A Big Step Forward

For the past few days Shannon has gone completly "nooch" less. She was still getting her pacifier for naps and bedtime. Since going back to daycare she wasn't getting it for naps, so last Wednesday we decided to not give it to her at night.

We were prepared for a long night of crying and general unpleasantness, but to our surprise it was fairly minimal. There was some protest complaints but she seemed to calm herself down enough to fall asleep.

Each night we take her to bed she complains a little but eventually falls asleep. This is huge for us cause the nooch was her most cherished belonging. Taking it away from her would be like taking the blanket away from Linus. This is something she fell in love with when she was only hours old, so you can imagaine the attachment to it.

So for now things look good. Up next, potty training.

Drunk Talk

When does drunk talk cost you a few hundred dollars?? When you decide to go on a road trip to see Van Halen after a few beers.

Living with the fear that Van Halen might not play Atlanta on this tour, Buck and I decided to road trip it to Greensboro, NC to see the 2nd night of the tour. I got tickets as soon as they went on sale Saturday and we ended up getting some good seats in the 200 level of the Greensboro Coliseum.

The date is Saturday September 29th and the plan is to take the 5 hour drive on Saturday morning and then come back on Sunday morning so Buck can get to the Falcons game by 1pm. Should be a fun trip and the first time I've road tripped it to see a show since college.

John From Cincinnati

Erin and I were both big fans of Deadwood. so we were sad to see that HBO cancelled it after last season. The good news was that David Milch was gonna do another show about a family of surfers called John From Cincinnati.

Being Deeadwood and NYPD Blue fans we gave John From Cincinnati a shot. Man does it suck. Not only does it suck, but is sucks so bad that HBO announced on Tuesday that the show will not be returning for a second season.

The show was loaded with good actors like Rebecca De Mornay, Willie Garson, Bruce Greenwood, Luis Guzmán, and Ed O'Neill. Even Luke Perry wasn't bad in it. There were also like 4 or 5 actors from Deadwood.

The problem was the story went nowhere and the dialog was dry, boring, and way over every ones head. It is Milch so I was expecting some of that but it was really unwatchable.

Every time we watched an episode all I could think of was, "they cancelled Deadwood for this?"

We have one more episode on the DVR left. The question is do I watch it or delete it into the DVR abyss??? I won't get any kind of conclusion out of it and it will only remind me why the show got cancelled.

Van Halen Tour Dates

Van Halen finally held their press conference yesterday to announce their upcoming tour. What was originally stated as a 50 date North American tour seems to have been slimmed down to 25 days.

They only released 25 dates and to my disappointment there was no Atlanta show. The strange thing is that there aren't any shows in Florida either so I'm thinking that there will be more dates to come.

The tour opens in Charlotte on September 27th and hits Boston on October 30th, New York on November 13th, and Los Angeles on November 20th.

Tickets for some of the shows go on sale this Saturday.

Look At Me

I did the CNN Passport program a few months back. I got to go to New York and see how things worked up there. So when I got back they asked me to talk about my experience for a corporate video they were making. I actually made the final cut and do I look awful. Look at all that grey!!!

The Chinese Are Trying To Kill My Daughter

The Chinese are trying to kill my daughter with lead paint. Fisher Price recently recalled a bunch of Dora The Explorer and Elmo toys after it was discovered some of them were made with lead paint.

After hearing the story I went right to their website and looked at the toys involved in the recall. Shannon has one of them. It's called the Dora Talking Vamanos Van.

We bought it for her as a birthday gift. She played with it often so I called Erin and had her remove the van from Shannon's play area. Thankfully after receiving the recall information from Fisher Price our toy isn't one of the ones that is affected.

So I put the van back into Shannon's play area when she was upstairs taking a bath. As soon as she came back down it was the first thing she went over and played with.

It's Official...Again

The reunion tour is back on again. According to Billboard magazine and Dawn (thanks for the heads up) Eddie Van Halen is sober enough for the band to finally do the 50 date North American tour that had been rumored for about a year now.

The Billboard report coincides with a news release issued Tuesday by touring company Live Nation and Van Halen saying the band will be making "an announcement of monumental proportions" during a news conference Monday in Los Angeles.

Fingers are crossed that the tour will come through Atlanta. I've seen Van Halen twice, first time with Alice In Chains opening. Never seen them with Roth but I have seen Roth solo during his Lil' Ain't Enough Tour. Trixter and Cinderella opened for that one.

$574.97

$574.97 is the vet bill we just had to pay for yet another operation for Daisy. Over our vacation she had developed some fluid in the inside of her ear. It looked like someone had shoved a water balloon between the flaps in her ear.

So Erin took her to the vet and they said she had an Ear Hematoma and it would have to be drained right away. Not only that but they would have to install a straw in the flap of her ear so fluid can continue to drain a week after the operation.

The operation went fine and Daisy is on the road to recovery. She is acting fine and back to her normal routine of sleeping and eating. This Tuesday the straw comes out and then the next Tuesday the stitches come out.

The biggest pain in the ass has been giving her the antibiotics. We have to hide the pills in food and sometimes she finds them before she eats it. So then we have to try to hide it in another piece of food and so on till she eats it. If she bites into one and shakes her head the powder gets all over the place and it reeks. Yuck!!!!