The Colonel's 25th

Hey kids.

A Black Bean Brownie Cake Mom dropped off in the morning.

Yours Truly turned 25 today. A monumental milestone, really, watered down slightly by the fact it fell on, you know, a weekday this year.  Not a whole heck of a lot you can do on a weekday as far as birthdays are concerned, but I count myself fortunate that I'm one of those lucky assholes that never has to go to work on my birthday.

One of the perks about being a teacher and having a birthday in July. Kinda rules.

Kris asked what I wanted to do on my birthday this year - if I had anything special in mind, if I wanted to go out to dinner, etc. - but I'm low-maintenance anymore, and honestly my 'dream day' is pretty basic: all I wanted to do was head to Radio Wasteland later on in the morning and shop for some vinyl, then spend the afternoon cleaning, resleeving, and cataloging my ever-expanding collection. You know, total nerd shit. 

I've spent far crappier days, I can tell you that much.

A couple days later - when it was the weekend and we didn't have any huge plans in the calendar (for once) - some of my friends took me around downtown Midland on a bar crawl for a belated celebration of my 25 years on this planet. Good times as always.

So here you go, folks - my 25th Birthday in a nutshell.  Enjoy.

My favorite thing to do on any birthday is hit up Midland's local record store, Radio Wasteland (where I'm considered a regular, and am additionally a 'Top Fan' of theirs on Facebook.)

My shelving situation is definitely getting dicey at home - I'm running out of space for additional records, so I don't buy in bulk as much as I used to, and my 'want' list is probably around 15-20 records. Still, I do enjoy the treasure hunting aspect of walking into a record store and stumbling across LPs I didn't realize I wanted. I probably spent 90 minutes in Jim's store today, thoroughly canvassing the entirety of his wares.

Walked out with seven boxed sets of classical music and operas, a 2-LP compilation, double-LPs from Brubeck and Chicago, Pablo Cruise, Loggins and Messina, and - the jewel of my finds today - the second compilation from Fat Wreck Chords, Survival of the Fattest (one of my first punk CDs I ever bought, back in my sophomore year of high school.) All for $44.

An awesome birthday haul, if I do say so myself.

Once I got home, I broke out the ol' Spin Clean machine and set to work cleaning, cataloging, and sleeving my new albums. I had ordered some new inner and outer sleeves in preparation for this undertaking days before, and made sure they were shipped to my house in time for my birthday. Once the new additions were all taken care of, I began resleeving a bunch of my existing albums that needed an upgrade. Took about five or six hours, but it was an awesome five or six hours, I'll tell ya what.

And some jalapeno honey whiskey accompanied the undertaking quite nicely.

A couple days later, me and some of the dads from our Midland friend group headed over to the Larkin Beer Garden to kick off an evening of bar-hopping downtown.

The beer selection on hand was minimal, but decent. Morgan, Mitch and Erik were on hand this evening (Collier was unfortunately out of town this weekend), and while we were at the beer truck we bumped into my old realtor, Rick, who helped us in buying our home back in 2017. Coincidentally, Rick - an avid record collector himself - was wearing a Radio Wasteland t-shirt.

We stayed for a single beer, then decided we'd head somewhere else to mix it up (there weren't a ton of people there, and there was zero shad to speak of since, you know, it's in the middle of an empty parking lot and everything.)

What are you, a cop?

Not gonna lie, this sign is pretty accurate.

Murals are starting to spread throughout the city, which grows more and more hipsterly with every passing year.

Heading downtown towards The Commons, where you're allowed to drink outside downtown (within the marked barricades, obviously.)

After picking up some beers from Molasses - a barbecue joint on the main drag - we set up shop at a table outside me and Erik's Lodge (the third story of the Larkin Building, in the background there.)

There was a quartet of saxophonists doing covers this evening. I forget what they're called, but I like to think their name is Sax on the Beach. That'd be the name of my sax quartet if I had one.

After a couple beers on Main Street, we decided to grab some food at nearby Whichcraft - probably my favorite bar downtown.

This place has the best beer selection in Midland, bar none.

Kicking things off with an imperial sour from Transient (never heard of 'em.)

Snackables.

Once we had eaten some food and had a few drinks at Whichcraft, the guys were really jonesing for some Old Fashioneds, so we headed over to Three Bridges, back on Main St.

This place distills their own liquor, so Erik and I checked out their vats for a hot minute.

Morgan, Mitch, and a weird-looking plant at our table that sorta looked like hops.

This bozo was providing live music to the bar patrons throughout the duration of our stay there. He was not good.

En route to the next stop. . .

Obligatory group pic under these lights.

We stopped off at Decker's for a nightcap (a few pitchers of cheap, domestic beer that went down like water.) When I got there I realized it was filled with my brother Chris' old high school buddies: the dude bartending was his friend, Jess, who used to be the singer in Chris' high school and college bands.

