grandpease grandpease the vault august 2008 Garlic, the Games and God damn Jazzbox Posted Thursday, August 7, 2008 This is what happens when I start to work the same number of hours that poor Tiff does -- no blogs. It’s been two weeks since our last post, and, sadly, there’s not too much to report. We’ve been consumed by work: preparing for the upcoming Olympic Games (Tiff), the upcoming high school sports season (I’m the pseudo preps editor these days), and navigating our ridiculously cumbersome new edit/design system, Jazzbox. I think I’ve pulled out a clump of hair each day since we started on Jazzbox and my headache never seems to go away. We’ve both worked six-day weeks for the past two weeks and have been working a minimum of 10-hour days. It’s just a little worse than normal for Tiff, but a pretty big leap for me and I’m being a baby about it. On the two days that we DID have off this past week, we did manage to have some fun and relax.   We took in the Gilroy Garlic Festival with friends Ashley and Kevin (back on the beam after moving to Alabama). The Festival is a smorgasborg of garlic delights and we had plenty: garlic fries, garlic mushrooms, garlic sausages, garlic steak sandwiches, Stella Artois (no garlic), garlic corn dogs and garlic calamari. Yum...  They also had a lot of really bad bands that people were really into. Gilroy is not a happening place.  Afterward we stopped in for a few hours at Bud Geracie’s house for... more food and a kickass bonfire before meeting the Rook and Kelley for a few drinks and birthday wishes to the newest member of the 30-year-old club.    In the spirit of the Games, which officially begin tomorrow in China but actually began yesterday, here’s a look at Tiff’s kickass Olympics cover and a tribute to the Tommie Smith/John Carlos Human Rights protest at the ’68 Games in Mexico City. The pair were sprinters from San Jose State and a statue on campus captures their most famous moment.    -cmg Ready for the weekend Posted Saturday, August 16, 2008 These days we’re ready for our weekend within the first 10 minutes of our week. The good news, as I write today, is that our weekend begins tomorrow and we’re planning on ... doing nothing. It’s a head-to-the-pool-and-relax fin de semana. We’ve got a lot of things planned in the upcoming month -- trip to L.A. to see Radiohead and visit Berka, SND design conference in Vegas, Lions vs. 49ers in San Francisco and a trip to Michigan for the Wisconsin game and possibly some fall colors in Gaylord -- so we don’t feel too bad about being lazy. We only had one day off together this past weekend, but made the most of it by putting the top down and heading to Carmel for some beach time, burgers and a classic car show. The beach, located directly below Pebble Beach golf club, yielded three brand new Titleists -- so the old course and I are now square.       -cmg
SoCal and football Posted Friday, August 29, 2008 Please forgive me, I’m having trouble writing anything about our incredible trip to Southern California this past weekend. I have football on the brain.  Yes, that’s me. It’s a disease really. Every time I start a sentence detailing Radiohead’s surreal sound and light show at the Hollywood Bowl, I can’t help but wonder whether Michigan’s undersized offensive line will be able to hold up against a seasoned Utah front. How could I possibly write about having drinks with our friend T.J. Berka at a Hermosa Beach bar as the sun was setting through the SoCal haze when all that I can really think about is whether RichRod’s spread offense will be enough to offset starting a walk-on quarterback? I can’t even begin to describe the ridiculosity of the Angels monkey obsession... I’m too wrapped up in thinking about how critical this weekend is for Michigan recruiting. I’ll just have to let the photos/videos tell the story.                  Sorry for the massive download times (and my terrible singing in the background), I couldn’t resist using the higher quality sound and vid for these. Go Blue! -cmg