About Today...

April 22, 2014

On Tuesday the 15th of April, we all saw my post last week about the Blood Moon and the full moon occurring in the wee hours of the morning. Later that morning, my mother had the unfortunate incident of slipping on some ice in the parking garage at work and ended up dislocating her shoulder! Ouch!! She is doing alright now and enjoys the comfort of a sling.

On Wednesday April 16, 2014 I attended The National Concert at the Chicago Theater. John and I headed out from the burbs around 4 and drove towards the heart of the city. After arriving, we were waiting for Rachel to get home from work, just hanging outside the front of her apartment, when her roommate Mary walked out the door, thus letting us in. What a pleasant surprise! We started to pregame and did so by watching a National Concert from Sydney, Australia.

We jumped on the L and headed to the city, arriving and meeting up with John's friend.

The theater was absolutely beautiful, and so was the opening band Daughter, not to be confused with Daughtry.

They played a pretty short set, but they did a lovely job. My favorite song by them was Youth, check it out.

We picked up couple of PBR beers to drink during the concert, only $6 a drink, not too bad! The National took the stage and our attention was on them for the rest of the night. They played an incredibly, beautiful show, and did everything perfectly, except play my favorite song, About Today... This being very similar to when I saw Deer Tick and they played everythign except my favorite song Mange. The set list was absolutely phenominal besides their minute mistake to play Wasp Nest instead of About Today, but I will live on. Check out my favorite song About Today, and the whole set list from the night!

A couple of shots from the concert. What a stunning performance! Amazing! It really turned Rachel & I into bigger fans as well. The music is so relaxing and beautiful. Love it.

After the concert, we were feeling pretty hungry since we had not eaten dinner, so we headed over to McDonald's. This time getting barbecue sauce for good reason, the 20 nugs we picked up. Tasty

Thursday morning I took the L to the train and then the train from Union out to my job. Worked the day and the next day Friday, nothing too exciting happening. Since this lack of entertainment I will now give you 2 lists of movies that are supposedly good, but not popular, I have seen a handful, such as Moon, Into the Wild, Lucky Number Slevin, & The Way of the Gun so I can confirm for those!

CLICK to VIEW list ONE

CLICK to VIEW list TWO

Nothing really happened on Friday, except I made my team run their butts off and do a bunch of pushups/planks/abs for consistently using foul language and as Will Smith did in the Fresh Prince, causing trouble in the neighborhood. Let's just say they all have a better handle on what is expected now, and I instituted a "no swearing" policy.

I give you a lovely video filmed using a drone, something I am considering purchasing in order to make aerial videos. Pretty phenomenal.

Any of my editor friends, I don't think I have any, will appreciate this video. Great look at an editors life & feelings.

Saturday the 19th of April, 2014 marks Rachel's 24th birthday. I started the day off by coaching my team to a 16-0 win over a new team with a mascot of Penguins. The mascot was awesome, the team, ehh they were new let's just say. Afterwards I headed over to Aurora and filmed AU stomp on Hanover 29-5. I got there near the end of the first and it was 7-1. The division in the D3 lacrosse is crazy insane. The talent pool is so spread and wide with over 200 teams now. Video coming next week.

Rachel was busy in the morning doing girl things with her mom, but then I met up with her at her house around 5pm. We watched the Blackhawks blow game 2 of the playoffs against the Blues (gave up a goal in the last 6 seconds to have it tied), and my sister was at the game! Then we watched a variety of TV shows and had a delicious steak dinner that her dad cooked up. We also had some succulent oreo ice cream cake. Yum.

We both were pretty tired from our long days and had to wake up for 7 AM mass the next day, so we called it an early night.

Sunday, April 20th was finally here. The best holiday around, 4/20, not be overshadowed by Easter! It started off with some 7AM mass (aka Church) with Rachel and her family. Afterwards we went back to their house and almost started the house on fire by putting a cinnamon sugar bagel in the toaster. The sugar caught on fire and produced some smoke and flames, but we were able to put it out. No BIGGIE!

In celebration of 4/20. Jcubed's oven is always on 420. Always

I then drove home and then headed to my Grandma's for Easter as usual. Easter was full of great food and great times with the family. Check out this tasty sundae I made for dessert, not to mention baby Sophia in the background! Who now walks around like a boss. Emma and I were basically twins.

Sunday Evening and monday morning I watched 2 Stanley Kubrick films, Paths of Glory & Lolita. Lolita was a very interesting film that documents a man who falls in love with his 13 year old step daughter. Weird!