A regular at Decker's is one of Chris' oldest friends (from like elementary school), Sverchek.

Sverchek belts out some classic '90s alternative for the night's karaoke session. . .

Erik picked up the tab at Decker's and, on our way out, noticed how Jess the bartender kept track of our ordering.

Morgan gifted me this for a birthday present - one of my all-time favorite Irish whiskeys. Perfect way to end a stellar birthday - hoping next year pans out just as awesome.

- Brian

March: The Beginning of Spri- NOPE, Still Winter.

Hi, America.

I'm so pissed off I can't see straight.

This has been the longest, most drawn-out winter - maybe not as ferocious as last year's in terms of snowfall, but definitely colder.  We've had a sprinkling of days over 45 degrees, but mostly Winter temps, regardless of The Beginning of Spring, St. Patrick's Day, and now, tomorrow, frickin' Easter.  We're still hovering in the mid-30s, for the rest of the foreseeable future.

I'm sure Republicans point to weather like this and use it to deny climate change.

F***ing Michigan.

Anyway, we did quite a bit in March, it seems - the month definitely went by fast.  Now if only the rest of the school year can go as fast, we'll be all set.

Enjoy.

Alayna gets some pet-cuddlin' in with Kris' Grandma's dog while we were over at her place helping her pack up her stuff for her upcoming move to Arkansas. . . or Arizona.  One of the 'A' states.

Revenge of the Nerds.

The Cannonball gave me a totally rad hand tat.  Let's hope they live up to her expectations in the fall.

Abby and her BFF Larkin at the Chestnut Hill Elementary Carnival

We had the Whites, Dad, and Chris' family over for pizza one Saturday, seeing how we hadn't seen people in awhile.  The Whites hadn't seen Chris' boys yet, and we had been meaning to get together with them for awhile.

Babies are a lot cooler than kids that run around screaming and getting into trouble, which is where we're at these days.

I finally bit the bullet and purchased a land line through Vonage so that the girls had access to a phone at home.  Vonage is an Internet phone service, and utilizes an adapter box that connects directly to your router in order to create a phone 'signal.'  Unfortunately, running this new phone signal our house's existing phone wiring wasn't making the house's jacks 'hot,' so to speak, so I had to get creative.  We wanted the main phone hub in the Study, upstairs, so I had to break out some power tools in order to make that happen.  I first drilled a hole in order to run the phone line from the router in the main basement area through a wall into the laundry room, then ran it up above the drop ceiling panels.  This phone cord was then run the length of the basement, through another wall, and up through a vent (the patch of light you see here is the bathroom part of the laundry room, a floor below.)  A lot of wiring, but all out of sight (Kris was adamant about no wires being visible - mission accomplished.)

I then had to cut some of the drywall back in order to allow the phone cord to fit with the air vent in place.  Not the cleanest cut, but you barely notice it with the vent in place.

Hooked up and operational.  Now with the hub established, we were able to activate our satellite phones throughout the house and - voila - we have ourselves a working land line.  I even ran a separate line throughout the basement in order to power four more phones downstairs (not that we need four phones in the basement, but I inherited a few vintage phones from Granny when she passed, and I always wanted to hook them up to a working phone line, so now there's two working phones in the Captain's Quarters.  Booya.

Kris goes to Ulta a lot (I think it's a make-up store. . .?), and she's recently introduced the girls to it.  Needless to say, they're both fanatical converts now.

Seriously.  This is the kind of stuff that happens when Yours Truly is away with the guys (this was taken while I was brewery-touring with the Sausage Pad in Kalamazoo.)

Breaking out some quality 2004-era video gaming with the offspring:  Star Wars Battlefront II for the PS2.  

Graphically it's comically out-dated, but the gameplay still holds up.  The girls had fun with it, especially our resident Star Wars aficionado, Abby.

No idea - Kris took this one.

A rare glimpse of the Cannonball actually doing her homework.

Another round of Trivial Pursuit.  We have a running protocol in this house that I'm the only member of the family that has to use the more-challenging Adult question cards:  Kris and the girls get to use the Kid question cards.

The night before St. Patrick's Day, me and a bunch of the husbands of Kris' group of Girl Scout/PTO/workout moms she regularly hangs out with all went out for a few drinks, bar-hopping between Diamond Jim's, Whichcraft, and Oscar's in downtown Midland.  While at Whichcraft, I was able to get my hands on Founders' KBS Stout: a barrel-aged bourbon stout that's one of the highest-rated and celebrated beers you can find - it's incredible (if not ridiculously potent.)

Pool at Oscar's, towards the end of the night.

Alayna had to create a diorama about a Native American tribe for her class, and was assigned the Chippewa.  Thankfully, her old man still had a bunch of old Playmobil figures lying around.

100% historically accurate.

