Coupons

My Wife has recently taken the plunge of couponing. We now purchase two copies of the Sunday paper every week. I was supportive at first, but slightly skeptical, until I witnessed the madness in person. I accompanied her to a store where she had $28 worth of items. Not a huge shopping stop, but big enough to catch my attention. Then she started pulling out the coupons. Seconds later the total was $6. I was amazed. Even the guy in line with us was shocked. His quote was this. "Wow, you almost got all of that for free". That was the moment I became a believer.

Tonight, a funny incident occurred in the realm of coupons. I had a gift certificate to Skyline, and my wife also had several coupons, so we ate there. We proceeded to finish our meal and we ended up with several coupons left that were to expire in the next couple of days. Being the nice person that my wife is, she offered the coupons to a table of people for their use. The coupons were save $1 on a $7 purchase and a free cheese coney with any purchase. All of the people at the table had meals greater than $7 and all had coneys.

I was baffled at their response. They replied "No thanks". She explained to them after they said no that by the looks of their meals, that money could be save with the use of the coupons. They said, "No thats okay, thanks anyways". Wow, did I miss something? She were offering free money savings, and was turned down. I think I did a literal LOL in front of them. I had to console my wife in the parking lot telling her that as hard as it is to believe, not everyone likes saving money.

Bottom Line - Coupons are cool

15 Albums

I've seen the 15 Album thing floating around blogs and facebook. My list is not my top 15 albums of all time, but instead the 15 albums that shaped my music life in order of appearance as well as I can remember. These are the tops of the family trees, that spawned interest to dive deeper into the artists in the same genres and so on. Some of these have 20 or so artists below them, but these were the core beginnings that got me started. #'s 2,3, & 4 were simultaneous so they were worth their own individual recognition although they may be in the same tree line and time period.

1. The Beatles - 1962 - 1966
2. Stone Temple Pilots - Core
3. Nirvana - In Utero
4. Smashing Pumpkins - Siamese Dream
5. Gin Blossoms - New Miserable Experience
6. Jars of Clay - Jars of Clay
7. Led Zeppelin - Boxed Set
8. Sublime - Sublime
9. Rage Against the Machine - Rage Against the Machine
10. Miles Davis - Kind of Blue
11. Jeff Buckley - Live at Sine
12. Mohenjo Daro - Baksheesh
13. Incubus - Make Yourself
14. Ray's Music Exchange - Alivexchange
15. Vineyard Music - Dwell

If there was a 16 it would be Sufjan Steven - Come feel the Illinoise

Bottom Line - Life without music would be lame.

Note to Guys who are NFL Fans

Are you a guy and a fan of the NFL? Do you have a spouse or a girlfriend that doesn't understand why you have to watch every game that is televised, even if it is not the local team? Is your spouse or girlfriend competitive? If you have answered yes to all of the questions, then I will share a solution with you that happened to work for me.

A couple years ago, I would call my wife a standard football fan. She would watch the Bengals games with me, but when the other games were on, I found myself receiving static from her about me spending the time to watch the non-Bengals games. Then my life changed. We both received an invitation to join a fantasy football league. My wife being the competitive person that she is, joined and did hours of research before the draft.

Then the first week of games started, and she wanted to watch every game that was on TV. I was in heaven. This is year two of her having a fantasy team. She watched the Thursday night game with me, and watched with me Sunday, even the night game. We don't have cable so we miss out the Monday night games, but sometimes, we'll watch the live stat tracker online if we have people playing in the game.

The only downside can be is that your wife will become so good at fantasy football that she starts beating your team and winning your league. Mine scored 152 points in week one.

Bottom Line - Now I have to convince her to be in a NBA and MLB fantasy league.

9 years ago today

Everyone knows where they were and what they were doing 9 years ago today. My story is this.

My family and I were on the last couple days of a 2 week vacation in California, which spanned from the mojave desert, death valley, and everything in between and including LA and Tiajuana Mexico. September 10th was spent attempting to surf all day on Huntington Beach. I remember the day was overcast but still warm enough to swim and try to surf. I view surfing as the hardest sport that I have ever attempted. I usually catch on to things very quickly, however surfing defeated me.

Being a family of 5, we always stayed in one hotel room on vacations with people taking turns sleeping on the floor. I happened to be on a bed the night of the 10th, I was exhausted and sunburnt from the day, and was awakened in the morning very early West Coast time by my dad blaring the TV. He claimed that the world trade center was on fire. I yelled, "so what, turn it down so I can sleep" and crashed back to the bed pulling the covers over my head. It took a couple minutes before I finally realized the seriousness of the situation, I was convinced when even MTV was showing the news coverage full time. So I gazed up with blurry eyes just in time to see live coverage of the second plane hitting the second tower. Wow, this was serious.



We were due to fly out of LAX on Sept 12th. That was obviously not happening, so we kept our small rental van with 2 weeks worth of luggage packed in and started a trek across the country to get home. I remember listening to the radio coverage and watching the footage each night as we stopped to sleep.

Bottom Line - Although it was a tragic event, it was one of my top memories with my family.

Top 3 - Jazz Albums

3. Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section



Released in 1957, the story of this album is unique. Art Pepper a west coast alto saxophonist and junkie had just recently got out of prison and had been scheduled to record an album with the current rhythm section of Miles Davis' band. Art didn't know about the recording date until that morning, and he had never met Philly Joe Jones, Red Garland, or Paul Chambers, and also he hadn't played his instrument in weeks.

The result of the recording date is amazing. It is a brilliant album showcasing the talent of the east coast jazz rhythm section stepping out beyond the reigns of Miles Davis mixed with the cool west coast sounds of Art Pepper.

2. Thelonious Monk - Monk's Dream



Monk's compositions and melodies are at the top of the jazz world as far as creativity, swing, and catchiness. His own personal recordings of his own music however have always been suspect until this recording. I would describe Thelonious Monk as the Bob Dylan of Jazz. Everyone else was recording his songs and making them sound better than his own recordings. In this album released in 1963, Monk's 1st with Columbia, Monk finally found a horn player that was able to understand his music and complex playing. Most of the songs were previously recorded and written several years earlier. This album swings and takes you away on a finger snapping and toe tapping extravaganza.

1. Miles Davis - Kind of Blue



Released in 1959 is the best selling jazz album of all time. It is hard for anyone not to like this album no matter what kind of music you listen to. Miles set the scene for this album by writing only the introductions of each song, then left the rest up to pure musical improvisation. The results were unforgettable solos that serve more as melodies. I can not recommend this album enough. This will always be my number one album of all time.

Bottom Line - Jazz is for everyone. If you don't like "Kind of Blue" then I'll buy you and ice cream cone.

Top 3 - Fortune Cookie Fortunes

I usually save the meaningful fortunes I get out of the fortune cookies I get when I eat Chinese food. Most of them are lame and usually repeats, but every once in a while depending on where you go, you get a good one.



3. "Your present plants will succeed" - This one is funny because I think it is a typo. It is supposed to be "plans" instead of "plants". Funny thing is that when I first got this one, I had just planted new grass in parts of my yard. So far the grass is succeeding even though grass is not considered plants.

2. "You are capable, competent, creative, careful. Prove it." - This is a challenging one that deals with self confidence. It is a reminder of all of the things I could be when I chose to "prove it". This one goes along with the #1 fortune.

1. "Ideas not coupled with action never become bigger than the brain cells they occupied." - Another challenging statement invoking action and persistence of ideas and creativity with matched self confidence to pursue them.

Bottom Line - Whether you are planting grass or ideas, self confidence and action are the only things that will make them succeed.