Have It All

Have It All - Ace Troubleshooter

Counting down, expecting latest, greatest

Newest model maybe, hope

Wishing, hoping, praying to outdo the Joneses

Heaven tomorrow

Heaven, my chance to have it all

Squalor, impulse, crowding, 'tis the season

Do the days turn just for these

Savior born in manger, please forgive us born in the inn

Heaven tomorrow

Heaven, skies open, pour out hope

See all my glimmering weakness

Here's my world, come on, will You come in

Brought to my knees

Child I'll play for you

Child enters in this world, it's broken

Angels sing and men sleep the night

Though it's brazen and defiant, please be born in my heart

Heaven tomorrow
Heaven, my chance to have it all

See all my glimmering weakness
Here's my world, come on, will You come in
Brought to my knees
Child I'll play for you

Featured Music - Iron & Wine

Ok, so here's the first installment of "Music That Jerry's Been Digging On Lately And That You Should Try Too"... For lack of a better method, I'll be featuring songs via YouTube, which means that several of them won't even be official videos, but just random user videos. So for the most part, ignore the visual, and concentrate on the audio. Though there will be a few that I feel enhance the music, so I'll be sure to point those out. Also, while I won't be posting any songs with questionable content, if you run across some by an artist I'm featuring, I can't be held liable.

With that out of the way, first up is Iron & Wine.

For the most part, Iron & Wine is the stage name for a bearded, soft-spoken Floridian named Sam Beam. He does tour and record with a band these days, but he'd been doing the solo gig under that name for long before that. Any self-respecting indie kid worth his tight jeans knows I&W well, but I just got turned on about a year ago, and I've been on a major kick as of late. His music (particularly his early work) is the lushest lo-fi you will ever hear. His voice is often a hushed wisper, layered with tight harmonies; and when combined with mellow guitars, lap steel, banjo, and other assorted instruments, it's the most relaxing musical experience ever.

Here are a few songs from his first album, "The Creek Drank the Cradle"

"Faded From The Winter"


"Lion's Mane"


This is just a beautiful song - one of my all-time favorites, "Upward Over The Mountain"


Another absolute favorite from this album is called "Muddy Hymnal" - but there wasn't a great quality video around to post. His second album, "Our Endless Numbered Days," was more of a studio effort, but still retained most of his lo-fi sound.

Here's the official video for "Naked As We Came" (This is a video I enjoy.)


"Free Until They Cut Me Down"


"Each Coming Night"


His latest album is called "The Shepherd's Dog." It's rather large departure from his previous work - utilizing electric guitars and a full band. I'd say it's my least favorite of the three, but it still has some good stuff.

"Pagan Angel And A Borrowed Car"


"Flightless Bird"


"Boy With A Coin" (Another great video.)


In addition to those three full length albums, I&W has put out numerous EPs and singles. Most notably, he covered "Such Great Heights" by The Postal Service for the "Garden State" soundtrack. And pretty much every song on the 6 track "Woman King" EP is just excellent. Here's one of them,

"Jezebel"


So there you have it. You can find more on YouTube, the official site for Iron & Wine, or at Sub Pop Records. Check it out.

Catching Up

Obviously I've been neglecting this blog for a while, so I figured it was time for an update. Not that anyone's been missing much...

I've been swamped at work - basically just scrambling every day and resigning myself to the fact that I will never actually get caught up. Which is depressing, since my goal was to get ahead before I took a bunch of vacation time for Christmas. We will be up in Idaho from the 17th of December until the 5th of January, so that's a pretty good chunk of time and I'm looking forward to it.

Other than work, I haven't been doing much. Mostly just hanging around the house and trying to keep up with Cohen...he keeps us both pretty busy. Sure, I have lots I should be doing. For example my car's not really running right now (Vivian, not the Olds) so I should work on her, but by the time the weekend rolls around, I always just feel like I need to recover from the week and I never get very motivated.

I've been having a really good time watching the Ray's kick tail all the way to the World Series. I'm definitely a bandwagon fan, but I'm okay with that. I'm glad I can have an AL team to root for this year, instead of just whatever team happens to be playing against New York or Boston. It's just nice to see a well run, young, small market team turn it around so quickly and have success. They are an extremely well built organization, and are easy to pull for. It gives me hope. In related news, the M's announced their new GM pick this week, Jack Zduriencik. He's not the complete new approach I was hoping for, but it's definitely a step in the right direction. And I figure they can only improve from here.

I've been meaning for a while to start a semi-regular series of posts highlighting all the great music that I've been listening to. Seems like I'm always getting turned on to something new via Pandora, or just recommendations from friends - I thought I'd just pick some of my favorites and share them. So perhaps I'll get the first one up later today... But until then, I have a poopy diaper to go change.

(Cohen's, not mine.)

Happy Birthday, Cohen!

Well of course it's old news now, but yes, Cohen finally made his appearance on August 14th - thus effectively putting to rest my theory that Jess was just faking the pregnancy so she could quit working and get fat. :)



Things have pretty much been a blur around here since... I just took Julie and John back to the airport this morning, and Tricia just got in Wednesday night. I was only able to take a few days completely off of work right after he was born, so now I'm making up for that by taking a couple more days off in addition to the long holiday weekend. I'm on day 2 of 5 days in a row and I'm loving it. Still not getting any sleep, but glad I'm not going to work on top of it... Coffee can only take you so far. And it makes my eyes twitch.