You know what else is weird, and kind of funny...Led Zeppelin album gets terrible reviews in the Rolling Stone magazine when they first came out.

Have you ever heard of the Loudness War? Very true and interesting concept how "re-issued" music and digital audio files are ruined when the audio levels are raised too high. Check it out because it is so true!

The last thing I have for you is this gallery of a baby baboon and lioness that become friends. Got to love the wild.

That is all for the past week. Headed to Carmel this weekend and have another Deer Tick show on the schedule. Get pumped.

We Out.

Josh

Blood Moon

April 15, 2014

To start this April 15 post on tax day of 2014, as well as the full blood moon of April, I bring you a couple of anniversaries to remember.

Ahh, It's time to relax....On April 8th, 1994, The Offspring released their album Smash. One of my favorite albums from childhood just turned 20 years old. Wow, how the time goes by. It brings back many great memories such as playing in John's basement with John, Danny, & Pat. As well as Danny & I listening to this cd in our room, and putting track #3, Bad Habit, on super low, so our parents could not hear the famous words Stupid, Dumb$@#t, GodD@^n, Mother F#$&er.

Read this Rolling Stones article about The Offspring & their hit albums

The one year anniversary to my Zamboni Ride at the Blackhawks game on April 4, 2013 was the week prior as well. You can watch my whole experience above! Kinda long, but worth the watch if you are interested in how my life on the zamboni went.

This past week was full of lacrosse and a super productive week as far as videos and video editing goes for me. To top it off, we had the Full Blood Moon last night. Play the awesome song Blood Moon by Deer Tick to get in the mood and continue reading!

On Wednesday the 9th of April, I cut up some onion, in the most creative way I could, and then grilled it up on the stove top. After I cooked some chicken, and cut it up, mixed it with the onion and added some rice. I make some creative meals, usually involving me putting everything together in a bowl. After work, I headed to practice with my team that day, another indoor practice because the fields are too wet to use still, as well as our last practice before 2 games later on that weekend.

Wednesday night and into Thursday began my mass editing binge. I really pumped out some quality lacrosse vids this past week. Two quick game clips to advertise 1223 training are underneath this text, the rest will come later in the post. On Thursday morning I was fortunate enough to be able to go to the dentist where I was told that more gold is coming my way. Hooray for teeth and great dentists in the past.

Mother and I cooked up a tasty stir fry dinner together, which was quite delectable.

Thursday evening I went and taped the alma mater NV play NN at North. Caught an absolute beautiful sunset before the game started. I also found out I had left on my camera mic, so the batteries were dead. Cruz, who I had met up with at the game, and I headed over to Office Max to pick up a couple of 9 volts. 10 bucks for two 9 volts, batteries are expensive. The game was pretty rough to watch, but then I saw one of the wildest endings to a lacrosse game I have ever seen. A last second buzzer beater from 28 yards out. Crazy.

Check out the ending here.

I then submitted the game to LaxAllStars and was fortunate enough to be featured in an article where a similar goal happened in a game in Utah on the same night. Check out the article here. Yay publicity.

Here are a handful of other lacrosse videos I finished this past week. 2 lacrosse games and a long overdue Chesty Cam video from the Big Freeze with the Naperville Apaches.

I also finally had time to put together this little highlight video from an event at work about 3 months ago. Better late than never?

Friday April 11th was the date of my team party for lacrosse, but before I could get there, I had an encounter with an old scruffy dog. I came home from work and this woman was parked outside my house and began to approach my car. I walked over to her and she explained how she had found this pup walking down the sidewalk right in front of our house. It was walking slow and seemed to be old, so it must be someone close by. I attempted to pin point whose dog it was, but really had no idea, we tried a few houses close by, but no such luck. I then (somewhat regrettably) asked if she had things to do. She of course said yes and asked if I could take the dog, lucky me. I didn't really have anything going on until my party, so decided to set up camp with the dog down by the sidewalk, hoping the owners would come looking. After about an hour of talking to parents and neighborhood kids coming home from school, the owner finally came to claim his prize. I would later find out that this dog was 14, partially deaf, and partially blind... no wonder it didn't do anything I told it to do & seemed dead at one point. I also discovered that dogs really are a chick magnet, in my case, it was girls between the ages of 7-12 and we will say 35-50. Not ideal, but we'll take it.

After the dog incident, I had a fun team party which involved back-flips on a trampoline, beers, pizza, ping-pong & some xbox. I was sent home with plenty of goodies like usual, love my team mom! After that party, Brian picked me up and we headed over to Yorkville to hangout with Adam and Brandy at about 10:30p and stayed there until 2a. Just did some catching up and talking around the bonfire. We headed back, picked up my car and I was asleep right at 3am.

