Orange Gearle: babies, 'shrooms and music

Spring has sprung. In the month of April and early May there have been over half a dozen babies born to co-workers, friends, or family. Amazing. They are all cuties! Here's a few pics!

In May alone two co-workers have announced that they will bring a new baby into this world within the next nine months. I expect there will be 5-7 more announcements like this AT WORK ALONE over the next 4 months or so. Amazing to me. I guess that's what you get when you work with a bunch of young people. I'm still obsessed with adding at least one to the list...I'm trying my best to just keep it out of my mind. It doesn't really work :-) but mini-obsessions like hunting for mushrooms help!

Seth, Alyssa, Hollyanne and I went mushroom hunting together. Hollyanne found the first one (really two) of the day...and Seth found the first one of his life! The pic above is about 1/2 (maybe 2/3) of our find. Charlie and I will enjoy them tonight! Yum!

Going to shows helps too. For my mom's birthday in March, I got her tickets to the Steve Earle show at The Englert in Iowa City (Show was May 3). We had pretty good seats, and the show wasn't too bad. Charlie and his parents and I had gone just over a month earlier in Madison, and that show was better, but I still enjoyed this one. His wife, Alison Moorer opened for both shows. She has a beautiful voice, but somehow she bores me a little. Not sure why. She did a lot of covers, maybe that's it. She is beautiful, and her voice is pretty amazing...but still. Steve was a bit off in the beginning of the show especially. But I still enjoyed the hell outta him. I liked it when he told us that he's way farther left than either of the Democrats up for election. He's always a bit political, and I like his politics...so that works for me. In Iowa City, (or Madison for that matter) he would have a difficult time finding many to disagree with him. He did a sing along....Steve's Hammer. If I get a chance I'll link the song. My mom enjoyed the concert, and that's really what it was all about. She took the pic to the right of this section...without flash to be polite, so it's a bit blurry. Ditto with the next pic. :-)

Last week, Charlie's parents, Charlie and I went to see Randy Newman in concert. It was amazing!

It was a fundraiser for The Englert in Iowa City. Charlie bought us tickets. He gave me my ticket that weekend before my surgery, the night we got back together. He put it in the card, and said something like, "Here's something to look forward to after everyone's feeling better." He also bought a pair for his parents for Christmas. Anyway, we didn't know it until a few weeks ago, but they were "VIP Tickets". Which basically meant that we would be able to take part in a few pre- and post-show activities. The night was beautiful...perfect spring weather. And everything was timed to perfection. We had supper outside, visited the art galleries -- drank wine -- and then walked across the street to The Englert and took our place in the FRONT ROW! The concert itself was awesome. He played "Short People", which I heard a lot growing up (imagine that). There were also a lot of songs that everyone that knows Randy Newman at all has heard. He also played a couple of other interesting political songs. I enjoyed the concert immensely. But equal to that, I enjoyed watching Charlie watch...and watching his parents watch. After the show, we attended a reception at The Penthouse at Hotel Vetro in Iowa City. Guess who was there????