May Dispatch

I've been slacking in May with regularizing dispatches so this one is a bit of an update before May abruptly turns into June...

Da Job: The semester has ended at Stritch and that has meant lots of program preparation for small groups of students (10-15) who have all been readying themselves for short-term excitement abroad via three-week excursions: Art in Italy, Spanish in Mexico, Culture & History in South Korea and Service Learning in Tanzania. All the groups are out the door except Italy and the institution is rather quiet now that summer vacation has started up. And there is something satisfactory about helping students prepare themselves (in many cases) for their first major travels abroad. Fri. was great driving the van of Tanzania travelers to the coach bus station for the ride to Ohare airport. And now I'm looking fwd to making my office into an inspiring place, getting some much needed systems into place and doing a bit of reseach...

Da Grooves: Middle of May, I managed to catch Eddie Vedder with his signatire bottle of wine in hand at the United Center in Chi-town with the Hoe (Pat Roe) from Mad-town. Excellent seats, great view, we pre-partied with the rest of the fans in the only place (the Billy Goat) within miles of the arena after enduring a downpour that had the pressure of a fire-hydrant erupting. As always Pearl Jam chose some random no-name band to open up, but their no-frills sets rocked out with a couple great encores and lots of the Ten album along with a few new grooves.

Da House: So my doorbell has been ringing more frequently as of late and I go to the door and sometimes no one is there. What the muck?! Last Sat. I wake up at 5:30 am to my doorbell ringing... and after a few minutes of rolling over in la-la-land I hear lots of pounding on the house and yelling... and more doorbells. Poking my head out the window, I realize that the MPD are pounding on the door of the neighboring house and generally making a ruckus! And that's when I made the connection seeing the police punching the doorbell and hearing mine ringing that my doorbell frequency must be the same as the neighbors. Later in the day the washing machine rebelled and bust a belt. Fixing the doorbell was a ten minute job (after telling the MPD to refrain from pushing the bell) Wash Machine took a few days for the fix.

Da People News: Claude is gonne be MCP in Bahrain. Kelly is doing the classic American-French wedding sometime in 06. Oliver & Nina were just in NYC interupting their nine-month around-the-world gig for interviews. Great stuff, they will be teaching and getting shot at in NYC starting in August. And I just heard they both kicked Digs out of his place in Shanghai after resuming their worldly travels. Sara (SIT) also dropped in for a Sat. from Mad-town to visit and chat about solving the world's problems through Intl Education...

Da Weekend: This weekend was a three-dayer given the National Memorial Holiday on Monday. Found myself Sat. aftenoon in the Nomad to watch the France-Mexico friendly game. World Cup is 11 days out!!! And I'm naturally in the process of converting my garage to a futball arena and in the market for a good grafiti artist to get the fans up on the wall before June 9th.

Within five minutes of being at the Nomad, the guy next to me is asking the waitress if she knows anyone who wants tickets for Milwaukee's own Violent Femmes for the evening debut of the newly-remodeled Miller Oasis stage at the Milwaukee Summerfest grounds. Hell-yeah! The Miller Oasis Stage has been rebuilt on a site facing east from under the Hoan Bridge and will has almost double the seating capacity of the old stage. New landscaping and improved sight lines contribute to the improvements.

Next to surprise-directing Kazu and Hisako (SIT) through downtown construction (Kazu is on his way cross-country from Seattle to Brattleboro and Hisako is wrapping up nearly a year internship in the Intl Programs Office at Beloit College in Wi.) and finally meeting Telemaco (Milwaukee-Madison trainee/travel-audit-stud at Johnson Controls) and finding dinner at the Greek place on Brady st. I managed to get to the Lakefront in time for the opener Ben Folds Five.

Miller stage is looking nice with a lot of VIP spaces (Miller Corporate) and a couple of big screens in case you are standing on the last picnic table this summer. Milwaukee's own Femmes played a great gig to the pre-summerfest crowd and my surprise of the night was an approx. eight piece horn section on stage for a few grooves with Dale Bigus (trumpet player my highschool jazz teacher!)

Some traditional sheepshead card gaming with the family in New Berlin the other day and the first aerobie session on Bradford beach today with Kevin, Amanda (is in town) and Justin (Red) - overnite beardless and 10 years younger - whilest observing the MPD and local television-news scene unfold.

So that about does the May Dispatch...

Da Next Weeks: hoping to meet up with Claude and BG at some point in the near future...

and oh yeah, my cousin Barry is getting married soon (destination wedding) in Maui, so I put ten days on the calendar for vacation on the West Shore of the island and am excitingly pouring over Lonely Planet and an extensive map of the the Hawaiian Islands trying to figure out the game plan as the family will be enjoying some quality time together in the Pacific. Need to find a snorkel and some fins!

cheers!
-Milwaukee Area Dude (M.A.D.)