Pithy Title Here

I love the years that this list is hard to do. Fun fact: I have been looking forward to this since late summer when it occurred to me there was always something new I was getting into on my frequent plane trips and bus rides. Every month, there was some great new sound. The craziest part: even with so much great stuff, my pick for the year's top album wasn't even close. Onward...

Friends, you can imagine how the year has been going since this is the first post in six whole months. But this, and the forthcoming albums of the year post, are things you can count on here. Neither rain nor sleet, nor lack of hours in the day shall delay these music-oriented posts. Anyhow, I'm kind of surprised how this year's mix came together. Confession: I usually start nosing around the Interwebs for songs around Labor Day. I don't think I had any ideas by Nov. 1 this year. Also, this is the eighth year I've been putting this together. I'm not saying the well is dry... but I'm not NOT saying it either. The way I see it, if I get next year's in some kind of shape, I can celebrate 10 years with a "best of the holiday mixes mix" and call it a great decade. If this is your first year reading about this, back in 2007, I thought it would be fun to put together a mix of rock and humor Christmas songs. When the "great to listen to at work&qu

About a year ago, I found myself being introduced to a member of the Sounders' arch-rival Portland Timbers (the rivalry has its own Wikipedia page if you need to be brought up to speed). The introduction was a chance meeting. I ran into an acquaintance who is affiliated with the Sounders and he just happened to be hanging out with this member of the Timbers. The friend introduced him, jokingly, as "the enemy." Instead of taking the bait, though, I answered back more simply: "no one's on the field right now." Granted, I'd like to think I have enough class that I wouldn't make some snide remark to a fellow human being simply because of the logo on his professional uniform. That said, in today's world of anonymous or quasi-anonymous commentary on various online channels, I cannot say that everyone has the same restraint. A brief look through Twitter at any moment will show buckets of vitriol and that's not even getting into the cesspool t

Oh, it was a troubling noise. All I needed was to do laundry before a week-long trip. Our laundry machines are upstairs. I was downstairs and watching TV and then, a noise. What was it? It was not how the laundry normally sounded. That said, the cycle finished and, since I'm male, I figured it was all fine. Next load of laundry goes in and, sure enough, once again, sounds like I have a freight train rumbling around upstairs. We have one of those front loaders, so you can actually watch as stuff goes down inside the washer. If I was a five year old, I'm sure I'd watch the laundry all the time because MACHINE WITH WATER, but these days, I need my laundry to kindly do itself, preferably quietly, and incident-free. Anyhow, I sat down and watched to see where exactly the Burlington Northern-Santa Fe Railroad was taking over my wash. And... you know what? That was where this story goes from household emergency to "we got this."

Last year, I started running more. I ran in a few 5k races. I kept up going to the gym (as I have for nearly the past 10 years) and I even refocused my weightlifting on my upper body since I walk on my toes and, as a result, have leg muscles that do not need to get any larger. As my 35th birthday approached, I was still cognizant that I felt a bit older than I ever had before. My face was rounder. I'm not sure I have a body type that will ever have a flat stomach, but, let's just say that, when I looked at pics from last summer, I wasn't heading in the direction that might help me get there. At first, I blamed it on "getting older" and moving to the Pacific Northwest. My friends, family and coworkers know I have never felt more at home in a place than I do here, and, to be honest, I have immersed myself in all the things that make the PNW great... including our tremendous supply of local craft beer. We're lousy with it. You come to a bar here and, if you a