Reveille is French for Wake Up. Rock On is French for Rock On.

We live near Camp Dodge, a military installation that currently serves as the headquarters of the Iowa National Guard.

Charlotte and I usually leave for school around 7:05. But if it's a clear morning, and we get outside by 7:00, Char likes to stand in the driveway and listen to Camp Dodge play "Reveille."

You can't hear the bugle from inside the house, so it's not bothersome. It's actually fun to catch it. I believe they also play "Taps" at the end of the day, but I've heard that so few times I can't say for sure.

That's not the only music we hear from Camp Dodge. For the past eight years the Iowa National Guard Adjutant General’s summer concert series takes place at the historic Camp Dodge pool. The free concerts are held on Thursdays and the gates opens around 6. 

The lineup includes: 

• May 23: Cloud Ten featuring Heath Alan (classic rock)
• May 30: The Candymakers (team spirit night)
• June 6: Gladys Kravitz (classic car night) 
• June 20: Dirt Renegade 
• June 27: The 34th Army Band’s Sidewinders group will play pop and classic rock (military heritage night; wear red, white and blue)
• July 11: Faculty Lounge (suicide awareness and remembrance night) 
• July 18: Abby Normal (Johnston 50th anniversary celebration) 

This will be the sixth summer for us to go to these concerts, and it is always a good time. We enter at the east gate (look for the tanks!), and both Daphne and I have to show photo ID to get in. There is a huge hill for little kids to run up and down, and bigger kids play Frisbee, bags, and/or toss a football around. If Trostel's is catering, I go for the Graziano Sausage Grinder...

 ...but you can bring in whatever you want to eat or drink.

All of the bands are great, but Sidewinders are especially fun to see at a military base. Where else can you see someone in army boots do the moonwalk?

I Think it's a Good Idea

While we drove home from school yesterday, I told Charlotte that I had entered a contest for the Iowa State Fair.

"What's the contest?"

"It's the Most Embarrassing Dad contest."

"What?" I could see in the rear-view mirror that I had her attention. 

"It's like a talent show, but just for dads who want to embarrass their family."

"You're not serious." Now Charlotte looked concerned.

"Yes, I am serious. And the kid you want to embarrass the most has to sit in the front row. I think I'll sing "Get Back Up Again" from the Trolls soundtrack. You like that one, right?"

I started to sing, loudly, "I really hope I can do it. 'Cause they're all depending on me..."

Char started to choke me by pulling on the back of my shirt collar. "Dad! Stop! Singing! You! Cannot! Sing!"

Honestly, I thought I sounded pretty good. "Charlotte!" I sputtered and laughed, "Stop choking me. I haven't even told you about the outfit Mom made me. It's gonna be really sparkly!

She had released my collar, but she didn't lower her volume, "Daaaad! You Can't!"

I let her off the hook before she got too mad. "I'm only kidding. There isn't an Embarrassing Dad contest at the fair."

"There isn't?"

"No, but if they ever have one, we are so there!" I continued to sing a couple more lyrics before I was shut down again.

"Daaaaad!"

High School Was Not Your Highlight - A Graduation Speech

I don't think that I'll ever be asked to give a high school graduation speech, but if that happens, I think I know what I will want to say...

Before we drove to my high school graduation ceremony, my dad and I were standing in the driveway waiting for Mom to come out of the house. She was inside triple checking that the party supplies and decorations would be ready for our guests and relatives when we returned from the school gym.

Leaning against the car, we both were watching the "Congratulations Senior!" sign lazily bumping against the house. Dad wasn't much of a talker, so he surprised me when he broke the silence.

"Bud, I sure feel sorry for you."

"What for?"

"Well, high school is over. I just feel bad that your best days are behind you."

Back then I took my dad's word as gospel, but I joked that there was no way that going to a tiny school for four years with the same 40 kids was the the best of anything.

Dad countered, "You got to suit up and play sports, you sang in the choir, and you played in the band. You took art and photography. You did all kinds of other things, and that's all over. Now all you have to look forward to is work."

That's a pretty dismal assessment, and looking back now, I suspect Dad was beginning to show some early signs of clinical depression. But I know there are plenty of people who are not depressed and would have agreed with him.

But why? What's makes the high school years so special? Maybe it's because those four years can also be your formative years, and the rocky passage from adolescence to maturity is so memorable. But I don't know that for sure.

What I do know is that the average person living in the United States can expect to live 79 years. Only four of those years are spent in high school. Mathematically, high school is only five percent of your life.

When was the last time you bragged that you had a great five percent?

How did your first marathon go? Well, early on I had 1.3 miles that were awesome!

Did you have a good spring break? Yes! There were eight hours on Tuesday that were really fun.

