A Parrothead looks at 38

Mark & Diana Kohne and Cathie and I headed to DTE on Thursday afternoon to meet up with the Rays and a slew of others to go see my sixth Jimmy Buffett concert. If you've never been to see Jimmy Buffett, it's an amazing experience where the concert is only 25% of the show. The parking lot is a lot like a Grateful Dead concert (Buffett fans are called Parrot Heads), except done up Yuppy style

I went to my first Buffett concert with my brother Dan about 20 years ago and I'd never heard a single song of his at the time. I'd helped Dan move from one apartment to the other and as thanks, he brought me to the concert with him, Kris and a couple of friends. I loved the show.

This year, we did it up as right as you can do it. We got there around 3ish and Bob had hooked us up with a motorhome. The parking lot was already filling up with some amazing parrot head with some pretty amazing setups. The great thing about the motor-home was not only the shade it provided, but the bathroom (and bedroom), kitchen and electricity.

Bob was kind enough to bring his friend Don Julio who makes some people like flamingos, and love every minute of it. We had a great time hanging out. We brought food, walked around, people-watched while people all around us danced, played beer pong and bag-toss (known in Nebraska as corn-hole).

I wore my favorite hawaiian shirt, which Anne informed me probably the hottest possible shirt I could wear. I'm used to hearing this from the ladies and was surprised when she clarified that my shirt was polyester, didn't breath, and must be sweltering in the 90 degree heat. It made sense after a bit. I was hesitant to take it off based on the amount of mocking I get from my family, but after a while, figured, what the heck.

There were Tiki-Bars like the one above all over the place - well, none quite like the one above. This one seated 13 and could be folded up to be pulled behind a truck and looked exactly like what you'd see on the beach in Hawaii. There were people who had trucked in sand, DJ booths, swimming pools, full size slurpee machines, and about every other thing you could imagine.

We saw some pretty amazing getups - people dressed like sharks, parrots and wild hats. I picture this woman in the sweet home-made outfit to be Cathie in 25 years.

People were really proud of their outfits and loved it when you took pictures of them.

I'm pretty sure this was Will's doppelganger with the guitar.

The Landshark Beer girls were awesome to watch. There were five of them piled on this special golf cart, complete with a landshark fin, trying to navigate the parking lot. The cops wouldn't even try it, but these girls did. They ended up having to try and turn this around and about hit me a few times.

Due to my PayPal concert ticket debacle that had happened earlier, Mark and Diana had no tickets. Mark decided to try and get them at the concert rather than spend a second small fortune on tickets like Cathie and I did. After seeing a few people walking around with "I need tickets signs", Mark figured it'd be a good idea to do the same. We had no cardboard or marker, so Mark made due with a paper plate and pen. He wrote a bunch of cryptic messages on the plates and walked around with them. People would stop him and clarify what "Buy 1 or Sell 1" and "Need 1 Lawn" actually meant. At one point, he got his wife Diana to wear the sign, with a little better effect.

In the end, he got two lawn seats for $100, well under what they were going for online at nearly $260.


You really can't go wrong hanging with the kind of people we were with at the show, and as you can see from the picture, Bob and Anne were setting the bar high. There were some rather amusing people around us, including a couple of um, let's call them 'dancers'. Some huge musclebound guy kept picking them up and having pictures taken with them. Not to be out done - we all ended up doing the same with our wives. None of us even dropped them.

The concert itself was great. Cathie and I had good seats, but I couldn't stop watching the guy in front of me. He was dressed like a pirate, complete with his eye patch and puffy shirt. He was so dedicated to the eye patch that he actually kept it on throughout the entire concert. To make things better, he used an actual telescope to watch the show. How do you watch a concert when you've got "pirate guy" sitting in front of you?

The show was amazing. Unless you've been to a Buffett show, you won't get it ("...don't try and describe a Jimmy Buffett concert if you've never seen it...."). It feels like being in the Caribbean or Key West with an ice cold Corona beer in your hand while sitting on the beach. I think it's part of the appeal of the music is what it reminds you of later.

