Brookings Marathon

I'm on a relay team in the Brookings Marathon again this year, on 14 May 2005. It's a fundraiser for Easter Seals South Dakota. If you would like to sponsor our team, click on the "Donate" button on the right side of the page. Your donation will be matched by the Larson Foundation. Last year, the marathon raised $8,000.

The program this year includes a speech by Billy Mills, the only American ever to win Olympic gold at 10,000 meters. Last year's speaker was Dick Beardsley.

Here are some photos from last year.

Dad
Dad, Mary, and Mary's brother
Vern and Mary's brother (I really should ask Mary for his name. I think it's Don...)
Becky
Keith

Of all of the wacky neighbors in all of the sitcoms in all of television...

This morning as I ironed my shirt, I thought, as I always do, of Howard Borden, alone in his apartment, ironing and singing "As Time Goes By" in an episode of The Bob Newhart Show. If there were a Wacky Neighbor Hall of Fame, surely Bill Daily would be elected in his first year of eligibility. Everything about him was funny on that show -- the way he talked, the way he walked, the odd little hand movements -- everything. He wasn't bad on I Dream Of Jeannie, either, even with all of those lousy scripts.

Making snowmen at Grandpa & Grandma's house

Click photo for more.

Visions of Johanna

The Dave Brubeck Quartet's "Time Out" has been in my car's CD player for so long that Thomas calls "Blue Rondo a la Turk" his favorite song. Finally, one of our kids or one of their cousins wanted to hear something else. I happened to have Bob Dylan's "Blonde on Blonde" handy, so I popped that in. Thinking they might be amused by hearing Johanna's name in a song, I played "Visions of Johanna." Amused they were, especially Johanna herself. "'Johanna is not here!'" she said, laughing. "That's silly!"

Now, Tami may tell you a different story, but Johanna is named after that song. Before she was born, we had endless conversations about names. As we didn't know if we were having a girl or boy, these discussions were doubly long, and most of them went like this:

Tami: How about x?

Joseph: I don't like it.

Tami: Why?

Joseph: I don't know why, I just don't like it.

Tami: OK, how about y?

Joseph: I don't like it.

And so on.

But one day, she said "How about Johanna?"

My mind raced. I said to myself "We can name our daughter after a Bob Dylan song! Poker face! Poker face!"

Not just any Bob Dylan song, either. This one has it all. In 1966 Dylan was at the absolute height of his powers as a songwriter, singer, and bandleader. "Visions of Johanna" is about 7 1/2 minutes of opaque lyrics, backed by a killer band with all of that mid-1960s Dylan tasty goodness: Al Kooper's organ, Dylan's harmonica, etc. And the singing is fantastic, with seemingly bizarre choices working like magic. As usual, he follows the melody only when it suits him, and for some reason, he appears to sing the first couple of lines of each verse jumping up and down an octave. Why? I don't know, but it works.

So I suspect I didn't really manage a poker face as I replied "Uh... yeah, that's OK. I kinda like it. I guess. Yes. Good name. Put that on the short list."

We eventually settled on the name Johanna. After she was born, my friend Pat let the cat out of the bag. His emailed response to the birth announcement quoted the line "Jewels and binoculars" in the subject line. By that time, it was too late for Tami to back out. I had my living, breathing, beautiful Bob Dylan reference.

One day I'll tell you about Frank Sinatra's second wife, Ava Gardner...

The Beginning of the End

Brookings is getting its first Starbucks. Reminds me of a poster put out by the Wales Tourist Board featuring a picture of Cardiff Castle and captioned "Castles 641; Starbucks 6."

Dodge, Duck, Dip, Dive, and Dodge

I played in a dodgeball tournament on Friday. It wasn't as fun as it sounds. It would have helped if our team (the Purple Cobras, naturally) weren't the worst of the field, and if I weren't the worst player on our team. Also, if a few of the other teams hadn't taken it a little too seriously and engaged in a little lax self-refereeing. But it was a little fun.

I needed a little help with one of the five Ds of dodgeball in particular: duck. I took two balls full in the face. One of them actually knocked me over. If only somebody had videotaped it.

We did manage to win a single game in pool play, but we lost in the first round of the bracket.

Next time we're going to be the Average Josephs.

GarageBand 2

I just couldn't wait any longer, and plunked down my hard-earned 79 bucks for iLife '05, mainly for GarageBand 2. It is too much fun. After doodling around a number of times using mainly an M-Audio USB keyboard and some of the supplied loops, I finally ransacked the house to find my old microphone and headphones. It was time to find out if Bobby McFerrin is a thousand times better than me, or merely a hundred.

Well, the first try sounded terrible. Not just my voice; I expected that. The recording sounded like an old 78 that had been used as a Frisbee for several summers at the dog park. I fiddled around with the levels for a bit, with no improvement. Hmm. My mic can't be THAT bad. I ended up cranking the noise gate so high, it dropped some of the quieter bits of the vocal. This is a problem for a singer like me with such an expressive dynamic range (yeah, right...).

I unplugged the headphones, intending to fire up iTunes while I Googled for some advice. Uh-oh! Feedback! Better switch the mic off. Huh? The feedback didn't stop. Oh -- forgot to switch the audio input. It had been using that little pinhole mic on the display of the iMac -- no wonder it sounded terrible. I had expected it to switch inputs automatically when I plugged in the mic, like it does for output when I plug in phones.

Anyway, headphones back on, and back into GarageBand. I kept the lousy vocals I'd already recorded, and prepared to add some backing vocals. A little "test, test, one, two," and another head-scratcher. I cranked the level up to 11, and still the meter barely blipped. Oh well. Here goes. As I recorded, the editor window showed a flat line -- nothing. I finished up, played it back, and couldn't hear a thing. I played back just that one track, and I could hear it, but only just.

Back to the OSX audio preferences. This time, I actually took the time to read what was on the screen. Of course! It's a line-level input, not mic-level. I wouldn't have guessed that.

I'll just have to get one of these gizmos, or something, except that I'm all out of USB ports. I had hoped to avoid getting a USB hub. I see the G5 iMacs have three USB ports, the same as the G4 had. Were I the product manager at Apple, I'd push for about eight. Well, at least five.

I also thought about hooking up my old Portastudio, which would solve the mic level problem, but it's just to big. It's an old 424mkII, and more "studio" than "porta" vis-a-vis our small, cluttered office.