So I haven’t gotten much practice in lately, but I’m developing a list of songs that are on my “must have” list for my accordion repertoire. They are, in no particular order:
They last one was chosen because I wanted to learn something that was sort of New Orleans style (zydeco), and I figured that would fit the bill. It also happens to be my high school fight song.
The first song I learned, and the only song I can play reliably, is Happy Birthday. I know a good chunk of Hava Nagila, but that’s only the keyboard side, I don’t know the bass. I’m also making a little progress on the keyboard part of the Pennsylvania Polka.
I think it would also be nice to learn Funiculi Funicula and Au Champs Elysees, because I’ve heard these played many times on accordion by street buskers, and both have some meaning to me (the first was sort of an inside joke on our Italy trip and the second was from our Paris trip).
So what am I missing? Any critical accordion hits that I must learn? Maybe something by Weird Al? (And yes, I am aware that it is traditional to learn Lady of Spain, but I don’t really know it or have any reason to learn it.)
I like to try all different kids of food. When you do that, you sometimes pick something you like, and sometimes you strike out. That’s just the way it goes (although I think there are a lot more wins than losses…I’m not very picky). However, there seems to be one kind of food that never seems to disappoint, and that’s Cuban food. Maybe its because they make ridiculously good sandwiches, and I’m a sandwich kind of guy. Maybe something about the pseudo-Spanish spices are just on my wavelength.
Anyway, all of this is just to explain why I found myself at the 90 miles Cuban cafe last weekend, the long odds it was up against, and how I ultimately wasn’t disappointed.
The cafe is very small on the inside. It’s more of a take-out kind of place. So when we showed up with the whole fam, we basically took up half of the available space. There’s only a high counter with bar stools, so it’s not exactly kid friendly, but they do inexplicably have high chairs.
Since everything sounded pretty good, we ended up ordering a metric ton of food. We were kind of sheepish about it, but A) we spent less than $30, and B) we ate all of it. So I guess it wasn’t so ridiculous! There wasn’t a single thing I didn’t like. The consensus winner was the chorizo and goat cheese empanada. We split on the yuca con mojo, but my cubano sandwich was amazing, and Sara’s bistec was equally good, if very different. There was much, much more (though they were out of shakes).
I even like their slogan, “Taste the Forbidden”. It makes me feel like I’m getting away with something. And gobbling down delicious empanadas also makes me feel like I’m getting away with something.
I mentioned before that I was considering getting some new glasses. Well, I have them, and I’m so ridiculously happy with the company I got them from, that I feel like shouting it from the mountain tops. Since I don’t have any mountains handy, I’ll do the next best thing.
The company is called Zenni Optical, and it is so ridiculously cheap that you will be sure there is a hidden gimmick somewhere. That’s why I didn’t want to blog about it until I actually got the glasses and checked them out. In fact, I would have been skeptical myself, except that my sister-in-law had tried it out with a test pair.
Me: “But how can they be so cheap? There must be something wrong with them.”
Sara: “The better question is, why are the other ones so expensive?”
This is a good point. There is absolutely no reason in this day and age why a little pair of frames should cost > $100, to say nothing of the lenses, etc.! But I never really questioned it before, because that’s the way it always was.
I purchased 3 pairs of glasses, 2 regular and 1 pair of sunglasses. For frames, lenses, anti-glare, anti-scratch coating, tinting on the sunglasses, absolutely everything, it cost me a grand total of $40. That’s including shipping and handling! The very cheapest glasses start at $7 (that’s frames and lenses).
The amazing thing is that the cheapness opens up a lot of avenues. I was nervous about trying out something totally different. But for that price, why not? I’ll just buy a second pair I can fall back on. Heck, I’ll buy 3 more pairs, in case the first two break! And for sunglasses, usually I just put tinted lenses in an old pair of frames. But for that price I can get real sunglasses for the first time in my entire life!
There are a few downsides. The biggest one is that you can’t actually try on the glasses. They have a “virtual frame-fit” feature that lets you upload a picture and “try on” the glasses, but it’s kind of lame. I would recommend trying on some real frames somewhere first, and then looking for similar ones on the webpage. You have to get an eye exam anyway, so you might as well look while you are there. You do have to measure your pupillary distance, which was pretty easy with their directions, but you probably can’t do it yourself. You could have your eye doctor do it for you, but Sara did mine and it was fine. You also have to wait for the shipping, which took me exactly 2 weeks. So it’s probably not good for an emergency pair (but then again, at that price, just order a couple of spares!)
There are probably other downsides too.
Sara: “You know they’re probably made by child labor, right?”
Me: “So are the other ones that they sell for $100.”
I am totally happy with them. They seem to be as good quality as any other frames I’ve ordered. My prescription was correct. I was able to get a little adventurous. I would recommend Zenni Optical to anybody (and I guess that’s what I’m doing right now).
When I put on my new glasses for the first time, Oliver took one look at me and just burst out crying. So I’m going to put him down for a “dislike”. Can you blame him?
Superbowl XLV is in the books, and the Green Bay Packers are officially the world champions!
The sun is brighter, the air is sweeter, traffic was lighter, and there were even Bears fans complaining on the radio. Life is good!
What a game it was. I don’t even know if I could say that I enjoyed the game, because it was so nerve wracking. In retrospect, now that everything is said and done and the Packers won it all, I can say that the last 6 weeks or so were about as fun of a ride to the Superbowl as anybody could ever want.
Having to beat the Giants and then the Bears the last two weeks of the season to squeak into the playoffs. Coming in as a 6th seed and beating both Philly and Atlanta on the road. Beating the Bears AGAIN in the NFC championship game. And finally winning the whole shebang, and putting up awesome numbers against a very good Steelers team.
