Jumpin' At The Woodside

Hola and Happy Friday! Been awhile since I posted regularly. Hope to keep it up with concerts and traveling coming up. Speaking of... enjoying an Avery IPA while listening to my latest summer mix , and looking forward to the Gov't Mule show next Saturday. Last I saw them was here at The Fillmore in July 2009 with Ol' Lazy Acres. Great show and was my first visit to the then new NC Music Factory . Next weekend The Mule will be at the outdoor Uptown Amphitheatre where I saw The Black Crowes in Sept. 2010 . We got a nice "gift" at work today. For our division's recent performance, we were granted "summer hours" starting today and going through August 31, which means our offices will close at 3 p.m. on Fridays... very nice! Last weekend I was lucky enough to see the Iron Pigs while they were in town. Although they got swept in the series by the Charlotte Knights , it was still good to see them along with some other Phillies/Pig fans in attendance. ...

It's been a few years since I last went to Charlotte's own PGA Tour golf championship , but didn't take much convincing and managed to find tickets on Craigslist from a local seller who turned out to be one of my employer's clients... and they dropped off the tickets at the office front door, can't beat that. I first went to the tournament in 2007 for the Saturday third round the year Tiger won, and then again the following year for the pro-am on the Wednesday before the first round. This year we got tickets for the second round on Friday and took a half day from work to catch the afternoon action, which featured Phil Mickelson. Tiger, McIlroy and Fowler (the eventual winner on Sunday ) teed off in the morning that day. They changed the rules recently allowing cell phones on the course, but photos were strictly forbidden during tournament play... Phil Mickelson lining up his approach on the 8th - Quail Hollow 5/4/2012 ... unless you snapped them whi...

Evening and happy Friday to all y'all! It's that time of year again... spring here means it's fall down under, which of course means it's hop harvest time in the southern hemisphere! Tonight's brew is the 2011 installment of Sierra Nevada's Southern Hemisphere Harvest Ale . Yep, and it tastes as good as it looks. Last week I returned from a trip up north that I planned... first, when I heard DMB wasn't touring this summer, and second when I heard about the Elvis Costello Revolver Tour. I've been a fan of Elvis Costello since the 1980s. During that decade, he went on a tour that featured a giant spinning wheel on stage. Elvis invited fans up to spin the wheel, which featured classic song titles. Whatever song the wheel landed on, he and the band played. A couple friends went to see him that tour, but I wasn't able to go. Try as I might, I never got to see Elvis Costello live and he never broke out the spinning wheel again. Fast forward 25 years or so...

Happy Friday! Had some chilly temps this week with the rain that moved through, but looks like we're headed back up to the high 70s and low 80s for the next few days. Great timing too as the Wells Fargo Golf Championship will be finishing up this weekend. Went to a Charlotte Knights game this week vs. the Columbus Clippers. The Knights are the AAA team for the Chicago Whitesox and the Clippers are affiliated with the Cleveland Indians. Definitely not an Iron Pigs game, nobody was there. We had general admission tickets and had our choice of any seat in the house. The Knights got thumped, but any time you get to a ball game is a good day! We stopped off for dinner before the game at a place called the Tilted Kilt . Food wasn't bad and let's just say the scenery was very interesting. This week, Vita was running around the house like a nut and now I know why. She came home to my ex-wife and I only two days before 9/11. We weren't sure what to name her, but after the eve...