These are my old Chuck Taylor's. I finally retired them after 15 years of service and got new ones last week.  I'm a little sad.

Nick Tweed-Simmons is ADORBS!!!!!!  Am I right?

The following Yankees games are only $5 for tier reserved and bleacher seats.  If you only pay $5 for a ticket you won't feel as bad paying $10 for a beer.  Who's in?  I know everyone but me (and perhaps Tommy) hates Yankee stadium but we can go bowling after and it will be fun. 

	Thursday	April 13	Kansas City Royals
	Thursday	April 27	Tampa Bay Devil Rays
	Wednesday	May 17	Texas Rangers
	Wednesday	June 14	Cleveland Indians
	Monday	June 26	Atlanta Braves
	Monday	July 17	Seattle Mariners
	Wednesday	August 2	Toronto Blue Jays
	Wednesday	August 16	Baltimore Orioles
	Wednesday	August 30	Detroit Tigers
	Wednesday	September 13	Tampa Bay Devil Rays
	Thursday	September 28	Baltimore Orioles

Rhett Miller is clearly genetically superior to the rest of us.  I saw him play at SXSW and now I'm like a little school girl.  Oh my good goddamn...

Yesterday, as I was walking up to the locked front door of my building, I pulled out my Metrocard instead of my keys.  I've done this before.  I know there is an obstacle in the way of me getting into my building and my Metrocard has gotten me through turnstiles before - why not locked doors? It reminded me of the time that I walked out the front door of my sister's house with my 2 year old niece and she said "Windy out". It wasn't windy out but she had heard people say that upon leaving the house before.  It's the general concept vs. the specific.  Except, she's 2 and I'm 30.

For Christmas I received a Creative Zen Vision M mp3 player from a friend.  Actually, calling it an mp3 player is not really doing it justice.  It pretty much does everything short of fixing you a tequila on the rocks after a long day at work.  I'm obsessed with it. You can put pictures and up to 4 hours of video on it and the quality is amazing.  Right now I have the video for Sweet Child O' Mine on there.  It's amazing how frequently I want to watch that video now that I have it available at the touch of a button.  You can also rent movies and load them on there.  They expire 24 hours after you start watching them.  I can't wait to use this feature when the band is on the road.

The Zen Vision also has an internal microphone.  And, as the boys in the band can attest, I'm pretty into using it.  The only thing more annoying than me taping conversations constantly is listening to them days later.  I need to improve my timing.  I seem to have only captured the most boring conversations me and the boys have ever had.  I have a good 20 minutes of Breakup Breakdown's journey from "Park Slope" back to civilization on the Q train and, let me tell you, it is not exciting.  Jeff explains the finer points of getting a new beer in a bar when you are finished with your last one.  James talks about Garage Band and his iMic.  Jay says things are "Nice!". We read the ads on the walls of the train and make fun of them.   I laugh a lot and it's really loud because I'm holding the player.  At one point I mention that I am going to take the train to 42nd Street and we have a big discussion about it and then I get off the train at Union Square anyway because I was/am so drunk/ditsy.

The above is all a lead up to the fact that I managed to record the most depressing thing ever yesterday.  There is this homeless guy who is often playing guitar and singing on the platform of the 14th Street stop on the F train.  Maybe you've seen him - he's usually playing "Knights in White Satin".  A few years ago he actually got down on one knee in front of me and belted out the part that goes "And I love you! Oh Oh I love yooouuuuuu".  It's hard to know how to react to something like that.  Anyway, I was waiting for the train yesterday and he was there.  After the obligatory Moody Blues he started playing "Wild Horses".  This is one of the saddest songs ever, to me.  I recorded the whole song.  He wasn't playing it very well and he was stomping his feet inappropriately loudly to the beat. People were talking right over him.  It was so sad.  The train came right at the end of the song.  You can hear me getting on the train just as he yells out "Thank you!".  One person claps weakly and then you hear the bell that lets you know the train doors are closing.  You can hear the train start pulling away and then it's over.  It's the crappiest, most depressing, most heart wrenching version of "Wild Horses" I've ever heard.  I can't stop listening to it.  

On Wednesday, Shafer and I visited the birthplace of Theodore Roosevelt - sort of.  I turns out that the house is a reproduction of the house he was born in but it was built based on the original plans by architect Theodate Pope Riddle (best name ever).

There are heads, horns and taxidermied lions. There are cartoon depictions of TR with his insane moustache, huge teeth, round glasses and no pupils. There are Teddy bears.

The house is on 20th Street between Park and Broadway.  The tour is only $3 and if you're lucky you might be accompanied by a long haired French philosophy professor from Oxford like we were.

Check out Shafer's blog - he wrote an excellent poem about TR's last words which were "Please put out that light, James."

I hate to say it but, Toys R Us kind of rules.  I went there today on my lunch break to get some presents for my nieces, of which I have 4.  I went to the one in Times Square which has to be the best toy store in the world.  First of all, there's a ferris wheel in it.  Yes, inside. It's huge.  Other attractions include 20 feet tall Lego replicas of the Empire State Building, the Chrysler building and the Statue of Liberty.  The Empire State Building has a moving Lego King Kong on it.  Next to the Legos is a Jurassic Park section that has a Tyrannosaurus Rex in the middle of it that must be 40 feet tall.  Every so often it moves and roars really loudly.  It's pretty realistic.  I'm a little obsessed with it now.

In the time it took me to purchase some Princess coloring books for my nieces I got so happy that I almost got my picture taken with Geoffrey the Giraffe.  It's taken me a while this year to get into the commercialized spirit of Christmas but I think I finally got there.