Nothing

"Nothing is too small to know, and nothing too big to attempt." — Sir William Van Horne

Change What Goes Into Your Mind

"Before you change your thinking, you have to change what goes into your mind." - Zig Ziglar

Be Yourself

"Be yourself, everyone else is already taken." - Oscar Wilde

Quad Cities

After checking out of the Holiday Inn - Moline Airport we drove up to Davenport, Iowa over the 'mighty' Mississippi on the green bridge. We checked in and went to the John Deere Pavilion and checked out the giant tractors. They were having a tractor auction so parking was scarce. After we visited the Pavilion we went outside to look at the tractors. Jim Belknap saw us walking around and surprised us from behind asking if we wanted to buy a tractor. After John Deere we drove over to Rock Island and visited the Arsenal. Our first stop was the Mississippi River Visitor Center. Our timing was perfect and we got to see the locks in action and the bridge turn. The person at the visitor center said that during the floods the river was up 22 feet. When we were there it was up 15 feet and still pretty high. After our tour of the visitor center we had lunch at the picnic tables outside. We had dinner at Wise Guys Pizza. It didn't compare to Chicago deep dish but it was okay. We went back to the hotel and the boys went swimming.

Boys On Tractor & Locks at Arsenal

Main Street Galena

We slept in and had breakfast at the breakfast buffet at the hotel. It was a beautiful morning so we sat out on the back deck and watched the Buick Rivera's line up for the car show. There were some sharp looking cars. The hotel had a beautiful park like back area. After checking out we went downtown and walked up and down Main Street Galena. We stopped in one store and the boys each got a Galena t-shirt. On the way back we stopped in an ice-cream shoppe and they had cones. Because it was mid-week the town wasn't very crowded. After Galena we headed south and drove through the Mississippi Palisades State Park. The upper drive was closed due to the storms. The park and campground was really empty. We kept driving and stopped in Port Byron where he had lunch right next to the 'mighty' Mississippi. We saw some young girls laying on the railroad tracks along the river. The Port Byron municipal building was right across the street and we looked up Joanna's friend Linda Alguire who lives in Port Byron. She called her up and we went and visited for a little over an hour. Afterwards we drove into the Quad cities and found a Holiday Inn by the Moline Airport. We had the hotel pool to ourselves again. After swimming they went online at the hotel computer. We walked across the street to a McDonald's for dinner. The hotel restaurant was closed due to earlier flooding. We asked to stay another night but a bunch of little leaguers were coming to town for a tournament and the hotel was booked.

Galena Library

On the second day of vacation we drove from Rockford to Galena. On the way we had breakfast at a McDonald's outside of Rockford. We had some of the muffins we brought along with egg McMuffins and the boys and Joanna had coffees. It started to rain right after we finished eating and rained most of the way to Galena. On the way we passed the observation deck which was closed. We got into Galena after lunchtime. The forecast was for rain that night so we cancelled our plans to camp at the Palace Campground and stayed at the Ramada Inn in Galena. They were hosting a Buick Rivera Owner's Convention so there were Buick Rivera's parked everywhere. Our Honda Odyssey was one of the few non-Buick's in the parking lot. Once we got checked in the boys swam for a while in the hotel pool. They had the pool to themselves. Afterwards we drove through town and ended up at the Galena Library. One of our souvenirs was a Christmas ornament celebrating the 100th anniversary of the library. The boys checked their e-mail and read. I looked through the local papers and spotted a CD launch party in the Galena Gazette at the Chestnut Mountain Resort just outside Galena along the Mississippi River. We drove from the library to Chestnut Mountain Resort and we were able to get pretty good seats to the side of the stage. The band was a local band called "The Scavengers." They played for a couple of hours and we bought their CD and listened to it on the way back to the hotel. At Chestnut Mountain Resort we had a view of the sunset over the Mississippi and we saw some deer down the hill. It turned out to be a great night.

