Even in the Quietest Moments...

I got a recent text from Rachel: "Hey so i have to use missys car to get to the cities this morning for dance. So i used the gas card to fill her tank." I had to smile. The "gas card" she refers to is a credit card that she's had for years and woud use to fill her tank. I'd just never heard her call it a "gas card". She recently posted a photo to Facebook taken by a professional photographer from last weekend's dance competition. The photo had a huge watermark across it so I wrote "Hey, feel free to order this photo or any others you'd like to have...you can put them on the "gas card" :-)

I love that kid!

There's a question I've been kicking around in my head much more than ever lately: when will I retire? It's not as though I need to define the date and lock it in, but for reasons I'm not entirely sure about, I need a plan. And so I have one. January 2nd, 2014. Actually, the date reflects the latest I'll continue to work and there's a real possibility I could be gone considerably sooner. I've added a countdown timer to the dashboard on my MacBook Pro so if I ever feel the need, I can know at a glance precisely how much time I have left—at the most.

I hate head-colds. I came down with one last Monday and it's been kicking my butt all week long. I'd hoped to get on my CompuTrainer this weekend and hammer out some much-anticipated miles but my fatigue level has been off the charts. So much so that I'm too tired to care. There will be plenty of time for working out once I'm feeling better. The one thing I don't want to do is push my body too hard considering all of the other healing it's been preoccupied with lately.

My all-time favorite album is Crime of the Century by Supertramp. It was released in 1974 and yielded a couple of hits in Dreamer and Bloody Well Right. Not that those two songs aren't exceptional but there was other music from the album that I liked even more, such as School, Hide in your Shell and Rudy—songs that never got much airplay. I was fortunate enough to see them at the peak of their career while in the Navy in San Diego in April 1979 touring with their Breakfast in America release.

Years later in the spring of 1997, I went with a friend, Rick, to First Avenue in Minneapolis to see Roger Hodgson (formerly of Supertramp) on his Solotramp tour. I'd be hard-pressed to recall a more memorable concert than his performance that night. Roger's music more than anyone else's has been the soundtrack to my life.

I was surprised a couple months ago to find that he'd be playing at Grand Casino in Hinkley, a little less than two hours north. I didn't get in on opening day ticket sales but in a venue of that size, there really wasn't a bad seat to be found. The only downside to the night was my lingering head-cold but I wasn't going to let that keep me down. Rather than rely on my Panasonic Lumix and its marginal audio to record some of the night I took along my 10-year-old Sony Handycam as it has a much better zoom as well as audio. It's served me well over the years and it did last night as well but it's time for an upgrade. More on that another day.

It was a nice night. Not as intimate as First Avenue 15 years earlier but the music was every bit as good and I was left smiling. Tammy enjoyed the show as well even though the music holds no special meaning for her.

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