In his song "Glory Days," Bruce Springsteen sings, "I had a friend was a big baseball player, back in high school", and later, "Well, there's a girl who lives up the block, back in school she could turn all the boys' heads."  Despite its scant four years, high school still seems to be the reference point most often used when people talk about their "glory days."

If you had a great time in high school, I'm happy for you. If you were academically successful, you deserve a pat on your back. If your activity won an award, you earned a I at solo contest, or your team had a winning season, then "Go J-Hawks!"

But please don't smile too broadly, pat yourself too hard, or cheer too loudly. None of those things would have happened without the help, support, and love of the people who are in the stands right now. You are standing on the shoulders of giants - giants who changed your diapers, wiped away your tears, and made sure you remembered that graduation cap tonight.

Sadly, I can assure you that a successful high school career does not guarantee continued success down the road. You'll have to continue to earn it, and that will be even harder because your giants won't always be there to lift you up.

But what about the students who didn't think they were successful at UHS? For them high school wasn't fun. What about the kids who found the last four years painful? Or even a torment? To you, I say I'm sorry, and I thank you for surviving. That five percent of your life is over, and you also have so much to look forward to.

Happily, like past success, past failure doesn't guarantee future failure. When I was a college junior home on winter break, I bumped into my high school art teacher at church. He asked me what I was going to do after college, and I told him I was thinking about a career in education. Without any hesitation or sarcasm, he asked, "Why do the worst students think they can become teachers?"

I didn't know how to answer him, but I've been a teacher for 27 years, and no one has ever asked me what was my high school GPA.

Do you know what they call the person who graduated from medical school at the bottom of the class?

Doctor.

In about 20 minutes, your high school career, for better or worse, will be over. Like it or not, you'll leave here, and your high school reputation will not follow you. You will have the unique opportunity to reinvent yourself. There is so much power in this opportunity. Please do not waste it.

You can do more than simply giving yourself a different name. Greet tomorrow by acting like the person you want to be. Every new person you meet will believe that is the person you are. Pretty soon you will believe it, too.

Tomorrow can work magic.

On my graduation day, I shook my head and told my dad that he was wrong. High school was certainly not going to be the highlight of my life. And I was right. I don't think I've hit my highlight yet. I know you have not hit yours.

Class of 2019, I hope you're excited that there's so much undiscovered territory in your lives. You still have 80% left to explore.

I wish good luck to whomever you become.

Bigger Can Be Better, but Sometimes Less is More

When we moved into our house five years ago, I was bummed that our large, widescreen TV didn't fit in the living room built-in. The house was built in the 2002, and the cabinet was constructed to hold those old tube TVs that are shaped more like a square.

I'd like to tear it out and replace the built-in with something more modern, but after the kitchen remodel project, that won't be in the cards for some time.

Having the golden pine stained a darker color was an easy update. This is a huge improvement.

Now it looks better, but it isn't any bigger. Luckily, modern TVs have a much thinner "frame" surrounding their edge. Now a larger television screen can fit into this same space. A 43" TV may not be huge, but it fills much more of the void.

That leaves me with an extra TV. *rubs hands together* I think it would be fun to have a space in the basement dedicated to retro video gaming. What I really need to do is to sell some pinball machines to make more room. I'd rather try that in the summer when I have more flexibility with my time. I'm going to use this desk for now.

(Wow. When I look at that picture, I can see how messy those cables look... I need to have only one system out at a time.)

I like how our older Vizio displays classic games in their proper 4:3 ratio.

My new TV automatically stretches the image of anything that uses RCA plugs, and it can't be undone. That bothers me.

The Vizio supports S-video, so I bought this cable from eBay for 5 bucks. It's a cheap upgrade for early Nintendo sytems.

For audio, a computer speaker system - two satellites and a subwoofer - works like a sound bar.

The speakers will add to the fun of playing Ridge Racer on the PS1. Once that game is loaded, you can swap the game disc with a music CD and listen to whatever you want while you race. I like Fu Manchu's "California Crossing."

A few days later...

Rats. The problem is that the Vizio is just too big for the desk. I had to push my chair 6 to 7 feet back to comfortably see the entire screen, and that just felt weird. Also, the retro games look so pixelated and washed out on a LCD TV. For the games to look correct, you really do need an old CRT TV. These games were designed to be displayed on tube TVs.

So, I'm using this Panasonic CT-1386 VY monitor instead. The price was right - free! The screen is only 13 inches, but you don't notice that when you play because you can sit so much closer to the desk. (Why is Earl in so many of my pictures?)

The Panasonic was manufactured in 1999, and it also accepts S-video. I can use the new cable with the Super Nintendo, the Nintendo 64 and the GameCube. I have a S-video cable for the PlayStation 1 and 2 on the way. I'll connect other systems using BNC to RCA adapters.