Earlier in the month, I decided to pull the trigger and have my old MacBook Pro sent out for servicing.  I bought this thing back in 2009, and the last three years or so it's been basically unusable:  it runs ridiculously slow, and so iTunes and iPhoto - honestly the only two programs I use it for - take forever to load (if they do at all.)  I briefly contemplated buying a new MacBook, but they're over $1300, and they're definitely NOT worth that much - I can't justify spending that much on a computer that's nowhere near as good as my current model.  Now, my dad offered an alternative:  he had recently sent in my step-mom's Macbook Pro, which was basically as old as mine, to a company called Tyrosys, out of Texas, and recommended I do the same.  Tyrosys revives old computers - updating RAM and operating systems, installing different drives, fine-tuning hardware etc. - thereby allowing me to keep my existing computer, at about half the cost of replacing it entirely.  They sent me a custom-fitted box, charged me about $500, and about two weeks later I had basically a brand-new laptop.  I couldn't recommend this place enough.

Kris had lost the Blu-Ray player remote, and for two weeks we tore apart the house looking for it.  Then, one day, she decided to paint her nails.  I hate wives.

Yoga session with Larkin.

Celebrating Grandpa Chinery's birthday over at Mom's house, one Sunday.

Baby juggling (Jeff's family was over at Annie's parents' house, so things weren't as chaotic as they could've been.)

During Spring Break.  Abby had consumed a ridiculous amount of Easter candy one day, and had vomited throughout the morning as a result.  She built an impromptu fort in the basement in an effort to quarantine herself from her family.  I found this quite considerate of her.

More roommate selfies. . .

There's this evening track activity in Midland called Fleet Feet:  a bunch of Kris' mom friends have their kids enrolled in it (like the girls' friend, Sophie, at center), so Kris wanted to see if the girls wanted to try it out as a Spring activity.  It's basically just running around a track at Northwood University, on the others side of town, twice a week, so we figured we'd give it a shot.  Alayna - as you can see here - wasn't a big fan of it.

Alayna liked hanging out with her friends, and drinking water from her sports bottle (according to her), but she didn't like the actual running part of it.  Since that's the whole frickin' point of the damn thing, we let her opt out of the activity.

Abby, too, decided against it.  Although more athletic and sports-oriented than her older sister, she found running around the track 'boring' and 'tiring.'  Honestly, she kinda has a point.

A recent Radio Wasteland haul.  I traded in an old copy of Led Zeppelin I I didn't need anymore (I recently bought a deluxe, remastered 3-LP of it, which is totally badass), and was able to pick up six vintage LPs at NO COST.  Some of these are 2-LP releases, too, and Jim even threw in some free Discogs and Third Man Records stickers and pins.  Not bad for a record-shipping trip.

Found the girls a cool little rocking chair for $5 at a local thrift store.  March was a good month for vintage shopping, let me tell ya.

On a rare above-40s weekend, towards the end of the month, Kris and I spent quite a bit of time in the yard, cleaning out the garden beds and preparing our yard for the Spring.  Now that we're home-owners again, we're taking every, necessary  precaution so that our property doesn't end up looking like a hobo's asshole.

While I cleared the yard of debris, Kris pulled up dead shrubs and plants from the beds.  We're going to have to drop some serious money into mulch and river rock this Spring, for sure - our beds are in desperate need of revitalizing.

We also need to look into fixing up this wooden bridge - it's covered in green crap and looks absolutely disgusting.

Abby lends a hand with. . . something.  Who knows.

One Sunday, Kris and I took the girls out with us Estate Sale shopping.  We scored a ridiculous amount of awesome books at one place (where you got to fill a bag of books for $5), along with a few pairs of brand new shoes for Kris and some random crap for the girls.  Kris was gunning for stuff that she could distress and use as decor for the house ('cause Pinterest), but didn't find much she was interested in.  At one house, they had this really, really creepy pool in their backyard.  Like something out of the '50s. . . or a horror movie.

This record cleaner got a lot of use over Spring Break. . .

Tragedy struck towards the end of the month:  my Pioneer receiver began cutting in and out while using my turntable, so I was finally forced to bite the bullet and drop some money on replacing my far-nicer Denon receiver.  I had been putting this move off for years because a.) I had a receiver that worked just fine (the Pioneer), and b.) it was next to impossible finding a qualified person to fix a vintage receiver.  Recently, while record hunting at Radio Wasteland, I learned of a guy here in town that fixed vintage stereo equipment out of his home, so with the sudden death of the Pioneer, I finally pulled the trigger and dropped off the Denon for repairs.  The repair dude said it'd take some time to fix, due to the fact that he was extremely busy with other repairs and there were a few receivers lined up ahead of mine on his to-fix list, but I wanted to get the order in as quickly as possible:  it's going to be a long, looooong record-less month ahead.  Pray for me.

A girl-requested glam pic.  'Cause why not.

- Brian