My daughter Mia graduated from her Early Childhood education program today. Kelly, Ellie and I couldn’t be more proud of her. Check out the video and see how well she walks across the podium.

We’ve made a change at the McIntosh house from bath time to shower time. This video if of the first night we made the switch.

This video goes to show that I did pass on my crazy dance a lot genes…

It is now understood that when daddy plays music the girls get to pick all the songs and I and just the hired DJ.

My favorite part of this clip is seeing Kelly and the girls dance around to I’m just a girl as though it was choreographed.

• Thursday evning we had Mia’s official family birthday celebration. See the video above and the pictures in the photo section of the site.
• Friday evening we had Kelly’s parents and brothers over for the Tschohl version of Mia’s 5th Birthday. She really enjoyed the evening and had fun playing with the cousins.
• Saturday morning we packed up the car and drove to Indiana Beach (2 hr. drive) to meet Grandma McIntosh.There we played and road rides all day. It was good to see Grandma. Lake Shaffer is pretty cool too. It was the first time I’d seen it.
• Sunday was Race Day (the Indy 500). This was our first time being in Indy for the event. Who knew they were going to black out the race on local TV.
• Sunday afternoon we visited the Stump’s for a fun filled afternoon of bounce houses, listening to the race on the radio and playing on the slip and slide. I think there were 15 kids there and 5 families.
• Monday afternoon we all went to Grandma and Grandpa Tschohl’s to visit once again with family and take a ride around the lake with the kids.
• Tuesday, I’m back to work for a relaxing day of building software.

I graduated high school in 1992 and this was the album and sound track for my freshman year in college. I think this gives me a unique perspective to review this new release. I just know there are 36-34 year old people all across the country playing both back to back just like I am right now to compare and contrast, to relive a little of the feeling of what it was like when WE were it, and that rocks!

This album is a prime example of popular music or an individual album becoming the sound track to a period in time. This is not any different than “Blonde on Blonde” by Bob Dylan or “Beggars Banquet” by the Rolling Stones in that respect. This view is shortsighted and wrong in my opinion. This album ( or the original ) belong in the same sentence as the pivotal albums that came generations before it.

So many people often try to filter this time period, the album and the experience down to a simple flannel shirts and the simple grunge scene look. To me that view or representation comes across like an Associated Press (AP) story picked up by you local home town news paper. It’s a cheapened and trivialized view of what the music and the time represented.

To the music:
In general it feels like the producers got more to the core of the songs by exposing more of the vocal track (Eddie) and talented musicianship of the Mike McCready (Lead Guitar). It is enjoyable and often catches your ear if you are familiar with the original.

My favorite improvement is – Deep
My least favorite adaptation was – Alive

Overall I’m thankful that this new collection got me to re listen to the album, both old and new a few times over, but I give it an A for re-marketing and a B for actual musical improvement or embellishment.

I now have to turn off the turn table and put the kids to bed. I’m old.