Three things I'm loving this week:
1. Free music everywhere! From North East to Edinboro, you'll find a host of free concerts in and around Erie on almost any day of the week. Don't believe me -- pick up a copy of Showcase in today's Erie Times-News and read the fine print. Just this week, I have four free concerts on the old family calendar. We didn't make it to the 8 Great Tuesdays concert with Jake's Blues this past Tuesday, but we made it to Whitford Park (in Harborcreek) last night and enjoyed a folk band. There's a concert on the concert of Penn State Behrend tonight and, of course, free blues & jazz music all weekend at the Erie Art Museum's Blues & Jazz Fest at Frontier Park. There are also concerts in the park in North East and Edinboro. The Erie Philharmonic is even getting in on the action with a free concert at lunchtime in front of the Warner Theatre on Aug. 12.
2. Football training camp. The boys are back. The NFL training camps opened this week and I've got football fever....even if the news out of the Steelers camp gets worse every day with some key player getting injured or pulling a muscle and otherwise causing Steelers fans to anxiously twist their Terrible Towels. The whole Casey Hampton-is-too-fat thing is pretty funny though. Seriously...if you were getting paid millions of dollars to stay in shape, don't you think you'd lay off the Big Macs and corndogs and get your fat butt to a gym once in awhile? Ah...but, don't worry, Casey, I still love you...you big, overgrown tackle.
(AP photo)
3. Rudebekia, otherwise known as Black-Eyed Susans. These are one of my most favorite perennials. I have them in almost every flowerbed in my house and just seeing their big, yellow petals makes me smile -- even if they are pushy perennials that have taken over half the beds. (The other nice thing about this plant is that it's very easy to divide and thin out).
Three things I'm not loving this week:
1. Big Brother. My husband turned on the TV the other night when I was reading on the couch and this "reality" show was all that was on. I couldn't stand 10 minutes of it. I had to leave when some big muscle guy starting fighting with some old guy who looks like my dad and then some other guy starts fighting with the old guy and girls are crying and people are lying and I'm like...OMG...why would ANYONE volunteer to live in this house with all this DRAMA. How much do they win if they're the last psycho living there? $1,000,000,000 is not enough. $100,000,000,000 is not enough.
2. Road construction and detours. A road I take nearly every day -- sometimes two, three and four times a day -- is under construction and it looks like it's going to be awhile before it's finished. Even though I know the road is closed, every time I get to the top of the hill and see the sign that says "detour," I'm a little surprised. "Oh...right, crap!" And then, I'm a little late.
3. My stressed-out husband. I'm a bad wife. I really am. When my husband wants to come home and talk about his bad day at work I just desperately want him to shut up. I blame it on my, uh, sensitivity. Yeah, that's right, my sensitivity -- I take on everyone else's problems and feel the need to fix them. He tells me his problems and I get stressed out and can't sleep because I'm trying to think of a way to get the Behrend job done on time. (I know..I'll never make it through the teen years with my daughters).