incredible. After that we strolled back to the campsite and turned in for the evening. I woke up several times during the night and I heard a nice medley of sounds including, but not limited to, crickets, My Morning Jacket playing and Randy's snoring. He warned us 5 minutes after we met what we'd be in for. I didn't believe him. That was the last time during the weekend I didn't believe something he said. That guy was a fricken chainsaw. Ah the people you meet at Bonnaroo...

Part 2 Coming Soon

The Bonnaroo Experience: Music, Beer, Snoring and Steven Seagal

Well we're back.

It's great to be back after a looong weekend of camping and strongly ignoring personal hygiene but it was well worth it. Looking back, I feel like I have enough material to write an entire book entitled The Bonnaroo Experience: Music, Beer, Snoring and Steven Seagal.

More to come on that later because I'm experiencing the worst part of returning from vacation. I'm now 4 days behind on work and even though some people "covered" for me, which apparently means just taking notes on all the issues going on and putting them together on a neat pile on my desk, I now get to go back and follow up with everyone that had questions while I was away. Stay tuned...

Leave a Message...

We are away on vacation until Tuesday. Please leave a message at the beep, er, comment...

Recent Sports Recap

1. The Brewers pulled out a road victory last night by beating the Reds 6-5. Zach Jackson got his first major league win despite giving up 4 home runs. Once again the young guys are coming through. Ricki Weeks had 3 hits and Prince Fielder had a game-tying home run. We've got some great players and they sure make it fun to watch.
   
2. The Dallas Mavericks are up on the Miami Heat 2-0 in the NBA finals. I'm happy about this for 2 reasons: A) My friend Amy (and blog lurker) lives in Dallas and I know how exciting it is to have such a good local sports team and B) all the Marquette Alumni I work with have guy crushes on Dwayne Wade on the Heat and I'm so sick of hearing about him that I'm loving the fact they have gotten destroyed so far.
3. The USA were beaten badly by the Czech Republic yesterday in the World Cup to the tune of 3-0. Since this is the only country where soccer/futbol is NOT the most popular sport in the world, I'm not sure how many people actually saw this dismantling. I am trying to give it a fair shake though, I've watched 5 minutes of game action so far...and I use the term "action" loosely.
4. The NHL finals are going on and no one could care less. The one really sad stat I heard is that game 2 got fewer viewers than a women's college softball game on ESPN2. Ouch. That strike just killed them.

That's all for now. Back to surfing the internet waiting for my vacation to begin...

Under a Week To Go...

As you can see from the Bonnaroo Countdown on the sidebar, we're T minus 1 week until "The Roo." Being as it's Friday and thus a pretty slow day at work, I checked over the schedule and put together the music schedule of events.*

Friday, June 16
----------------
2:00-3:15 PM Ben Folds
4:00-5:30 PM Nickel Creek
6:15-7:45 PM Death Cab For Cutie
8:30-12:00 AM Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (woohoo!)
12:00 -2:30 AM My Morning Jacket

Saturday, June 17
---------------------
1:15-1:45 PM Blues Traveler
2:00-3:15 PM Buddy Guy
3:15-4:45 PM Rusted Root
5:30-7:00 PM Beck
8:30-11:00 PM Radiohead (woohoo!)

Sunday, June 18
------------------
12:00-6:00 PM Probably walk around like a zombie from lack of sleep and non-alcoholic drinks.
6:15-7:45 PM Bonnie Raitt

* All plans are subject to the spousal override


Should be a good time. Have a good weekend y'all.

UWM Panther gets drafted by the Brewers

The Major League Baseball draft took place over the past two days and a local "feel good" story has developed. One of our very own UWM Panthers baseball players was drafted by the Milwaukee Brewers. Here's the news brief from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

The Brewers selected University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee outfielder Mike Goetz today in the 25th round of the Major League draft.

Goetz was the Horizon League player of the year as well as the NCAA Division I batting champion with a school-record .493 batting average. He reached base safely in all 57 of the Panthers' games, collecting hits in all but two.

Goetz had hitting streaks of 32 and 27 games and also led the nation with a .579 on-base percentage.

Congratulations and good luck to Mike!

If you can't trust a professional...

...who can you trust?! I wanted to share an experience I've had this past year. Kirsten and I got married in October and being the responsible person I am, I began looking into purchasing some life insurance on me just in case some event happens that ends with my untimely death and she's left to pay for the condo, cars, secret internet porn habit, etc. So where do you begin? At the time, I liked to think of myself as a rather savvy person when it came to personal finances with the exception of life insurance.

Living in Milwaukee has many perks, one of which I thought would be that the city is host to one of the largest insurance companies in the country. The company shall remain NaMeLess, but you know who you crooks are. Anyway, I go to meet with a personal finance advisor and to make a long story short, I get talked into purchasing a policy called a "Variable Life" policy which means some of the money paid toward the premiums is invested and over time grows, makes you rich apparently, and other supposed benefits. (A side benefit is the person who sells the policy gets a very large commission.) So it's basically an investment vehicle built into an insurance plan. So I signed up to the tune of $200 a month. This clown's overwhelming theme to me was that he was going to do what was right for ME...I assumed that meant not him.

