You're Being Watched

Well, it is pretty much a given that much of we do is being monitored. I had two moments over the weekend that got me thinking about this whole surveillance issue. Firstly, I watched Eagle Eye, a movie about a computer program designed by the government to gather and compile information and make decisions on who to watch and what actions to take with that information. It also gives a glimpse of what is possible (maybe a little exaggerated) in this digitally-driven world. The next morning I read about this CIA story in the news, part of which is about domestic surveillance programs. Then, later that morning, I heard on NPR about this technology company, Palantir, in California who is developing capabilities to assist in data mining and finding trends and patterns in that data. Sound familiar?
This area is a controversial. Some people probably feel that the government has no right in people's personal business. Others strongly feel that if the government can gather certain information and subsequently use it to save lives or make its citizens more safe, then they should do so. Whichever side you are on, or if you are in the middle, there is (a least) one massive question: who is going to be keeping tabs on the people gathering the information to ensure they use it for good? Or as the wife in Enemy of the State says, "Who's going to monitor the monitors of the monitors?"

Chicago Trip #2

A good friend's wedding brought me out to Chicago for the second time this summer last weekend and homebase came along as we turned it into a mini-vacation. That's also my excuse for not blogging for so long. On Thursday Mat Kearney was at Nightfall on the River and his opener, Erin McCarley. Both put on great shows and provided some humorous banter in between songs. I only knew two songs of Mat's before hand, but at $12, I'd be a fool not to go down and enjoy a show with some friends at such a fun venue. Friday, homebase came up and we went over to Iowa City. I triumphed over my first shopping temptation of the weekend. I really wanted a lumbar pack there, but, rightly decided that I did not need it....at this time. Saturday morning found us on the road early and getting into the downtown with some time to hit some shops and score some good bargains at the Gap before heading to Quartino's for a delicious lunch. That place has become my favorite downtown lunch eatery. We spent the afternoon shopping the Long Grove area (mostly in Paddy's) before checking in to our hotel. I got cleaned up and headed to the wedding (reception actually since I skipped the actual ceremony, sorry Adriana!) It was a very nice event and a fun time catching up with Chicago friends. Sunday we went to the Botanical Gardens and did some shopping and I was lucky enough to spot a Potbelly's while we were driving around. I had forgotten how good their meatball sub with extra giardiniera is! We finished off the trip with a wonderful performance at Ravinia of the Chicago Symphony playing selections from Tchaikovsky and culminated with cannons during the 1812 Overture. (video is not of the performance we were at...ours was better). It was pretty awesome.
But, it's nice to be back in town and try to be productive...til next weekend!

Hoodie Love

Is there a better feeling than throwing on a hooded sweatshirt when you are chilly?
That usually doesn't happen on a July afternoon, but I just had to go out to my car and grab my hoodie because I was freezing at the coffeeshop. 65, raining and overcast...what kind of summer weather is this?

School Uniforms

Big talking point in the Des Moines Register today. Two public middle schools are instituting a uniform policy for this fall. Polo shirts and khaki pants, shorts or skirts will be the outfit for their students. I have always liked the idea of uniforms and will be very interested to see how this policy goes over. The school is providing the shirts and the families are responsible for the pants & belts. I'm sure this first year will have a lot of bumps along the way and many complainers, but if they stick with it, I think it will be a good thing for these schols and these students. And, hopefully, it will force those teachers who wear track warm-ups or jeans everyday to step up their professionalism too, even though the school can't mandate that they were uniforms due to union-stipulations in their contracts.

Lance Back in France

The Tour de France started a few days ago and yesterday the Astana team, who Lance rides for, did well in the time trial stage. Lance shaved 40 seconds off the lead rider, so he is sitting less than one second behind the leader, in second place. I also found this video from before the time trial of Ben Stiller getting into the spirit of the event. It's great. Bon chance, Lance!

3 More Stripes!

These are the new ones I picked while I was in Chicago a few weeks ago. SO comfy. Those SL72's that I bought may look great, but they are not a very comfy shoe. I had a good discussion with the manager guy at the adidas Originals store about it actually. This guy is always working when I go in there. He's got a great attitude, loves his job and is super friendly. He loves talking about product and as they say, "game recognize game" so we both enjoy talking shoes with another adi-phile. The tongue on the SL72 is the main hang-up. It is too short and too tough, cutting into your foot. These Country's have a longer, padded tongue and also have a more cushioned sole. I wore them for the last day of summer school and the kids gave them the thumbs up.