The Scavengers

The Scavengers, a local Galena area indie/alternative rock band consisting of nine teenagers, are held a CD release party and a free concert at Chestnut Mountain Resort on Wednesday, June 25, at 7 p.m. The Scavengers debut album, "The Scavengers," contains 12 original songs completely composed and written by the band. "I like playing in general," guitarist Andrew Bockelman said. "But I think creating a song, especially with your band mates, and using your creativity to get overall sound that you're looking for is the best." With nine members, the Scavengers have plenty of options and versatility when it comes to their sound and song writing. But to become acquainted with the members, you must know a brief history of the band. The band's first gig, and consequently their beginning reason to start practicing and actually be a band, was the fourth of July, two years ago. The Kiwanis club, the organization in charge of the fourth of July festivities contacted Vinny Newton to see if he would be willing to put about an hour's worth of music together for a pre-fireworks show. Newton obliged and informed his other band mates, Clayton Buss, guitar, Curtis Cole, drums/vocals, Spencer Harris, guitar, and Kyle Holder, drums/vocals, and Newton on keyboard. The band then prepared their set and played their first original song, "You Were Mine." With the absence of a bassist to round out the band's overall sound, Megan Ault joined The Scavengers in late 2006. Ault, already in another local band, Eightfold, was pulling double duty, until Eightfold Path disbanded in early 2007. This disbandment brought Bockelman and drummer Daniel Martinson into the Scavengers. The number stayed at an even eight for months until, because of a new song, and want of a different element, saxophonist Brian Peters came in and finished the band count at a large nine. The Scavengers started recording for their album in mid fall with Jimmy Berg at Heartland Studios.

We were there. Maybe they will become famous.

Rock Cut State Park

We camped the first night of vacation at Rock Cut State Park in Rockford. We found a good campsite and set up our tents and got everything ready. Once the tents were set up we got our fire going and sat out by the fire until it burned out. The bugs were pretty bad. We were close to the lake and we could really here the frogs. A hippie couple at a campsite across from us had a raccoon visit their campsite and they were yelling, banging pans and shining their car hidelights to try and get it to leave. They ended up moving their campsite next to us. Later in the night through the back window of our tent I saw the raccoon pass between our campsites looking for food. I woke up early and took a walk exploring the campground. It looked like rain so be broke camp before 9:00 a.m. and headed south.

Magic Waters Waterpark

We spent the first day of our vacation at the Magic Waters Waterpark in Cherry Valley, Illinois. We ate our lunch at some picnic tables in the parking lot. The boys spent a lot of time in the wave pool and went on all the water slides. I spent a lot of time in the lazy river. We got the family pack so we got pizza and drinks which was our dinner. We left when the park closed at 6:00 p.m

ZZ Top DVD Launch Party

We went to the ZZ Top DVD launch party at the Hard Rock Cafe in Chicago. We won tickets from WLUP. They had a buffet and some door prizes. Joanna had a Bacardi Silver and I had A Bud Light. We both won concert DVDs and a shirt. We watched the DVD on the big screens. We checked out the rock memorabilia on the walls. It was a nice event.

Life

"You can't do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth." - Evan Esar

Behavior

"Behavior is belief." - T.S. Eliot

Nothing To Lose

I finished reading "Nothing To Lose" by Lee Child.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Two lonely towns in Colorado: Hope and Despair. Between them, twelve miles of empty road. Jack Reacher never turns back. It's not in his nature. All he wants is a cup of coffee. What he gets is big trouble. Reacher—a man with no fear, no illusions, and nothing to lose—goes to war against a town that not only wants him gone, it wants him dead. It wasn’t the welcome Reacher expected. He was just passing through, minding his own business. But within minutes of his arrival a deputy is in the hospital and Reacher is back in Hope, setting up a base of operations against Despair, where a huge, seething walled-off industrial site does something nobody is supposed to see . . . where a small plane takes off every night and returns seven hours later . . . where a garrison of well-trained and well-armed military cops—the kind of soldiers Reacher once commanded—waits and watches . . . where above all two young men have disappeared and two frightened young women wait and hope for their return. Joining forces with a beautiful cop who runs Hope with a cool hand, Reacher goes up against Despair—against the deputies who try to break him and the rich man who tries to scare him—and starts to crack open the secrets, starts to expose the terrifying connection to a distant war that’s killing Americans by the thousand. Now, between a town and the man who owns it, between Reacher and his conscience, something has to give. And Reacher never gives an inch.

Lee Child And Me

I went to Lee Child's booksigning at Border's Books in Oak Brook. He had an excellent turnout. It is always enlightening listening to the authors tell their story behind the story. He use to be a television producer before he became and author. He explained the story behind Jack Reacher's name. Lee Child is tall and was able to "reach" something high on a shelf and needed to come up with a name for his main character. I'm pretty sure I've read all of his books. An excellent writer.

ZZ Top "Live In Texas"

Another Prize

Congratulations, you've won a pair of tickets to the Screening of the new ZZ Top DVD, "Live In Texas" at the hard rock in Chicago from the Loop!

Monday, June 23rd at 8pm. YOUR TICKETS WILL BE AT WILL CALL AT THE HARD ROCK AT 7PM.

This engagement is 18 + over.

Bring your ID and a copy of this email to redeem your tickets.

The Hard Rock is located at 63 W Ontario St
Chicago, IL 60610
(312) 943-2252.

