Maybe I should grow my mullet again

Growing up in the 80's, I've always been a fan of the hair bands. I spent the high school and college years listening to Ratt, Motley Crue, Bon Jovi, Faster Pussycat, Cinderella, Slaughter, etc. And of course, I'll always have a special place in my heart for Poison since I met a girl during a college spring break because of one of their songs. She and I meant a lot to each other for the week that we were together ... hang on, I think I'm tearing up.

Ok, I'm better. Anyway, several weeks ago, I was out with some friends, and one of them (Damon) mentioned an upcoming concert that he was thinking of attending. I was the only one in the group proud enough to admit that I would be willing to go, for I had no shame, as I have demonstrated on many occasions. Plans were made, and tickets were later purchased.

We arrived at the concert and made our way to our seats in the nosebleed section. The opening act, Dokken, was already rockin' the house. You heard me ... Dokken! They played all the favorites (well, the ones I knew) and sounded good, but I can't comment on how they looked, since we were so far up.

After they finished their set, Damon and I snuck down to some floor-level seats, getting as close to the stage as we could. Finally, the second band, Whitesnake, kicked off their set. Again, they sang the "classics" which sounded great. David Coverdale still had the range, although he didn't looked like he had aged well. I noticed he was wearing baggy jeans instead of the traditional spandex. He did have the best line of the night though when he introduced a song with: "Here's another old one for you ... what am I saying? They're all old!"

And finally, the evening was capped off with a rousing performance by the headliners, the Scorpions. Most of the principle players were the same as during their heyday, with the only new people being the bass player and the drummer. The drummer rocked, by the way, during his obligatory extended solo. They finished their set, and encored with Winds of Change, Still Loving You, and Rock You Like a Hurricane.

My brother Ron and I had the Scorpions World Wide Live CD back in 1985, which was recorded live in San Diego. I noticed something similar between that concert and this one: for the most part, the only banter from the lead singer that I could understand was when he would say the name of the town. "Blah, blah, mumble, mumble, Austin, Texas!" I hope he wasn't saying anything important.

Damon took a few pictures during the concert, and I've included the links to a couple of them that I placed on my website. See if you can guess which one of us is wearing a wig.

• http://donyoung.us/images/scorpions.jpg
• http://donyoung.us/images/don_damon.jpg

Charity begins at home

I'm not the best of people. I've done SOME good things in my life, but I've done plenty of not-so-good things, too. I rarely (if ever) give money to street corner people because I think most of them are scam artists. I don't give to phone solicitors because I don't like being rushed into decisions and because I don't trust them. Sometimes, I can be slightly cynical. Slightly. :)

I've had the same sectional sofa for 12 years: two pieces, one being a queen-size sleeper. It's mostly a beige color with a pastel print. My brother Ron and I bought it a few months after we graduated college and moved to Dallas to work at IBM. When I was transferred to Austin, I got to bring it with me. It's followed me through several moves, it's had food spilled on it multiple times (no stains though), it's been slept on many times (a lot of those by me), it's helped me watch several hours of TV, and it has survived several evil cats. (It has the claw marks to prove it!) The couch has served me well.

After buying a new house, I bought some new furniture to go with it. The old sectional was just too big for my living room, and I wanted to go with some different colors. When the new couch arrived, the old one was stored in the garage, with a lot of boxes on top of it. However, I needed some room in the garage, so it was time to give the old one to charity.

I called the Salvation Army to come pick it up, since I don't have a truck to haul it around in. They gave me a nice four hour time window Saturday morning to sit around and wait, and they eventually showed up. The driver looks at the two pieces and within a few seconds, he says, "We can't accept these, they have claw marks." And I'm thinking, "No sh!t Sherlock, I've owned cats. Hello ... it's free!" It's not like they're not going to make a profit on the thing.

So apparently, the Salvation Army has an image to maintain, and my couch just doesn't cut the mustard. The couch worked for me, it could hold several adults, and it didn't stink (as far as I know). Maybe my furniture standards are lower than I thought. Oh well, I'll just give it to a battered woman's shelter or some other charity. I tried to do one nice thing this weekend. Maybe in a couple of years, I'll try to do another one. :)

Fourth of July

At the request of my friend Terri, I just got back from spending the Fourth with her and her family in Lubbock. Of course, most of you are probably wondering why anyone would want to spend the Fourth in Lubbock. Surprisingly, when I was there a couple of years ago, they had the best fireworks show I'd ever seen (and I've seen quite a few), so I had no problem with going again. I had planned on coming into town on Thurdsay, but a couple of Terri's daughters played the guilt card until I relented and drove in Wednesday (the 3rd) after work, so I was also in town for the parade Thursday morning. Terri's husband Tim was trying out his new digital camera and took lots of pictures, and I put a small subset of them on the website at:

http://donyoung.us/id2002/

Here's a couple of notes about Lubbock parades:

