danajohnhill.org | Hard Times Come Again No More

Every summer, my neighbor Elke visits her family in Berlin.  She and Kyra left a couple weeks ago, and aren’t due back until next month.

In the meanwhile, while Elke is away, I am caring for her animals.  The menagerie includes two cats (her adorable kittens have another home for the summer), four rabbits and a chicken.  The cats require little care.  They’re sassy, but I don’t have to touch them.  The same goes for the bunnies.  They have their own large cage, and all I have to do is fill their food dispensers and make sure their water jug–which sends water to several nipples in the cage–is always full.  They don’t seem to like being molested.

The chicken, on the other hand, is the most demanding of all.  She doesn’t really like her oats as much as she likes the rabbit food.  That’s fine; I’ll give her what she wants.  But she’s always getting under my feet, and if she thinks I am holding something she can eat, she’ll jump up.  I am a six-foot-tall, 190 pound man, but it still makes me a little uncomfortable having a chicken lunge at me.  After school every day, I let her out of her cage, and she pecks around the yard for a few hours until I come by later to put her back.  Once it’s dark out, she goes to sleep near the back door, and I have to pick her up and carry her to her cage.  She doesn’t fight me, but she does lift her wings up when she knows I am about to grab her.  More troublesome is the way she knocks over her water bowls.  She tries to climb up on them, and ends up dumping the water out.  I make sure to check on her several times day because of this.

I also check for eggs every day.  I never really gave it much thought before, but eggs are completely bizarre.

Filed under: Animals, General on July 28th, 2009 | No Comments »

The miracle of our modern age is video on demand.

Filed under: Popular Music, Technology on July 27th, 2009 | No Comments »

I am, naturally, a Rays fan, and don’t like seeing them lose.  But today is different.  The Rays lost to the White Sox this afternoon because Chicago’s pitcher, Mark Buehrle, threw a perfect game – only the eighteenth in Major League Baseball history.  Watch this video, and listen to the announcer freak out.

Filed under: Current Events, Sports on July 23rd, 2009 | 1 Comment »

The latest post on backstreets.com begins: “You gotta be there.  Every time.  Every time Bruce Springsteen is in town, you gotta be there”.

I know that, and I do my best.  I just learned that the E Street Band has added a Tampa date this fall, and I will be there no matter what.  But, even if the band played six straight days in Tampa, I’d have to go to each show, because you don’t know when it’s going to happen.  What do I mean by “it”?   Let’s review some history.

During the 1978 Darkness tour, Springsteen began inserting a long, improvised interlude into “Backstreets” following the last verse.  The sequence generally featured Bruce singing over Roy Bittan’s piano, telling a story about a girl he used to meet in an abandoned car in an open field on the edge of town.  “Baby, I remember you”, was how he generally began the interlude which came to be known as “Sad Eyes”.  As the Darkness tour progressed, the “Sad Eyes” interlude became more elaborate, until one night he sang, “back then I swore I’d drive all night”.  Roy Bittan, at that point, was playing a I-IV-V progression.  When The River appeared two years later, “Drive All Night” was the second to last track on the Side Two of the second disc, just before “Wreck on the Highway”.  “Drive All Night” is over eight minutes long, and was played at only a handful of shows on the River tour, and seldom heard after.  That brings us to July 21, 2009 in Torino.

From backstreets.com:

When the band broke into “Raise Your Hand” to let Bruce collect signs for requests, three identical, sealed and numbered envelopes reached the stage. Inside, the first one says “Drive All Night.” Bruce shakes his head; “naah, too difficult and long,” he seems to say, while the crowd dives into visible desperation. Envelope 2, the paper inside says “Drive All Night” once again. The trick is almost revealed, so when Bruce opens envelope 3 everybody is screaming—and needless to say, marked in black is “Drive All Night”—and a collective dream comes true. In a show really close to perfection (every musical ingredient is there, almost every Bruce topic woven through the setlist), “Drive All Night” is a brilliant example of how the art and magic of Bruce Springsteen not only lies in what the audience usually gets, but resides as well in what it may not get. A majestic song like that might stay unrevealed in an envelope that Bruce may not pluck nor open. This is why you should always be there, every time he plays, if you can.

At the show I saw in 2008, a handwritten poster requesting “Drive All Night” went unfulfilled.  I can’t complain, since I got “Jungleland” instead (in a show which also included “Turn, Turn, Turn” with Roger McGuinn).  But if I could hear “Drive All Night” live this fall, I’d be a happy man.

Filed under: Musings, Popular Music on July 22nd, 2009 | No Comments »

I travel to and from school each day on a bicycle.  The round trip is seven miles, and depending on traffic, I could make it in thirty-five to forty minutes.  Naturally, the hot and humid summer weather makes the journey unpleasant, and when I arrive at school or home I am drenched in sweat.  I hate feeling dirty and sticky and thirsty and winded, but that is usually the only bad aspect of the trip.  Today was different.

All was normal as I made the turn onto Eighth Avenue.  But a block west of Sixth Street I heard a loud ping, and felt the bike seat fall out from under me.  What was left was a bare post.

I was lucky that the plastic grocery bags I use to protect the seat from the rain captured the metal hardware that would otherwise have bounced into the grass and sand.  Two days ago I had almost removed the bags.  But, though I had all the parts, I had no ability to fix the seat where I was, and I had to ride the rest of the way to school standing on the pedals.  This left me more fatigued than usual.

University of Florida students have access to free bike repair, a service funded by fees we pay with our tuition.  The bike kids that do the work are fairly competent, and certainly love bikes.  But they didn’t have the bolt I needed to repair the seat.  The bolt that attaches the seat to the post had simply snapped in half right above the threads.  It certainly made me feel fat.

With no way to repair the seat there, I had to ride the bicycle as it was.  I rode downtown, where Danielle Kay cut my hair, then all the way home I stood up pedaling.  I arrived very tired, but sure made good time.

Filed under: School, Transportation on July 22nd, 2009 | No Comments »