Summer break

The video that you see above is simply a few minutes of a day with Av. I apologize in advance that it will not play on the page, if you click it it will open up in a new window and you can watch it. Apparently they thought they should make Flip videos impossible to use on Blogger. Bastards. Just about every day is just like this, the toys or random objects she plays with change, sometimes she says new words but for the most part this is essentially what you get when you sit down to play with Av. As a bonus, in this one she is also eating a freeze pop. Enjoy the video and don't be afraid to laugh at her, I certainly am not.

After some thought and a lot of frustrating writer's block moments I came to the conclusion recently that this blog just isn't going to work in the summer time. Av spends way too much of her time with Monica for me to learn any real parenting lessons and my life is just a little bit too leisurely at the moment to get real fired up over anything significant enough to blog about.

When I worked at the newspaper summer was always the toughest time of the year. That is when you would struggle all day long to formulate one story by deadline and it was usually something lame like 'Kids clean up park' or 'Local group saves money for fundraiser.' Of course, I worked at the Item (or as we called it sometimes the 'Lynn Herald'- in reference to the Boston Herald and its outrageous headlines) so usually the header would read 'Passionate pupils plow park problem' or Group gets going with great giveaway.' Ah, alliteration, a headline writer's best friend- and a reporter's arch nemesis. I was always that reporter who put suggested headlines at the top of the stories, too. I am sure that pissed off the guys at the copy desk but if you didn't do it chances are they would only read the first paragraph of the story and slap an inaccurate header on there anyway. Even worse were they days when you would come in to find an alliterated pun draped across the front page. Guess who had to field those phone calls? Yeah, it wasn't the copy desk.

I have been thinking a lot about being a reporter lately, probably because I don't have a real job and a lot of places around here are hiring right now. I almost sent my resume out the other day and then I remembered that 'competitive' wages and benefits mean around 30 grand a year and basic health insurance. Then I remembered how much I hated covering city council meetings and how much I liked not having to wake up and go to work in the morning. Ill find a real job someday. Honest, I will. Hell, I'm going to have to because if I don't I'm likely to have a nervous breakdown soon.

So that is all from me until September. Of course, there is always the chance that I will become passionate about something and post it up hear in the mean time, and I have a lot of videos of Av so check back now and then anyway because I am sure I will post them. It is just important to me that the blog not lose focus or become stale, and I said from the beginning that I wouldn't force it, so I am not going to. Hopefully, when September comes back around and Monica is back to work this little break will have done me well and I will have hoards of new material to lay on you. Until then, here is one last musical selection from one of the best ever, R.L. Burnside, the most progressive Delta Blues artist of all time. Enjoy.