Brutha

He's a genius.
He's an artist, and can illustrate our dreams.
He can take a mundane object and turn it into inspiring prose.
He can take a glimpse and turn it into poetry.
He can pick up a guitar and make you cry.
He has symphonies in his head.
He has the world at his fingertips.
He is the sound of one hand clapping.......literally.
He is my bro.

secret yawn

Yesterday, I had to attend a 3 hour meeting where I got to witness one of my favorite boring meeting behaviours.....the secret yawn. The meeting was long and chock-full of information that everyone already knew. This combination invariably leads to the secret yawn. The secret yawners have 2 pound eyelids and fight to maintain consciousness after an hour or so. You can see the yawns coming a mile away, but to avoid being rude, they try to hide it, which of course doesn't work. It saves us from looking straight down your throats, but we can still see you! The cheeks turn white, the eyes close, and the nostrils flair to twice their natural size. It's usually followed by an involuntary shudder.
When I need to yawn, I'm not shy about it. I think it's best that the person inducing the yawn sees it in all its glory, sometimes I even throw in the big yawn sound and the over-the-head arm stretch just for effect.

St. Louis

My family and I just got back from a trip to St. Louis. It was our 1st real vacation as a family and we had a blast, It wasn’t relaxing, but it was still kickass. Here are the highlights:

The hotel: We stayed at the downtown Radisson, where we had a 2 room corner suite on the 24th floor. When we got in the room, we pulled back the drapes to see the Gateway arch towering above the mighty Mississippi river. We had views East and North. It was awesome.

The arch: If you haven’t seen this thing, you can’t understand the immensity of this thing. It is gigantic and mind blowing. We went up to the top and looked through the tiny windows and got dizzy from its bigness. We stood underneath and got dizzy from it bigness.

The concert: They have free concerts under the arch every weekend. Branford Marsalis played and blew us away with killer jazz. They had fireworks at the end, I’ve never seen so many fireworks go off so fast, I was flabbergasted. They shot a wall of water out of the water and shined crazy lasers and images on it.

The zoo: One of the best zoos I’ve ever been to. High points: The Somali wild-ass, the penguin house, and the Hippos in a giant area with a glass wall so you could see them both underwater and above water.

Anheuser Busch tour: beer

Basilica of St. Louis: The craziest cathedral I’ve ever seen. Ornate mosaics and stonework on every surface.

Food:

• Ragozzis on the hill, super good Italian food with real live grumpy italian waiters.
• St. Louis style pizza - super thin crust and way good
• Don Boccardis: mmmmmmmmmm

The city: the city is crazy big, with giant buildings from every era and people everywhere.

Six flags: It rained halfway through the day, and almost everyone took off , then it stopped….perfect!

• batman the ride- loopiest corkscrewy ride ever in the midst of gotham.
• The boss: giant wooden coaster, scary and jerky as hell
• Ninja: my little girls 1st crazy roller coaster ride, it was super fun
• Loony Toons town: need I say more?
• Ferris wheel: Bigger than hell. Even my little buddyman was enthralled,
• Hurricane harbor: a kickass water park right there in six flags!

Of course the best part of all was hanging with the family, seeing new things in a new place, and not going to work for a week. High Five!