A great start to the weekend in which Rachel was vacationing in Florida with Sarah, lucky girls!

On Saturday, my Mom, Dad, & I were unsuccessful in attempting to win some jewelry out in Orland Park, but we enjoyed free subs, free desserts, & free ring boxes with fake little plastic rings. Afterwards we headed over to my Aunt & Uncles to have a barbecue. On the way we stopped at Walgreens and I was blessed to find a bag of all Lemon flavored Jolly Ranchers, the flavor they have since taken out and replaced with blue raspberry, heaven!

At my Aunt and Uncles we had some grilled barbecue chicken, grilled Italian sausage, strawberries, jello, and I had some Sam Adam's Boston Lagers. All of it was so delicious, and the dog, Maggie kept trying to get some. What a beautiful dog!

Sunday April 13th marked the beginning of the Fox Valley season for my 8th grade team. Despite stormy weather, causing a 30 minute delay just two minutes in to the game, we were able to finish both games and came out with 2 victories, 15 - 9 and 9 - 0. Proud of my team playing hard in the rain and wind at Rachel's high school alma mater. Go knights?!

After the game, I stopped at Burrito Loco and picked up a coaching burrito for the two big wins. Celebrating alone, stuffing my face with a burrito, like a true champion.

That night I put in the movie the Conjuring which I really have trouble saying aloud, but is me having trouble to read anything new? The movie was actually an awesome scary movie, it gave me chills for almost the whole thing and was spooky as hell. Great movie, probably not the best to watch at 1 am right before I sleep, but I watched the whole thing and enjoyed it. The thought of possessions and hauntings is something I really am interested in, but that is for a later time.

Monday came, to perhaps give us the last snowfall of the year? I guess we shall see with that and the glorious Full Blood Moon was here! Usually known as a Full Pink Moon, but called the Blood Moon on this date because a lunar eclipse was to occur. A lunar eclipse is when the Earth is in alignment between the Sun and the Moon, so it casts a shadow on the moon, hence the eclipse. April 15, 2014 what a great day in history. I stayed up and took pictures from about 12:50am until 4am. Sometimes heading back inside because it was a bit chilly outside and I wanted to warm up as the full lunar eclipse slowly took over the moon. Finally around 2am if I remember correctly, the moon began to take on the orange/red hint, also known as the Blood Moon. I took a ton of pictures and some came out decent. I am looking into buying a new lens, and really should have considered purchasing a telephoto before this occurrence, but hopefully this occurs again and I will have the lens and more photography knowledge by then!

I hope you enjoyed this post and hope you were able to enjoy the Full Blood Moon, if not then you were able to enjoy my photos of it. I am looking forward to this week coming up which include a National Concert, as well as Rachel's Birthday!

See you next tuesday.

Josh

Flying Solo, Together

April 8, 2014

Woo. April is here. Bring on the rain showers. Another fantastic week in the books, or I guess in the movies since I seem to watch way more movies than reading of books. Slow reading problems.

In case you missed it. Here are two videos I finished last Tuesday. One a little dancing with Rachel, Squid, & my cousins. The other a lax highlight.

Wednesday April 2nd I had a solid, early day of work, running some spring break camps that started at 7am. Later that evening I headed over to BenU and hoped on a bus with them and headed to Elmhurst for an away game under the lights. Filming the game went well, although entering the fourth quarter the heavens began to drizzle some rain drops down on us, luckily I brought an umbrella to protect my camera. I am about halfway through the editing process, hopefully the highlight will be out by Thursday.

After the game, which BenU pulled out, we headed to Chipotle for a team dinner, luckily for me, the camera man was included in this sweet deal. I picked up my usual, steak burrito, black beans, brown rice, corn salsa, mild salsa, a dash of sour cream & lettuce. Deliciousness, especially after having such a long day. But the greateness did not end there... When we were leaving, Chipotle gave us all free chips since they had about 100 extra bags and were just going to throw them out. So I picked up two free bags and ate on the way home & to Rachel's advice, saved the other one for the next day. I crawled into bed and turned on The Fast & the Furious, Paul Walker's finest film. Day over.