The Panasonic supports only one audio channel, but I am using the monitor just for video. For sound I can connect the console's audio cables directly to the computer speakers using female RCA adapters. The nice part is that a sound bar would block the buttons on the monitor. The satellite speakers don't do that.

The speakers sound pretty good.

The difference between the Vizio and the Panasonic is more than noticeable. Blu-rays look great on the Vizio, but these older games just shine on a tube TV. I wish I could get better pictures to share, but here are two from the opening of Ridge Racer 64. (Of course, there's a dog hair on the screen.)

Once the setup was ready, I brought Char downstairs to see it.

She was disappointed that the big TV was gone, but that changed when I fired up the GameCube. "Oh my gosh! That looks so good." Charlotte jumped out of the chair and ran to the back of the room. "I can read it from way over here! It's so clear!" It was almost time for bed, but I let her play Animal Crossing for five minutes. Char kept commenting how much sharper the patterns and the characters looked. When we turned it off, Char turned to me and said, "Dad, do not get rid of this TV. Promise?"

I promised.

You Can Judge a Record by its Cover

The resurgent popularity of records has left the thrift stores a vinyl wasteland. I've given up looking for records at Goodwill. All you can find is beat-up religious albums from the 60's and the entire Ray Conniff catalog.

I usually stick to what's for sale at ZZZ Records. The vinyl at ZZZ are fairly priced. They also have a listening station so there aren't any surprises when you get home.

But then last week I got surprised at a thrift store. I was walking towards the paperback books when I spotted Boston's first album in my peripheral vision. That stopped me in my tracks. What's that doing there? It actually looks like decent LP. Behind Boston were Amy Winehouse, Lana Del Ray, Steve Earle, Donnie Iris, Prince, and several others. What are all you guys doing here?

Then I spotted these friends hiding in the bin.

I haven't seen a Beatles album in a thrift store in years. Finding Meet the Beatles made me feel like I won the lottery, but I know I didn't. This record is far from mint. The spine is blown out, and the vinyl is visibly scratched. But I cleaned it, and now it sounds pretty good.

The Beatles are still wildly popular. Their records are always worth something. But you have to remember that The Beatles sold A LOT of records.

 I've read that overestimating the value of a Beatles record is a rookie mistake that many customers make when they try to sell their records to a record store.

If you want to know your record's approximate worth, then you need to honestly grade it first.

According to Goldmine magazine, the grades are:

M = Mint: It's perfect in every way - should only be used when describing brand new, unopened records and Mary Poppins. The term "mint" is pretty subjective, and I would stay away from it.
NM or N- = Near Mint: Looks like someone bought a new record, opened it to make sure it was in there, and then left it alone on the shelf. It may have been played once or twice.
VG+ = Very Good Plus: Played but not abused. No visible scratches on the vinyl, and the cover has few imperfections. This is a record you could proudly display and play to entertain friends. A slight warp is okay. This grade is what I shop for when buying records from online dealers.
VG = Very Good: You can see scuffs on the vinyl and hear some noise between songs and during soft moments. The cover might be repaired with tape, and a name could be written on it, and the corners could be bent. Not all of these imperfections will be present.
G+ or G = Good Plus or Good: Playable all the way through, but many of the above imperfections are present and/or multiplied. Cover can be water damaged and the seams split. It might not be able to hold the vinyl. I bought a "Good" 45 online before I understand this grading scale. I was pretty disappointed when I played it.
P or F = Poor or Fair: I'd keep this off the turntable and use it for decoration or arts and crafts.

You can see the scratches and scuffs on Meet the Beatles, and you can hear the pops between the songs. The pops don't overpower the music, so I'm going with VG.

Let's listen to how it sounds between songs.

The front and back of the cover look okay. You can see some ring wear and other typical damage. This isn't a show piece, but it would look cool in a frame.

It's too bad the spine has been slowly cut open over time by the record's sharp edge. This happens when the interior paper sleeve is damaged or lost.

I would grade the cover as G+ because of the split seam. Too bad there isn't a VG-.

Next it's time to check the Discogs website and use the record's serial number to search for this exact release. The upper right corner of the cover lists the serial number T 2047.

Then I look for records listed that have similar grades as my record. The seller wants $10 (plus $4 for shipping.)

Discogs has a helper "i" to explain the grading.

I found several other G+ to VG records for sale. I think I can assume my record is also worth about $10. That's not lottery winnings, but I didn't have a copy of Meet the Beatles before, and now I do. And it only cost me a quarter.

BTW,  if you are a seller and you are going to insult a previous owner, then please spell your insult correctly. Char, can you spot another grammatical error?

I have other Beatles records. This one is an entirely different story.

