Well, our flight to
Baltimore was uneventful. We spent most of the flight reading the new
Vince Flynn book,
"Protect & Defend"...Flynn has done it again. We love
Mitch Rapp and love his attitude and as we have said before, if the
US could just send Rapp,
Scott Horvath, &
Jack Ryan over to the
Middle East all of our problems would be over!
Landed and called
Matt who was waiting in the
'cell-phone lot'....LOL how the world has changed in the last few years. Now almost every airport has bought property off site or converted property at the end of their borders to allow cars to sit and wait for that call to come pick up their arriving parties...
Walked outside and a few minutes later here he comes. He jumps out of the car and we grab each other in a big ole hug and kiss....
(Yup...we still kiss...something I have done my whole life with my grand dad and my dad...and now with Matt)...
Jump in the car and head out. We went to his apartment which is not all that bad, but way empty. Only a couple of chairs and the TV in the living room and his futon and two small dressers in the bedroom. The microwave is on the floor in the kitchen since there is no counter space at all...
We then headed out for dinner and
Matt picked a place where he could get a steak and they had a bunch of sports on the TV's...
Afterward, we headed back to his place and just talked and relaxed for the rest of the evening.
Saturday began a little slow
(well, hell he is a 20 year old and still knows how to sleep!), and then we headed to the
Towson campus.
We ate at one of the dining halls and had a nice breakfast. We got to meet a few of the friends he knows
(all women!) at the dining hall and then did a walking tour of the campus. Dang...lots of up and down on that campus...and it is bigger than we had imagined.
We ran into his friend
Aaron who informed us that his fraternity was playing football that afternoon, so we decided to shoot out to the store and then come back for the game.
Off to
Wal*Mart we ran, where we purchased a 12 quart pot and some of the fixin's for a pot of gravy. Then back to campus for the game.
We got there to find out the other team had forfeited the game...
We met one of
Matt's other new friends,
Andrew. Andrew is also pledging the fraternity that Aaron is and they tried to get
Matt to pledge.
Matt's thought is to do so next semester...it is not
TKE like we are a member, but that is fine...
This is
Matt & Andrew
Andrew said something really interesting. He had also been playing club baseball with
Matt, but dropped out because the pledging was taking too much time. He told
Matt on Saturday that another guy he knew had been thinking of trying out for the club team, but had been told by some of the other team members that, since he was a catcher, his task was almost impossible...seems there is a
'new kid who has the spot locked up'.
Yup...the other kid is
Matt!
Andrew then took a few pictures of us, as we picked up a throw-away camera at the Wal*Mart. We thought
Matt had the digital camera with him on campus, but were mistaken.
We headed out to the store to get the rest of the ingredients we needed and even found the plum tomatoes packed in
Italy(you know...where Julie is with Sara!). Basically had to buy all the spices needed...
Back to the apartment around 4:30, we began the process of making a pot of gravy. Since he did not have a food mill, this pot was made with the tomatoes whole...you just cook a with a bit more heat and let them fall apart as they cook...we also made 19 meatballs...
Matt watched and helped so he could learn and do it himself soon....
Note the whole tomatoes early in the cooking stage
Stir the pot often, making sure to get all the way to the bottom
Plans were to go out to dinner, but we decided to get a pizza and some wings and rent a movie or two and hang and do something we had never done together....
We drank beers and watched the movie. It was pretty cool that we finally got to have that 'right of passage' together. We have never just sat and knocked back a few and it was nice to be able to do with
Matt. We watched
"Casino Royale" which was OK, not the best
Bond movie (We tend to like the
Sean Connery versions best). We knocked off some beers and all the pizza and wings while we watched and as the gravy slowly cooked.
Sunday morning, we woke early and as
Matt slept, we put the gravy and meatballs into tupperware and slid them into the freezer
(which obviously gets SO MUCH use! LOL)...
Each round tub - 3 meatballs...The rectangular containers - 2 meatballs
There was also a pot on the stove for his Sunday dinner - 4 meatballs
Yup..that is 19...we split one! LOL
Then off to breakfast and then to the airport where we took some of these pictures in fun...
