Totally geeking out and testing some things.

Things like this and this. You know, just things.

Now let’s try this: The Brannan Blog

Or this Example

Test

Test

Test

Or even this

Block quote, bitches.

More testing.*

**Testing*

Periodically we buy the girls spiral notebooks to use however they see fit. Most of the time they turn into sources for paper when they want to draw and color. But, as Meghan learns to read and write, hers has taken on a new use: her first diary.

While she was insistent at first that we were not to read her diary, since she’s broadcast every entry to the entire family I feel comfortable sharing some of my favorite entries here. So, with some of her spelling errors,* here they are.

* Unfortunately I can’t do the backwards or misshapen letters.

Dear Diary, Cait kicked me.

Her first, and my favorite, entry. What better use for a diary than to complain about a sibling?

Dear Diary, I wont to go to floota (Florida)

We’re considering a beach vacation sometime in the next year. I think she’s made her vote on destination.

Dear Diary, I have a new ring with lipstic in sid the ring

Dear Diary, Doo you like me

We think this one is especially cute.

Dear Diary, Dade gave me a weird look like this

Below she drew a rather demonic looking picture of me. I did give her a weird look, but I don’t remember growing horns.

Dear Diary, Mom gave me a werd look

The picture of Suzanne just has her with a sad face. No horns.

❖

In recent weeks I’ve covered the state swimming and diving finals, a sectional gymnastics meet,* and a few hoops game here and there. Saturday night, though, I may have covered the perfect game. Save this one for lunch or a coffee break; it will take a while to get through.

* Awful. I forgot from last year how tedious gymnastics meets are because of all the dead time between rotations. For some reason things were exceptionally slow Friday night. There was still a girl on the balance beam at 10:00 pm. The official results were handed to us poor press schleps at 10:25, which gave me less than 20 minutes to put something together. Not great for the girls who worked hard to advance to regionals but got no coverage in the paper because I had no time to fight the crowds and interview them.

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Some bands make it big and stick around forever.

Some bands have one great album and then disappear.

A few are only lucky enough to become one hit wonders.

And then there are the bands that never made it but should have.

The Sheila Divine fits in that last category. They put out a brilliant album, The New Parade, in 1999. A solid follow-up in 2001 failed to push them to the big time and they never became more than a great band that should have made it. They made great, crunching rock centered around Aaron Perrino’s fantastic voice. He was capable of singing sweetly one moment, shrieking like Cobain the next.

This is from the first album.

A few items for your reading pleasure.

The Onion gets in on the Tiger Woods coverage. I have to say, I like their angle more than what I saw on ESPN et al a week ago.

Tiger Announces Return to Sex

Hank, 20 years later. It wasn’t quite Len Bias, but I think most guys* my age remember where they were when they heard.

* And some girls.

Hank Gathers Stirs Memories for His Family

You know when you hear people talk about how the government is deliberately targeting some group with poisons, diseases, etc. and your instant reaction is “Nutjob”? Turns out there is some historical justification for those fears. This is crazy; I had never heard of it before.

The Chemist’s War