Current reading: undecided

Recent listening: Ray Charles, Harry Belafonte, Bonnie Raitt, Glenn Gould’s Goldberg Variations, Allman Brothers Band, Country Joe and the Fish, Pictures from Life’s Other Side by Johnny Dowd, Forever Changes by Love

Recent viewing: Raising Hope, Community, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, 60 Minutes, Stargate SG-1, Sons of Anarchy, South Park, The Office, The Walking Dead

Recent playing: DropZap, Words with Friends, Bloons

Recently accomplished: Cleaned roof and gutters, outdoor winterization, iPhone LCD replacement, Christmas vacation planning, booked December work trip

Imperative To Do: Finish Neil Young “liner notes”, put away hoses, organize recent garage additions, finish Xbox repair, reassemble Graham’s computer, Christmas CD burning

Sadly, a DVD release of those two seasons is reportedly held up by Michael Richards. Luckily, YouTube has most of their great sketches including the ones I’ve included below the fold:

I specifically remember turning to my friend, Dave, and commenting on how bad they were. His reply was, “it’s like they’re each playing their own song.” I have no doubt my favorite band at the moment was Queen and my second favorite was The Beatles. There was not yet room in my world for The Clash.

This video definitely illustrates the stylistic differences with Saturday Night Live.

If you’re not on Facebook, this is a couple of screenshots from my “feed” there. This particular person first became a “fan” of  ”Fox Business and 11 others” which included Sean Hannity, Steve Doocy and Fox News. Two minutes later they posted their message opposing the new health care reform law. Subsequent comments revealed that it’s extremely unlikely this person understands anything substantial about the debate.

After the three of us finished breakfast, we retired to the living room to watch Saturday Night Live on the Tivo from the night before. Tina and I became drowsy and drifted off to slumber. Thomas was still sleeping so Graham was the only one in the house awake for awhile. A couple of hours later we woke to find Graham watching Mary Poppins as it was recording on the Tivo. We watched about half of the movie before deciding that we should rouse Thomas and get ready for lunch at one of the three restaurants with which I had made reservations the night before. As we waited for everyone to finish showering and dressing, Graham retrieved our Mother’s Day gift from my office and presented it to Tina. She has long wanted a GPS and I found a great deal on a TomTom a few weeks ago. She was very surprised and delighted.

After reviewing the basics of GPS navigation, we set course for a 1:00 reservation at Newport Bay which has a delicious Sunday brunch buffet. Although it was very busy and the service was a bit slow, we were not disappointed. After we ate more than our fill, we visited our nearby Bike Gallery location to shop for a new bike for Tina. Since Tina broke her tailbone a couple of years ago, she has not been able to ride her mountain bike comfortably. When Thomas outgrew the bike we bought him a couple of years ago, he was glad to get Tina’s old bike. Graham inherited Thomas’ bike but Tina was left bikeless.

We had already looked at several bikes in the cruiser style, but we were both pretty partial to the Trek 7000 series for women. Simon, our helpful Bike Gallery salesman, put the 2007 model of the 7300 up on a trainer and fitted it for her. She really likes the upright position which doesn’t force her to stretch out her painful tailbone injury. After a little deliberation, we decided to buy the 2008 model since it has RapidFire shifters (instead of the grip-twist shifters). They didn’t have the 2008 7300 in the size and color (light blue) we needed but the Bike Gallery in Hollywood (another area in Portland not too far from our house) had it.

We stopped briefly at home to switch vehicles and then The Doctor (Tina’s name for her TomTom) plotted our course to the Hollywood Bike Gallery. After a quick checkup by the service staff and a minor seat adjustment, we rolled it out of the store and loaded it into the van. We were all amazed at how light it was as we lifted it into the van. It’s also much shorter than my bike so it fit quite easily into the back of the van.

Anxious to try out her new bike, we all mounted up our bikes when we got home and went for a short ride on the bike trail that parallels Interstate 84 near our home. Graham was cranky and refused to go faster than 7 mph because he was afraid of wiping out like he did a few weeks ago. He also said he was uncomfortable with the rest of us riding behind and in front of him. Clearly, we still have some work to do with Graham’s bike riding instruction.

After we got home we watched some more of Mary Poppins before we realized it was late and the boys would soon be hungry for dinner. We all piled back into the Scion and asked the Doctor for a list of nearby restaurants. After an instructive but unproductive foray into a nearby subdivision of which we were previously unaware, we headed east on Sandy and watched as the Doctor’s list of restaurants changed. Eventually, Tina came up with the excellent idea of eating at The Truffle Hunter, a fixture of fine dining in Gresham for many years. We hadn’t been there in years but it had recently re-entered our consciousness when we had to drive by it to find dryer parts. We had remembered that they served giant sandwiches, but we had forgotten just how big those sandwiches were. Everybody ate half of their sandwich or less and then we all indulged in a delicious dessert.

All in all, it was a pretty good day for everyone and Tina is certainly glad to be a mom today.

Our family loves Jim Gaffigan!