Cat Fight

My cat and I have an understanding - basically, we agree to not like each other. Occasionally if he wants something, like food, he'll purr and rub against me, but we both know what he's up to. What's earned my cat the most respect from me is the fact that he likes to beat the snot out of my really dumb puppy:

There are worse ways to spend the day

Running Away From It All

I love getting up early-ish and going for my weekend long runs. I've been doing long runs between 10 - 13 miles every other weekend in preparation for the Detroit half marathon. Last year in my training I was pretty much running the rail-trail bike path in town, which got to be pretty monotonous. This year, thanks to Runkeeper (my iPhone's GPS run tracker app) I've been able to head out in some pretty rural directions, without a route or distance really planned, and track my run very accurately (which everyone's seen from my twitter/facebook statues)

I've been running down some unpaved roads around here, back into rural areas i didn't know existed this close to my house. Maybe it's the fact that when I'm on these roads I'm driving 50 mph and don't really take a second to enjoy what's around me. This morning I took these mental photos of corn fields filled with sun-flowers, three horses playing together, a guy training his horse for harness racing all while the birds chirped in the background. Something about it is so relaxing that I barely notice the fact that I'm running and sweating like ccrazy. I listened to a Podcast for the first hour and then was just alone with my thoughts. I spent some of the time praying, other times thinking random thoughts.

I've been trying to slow down my long runs, but I'm averaging around 8 minutes 30 seconds per run with an average heart beat of about 159 bpm. I've been amazed that my resting heart rate is as low as 45 bpm. The heart rate monitor is a nice thing to have, and i'm sure Runkeeper will incorporate it in soon. I think the app also has the ability for you to take pictures and overlay them on your course - I'm just not sure how and haven't really messed with it yet. It's by far the best and most stable app out there so far for running. i swear by it. It's gotten more and more accurate as the iPhone has improved their GPS as well. My friends Brad and Bob use a Garmin watch to track their runs, which does some of the telemetry integration as well for heart monitoring. The downside is that the interface is confusing and the web site isn't very user friendly either.

Ten Random Reasons I'm Madly in Love with Cathie Kurt

1. Even though few would believe it, she has a sense of humor similar to my own.
2. She knows how to communicate things to me with just the smallest look or the lightest squeeze of my hand.
3. She is an amazingly genuine person through and through. To those people she trusts the most, she has a transparency that I envy.
4. She is beautiful not only on the outside, but on the inside. Her beauty touches something deep inside of me. She can look smoking hot even when she's wearing her sweats, no make-up and her hair pulled back.
5. She has a pretty amazing memory and realizes that mine sucks, except odd, random things, and music lyrics. I have 20+ years of amazing memories with her.
6. She has a laugh, the deep laugh that comes when one of the kids does something, she spills something or she's taken off guard by something, and it lights up the entire room. It's the kind of laugh where she closes her eyes, throws back her head and is laughing at herself or something she's seen a friend or kid do. Yet she'll still laugh in a polite way when she hears me tell the same story for the 10th time.
   
7. The things that impress others about me, don't necessarily impress her
   
8. She knows me better than anyone in the world.
9. She has a fun and wild side that those closest to her see, which makes it even more special. Those that know the kind of hip-hop she likes will know that they're in this inner circle.
10. She rarely plug my nose or roll me over when I snore at night.
11. Many of her strengths are my weaknesses, and vice versa. I learn from her strengths and they help my weaknesses.
12. I know from the bottom of my heart that I am enough for her
13. She is amazingly tough, both physically and mentally.
    

Libby and Reagan's visit

My two nieces, Libby (almost 4) and Reagan (2) left tonight after hanging with us for four-ish days (Friday - Tuesday). We had a blast with the girls - going for walks (Libby: "Uncle Dave, I've never been on a walk before."), going to the park, to the animal farm (Libby: "Aunt Cathie, seeing all of these animals has made me hungry"), going to church (Libby: "I got to

The girls were fantastic and my kids loved playing with them. Cathie and I had fun having little ones running around again and just cuddling with them.