Thursday the 3rd of April was a busy day of editing videos, including the Trine BenU game seen above, a little chest camera action from a tournament in December, as well as the game I had filmed the previous night. I took a break about midday to go get my oil changed. I make it a habit to walk over to Disc Replay and browse for any movies I may need while I wait for my oil to be changed. I picked up Airplane & the original & only good Saw movie. You can see my entire movie collection by click here! For an afternoon snack, aka my lunch, I used my brilliant mind and created a full tray of nachos, using the Chipotle chips from last night. I topped them with some cheddar cheese, cut up some steak and layered it across the top and put it in the over at 420 degrees, nah only like 300. While this was cooking in the oven, I brewed up some mexican rice and completed my nachos by dumping the rice over the nachos. Mmm, I am quite the chef.

Friday, the start to the weekend! I headed down to Chicago around 4pm. Once arrived, I met Rachel at the train and we walked over to the bar Benchmark for spinach artichoke dip & a couple of drinks. I had a strongbow cider, tasted like apple juice. Oh and I was also wearing black swishy pants, so fancy, but hey can't help my work attire. On our walk back to Rachel's place we stopped at a liquor store and picked up two bottles of wine, one being "Flying Solo". Funny thing about it is, as Rachel put it, we were "flying solo, together!" Once we got back we started to cook up dinner. We made a tasty talapia, another fish filled with cheese, asparagus, & rice dish, not too bad! I had picked up a redbox earlier that day, so we put on American Hustle. I thought the movie was pretty good, but lacked something to make it a great movie. Or I just need to watch it again to really appreciate it, I'm not sure! We threw on a couple episodes of Workaholics, but somehow before the second one even ended, I was asleep on the couch to the right & Rachel was asleep on the couch we started on. Party animals!

On Saturday morning, I drove back to Lisle to film BenU play Augustana. I picked up some Jewel chicken on the way for lunch. It was a beautiful day out, so filming was much more enjoyable as I didn't freeze! I'll be editing the game this week and hopefully have it done by next week. I headed back to the city and arrived back at Rachel's, who was busy working out while I was gone! We watched a few episodes of Breaking Bad before her brothers came over. Then around 6:30 we headed to a local bar to grab some food, but Brian and Tori were going to be coming over around 7, so I left early and picked up some Jimmy Johns for dinner instead. Club Lulu #16, classic. All the friends came back shortly after, Rachel so kindly brought me 3/4 of the burger she did not eat, so I ate that too! Ahh how am I not super fat? Grant came over later as well and then we all played Cards Against Humanity. Had a drink called Old Brown Dog Ale & thought of Andy Mewbs and the real brown dog, as well as our trip to Georgia back in 2008 (pics below).

Brian, Grant, & I stayed for a few more drinks while everyone else headed out. We then met them out a little later a bar down the street. Rachel & I took off for home, but of course, had to pick up some McDonalds that was conveniently on the way home. Here is how the order went:

Josh, "Yes, can we have 2 McDoubles & 2 McChickens?"
Guy, "Is that all?"
Rachel, "And one barbecue sauce please!"
Josh, "Ok I guess".

And that is how Saturday night ended.

Chilling after John got his teeth knocked out (Story for another day)

Swamp Guinea! Where everything is deep fried!

Sunday

Frozen Jack's pizza to start it off while watching some more of season 3 Breaking Bad. I did a little budgeting in my preparation to potentially move out of the parent's house as well. Then I jogged a mile over to Grant's place in Lincoln Park and played some ping pong. I'm a little rusty. Had a hamburger from some polish place maybe? Wasn't sure of the language, but the burger was delicious. I then jogged back to Rachel's place. I need to start working out...

Rachel and I then walked over to the Lincoln Park Zoo. Many of the animals were still inside, but a handful of them were out and looking oh so happy, syke! Zoos are pretty sad places when you are older and understand what is going on as the animals walk in circles, imprisoned and drugged out of their minds.

We got back from the zoo and cooked up some pasta with italian sausage & veggies. We topped it off with a balsamic vinaigrette sauce. Just love cooking up meals with Rach! So fun and so tasty!

As the night was closing, we wanted to watch a movie, but also had a craving for ice cream. We walked over to Walgreen's and picked up a pint of Ben & Jerry's Half Baked. As we also walked we pondered how crazy it is how walking at 9pm in the city of Chicago seems so much more dangerous than out in the suburbs. It is very interesting how the darkness and night can create such an eerie mood.

As we settled down on the couch with our Half Baked ice cream, we loaded up the movie Turbo. A film about a snail who has always wanted to race and go fast. He ends up being magically induced with some serious speed and then ends up becoming a professional race car driver. I won't ruin the movie for you all, but let's just say it is top notch, provided many laughs, and is even suitable for the kids!

Oh, speaking of kids. These are two hilarious texts I got from my sister about things my cousins Emma & Anna said while at the Art Museum. So funny.