Mack To The Rescue

I finished reading "Mack To The Rescue" by Jim Lehrer.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Though billed as a mystery, it contains no crimes as such — unless one counts the antics of zany Oklahoma governor Joe Hayman (aka Buffalo Joe or Chip), who announces on radio's popular Sooner Sam Screams at Noon show that he intends to privatize the entire state government. Mack, Oklahoma's lieutenant governor, is prepared to run against Hayman in the next election, but he's sidetracked after undergoing a heart-bypass operation, one intended for another patient, which leads to a juicy malpractice trial in Washington, D.C. While recuperating from surgery, Mack does his best to keep Oklahoma from falling apart. In taking aim at such subjects as the health care system, the courts and talk radio, Lehrer is more likely to evoke wry grins and the occasional chuckle than anger or outrage

Thinking Alike

"If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking." - George S. Patton

A Father

"To become a father is not hard. To be a father is, however." — Wilhelm Busch

Cecile C. Carsello

I just found out the mother of a close college friend of mine passed away. This family was like my second family during and just after college. Services for Cecile C. Carsello, 86, were at Cumberland Chapels, Norridge, and proceeded to St. Ferdinand Church in Chicago for Mass. Interment is at Queen of Heaven Cemetery. Cecile was a graduate of Alvernia High School Class of 1940. She was the beloved wife of the late Elmer and loving mother of Madonna, Jack (Chris), Karen (Lou Vasselli), Susan (Frank Patzke) and Rosemarie.

Think

"Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try!" - Theodor Geisel

Marvin's Room

We watched the DVD "Marvin's Room."

Synopsis

Estranged since their father's first stroke some 17 years earlier, Lee (Meryl Streep) and Bessie (Diane Keaton) lead separate lives in separate states. Lee's son, Hank (Leonardo DiCaprio), finds himself committed to a mental institution after setting fire to his mother's house. His younger brother, Charlie, seems unfazed by his brother's eccentricities or his mother's seeming disinterest. When Lee comes to the asylum to spring Hank for a week in Florida so that he can be tested as a possible bone marrow donor for Bessie, Hank is incredulous. "I didn't even know you had a sister," he says. "Remember, every Christmas, when I used to say 'Well, looks like Aunt Bessie didn't send us a card again this year?'" "Oh yeah," Hank says. Meanwhile, Marvin, the two women's bedridden father, has "been dying for the past twenty years." "He's doing it real slow so I don't miss anything," Bessie tells Dr. Wally. In Bessie's regular doctor's absence, it has fallen to Dr. Wally (Robert DiNiro) to inform Bessie that she has leukemia and will die without a bone marrow transplant. This precipitates the two sisters uneasy reunion. In Marvin's room, Bessie cares for her father's every need. In Lee's eyes, the sacrifice Bessie has made is too great and realizing the old man's welfare will fall to her if Bessie dies, Lee's first instinct is to look for a nursing home. "In a few month's, I'll have my cosmotology degree," she says. "My life is just coming together; I'm not going to give it all up, now!" As first Lee is tested and then the boys for the compatibility of their marrow with Bessie's, the women take stock of their lives and rediscover the meaning of "family."

Juno

We watched the movie "Juno" on pay per view with LeAnn.

Synopsis

Sixteen year-old Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page) is the type of girl that beats to her own drummer, and doesn't really care what others may think of her. She learns that she's pregnant from a one-time sexual encounter with her best friend, Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera). Juno and Paulie like each other, but don't consider themselves to be exclusive boyfriend/girlfriend let alone be ready to be a family complete with child. Although she would rather not be pregnant, Juno is fairly pragmatic about her situation. Although there, Paulie really leaves all the decisions about the baby to Juno. Initially she decides that she will have an abortion, but that's something that she ultimately cannot go through with. So she decides to have the baby and give it up for adoption. But first she has to tell her father, Mac (J.K. Simmons), and stepmother, Bren (Allison Janney), that she is pregnant. Although they would have preferred if Juno was on hard drugs or expelled from school, Mac and Bren too are pragmatic about Juno's situation. The next step is to find prospective parents for the yet unborn child. In the Pennysaver ad section, Juno finds Mark (Jason Bateman) and Vanessa Loring (Jennifer Garner), a yuppie couple living in the suburbs. Juno likes the Lorings, and in some respects has found who looks to be a kindred spirit in Mark, with whom she shares a love of grunge music and horror films. Vanessa is a little more uptight and is the one in the relationship seemingly most eager to have a baby. On her own choosing, Juno enters into a closed rather than open adoption contract with the Lorings - meaning she will have no contact with the baby after she gives it up. During the second and third trimesters of Juno's pregnancy which she treats with care but detachment, Juno's relationships with her family, with Paulie, and with the Lorings develop, the latter whose on the surface perfect life masks some hidden problems.