We had these two ottomans, which the girls, especially Reggie loved sitting in. We found that they were both very good at watching TV. I'm guessing they got that from their Dad.

Some of my favorite lines from the girls (other than the fact that during multiple times, Libby told Cathie and I that we are her favorite Aunt and Uncle):

Libby: "Uncle Dave, do you like farts?"
Me: "Do I like art?
Libby: "No, do you like farts?"

Libby: "Uncle Dave, at my house, visitors all get chocolate milk before bedtime. I'm a visitor at your house, so I should get chocolate milk now."

Libby: "Nateo Potato, your room is a mess. You need to clean it right now"

One sport Maddie will never play

Jon's children are very good at watching TV

No surprise, really.

Thoughts on my 20th OHS Class Reunion

We got together last night in East Lansing as part of my 20 year high school reunion. We met up at a bar as part one of whole 20th festivities. I met over at Matt's house and we went over with a few other guys to the event. Matt is one of the few people I've really kept in touch with from my childhood. He grew up across the street from me as a kid, and as different as we are, we have this bond that's lasted through elementary, middle school, high school and college. Matt is a conduit to just about everyone else in our class. He has this amazing memory of things that happened 20 and 30 years ago and he kept me rolling on the ground as he'd bring up stories of dumb things we'd done. It was funny how once we piled in the car we reverted back to the same roles and stupid stuff we'd do then.

It seemed like there were a ton of people at the event, but in hindsight of going through the yearbook, I'd guess 25% of the class. Throughout the event, I'd basically wander from person, catch up for a while and after a few minutes move on to the next group of people and talk. Everyone seemed genuinely happy to be there (except maybe the spouses) and interested in knowing what was happening with everyone. I was amazed at some of the distances people traveled to be there, including Alaska. It seemed like there were five basic questions:

1. Where do you live now?
2. Are you married?
3. Any kids?
4. What are you doing these days?
5. Who do you stay in touch with from school?
   

Some random thoughts

• It was interesting seeing how people are essentially the same after 20 years, yet different. My friend Erik went from being a heavy metal head banger to a doctor, yet he still tells a story exactly the same way, using the exact same gestures. We laughed as i told him my son now listened to some of the same iron maiden songs we'd listened to growing up. He remembered an autographed Ronnie James Dio album I'd given him about 20 years ago, which I'd totally forgotten.
  
• Everyone seemed genuinely interested, kind and excited to be there, hanging out with each other and catching up. The spouses -not so much.
  
• I talked to one couple who'd been married longer than Cathie and I @ 18 years.
  
• The two most memorable stories involved one guy who's a state trooper and was lead the team assigned to Tom Izzo throughout the final four. The other great story is from a classmate whose the director of entertainment at the Hard Rock Casino in Vegas. He had some great stories about Axl Rose and other artists who play there.
  
• One classmate had six kids under 6, two sets of twins in that.
  
• I hadn't cracked my yearbook in 20 years. We opened it up over at Lisa Sadao's house and went through laughing at the pictures and the things they let us write in there.
  
• I love stories, and it was fascinating to me to hear all of the stories of where people have come and how they'd changed. I heard of people who weren't there whose lives and are in shambles, and others who are great and happy.
  
• I was amazed at how many people live near me that i had no idea about.
  
• As I looked around, I tried to figure out where I fit in back in high school. There were all sorts of pockets of people that I would hang out with, but no real specific clique. I'd hang with the stoners, the brains, the art kids and even some of the jocks. One person I talked to last night described me as being "neutral" in high school, going from group to group. Probably about the best way I can think to describe it.
  

