Happy 4th of July to citizens of the United States of America, both at home and abroad. If you aren’t an American citizen then I will extend the well wishes to you too by hoping you have an unusually wonderful day today. If you are a member of the British Parliament… Then… Well… I guess you can have a good day today too, but only If you take a few minutes to think about what your predecessors did, and realize that you really had it coming.

Sadly this Independence day is pretty much ruined for the Mrs and I. I’ve had a bad cold for almost a week now. It’s just as bad today as it was yesterday. Now to make matters worse, my lovely wife Jennifer has come down with it too.

It looks like there will be no fireworks on the beach for us tonight.

Blah. I really wanted to go.

I’m trying to cheer myself up by grabbing a tape of the opening night of the Rush tour. I can’t listen to it until I see a show for myself, but at least it will be there waiting for me once I do.

Go watch the documentary, Rush Beyond the Lighted Stage. It’s a fun view. I highly recommend it. All of it. Don’t miss the bonus features, as some of the best stuff is there. (referring to the dinner scene.)

Happy 4th of July to you all!

Yeah, I’m sick. I’ve been sick since about Tuesday. It blows.

Because I am feeling sick, I slept late today. Jen came into the bed room around 10 and said, in all seriousness, “Wanna take a drive to Logan airport and get on a plane to Milwaukee so we can see Rush tonight?”

Robbie, of course, thinks she’s being cute (she is SO cute, I can’t stand it sometimes. She’s just so cute. That smile, those eyes! I LOVE HER SO MUCH!) and laughs it off.

“No,” says my beautiful, charming, brilliant wife. “I’m serious.”

So what’s a lifelong Rush fanatic who finally got to watch the documentary, “Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage” last night going to say? I said, “YES!”

Then reality crashed back and we realized it was too late to pull it off. It was fun thinking about it. Just as it’s fun thinking about the Jones Beach, NY show on the 24th.

This makes me think… we still haven’t received our tickets for the Boston Garden show in September. I hate the company they use for their website/fan club pre-sales. They pretty much give me ulcers each time I deal with them.

Anyway, we have the show in September to look forward to, but… ya know… September is so far away. So very far away. Not as far away as Jones Beach, NY, but at least that comes up sooner on the calendar.

We’ll see… we’ll see.

If you make a method abstract it makes the entire class abstract.

Interesting.

Polymorphism is easy to grasp, but some how I only put it together today. “Oh, that’s why you do that!”

I love stupid behind the scenes stuff like this. Some days I could watch crap-o-la on VH1 classic for hours at a time.

This is Steely Dan talking about recording the song “Peg”. Not my favorite song, not my favorite Dan album, but a good one none the less.

This morning I made the following statement:

I am too sick to go to the hospital.

I swear to god, today on the drive home I was in a 30mph zone behind a guy who was driving 12mph.

No one in front of him, just out for a casual rush hour stroll through the town of Concord.

Twelve (12) miles per hour. 40% of the posted speed limit.

I passed him illegally, but I doubt any traffic cop would hold it against me.

Happy Canada Day where applicable.

Is it coincidence or by design that Canada Day is also the start of the NHL free agency period?

Gonchar to Ottawa? Didn’t see that one coming.

File this under -It’s Never Too Late to Write Up a Topic-

This post is something like 18 years in the making.

Yeah, cutting edge information here!

So I have gone to UMass Lowell twice. I refer to it the same way Veterans refer to their times in a war zone. I did two tours in Iraq, or I did three tours in ‘Nam. Me personally, I did two tours at UMass Lowell.

The first time was between the Fall of 1989 and the Spring of 1991. I think it was the semester after I dropped out that the city did something to screw over the South Campus.

During that first tenure when I was a music student we had a parking lot along the bank of the Merrimack River. The land belonged to the city and there really wasn’t any other parking area for commuting students on South Campus.

Then the city did this:

Yeah, that lovely little park is my South Campus parking lot.

I’m still pissed about that, even though it didn’t affect me. It took the University years to find another parking lot. In the end they built the Riverview lot using the same specifications as the main lot on North Campus. They found the steepest, most painful hill on the campus and put the huge parking lot at the bottom of it. I think that might be a state college thing in Massachusetts because the Bedford campus of Middlesex Community College was built the same way.

So my mother has been hospital hoping in Lowell and I had a chance to take pictures for this ridiculous almost 20 years too late post.

Yeah, so this is lame… here are a few more Merrimack River in Lowell pictures.

They have a beach on the Merrimack? Like, people go in the water? GROSS!

Cool boat.

My old, old, old, old school. Durgin Hall.

Lowell.

Water.

Mmmm Wal-Mart Subway.

Mmmmmm

The Rush – Time Machine Tour kicked off in (I shoulda made a left at) Albuquerque last night.

This officially begins the period of avoiding all Rush related web sites until after Jen, Mike, and I see them at the Garden in September.

Don’t spoil the set list for me, okay?