Fast forward to me spending some quality time at the great Schwartz's bookstore and I pick up a book on life insurance that compares the different types. This book (and I found many others later) basically says anyone that buys one of these policies is a fool unless you have so much money, you need somewhere else to hide it. Needless to say, not the ideal policy for someone in my position. Term Life insurance is the way to go (and also literally 10x cheaper for me). It also points out that (conveniently) the broker who sells the policy makes about 5x as much on commission on Variable Policies than on Term Policies. I'm furious and feel like an idiot.

Fast forward again and I've researched this MUCH more and ended up canceling my policy to which my State Farm agent (who already has my car, condo, jewelry, etc and who I should have started out going to in the first place) warns me that I'll be receiving an ugly call from the "wolf in sheep's clothing" because it's law that he's informed that I'm switching policies...and to no surprise, he's right. Here's the paraphrased conversation but the worst comment I had to include:

Crook: "Derek, I must say I'm disappointed you cancelled your policy without consulting me. How could you do such a thing to me?" (At first I was like "how is this personally hurting him?" but I found out if a customer cancels this type of policy in the first year, he has to pay back his big commission)
Me: "Well, I've been doing a lot of research and found that these policies are not the right choice for someone in my position. I haven't maxed out my Roth IRA this past year and I should do that before putting investment money into an insurance policy. Wouldn't you agree? You said all along how you want to help me make the best decision for me."
Crook: "Have you read the book Your Complete Guide to Money Happiness? That book states these policies are the way to go.
Me: "No, but I have found dozens of other books & websites that basically call people who invest in these things idiots unless they need a tax shelter. It's in no way the best type of policy for me."
Crook: "Well Derek, I don't know what to tell you. Here you go and do research behind my back. I just can't trust you. I don't think we have any other business to do together."
Me: "Behind your back? Are you serious? Since when is your word gospel on where my money goes??"
Crook: "I'm the professional and you should listen to what I say."
Me: "Uh yea, I don't think so. I think I'll be safer out on my own."

WTF? This clown was supposed to be a "professional" and showing me, the uninformed consumer, the correct things to do with my money for me and my family. Turns out, to no surprise I guess, that he's just trying to get commissions and screw the customer.

Your lesson for today folks, do your research and talk to as many friends as possible to see what they do. I started doing that after this fiasco and I felt like a bigger turd because many of them went the Term Insurance (aka, the correct type of policy) route in the first place. Thanks for letting me vent.

Jumping the Shark

I know by now "Jumping the Shark" is quite a familiar phrase but for those of you who don't know, it's the turning point of a TV show where it ceases to be enjoyable and begins it's downfall into pit of worthlessness. You know, like when Seinfeld introduced Mickey, the little person, or on 90210 when Brenda left or perhaps the most notable, Friends episode 1.

Anyway, not that I'm a reality TV buff, but The Apprentice is officially at that point. Tonight is the season finale and I can't believe the two guys that are left. One is just a butt kissing wimp and the other is a caricature of Hugh Grant complete with the sniveling and feathery hair. The prior winners, and I'm using that term very loosely here, you could see had some excellent experience and business sense, but these two are just a joke. To think one of them would actually take over one of Donald Trump's companies is ridiculous. Time for Donald to hang up this venture and go back to tending real estate. Yea I know...I talk tough but I'll probably end up watching it tonight.

Update (10:15 PM): I held tough and didn't watch the finale of The Apprentice where it appears the Englishman won. Instead I chose to watch the Brewers finally snap their 8-game losing streak by beating the Padres 5-2 with Chris Capuano getting the win and Derrick Turnbow getting back on track and picking up the save.

The Church Exposed!

Quite the attention getting headline huh? Last night I finished reading The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown bringing the list of people who have yet to read this book to 10 I think. It was definitely an interesting read. I say that since it finished it in 4 sittings I believe which is pretty much a record for me. It goes quick and grabs your attention very early on which is always a good thing.

I would agree that it's pretty much everything it's advertised to be. Exciting, suspenseful, true...oops, not quite. I don't understand the uproar over the NOVEL though. It's a fictional story and the author presents it as such. Even before getting to the first page, Dan Brown states that the locations and architecture descriptions are true. That's it. Nothing of the story, historical depictions, etc. yet so many people are freaking out and demanding answers to questions they are raising from a NOVEL. It's gotten so ridiculous that churches have put out pamphlets at mass for stating their response to the NOVEL. Opus Dei, which is depicted through a murdering and self-torturing monk in the book, has also released a "response" to the NOVEL.

I think "K" said it best in the movie Men in Black: "A person is smart; people are dumb panicky dangerous animals.."

I still want to go see the movie though to see how it differs from the book. Plus Audrey Tautou plays one of the main characters and she's a cutie.

Oh, one final note speaking of fictional writing...Michael Moore was sued yesterday for $85 million by an Iraqi vet claiming "he recycled an old interview and used it out of context to make him appear anti-war in "Fahrenheit 9/11."" No way, Michael Moore does not misrepresent things does he???

Happy June 1st and Happy Birthday to my sister Gina!