After we closed out the bar, we all headed over to Lisa Sadao's parents house in Okemos and hung out until about 4am. We hung out by the fire, caught up more, laughed about the yearbook and talked some more. Some people walked home, and others piled 10+ people deep into a mini-van and were bussed home that way - some in worse shape than others. I was planning on staying at Will's, but figured I was close enough and wide awake enough to just head home and crash in my own bed, which after being gone for 3 days felt good.

I got home about 5Am and all of the doors were locked. I'd been up about 25 hours at this point and was seriously considering just sitting in my car and going to sleep rather than wake up Cath, the kids and Jon's kids who are staying with us. From the garage, I found a screwdriver and was able to open and climb in through a window to make it home.

Maddie and Sooze with pool side Margaritas

PayPal Screwed Me with my Concert Ticket Purchase

I've always thought that P. T. Barnum's "A sucker is born every minute" applied to everyone else. I see myself as pretty savvy to most of the scams on the internet. I've never fallen for the whole "Guy in Ethiopia will send me his $50M inheritance if I give him my bank account information."

Back in April, I found six tickets for Jimmy Buffett on Craig's List and bought them. I e-mailed back and forth with the guy and he seemed credible. He was going to deliver the tickets to me electronicly that he'd received from ticketmaster once he received the funds. I went on PayPal and validted the guy's status and he was a certified PayPaluser for years and there was no notice of any fraud claims against him. I searched PayPal's site and it was plastered all their site and FAQs that they cover you in the event that your transaction goes sour.

Based on that, and my long history of using PayPal, I figured I was covered, so I wasn't overly worried about getting scammed. I sent him $420 via PayPaland he sent me the tickets and all was well. After buying tickets from a scalper at kid rock, I started thinking through the "What if" this guy wasn't honest and in fact sold these tickets to 10 people at the same time (I know: too little, too late). After doing some digging, I found out that these were in fact a scam that this guy had, selling these tickets to multiple people overseas. He went by the name Stephen Hill (PayPal ID scrap1414@hotmail.com and sold tickets via sticket@ymail.com) from overseas.

I called PayPal and they explained to me that in the fine print, they only cover the sale for the first 45 days. The customer service rep explained that I should read the fine print in their end user agreement where they're covered for just about everything and don't actually have to pay for much in terms of fraud. They admitted to me that they're coverage advertisement doesn't point to the fine print of buying tickets prior to the 45 day window. They shared that even though Stephen Hill is selling these tickets to multiple people, they cannot be the court and that they actually allow this kind of fraud to take place in their system. If a significant number of compalints come up, they may do something about it, but otherwise they do nothing. I was on the phone for an hour as they explained that I had no recourse whatsoever and admitted that they do a poor job of explaining the loopholes that crooks use with PayPal.

Hopefully people learn from my pain. Don't buy electronic tickets for concerts from a 3rd party and don't use PayPal for those purchases. Apparently I'm not alone in my angst. I found a blog devoted to stories of PayPal screwing PayPalSucks.com

Kurt Family Dirty Mustache Competition Results

We had our 2nd annual Kurt Family dirty mustache competition on vacation this year. Last year's mustache's pail in comparison to this year's results. Jon, Dan and I were the only real competitors. Kevin claimed he had to shave due to a wedding (A Carson City wedding, which no one shaves at). My Dad started growing a mustache that week. You can see the results three weeks later at the bottom of the post. Jon's wife referred to jon's stache this year as a "Pedo Stache"
Last Year vs. This year:

My entry this year went through a few permutations. I stole the original idea from John Winters and was then told that it was a gotee, not a stache. After a couple of small adjustments, I was announced the winner. From there I took it through a few versions, each looking nastier than the last. My final version ended up looking way too french, the point that I wanted to punch myself when I looked in the mirror.

I finally shaved it, and you can see how happy my wife is, and imagine how happy jon's wife is.