80/35

I was not very excited about this year's lineup for the 80/35 Music Festival, which is too bad because it is the biggest music event in Des Moines. The new location, just a couple blocks east from last year, seemed to work out fine. The main stage was good, but for some reason the festival just felt smaller than last year. Even though the bands I was most excited to see (Matisyahu and Tilly and the Wall) played on Friday night, the fact that they were both on the main (braclet required) stage, coupled with the crappy weather ensured that I stayed home. But Saturday brought new hope of discovering some fun new music. So, ignoring the overcast and intermittenly misting skies, caboose and I headed downtown. We caught the last song of Audrye Sessions and they sounded like I would've enjoyed their set, so that was a bit of a downer. But we followed that up with Girl in a Coma, an all-girl punk band out of San Antonio, who were good and I had a good time listening and watching them. Back to the east stage after that, we caught the Josh Davis Band, who always seem to be playing somewhere around Des Moines, but oddly, I'd never went to listen to them before. They played a pretty fun set of fairly pop-ish tunes and again, I pretty happy with what I heard. Former students were out in force down there which provided some fun conversation in between bands; hearing where they've been and how their first year of college went. We then went back to the west stage to listen to Cymbals Eat Guitars, which had been hyped up by Pitchfork and Juice. They were awful. The only entertaining thing about that show was this group of people that brought in a plastic yard flamingo that had been painted for the Fourth of July and the tip of the beak and tail cut off, making it into a beer bong. They were going around having everyone try it out. Check out the flaBONGgo here. Lastly, we caught Cleo's Apartment on the east stage. They were a fun show. Lots going on on stage, lots of instruments, a great voice on the lead singer, a guest appearance by Aeon Grey. Fun stuff. caboose and I headed out after that and came home to recharge and go our seperate ways. He went to check out a Menace game and I went back down to 80/35, meeting a friend who had an extra braclet for the main stage, so even though we missed Broken Social Scene who I really wanted to hear, we were there for the Ben Harper set. I've never been a huge fan of the guy and now he's got a new band, more rock, less folky, so he didn't play any songs from his old stuff. It was ok, and there was a fun cover of Led Zeppelin's 'Good Times, Bad Times', but nothing else too memorable. Overall, it was a fun day of music, some good, some not good, but definitely better than nothing!

Chicago & 5k

I haven't blogged much lately about what I've been up to. I was in Chicago for three days for that Global Economy conference which was GREAT. If you are really interested in that, you can check out all of their powerpoints. They had some great speakers and they all looked at different aspects of our global economy and also gave in-depth looks at different geographic areas. I took away a lot of information and some things that I am hoping to incorporate into my curriculum this fall. One fun site I learned about was this database of government subsidy payments. You can search by state, county, type of subsidy (corn/soy/CRP), zip code, last name. Very fun stalking of neighbors! :)
I got to check out a few of the bookstores and restaurants in the Hyde Park area but my time there really flew. I did find time to get downtown and pick a new pair of adidas, which I will share pix of soon. One surprise was that there was no air conditioning in my room. They put me up in a dorm-style room in the same building where the conference was and 95 degrees with high humidity made for tough sleeping. There are few feelings I hate more than waking up sweaty, especially at 6 AM. So I figured since I was up and sweating, I might as well go for a run along the lake which was very nice. I was amazed at how many people were out and active at 6:30!
Even though I'm a little spoiled by usually flying when I go out there, the drive wasn't too bad. I had two audiobooks that made the drive go by quickly, "I Am American, and So Can You" by Stephen Colbert and "Father Joe" by Tony Hendra. I was a little disappointed with the Colbert book. Not sure if it just didn't translate to the audio format very well or what but it wasn't as funny as his show.
And later that week I went out to Omaha for a 5k with stoppable. It was put on by the Siena Francis House and the route was around Lake Zarinsky. Now, the last (and only other) time I ran a 5k was also with stoppable and it was in 1994 or 1995. I was a senior (I think) in high school and stoppable was a student at Creighton. I won't go into details but that 5k was not a pleasant experience. There were a couple walking breaks and it was a lot of work. As stoppable pointed out last weekend though, "I think I trained for it by going to a keggar til 3 the night before" so our approach to this one was a bit more restrained and sensible. And the difference was significant. We clocked our run in right around 27 minutes, so a 9 minute mile pace. Not blistering but there was no walking and we felt great afterwards. So great that, subsequently, there has been some talk of a 10k this fall. We'll have to see. I think I might be up for it!

Summertime...and the living's easy

The weather can not be any more amazing that it has been that last few days. Mid-70's, low-80's, sunny, breezy, low humidity. What a blessing. And since today is my first day that I do not have to think about summer school, it really has felt like a bit of a gift. I slept in an extra hour, made a little breakfast, played an hour and a half of tennis, and walked down to the coffee shop to enjoy a chicken-salad croissant and an iced tea while I get some work done. Even though I think I'm getting worse instead of better on the tennis courts, it was very fun this morning. I also took some swings using my friend's racquet. Wow. I was blown away by how big of a difference there was. I guess you can but tennis rackets into that "you get what you pay for" category. So, now I have a nagging need to go out and treat myself to a new racket. :) Stay tuned.
A few other summery items:

• I tried out this recipe for rhubarb slush and it is SUPER. I recommend.
• Came across this video this morning of Local Natives, who I am unfamiliar with, doing an acoustic cover of 'Cecilia'. Not only is that one of my most favorite songs but there is a xylophone solo and I am a huge fan of bells. Great summer tune.
• If your copy of my summer mix wasn't enough for you, I Am Fuel, You Are Friends, put out her summer mix yesterday and it looks good. Download and check out some new music.

Sorta Project

I love creative, edgy, gritty art with street-level expression. Unfortunately I am not blessed with the patience to envision, devise and create something really insightful or beautiful. This project is a great example of that. I started with a sheet of shower laminate/white board (pic 1). I had the idea to use a big tree as a background onto which I would write favorite lines and lyrics from songs. So I laid down some sky and a horizon line (pic 2). I was very happy with the sky and very sad about the ground. Then I drew a tree and root system with a pencil and taped off the tree (pic 3). Spray painting the tree and hitting it with a black paint marker outline left me with something that, while it wouldn't stop anyone in their tracks, wasn't too bad (pic 4). At least you could recognize what it was. I started putting on the lyrics and about halfway done it looked pretty decent. But then my Achilles's heel popped up and I fell victim to rushing through it like I always do and eventually mucking it up (no pic). So then I decided to just scrap it and do so random painting and patterns on it and using it as a backdrop while spray painting some other things. I also did some writing/tagging on it and eventually I ended up with something that I actually like (pic 5).