You Can Judge a Book by its Cover

I heard this story from a co-worker. There was a family from a small, rural town that were visiting the big city of Des Moines. They were at the mall, and before splitting up, their Dad said, "If you see or hear any trouble, get your behind to the book store."

"Why?" asked the son.

"Because," he said sagely, "whoever is causing trouble sure as hell ain't reading books!"

The book stores didn't look quite so safe when I was a kid. That was during the horror boom, and the shelves were lined with paperbacks featuring lurid titles and shocking artwork. I loved it. You knew that covers with holes hid something scary, and they just begged to be opened.

"Gaa!"

When my family went their separate ways at the Empire Mall in Sioux Falls, my mom would always know where to find me later - at the Cover-to-Cover book store. I couldn't see the movie The Final Conflict in theaters, but I remember reading part of the book sitting on the floor of Cover-to-Cover. I read the ending to  Halloween while my mom shopped at Kmart.

My interest in these books was renewed when I read Grady Hendrix's Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of '70s and '80s Horror Fiction. 

"Page through dozens and dozens of amazing book covers featuring well-dressed skeletons, evil dolls, and knife-wielding killer crabs!... Horror author and vintage paperback book collector Grady Hendrix offers killer commentary and witty insight on these trashy thrillers that tried so hard to be the next Exorcist or Rosemary’s Baby."

I already had a few of the titles featured in Paperbacks from Hell.

But I keep an eye out for others when I see used books for sale. I don't know how many I'll read; I just like the artwork. Most cost a buck or less.

Let's open another one.

"Gaa!" again!

My mom, sister, and mother-in-law were visiting last weekend, and they went shopping with Daphne and Charlotte. That gave me some time to shop on my own. I found this at the Salvation Army.

Look at it from this an angle.

I asked Daphne to hold it "sleeveface" style. She's a good sport.

I put Nightlife on a book shelf to see how it looked, but it didn't stay there very long. "Uhhh, Dad? Could you put that book away? That guy is creeping me out."

I guess I won't display Nightlife all year round, but it will look pretty good by the Halloween books in October.

First Communion!

When I was growing up, you had to take two years of confirmation classes before you could participate in communion, but things are different at our Lutheran church now. Charlotte and Daphne completed a communion packet of worksheets and activities together, and then Char was all set.

Grandma Betty and Aunt Michelle made the trip from Sioux Falls to help us celebrate. Grandma Maureen was also there, but she gets her own blog post soon.

Char made it into the bulletin:

The congregation was singing "Lamb of God" when Charlotte received her first communion wafer. That's one of my favorite songs in the liturgy, and I choked up a bit. That surprised me.

Somebody was pretty proud of herself afterwards.

Yes, she's growing up, but she hasn't outgrown the children's sermon...

... or whispering during it.

Nine Weeks Later... Our Kitchen Project

After five years of thinking about it, we finally decided to pull the trigger. We hired Silent Rivers to design and remodel our kitchen.

Having someone else do the work made coming home each night fun. How much did they get done today? What will be different? I tried to stand in the same place each day and take a picture of the progress. 

The kitchen before:

The piano room served as our makeshift kitchen. A toaster oven, a microwave, a hotplate, and a toaster can make a lot of different meals. Daphne approached it as a challenge, and our dinners really didn't change that much. I was surprised how often we ate at home. A Thursday night steak dinner for me was about all we went out for. (While it worked, washing the dishes in the bathroom isn't ideal.)

Here's the first day's progress. I won't comment on every picture, but this change was a bit of a shock to come home to. No going back now.

The kitchen didn't have a ceiling for awhile. To be honest, I got used to the look. I was almost disappointed when they put up the ceiling's drywall. I can see why people like the exposed, industrial look.

The Silent Rivers team kept our old oven hooked up for us for a long as they could, but it didn't get used very often.

Some days I'd come home and think, Huh. I guess they weren't here. Then I'd notice that the cabinets have doors.

Maggie wasn't too happy about being locked in our bedroom each day, but she put up with it. The cats took the construction in stride. 

New floor!

The installation of the counter made it feel like were really going to have an actual kitchen.

New faucets and appliances.

The day the back splash tile was installed was the only time Daphne wasn't excited when she got home. The kitchen didn't look right, and she afraid that the color of tile that we had picked was a mistake.

Then we discovered that the wrong tile had been installed. You could see the relief wash over Daphne when she found out.

The wrong tiles were removed.

Drywall, again.

There! That's better.

Done!

Before:

Nine Weeks Later...

The only member of our family that isn't excited with this project is Charlotte. She wants the old kitchen back. What??

We'll drive Char down to Grandpa's house if she is ever overcome with kitchen nostalgia. She can visit the old cabinets that are now in his garage.