Nick's sister Lisa has repeatedly made reference to my gayness based on my cool pipe that I smoke, have an amazing orange shirt and the ability to grow phenomenal mustaches. Her tribute to me is below:

Here's my Dad's final mustache after three weeks:

Kid Rock Concert at Comerica Park

Cathie and I woke up a couple of weeks ago and decided we'd go see Kid Rock at Comerica Park. He's on the list of people I've really wanted to see for a long time. I've crossed Bob Seger, Roger Waters and Kid Rock off the list. Only group left right now are the Foo Fighters on my list, but I'm sure there will be more...

We ended up getting great seats from a ticket scalper. More than half the seats (entire field) were general admission, which we DIDN'T want, so we got the beats seats there were, 8 rows up from the field.

We sat around a good group of people, people watching for the first couple of hours waiting for the show to start and watching Alice in Chains playing. I was surprised how many songs I knew of theirs. This guy was by far our favorite:

Kid Rock started the with "Don't Stop Believing" by Journey. When it got to "Just a city boy - born and raised in South Detroit" - he came out singing:


It was a truly amazing show. He played a bunch of cover songs through the show, going all over from the different styles: Rolling Stones 'Tumbling Dice', Sly and the Family Stones 'Everyday People', Dukes of Hazard Theme Song, Drift Away by Dobie Gray (with a montage of pictures of his musical heroes that have died over the years), Jackson 5's 'ABC', Cat Scratch Fever and then finished with Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA.

Cathie and I had such a blast together. Part of it was that it was just her and I spending time together, partly that we had such low expectations. There were so many funny things going on around us through the show and people watching that we still laugh about. I love the fact that I'm married to a woman who would go at the last minute to a Kid Rock show and stay on her feet the entire time.

Maddie and Julie at Spring Hill

Cathie picked Maddie up today at Spring Hill camp. She had an amazing
week. Here are her two counselors and her friend Julie that went with her.

Velocity Video

I know it's been almost a month with no pictures from camp. I'm just way behind on my blog postings, so I'll show the video we'd put together. We used a slightly edited version of the song 'Don't Stop Believing', which as been huge in Detroit as a Red Wings theme, and theme to the plight of our state overall. Our pastor, Joe prefaced the video in church explaining the meaning of the song to the kids and to this video.

Baby Bird Rescue

The girls found two birds that had fallen out of their nest in the tree. Cathie helped them look this up online what to do to get them back to their mother. They took a basket, hung it in the tree and amazingly enough, the Momma bird came back and took them back to her nest. Either that, or a cat got them...

The Odd Madelines (aka Mini Me)

Maddie and Maddie were going through some old baby stuff that Cathie was going to sell at a garage sale. They came across this baby carrier backpack and figured they'd give it a try. I was impressed that Maddie Kohne could actually carry my Madeline around in it. Don't you love Maddie's new glasses?

Maddie having fun at Spring Hill Camp

Her cabin group at Spring Hill.


Maddie showing no fear on "The Blob"

The trade-off's of treating ADHD

Interesting article by Penelope on the trade-off's of treating ADHD by Penelope Trunk. entitled, Will Taking Drugs Help Your Career? Maybe you need Adderall?

The article talks about the focus that can be achieved using ADHD drugs, but the down-side in terms of the creative impact:
“Cognitive psychologists have found that there is a trade-off between attentional focus and creativity,” says Martha Farah, director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience. “There is evidence that individuals who are better able to focus on one thing and filter out distractions tend to be less creative.”

I've seen this in my own life as I've started taking med's for ADHD. The upside is that I can get a lot done in a very focused amount of time.

Great Label

Our future Picaso

I can't imagine the dog likes this

Em getting tough

Em is doing Nate's pre-season football workout along side him. He's
encouraging her as she goes, telling her what a great job she's going.

Chris Rays and Borat

Em's new hair cut

Eyebrow Singeing Big Ol Camp Fire

Cath and Nate Kayaking

Winne of the Kurt Family 'Stache Contest

Cathie Chilaxing on vacation with her book

Em and Allie after their cherry pit spitting contest

Mike Koch's smoked meat

Nate and Gabe, Agents 007 and 007

Gabe learning the downside of squirting Dad

Not a bad way to start vacation