Grab Your Gloves and Bats and Join In!

Spring is hitting the diamonds and it's time to start looking at some great baseball players....Yep, it's time for Fantasy Baseball! It would be great to have the folks back from last year in the leauge, and maybe some new faces! If your interested, just contact me or Tom (invisiblebear) at out LJ email addressees and we'll get the link out to you. We're playing in a free no-frills Yahoo league again, and we're playing for glory, not money. It's all about having fun!

Come on everyone Get Wood!



(Well, Kerry Wood might be hurt, but he's still cute)

When a Song Hits All The Right Notes

One year ago tonight My sister, Chris and I were in a concert venue waiting for Barenaked Ladies to come on listening to the opening act. It was a one man band, a guy with a guitar and a ton of different pedals that he was using to increase the range of his sound. He was self effacing, and managing to create a sound bigger than just a small acoustic experience. It sounded good, but I know I was waiting more for BNL to come on. Chris, however, was much more in tune with what this guy was playing.

This was our first exposure to Howie Day.

Chris went out and bought his album within the next few days, and he had a hit at the time, called "Perfect Time of Day" which we thought was funny for having his last name in the title. Not as silly as the band Talk Talk releasing a song of the same name, but there's less you can do when it's your name. The song was a pretty minor hit that came and went onto the Adult Contemporary charts pretty quickly.

Flash-forward a few months and we're in the hot Texas heat waiting for Howie Day to perform at the Austin City Limits Festival. Howie's on a middle stage at 4 o'clock in the afternoon and we're baking. We manage to talk up Howie, and get our little crowd to stick around for most of his set before they move on to whatever bigger, hipper act started elsewhere, but again they were impressed by Howie's one man band act. He fits in that Jon Mayer-ish role of singer-strummer. I'm lead to believe that since Howie's from Maine, he learned to play by himself because their aren't enough other people to build a band with.

Of course, Howie's album has more musicians on it, it's not just him, but it's still a bit wide open, expansive. Knowing how much Chris enjoyed the album, I managed to track down two of Howies older albums and gave them as part of the Christmas gift. Although I only have a few MP3's, I've heard all of the albums as they seem to stay in permanent rotation in Chris' new car with the CD changer.

Back in December, radio slowly started to play one more song from Howie's most recent album. The same one he was touring for a year ago. The song has slowly been climbing the charts and has become a top 10 hit, Day's 1st. I happen to think it's a great song.

The song is called "Collide". It's hard to describe. After hearing Day talk about it once, even he said it's kind of enigmatic. He was asked if it's a love song or a break-up song, and he said he wasn't totally sure. It's one of those songs where you're just looking at the other person in a relationship and you just don't know quite how these things all fell into place. It's interesting.

The reason that the song is so interesting to me is how it makes me thing so much about Chris. Really, it's one that I think of when he's on my mind, and the fact that a whole bunch of the Sirius stations are playing the song right now keeps it playing for me quite often.

Without going into details, for a lot of the last few months my relationship with Chris has gone through a few different moves, sliding this way and that. I was really concerned at a point that things were pretty strained between the two of us. It seemed like this one song would come up at those points, reminding me just what my feelings for him were. (I may discuss these things more in the future, or I may not...who knows) Still, when it comes down to it, even after last weekend, which was great, and I felt we really connected again, which was different from the rough time we had a few weeks back, there was Howie, singing about doubts and yet you overcome such things and find your way.

I think it also rings for a long-distance relationship for some reason. I'm not so sure why. Maybe it's the video.

I think that's the thing, in the moments where I've been unsure, Howie's been there with this song, saying it's alright, people stumble, people don't always know what they're doing in love, but there's always the ability to fix it. I certainly think that's true.

Just to not sound to down, let me tell you, despite the really long days I've been putting in at work this week, I was happier than I've been in months this week. Perhaps it is the perfect time of day.


( Collide Lyrics )