puredanger.com Blog

Pictures added to Family Pictures.

I dunno…could my mom really be Corinne’s Nana?

I want to put a quick plug in for the Banana Bows Hair Accessories online store which my friends Micah and Elizabeth created. Elizabeth, who is a nanny, makes all of the bows by hand. She has made many bows for Corinne, including the one in the pictures here:

Today my Grandma is 86 years old, born April 10, 1921. We surprised her at the assisted living place with a cake and candles around lunchtime. She had total hip replacement surgery done eight days ago – now both of her hips are artificial. She had recently broken her one remaining natural hip. This first picture was taken today, the others were taken recently.

Today is Donovan’s fourth birthday!

Donovan requested that we go to IHOP. He’s been into pancakes lately. Seriously, he likes me to make up stories about us going to IHOP and then we talk about all the different kinds of pancakes you can get there, some real, some made up (like gooseberry pancakes, which he made up).

(Hmm, just occurred to me, this is a golden opportunity to work the word “flapjacks” into his vocabulary.)

Anyway, ultimately both my parents and Carla’s parents were able to make it and we all met at IHOP about 8:00 this morning. We had a few presents, and Carla had made a birthday cookie cake and had four candles for him to blow out. Donovan and Corinne both were very excited. Donovan got to ride there with me in my Jeep (I had to drive separately to go onto work). Corinne, predictably, hollered until we sat a plate of sausage in front of her, and then once again she was sweet as sugar! All in all, for a weekday morning, not bad.

I don’t have a picture from today, but here is a recent picture of Donovan and Corinne watching something on a portable DVD player.

Also, here are the latest stats from their most recent checkups a few weeks ago:

Donovan
Height: 40″ (50th percentile)
Weight: 34 lbs (40th percentile)

Corinne
Height: 31″ (80th percentile)
Weight: 24 lbs (75th percentile)
head circumference 75th percentile

Lately, instead of reading books to him, Donovan wants me to tell him stories. He wants me to make up a story about him and, almost always, his cousins Joe and Anna. He wants the stories to be very normal sorts of things, like a story about him and his cousins at the beach, or the park, or the zoo, or at IHOP, or camping out in a tent. He makes up half of the stories himself, correcting me or making suggestions as I go along.

Carla made a few notes today. She noted, “Donovan was singing Veggie Tales’ ‘God is Bigger than the Boogie Man’ song.”  Then she said “you look older,” and he replied “and I can sing better too!”.

Whew! I’ve been pouring through old photos, and I barely got this post in before midnight.

Today is the 17th anniversary of my buddy Nick’s 18th birthday. In honor of this momentous occasion, Nick, I have scanned in some of my favorite pictures of you from over the years, including one from your 18th birthday party in Bill’s parents’ basement, and a couple pix that I bet you have never seen before:

Kinda amazing…it must’ve been just prior to your 17th birthday that we became friends, over half your life ago now!

Happy birthday, Mixmaster!

I want to put a plug in for my friend’s jazz big band The Tommy Money Orche$tra. They are a 17 piece jazz big band in the 1940’s style. Check their website out for pix, audio and video.

The next show is on Saturday night, March 10 at Cookies Jazz & More in Webster Groves, from 8:30 until midnight.

I saw their first ever show, their holiday show, in December. They really swung! I’m very excited to see them again and hopefully begin to see them gain some local traction. And those of you who are aware of my waning interest in live music know I don’t say that lightly.

Tom Money (yes that’s his real name) is a trumpet player and founder of this big band. He is currently a Staff Sergeant in the U.S. Air Force, stationed at Scott Air Force base, where he is a member of the USAF Band of Mid America. A lot of the other members of the TMO are also in this Air Force band – if you follow the above link you can read some information about each of them.

One particularly exciting thing for me personally about this big band is that my former drum teacher Kevin Gianino is the drummer. I’m sure I don’t have to remind my regular readers (both of you) what high regards I hold Kevin in, but I will mention that Tom is equally blown away by Kevin both musically and as a person.

Tom and I know each other from church. We are friends and so are our wives and kids (he has three young boys, the oldest is in kindergarten). Tom and I have had some long talks over the years about jazz and about being a musician. As I’ve explained to him, I am always impressed by anyone who makes their living as a musician, and Tom is no exception. Over the years I’ve dabbled in music enough to know that there’s a world of difference between such dabbling and making the commitment to be a pro. In fact, taking drum lessons from Kevin in ‘01 and ‘02 is what finally drove that home for me – I realized I could only take the craft of playing an instrument so far in my spare time, and after awhile realized it was not nearly far enough to satisfy even my own minimal standards. I am now happily resigned to being a fan of music, not a musician.

If any of you guys, my friends and regular readers, are interested in seeing the show let me know and we can arrange a group outing. Live jazz on a Saturday night in March, shouldn’t be disappointing. Think of it as a way to whet your appetite for SxSW.

This one is primarily for Alex and Nick. It’s a recording of Medeski, Martin and Wood, with Trey Anastasio on guitar, performing “Crosstown Traffic“. I’m almost positive this came from a show at Emo’s in Austin, TX, on 10/14/95. Alex had given me a copy of the rest of this show (minus this song) some time ago; years before I had found a copy of this song on Napster or Kazaa. Only recently did I put the two together.