The game itself was a nail-bitter for me. After all the injuries this season (15 guys on IR! Many of them starters!), then to see Woodson and Driver leave the game, along with Shields and Collins (who both ended upcoming back), was almost too much to bear. I told Sara, “Thank god this is the last game of the season…I couldn’t take another one.” Watching the Packers jump out to a 21-3 lead and then slowly squander it away through dropped pass after dropped pass. Just writing this paragraph is raising my blood pressure.
Evie caught my excitement and was pretty excited:
Evie: “Go Packers! I’m so excited I let some drool out of my mouth!”
I might have been a little overly enthusiastic myself, especially in terms of high-fiving:
Evie: “Ow, you hurt my hands!”
Overall, what a good year for football! I won my survival league, I finished the regular season in 1st place in my fantasy league, and even though I only ended up in 3rd after the playoffs, it still payed out. And now, the Superbowl of course. You cannot beat the trifecta of football wins!
In fact, I can only thing of two football related things to complain about:
Due to some setting on either my Tivo or my digital converter box, the score board is off the side of my tv, making it impossible to see the score or the game clock. The score isn’t a big deal, but not knowing how much time is on the clock at the end of the game is a very bad thing!
The Packers have a sore lack of a theme song of some sort. There are plenty of songs out there, generally of the one off, super-cheesy (no pun intended) variety. But I’m talking an official, Packers’ authorized chant or song, similar to Fly Eagles Fly, Bear Down Chicago Bears, or even J-E-T-S-Jets-Jets-Jets. Preferably something old and classic. Some kind of rallying cry that every Packers fan everywhere would know. The closest we come are the ultra-generic, “du-duh-duh-ch du-duh-duh-ch GO PACK GO” and playing “I want to bang on the drum all day“, which is used by several other football teams. You’d think a team with this much history and tradition would have picked up some sort of unique fight song somewhere along the way!
One more funny quote during the game:
Sara: “Don’t have another [diet caffeine free] pop. You’ll be up peeing all night.”
So the great blizzard of 2011 came and went, and everybody survived, more or less.
My boss called Tuesday morning and told me to work from home. Last time there was a bad snow, it took me 3 hours to get home from work, so I wasn’t going to argue. I took the kids to daycare like normal and worked from home until about 2:30, when the snow and wind started to pick up. Then I picked them and Sara up, and we settled in for the night.
This thing was being billed as hell on earth, so I was actually pretty excited about it. It wasn’t snowing that hard, but the wind was blowing something fierce. I don’t remember a time in my life ever where the wind blew so hard, for so long. It was so windy that the snow didn’t really have time to settle, it pretty much just blew horizontal the entire time. The street lights were shaking, the power lines were shaking, and it just looked really nasty. The power flickered a few times, but never went out.
Our sidewalk was clear when the whole thing started, and when I went to bed it was still clear! The cars were clear too. Obviously the snow was building up, especially in places where the wind was leaving drifts, but I was a little disappointed because there had been all this hype about how much snow we were going to get. But the lack of snow should in no way take away from the impressiveness of the storm. The wind was whipping the snow around so hard, that it would have been impossible to get around in. I would have rather killed a man than had to go out into that storm.
One very impressive thing was that Metra kept the trains running through the storm. I can’t imagine what the wind must have been like up there on the elevated platform. I just think of that long train taking a full gust right to the side. It seems practically suicidal to be running up there, but I guess people were probably grateful to be able to get home. Plus it made me feel a little better: if those train operators felt safe enough to keep the trains running, then how bad could it really be down where I was?
Definitely the best part of the blizzard was the “thundersnow”. I had heard the phrase thrown around and I wanted to be a part of anything that awesome sounding. I had seen some lightning-snow, but I hadn’t yet heard any accompanying thunder until late Tuesday night. Totally made the blizzard! I will admit, there was some fist pumping. (Side note, someone get me a thundersnow parody to ACDC’s Thunderstruck, stat!)
In the morning, I rushed to the window to see how much the snow had built up. Pretty much the same as the night before! Again, a little disappointing. The cars to the left were drifted in, but to the right the road was clear. The sidewalk was still clear. “So much for this crummy snowpocalypse,” I grumbled.
However, sometime Wednesday morning, something like 17 hours after it had originally started snowing, it really kicked it up a notch. (All of the pictures, including those above, were from after this final hurrah.) We ended up with 22 inches on the ground when all was said and done, although, like I said, all the wind made it extremely patchy.
I had the honor of seeing a snowplow get stuck trying to plow the street. That was definitely the first time I’ve seen that one before. It’s nice to know that when a snowplow gets stuck, he just has to try to go forward and back until he gets out, like the rest of us. Eventually he drew a crowd and they got him out with shovels.
I have to say, it’s pretty cool to go through a storm of that magnitude and basically watch it all from the security of our warm house, and then shrug and say, “Goodnight!” I guess we’ve gotten to the point where the weather is somewhat irrelevant.
But did we stay in our nice warm house? Of course not! We took the kids out and played in the snow, and even got a few trips down the sled hill on the Midway. The snow was over my knees in a couple of places, not counting where the plow pushed it up deeper. Snow is kind of a mixed blessing for kids. It’s fun and out of the ordinary for about 10 minutes or so, and then it’s just too cold and wet and hard to walk. Oh well, we still had a good time. I pulled Evie in the sled running as fast as I could, and I thought I was going to hyperventilate and die.
So that’s it! SnOMG defeated. Been there, done that, rode the sled hill.
Shane Halbach 