1. You pretty much just have to sign up in order to be in the parade. You don't really have to have an extravagant float. Heck, you don't even have to have ANY kind of float.
2. In Lubbock parades, you're going to see a lot of horses. And due to the potential messes that might occur, they have several street sweepers spaced throughout the parade. And they're smart enough not to put a marching band right after a set of horses, unlike some of the parades I was in growing up.

Of course, I do have one story to tell. On one of the evenings, Terri's friend Corrie was over with her 3 kids, so we played a game of Pictionary, kids included. Tim, Corrie's two sons, and I were on one of the teams. Courtland (the 6 year old) wanted a turn at drawing, but we were a little concerned that he wouldn't know the definitions of the clues. Well, in the course of trying to explain that to him, Tim accidentally upset Courtland and made him cry. Yes, Tim did eventually smooth things over with him, but not until after the game was over and we had suffered a humiliating defeat to a team of girls. We never could get Courtland off of the couch where he was pouting and rejoin the game.

I know, it doesn't seem like an upbeat story, but I have a couple of reasons for telling it: 1) it's nice for me to be able to tell a story about an adult making a kid cry in which I'm not the adult in question, and 2) Courtland provided my favorite sound bite from the weekend while he was on the couch. His mother was trying to convince him to play some more, and she mentioned that he seemed to be having fun earlier, so why not give it one more shot. Courtland replied that he was having fun, until "TIM RUINED IT ALL!" Again, I'm glad it wasn't me messing up this time.

The Chaperone

This past weekend, my friend Terri invited me to Lubbock to attend the birthday party and slumber party for her two oldest daughters, Taylen and Teagan. Here's a picture of Taylen holding up the "diamond-like" earrings I got her for her birthday:

http://donyoung.us/images/tntbday4.jpg

Since I stayed at their house and helped chaperone the slumber party (no, really!), I was there for the entire shindig. Here are a few highlights:

1. The party was attended by approximately 15 little girls (7-9 year olds). They can make a lot of noise, most of it being classified in the "squealing" category.
2. If you were a fan of N*Stink ... uh, I mean N*Sync ... you wouldn't be after hearing the same CD several dozen times during the evening. Luckily, I convinced them to turn it off by threatening to dance whenever it was on. Spastic dancing by adults tends to frighten small children.
3. In the picture above, Ashley is the little blond girl sitting on the floor. At one point in the evening, she told me she thought I was handsome. She immediately became my favorite.
4. Also in the picture above, Kimberly is the little brunette girl sitting on the table. After a fun-filled night of brownies, strawberry cupcakes, indoor hide-n-seek in the dark, singing, running around, lots and lots of squealing, and (in Kimberly's case) having your face jumped on by one of the cats while sleeping, Kimberly's little body could no longer contain her excitement, and she threw up. Multiple times. Not being familiar with the house, she didn't make it to the bathroom for the first batch and left her deposit in the hallway. The rest of it was in the bathroom, although she didn't always hit the toilet. :) Since Terri was occupied with consoling Kimberly and cleaning up the bathroom and her husband Tim was conveniently asleep, I got to clean up the hallway mess. And due to the aforementioned strawberry cupcakes, her vomit was pink. Let me just say this: if any of you invite me to a party any time soon, I'm not cleaning up any messes.

Don has a girlfriend!

Stop the presses! Although many of you have theorized that it would be difficult --- if not impossible --- for me to find another girlfriend, what with these personality and appearance "issues" that I have, it seems that hell really has frozen over. Last Friday night, I went to a party thrown by my lovely coworker Holly and her not-as-lovely husband Will. (No, I don't know how I managed to get invited.) One of their relatives was in attendance at this party, and we really hit it off. It's amazing what can happen when you find someone who has the same level of intellect and wit as you, someone who enjoys the same type of humor as you, someone who laughs at your jokes, someone whose maturity level doesn't exceed yours too much, and someone who doesn't think you're a dork ... at least not yet!

Luckily, Holly was able to capture Sterling and me in this lovely photo:

http://donyoung.us/images/sterling.jpg

I am so evil! :)


NOTE: If you're wondering why we look so unkempt, we had just finished jumping on the trampoline.