The Future

"The best thing about the future is that it only comes one day at a time." — Abraham Lincoln

Do What You Are Meant To Do

JK Rowling gave a wonderful address to Harvard graduates last week where she spoke of failure and imagination. Describing the place from which she wrote Harry Potter, she said: "So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realized, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life."

http://harvardmagazine.com/go/jkrowling.html

Grub

I finished reading "Grub" by Elise Blackwell.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Grub chronicles the triumphs and humiliations of a group of young novelists living in and around New York City.

Eddie Renfros, on the brink of failure after his critically acclaimed first book, wants only to publish another novel and hang on to his beautiful wife, Amanda, who has her own literary ambitions and a bit of a roving eye. Among their circle are writers of every stripe—from the Machiavellian Jackson Miller to the ‘experimental writer’ Henry who lives in squalor while seeking the perfect sentence. Amid an assortment of scheming agents, editors, and hangers-on, each writer must negotiate the often competing demands of success and integrity, all while grappling with inner demons and the stabs of professional and personal jealousy. The question that nags at them is this: What is it to write a novel in the twenty-first century?

Share

"The miracle is this - the more we share, the more we have." - Leonard Nimoy

Lack Of Direction

"Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four hour days." - Zig Ziglar

Real Courage

"Real courage is when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway." - Harper Lee

In A Hole

"If you're already in a hole, it's no use to continue digging." - Roy W. Walters

Man's Success

"Don't measure a man's success by how high he climbs but how high he bounces when he hits bottom." - General George S. Patton

All You Need

"All you need is deep within you waiting to unfold and reveal itself. All you have to do is be still and take time to seek for what is within, and you will surely find it." - Eileen Caddy

Forgive

"One of the secrets of a long and fruitful life is to forgive everybody, everything, every night before you go to bed." - Bernard M. Baruch

Make Yourself Happier In The Next Hour

Seven tips for making yourself happier in the next hour.

You can make yourself happier – and this doesn’t have to be a long-term ambition. You can start right now. In the next hour, check off as many of the following items as possible. Each of these accomplishments will lift your mood, as will the mere fact that you’ve tackled and achieved some concrete goals.

1. Boost your energy: stand up and pace while you talk on the phone or, even better, take a brisk ten-minute walk outside. Research shows that when people move faster, their metabolism speeds up, and the activity and sunlight are good for your focus, your mood, and the retention of information. Plus, because of “emotional contagion,” if you act energetic, you’ll help the people around you feel energetic, too.

2. Reach out to friends: make a lunch date or send an email to a friend you haven’t seen in a while. Having warm, close bonds with other people is one of the keys to happiness, so take the time to stay in touch. Somewhat surprisingly, it turns out that socializing boosts the moods not only of extroverts, but also of introverts.

3. Rid yourself of a nagging task: answer a difficult email, purchase something you need, or call to make that dentist’s appointment. Crossing an irksome chore off your to-do list will give you a big rush of energy and cheer, and you’ll be surprised that you procrastinated for so long.

4. Create a calmer environment: clear some physical and mental space around your desk by sorting papers, pitching junk, stowing supplies, sending out quick responses, filing, or even just making your piles neater. A large stack of little tasks can feel overwhelming, but often just a few minutes of work can make a sizeable dent. Try to get in the habit of using the “one minute rule”—i.e., never postpone any task that can be completed in less than one minute. An uncluttered environment will contribute to a more serene mood.

5. Lay the groundwork for some future fun: order a book you’ve been wanting to read (not something you think you should read) or plan a weekend excursion to a museum, hiking trail, sporting event, gardening store, movie theater—whatever sounds like fun. Studies show that having fun on a regular basis is a pillar of happiness, and anticipation is an important part of that pleasure. Try to involve friends or family, as well; people enjoy almost all activities more when they’re with other people than when they’re alone.

6. Do a good deed: make an email introduction of two people who could help each other, or set up a blind date, or shoot someone a piece of useful information or gratifying praise. Do good, feel good—this really works. Also, although we often believe that we act because of the way we feel, in fact, we often feel because of the way we act. When you act in a friendly way, you’ll strengthen your feelings of friendliness for other people.

7. Act happy: put a smile on your face right now, and keep smiling. Research shows that even an artificially induced smile has a positive influence on your emotions—turns out that just going through the motion of happiness brightens your mood. And if you’re smiling, other people will perceive you as being friendlier and more approachable.

Some people worry that wanting to be happier is a selfish goal. To the contrary. Studies show that happier people are more sociable, likeable, healthy, and productive—and they’re more inclined to help other people. So in working to boost your own happiness, you’re benefiting others as well.

Feel happier yet?