Mike Oren.com

After everything finished up with the class I was teaching, I took off for a week of "vacation" back home in Illinois. I kicked it off with three days at the Lollapalooza music festival in Chicago's Grant Park. I'll be the first to admit that loud, crowded concerts aren't really my scene, but it was a fun experience--I'll be back next year since I managed to snag one of the extremely limited $60 3-day passes (Golden Tickets). The highlight of this year's show for me were The Killers (I was about 20-50 feet from the stage--not sure exactly how far; too close for ear and physical comfort but an interesting experience anyway and The Killers are in my list of favorite bands). My biggest disappointment was missing Silversun Pickups (I was waiting for The Killers to start) and my second biggest disappointment was not being able to get closer to Arctic Monkeys (I could barely hear where I was). The best group I had never heard of before the show was Los Campesinos! (why a UK band chose that name, I don't know...) The group I heard more of then I ever cared to was Care Bears on Fire--little angsty pre(?)-teens (my older brother liked them--not sure why).

After Lollapalooza was over, I spent the week watching my nieces (age 2 and 4)--took them to the zoo (they love the penguins and we went for sushi after--the 4 year old loves sushi and can use chopsticks, but I bought yakatori for the 2 year old and got her a fork). I also took them with to my annual "take Brian to IHOP for his birthday--usually weeks late" thing--he was pretty good with the kids there (I guess that's good since he's a teacher; although he and Kaitlyn are, smartly, waiting a few years before hey have kids of their own). Friday I took my nieces to the park for a few hours then after the 2 year old had her nap, took them outside for water baloons (which were old and defective, so I sprayed them with the hose instead). Needless to say, I ended up as their favorite babysitter, much more than my younger brother (who has been watching them this summer due to an inability to find summer work--he didn't take them off the house property at all).

I did go out in the evenings after my sister got home but nothing much to repot there, most exciting things were an Ethiopian dinner Friday night and two nights at Dave and Busters (thanks to a $50 gift card I won--I still have ~170 credits left to play too; and I cashed in my tickets for an automatic ice cream maker--I'd never buy one but for free it's a nice little prize). Speaking of prizes, I also won (and just received today) a Flip MinoHD video recorder from gradshare.com (a web site where grad students can ask each other questions).

Things I didn't do that I would have liked to do: updating/redesigning my web site (including removing the photo gallery section in favor of information / papers I've written in Sociology), going to a beach, restarting (for the 4th time) mikeoren.blogspot.com (this time with an attempt to write my autobiography--primarily because I spent some time over break reflecting on the people and events that have shaped my course through life). sell my shares in FNM when it was over $1.20 (would have meant doubling my investment of $600 from 1 year ago--would have rebought after the drop I saw coming; this is a long term holding for me, but I'm not opposed to some short term profit when the opportunity appears but I missed the boat could still sell it for some profit but I'm not convinced it will drop low enough from the current price to make it worth the transaction fees, tax, effort, etc), and I didn't bake brownies to send to my friend as a thank you for a fun visit out to her in California.