JUST SOME POSTS

Today on the Bob & Tom Show I heard a guitarist - Tommy Emmanuel - that was recently named "the Best Acoustical Guitarist in the World" by the readers of Guitar magazine. He played some short outtakes of a few songs, and I was hooked. I am buying a CD shortly. In the meantime, he has a lot of cuts on You Tube. Here are some links for three of them: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxKjg6Yy23Y http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TX0eTp7SoNU&NR=1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5qakFIecBU&feature=related Sorry, this blog format will not allow me to put links. You will have to cut them (one at a time) and put them in your address bar of your browser. (if it does not work for some reason, just go to www.youtube.com and type in "Tommy Emmanuel" and search. Enjoy, if you like music - You will. The third link is especially AWESOME! It is a duet with the best ukelele player in the world, doing George Harrison's "While My Guitar Gently Weeps". If

One would think one of the advantages of being a father of six (yes - SIX) would be the copious gifts and good tidings one would receive on ones birthday. HAH. I am writing this at 11:57 pm on my 55th birthday - the day I passed from a simple adult to a senior citizen discount eligible citizen - with only THREE "Happy Birthday"s from my kids. I got more good wishes and greetings from my on-line websites, groups, companies, and forums I belong to than my six kids. (to be fair - one of the three that never wished me Happy B'Day was the ONLY one to cough up a gift - ALWAYS nice!) Hey, PEPSI (or one of their computers),took time out of its busy day to wish me Happy B'Day! Can anyone say - E-CARDs!?! Bitter? Nah, I'm not bitter. There were probably thousands of fathers with six children that didn't hear from three of them, AND ONLY GOT A GIFT OR CARD FROM ONE OF THEM! I'm sure of it. (this is pretty cool - I can semi-publicly chastise my kids in front of the

"Whoa! What is that smell!!" If I had a dime for everytime I heard that one... I will always remember the two summers I spent working for my "Uncle" Boris. He and his wife Agnes had a little company that made costumes and props for performing animals. You know, the little jackets for the dancing bears, the headdresses for the horses and elephants, etc. My job was as a go-fer, and I had the dubious honor of measuring the animals for size. You haven't lived until you try to get an inseam measurement from a chimp. I especially remember one week when Boris was trying to develop a special unicycle for a bear. The circus people wanted it to look like a regular unicycle, but you can imagine the difficulty here - hey, it had to support a bear! I was measuring a Zebra for a coat, and I heard a terrible crash. I ran over to the shed where Boris was working and saw him on the ground. He was screaming and wailing like he had been shot. I found out later that was the day

I have not felt very motivated lately to write. I have ideas, and even formulate blog posts; but it is always when I am hours away from actually being able to sit at a computer and type it out. One of the things I am really tired of hearing is the doom and gloom over our economy. Here is an analysis by a money manager from Raleigh I just read: 1.US employment: Today, our unemployment rate is roughly 5%. Last year at this time, the unemployment rate was 4.5%. Five years ago, the rate was 6%. The average rate of unemployment over the past 50 years is 5.86%. So, the rate of unemployment is higher today than a year ago, but it is by no means stark. A fair number of economists have set the “natural” rate of unemployment at about 6% to account for those people temporarily off of payrolls. Some would argue that the current trend is bad, but they typically go too far in assuming that small trends will become long-term trends. (These are the same types of forecasters who, in the 60s, projec