onfocus

Just got back from a week in Nebraska. We spent a couple of days in a cabin at Mahoney State Park where we did some hiking and saw some good sunsets.



On Friday night we went to Omaha to see Portland's hometown favorite Pink Martini play with the Omaha Symphony. The show was fantastic partly because it was in an ornate old building with great acoustics, The Orpheum.



On Saturday my cousin Lisa got married, and it was a beautiful wedding and reception.



On Sunday we got together with my Dad's side of the family. It's always fun to catch up a bit with everyone and argue about politics.

I spent the week offline for the most part and now everything is bold—email is unread, posts in Bloglines are unread. So I have a lot of catching up to do but it's great to take a break once in a while.

So I'm doing better at cutting back TV now that Hell's Kitchen is over, but I had to tune into Tommy Lee Goes to College last night. The premise of this reality show is that Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee has to go to college for some reason, get into the marching band, live with a roommate, and pass some classes. The fun part is that it all takes place at my alma mater—The University of Nebraska at Lincoln. I wanted to see how UNL looked, and how the producers portrayed the school. I got an email from my Dad after the show (also a UNL alum) and he mentioned he was glad they didn't show cows and barns. Most national TV shows tend to find the one cow somewhere in the Lincoln city limits to let everyone know Nebraska is farm country, while in reality Lincoln is just like other cities its size with running water and everything. The show was typical reality-TV stuff, but I set up a Tivo season pass anyway because of the school connection. Go Big Red!

I just got back from a quick trip to Nebraska, and I posted some photos at Flickr: pb's photos tagged with nebraska. I was complaining last Thursday about 90 degree weather in Oregon, but Oregon doesn't have anything like that kind of heat plus humidity. I knew I'd been spoiled by west coast weather, but I didn't realize how bad until now. I was constantly amazed seeing people playing softball in 100+ degree weather, but then I did that sort of stuff when I lived there. Weather tolerance is relative I guess.