We did not get to see his girlfriend
Danielle as she was in her dorm room sick sick sick....
When we got home, we received two calls on the
'making of dinner' and gave our recommendations...
Too freakin' short ... the time went too freakin' fast...but we have discussed his coming to
Memphis in January while he is on break, if he is not booked with lessons...(
Matt is an instructor at a baseball academy in
NJ and has a roster of clients who he works with).
Love my son...he is everything to me...and every parent knows exactly what we mean by that...
BLOGTALK RADIO UPDATE
Coming up this week on
DR. BLOGSTEIN'S RADIO HAPPY HOUR: (Live on Tuesday November 6th at 9PM ET and forever archived at BlogTalkRadio.)
To show solidarity to the striking members of the Writers Guild, the Radio Happy Hour will once again be totally unscripted!
Political cartoonist Lloyd Dangle stops by to give us his humorous analysis of current events. We'll find out from the creator of
"Troubletown" which of the presidential candidates will give him the most material for his cartoon, how many death threats a political cartoonist can expect to receive and what its like to grow up with a last name like "Dangle".
Also,
Hollywood producer John Loar will join us. Loar, head of one year old
Red Bird Cinema, a joint venture with actor
Kevin Pollak and St. Louis Cardinals manager
Tony La Russa, will discuss the
Sugar Ray Leonard biopic they have in the works. We'll also get his opinion of the Writers Guild strike and find out if we're in for a steady diet of reality TV for the next few months.
All that plus,
Dangerous Lee co-hosts,
SUPREME COMMANDER OF THE CYBERWAVES Vinny Bond drags his
Big Leather Couch into the Radio Happy Hour Lounge and chats live with the listeners, and your calls at 646-652-4804.
Join us live every Tuesday night at 9PM ET. The Radio Happy Hour Lounge--a live chat room during show time--is a whole new reason to make sure you listen live! It’s the show within the show!
THEN ON WEDNESDAY
THE DAY OF PEACE GLOBES IN THE BLOGGOSPHERE
A WONDERFUL OPPORTUNITY TO SHARE YOUR STORIES
IN A COMPLETELY NEW WAY...
Looks like Thursday will be
"GRAVY & LASAGNA" day...
Lifelogger still acting up and not allowing us to load anything new.
So...into the vault...
Roger mentioned this and we have to agree...The mix of rock, jazz and even some Latin makes this a classic...
From the
Allman Brothers At The Fillmore East album. Composed by
Richard (Dickey) Betts.
This is from the entry for
"In Memory Of Elizabeth Reed" on wikipedia.com:
In this performance, Betts opens the song with ethereal volume swells on his guitar, giving the impression of violins.
Slowly the evocative, lilting first theme begins to emerge, and Duane Allman's guitar joins Betts in a dual lead. The next section has the tempo pick up to a Santana-like, quasi-Latin beat, with a strong second-theme melody being driven by unison playing.
Betts now takes a solo, featuring his usual metallic-toned guitar playing. This leads into a thoughtful organ solo from Gregg Allman, with the two guitars churning rhythm figures in the background.
Now it is Duane Allman's turn, and he starts out quietly rephrasing the first theme in his more wood-toned guitar style. He then gradually builds to a high-pitched climax, with Berry Oakley's bass guitar playing a powerful counterpoint lead underneath him against the band's trademark percussive backing.
Allman cools off into a reverie, then starts up again, finding an even more furious peak. It was this long, masterful solo that drew comparisons of Duane to jazz immortal John Coltrane.
Spent, the band drops off and a relatively brief but to-the-point percussion break is taken by Butch Trucks and Jai Johanny Johanson.
The full band then enters to recap the mid-tempo second theme, and the song is smartly finished off.
Clearly kept in rapt attention, a couple of silent beats pass before the Fillmore audience erupts in applause.
The song is named after a headstone Betts saw at the Rose Hill Cemetery in Macon, Georgia. By no coincidence both Duane Allman and Berry Oakley are buried in the same cemetery as Elizabeth Reed, as it was a place frequented by the band in their early days, for relaxing and writing songs, among other things.
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