Naturally Jess updated her blog/myspace etc. way before me and already has lots of pics up, so I won't bother duplicating her efforts. But it's quite obvious that he's the cutest baby in the world. What can I say...he gets it from his mom. :)

Major Holidays Of The Western World

I'm speaking of our anniversary, of course. Yes, a couple of weeks ago we celebrated our 2nd anniversary. Sure has been an eventful two years...seems like much longer than that - but in a good way, of course. There were no extra days off and fun trips to the Palm Springs this year. No sir - just a nice dinner at quaint little Italian place at La Jolla Shores. The food was incredible though - I had this stuffed chicken dish with mushrooms that just melted in my mouth. We even managed to stay awake through the meal. Funny how having kids can change things before you even have them.

One of the other holidays you might have noticed recently was the 4th of July. We enjoyed the long weekend, but didn't really do much. Jess and I just sat at home and relaxed most of the day, then barbecued burgers and made homemade ice cream. We did end up going out that evening with Adam and Shonna to watch fireworks down in Pacific Beach. And for whatever reason, it's tradition in PB to follow the fireworks show with a gigantic marshmallow fight. Picture thousands of people all over the beach and adjacent streets just hucking marshmallows at each other like crazy. People just bring bags and bags of them to the beach. They even had these huge, jumbo marshmallows that can apparently be found at Costco. It was entertaining, to say the least. Here's a (rather poor) clip of the show...

And here's some of the marshmallow action happening at one of the bonfires...

Although, by all accounts, it was pretty tame this year since they recently enacted the hotly contested "booze ban" at all the public beaches.

Anyway, not much else going on...My wife is officially "retired" now from both of her jobs - we're both pretty stoked about that. Her friend Jessica Porto came down for a visit last weekend, and some of her other friends down here threw her a baby shower. I cooked burgers for them before splitting to catch the Padres-Braves game with Mom and Aunt Kathy. Today is our last Sunday volunteering in the nursery at church. In other words, everything is just winding down in preparation for the big day...And you can now follow all the exciting baby action on my wife's new blog, started expressly for that purpose. Check it out! Cheers.

Cohen's First Game...

And I've got the pictures to prove it! Oh, and we were there too, of course. Although the gentleman over my left shoulder does not seem very approving our presence.
















And in spite of the M's best efforts, (Silva pitching, Vidro in the lineup, etc.) they actually won! 4-2! And thus continues my streak of never having attended a game that they lost. This all happened a couple weekends ago - we went with Mom and Bill and Adam and Shonna. Petco really is a nice park, it was a beautiful day, I had hotdogs and beer, and the M's won. What more can you ask for in life? Here are a few more pics...

Jeremy Reed getting to know some Padres fans...
("Hey, death-metal-tshirt-dude...nice to meet you.")

















Ichiro sizing up the pitcher...
(who just happened to be Unnecessary Mariners Castoff Cha Sung Baek)

















Adrian Beltre - probably getting ready to do something totally awesome, as usual...
(While JR casually checks out his butt - "Yeah, he must work out!")

















And for the sake of my wife, her favorite old bald guy, Rauuuuuuul.
(He's checking in for the signs, which probably included something along the lines of "Just try to hit a home run. Cause, you know, Vidro's batting behind you...Sooo it doesn't really matter if you get on base.")

















So there you have it - Fun times at Petco Park. I'm sure Cohen will cherish the memory.

















DISCLAIMER: I know this is retarded, but I'm kind of anal about these things... My Mac has a 17" widescreen, so when I post pictures within text on my blog, I can either format it so it looks right on my computer, but will have extra long gaps between the pics and text on regular monitors; or I can post it as is, and on a widescreen monitor, the text will wrap the pics in funny places and generally look funky and wrong. Either way bothers me, but should you encounter one of these views, know that it is not because I'm an idiot. (Not for that reason, at least.) ALSO, because I still don't have Photoshop at home, and because I'm too lazy to learn any other program right now, the pics I post are straight from my camera, and generally semi-large files. So when you click on one for a bigger view...well, you really get a bigger view. Again, not stupidity in this case, just laziness. Please forgive me, and enjoy nonetheless.

I Own a Stroller.

And a carseat. An entire travel system, as I understand they're called. And it's a nice one too, let me tell you - a Graco Quattro Tour Dee-luxe. But nonetheless, I am slightly weirded out by the fact that it's all sitting in my living room. And I own it.

Anyway, so Jess had her 21st birthday a couple weeks ago. (I'm pretty stoked that she can buy me beer at the grocery store now, and I don't have to make an extra trip!) We went to Seaworld again to celebrate, and we took the "sky-ride" lift around the bay while we were there. Then we hit Olive Garden for dinner. Oh, and I made her a cake.








































So other than that excitement, we're just busy little bees. We're both working alot, I'm studying for my Series 24 securities license for work, and we're taking a birthing class every week, while attempting to get things sorted out before the big day arrives. Only 7 1/2 weeks to go. Yikes.

While going through my phone pics for the ones above, I found a couple more I might as well share...The first one is a pic I took forever ago of the seals down at La Jolla Cove. And the second is a recent sunset as seen from our office windows. I have a whole bunch of San Diego pics that I've taken with my real camera, I should upload some of those some time. But not now....I'm going to bed.












































P.S. Yes, the Mariners fired Bill Bavasi. Yes, I was surprised it happened this early. And yes, I'm very excited, although only cautiously optimistic about who they will land on for his replacement.