Unfortunately, I’m too busy at the moment to be particularly clever or insightful. However, you have all been clamoring to see pictures of Marisa’s and my trip to the south. So, without further ado, here you go:

• Lexington, KY
• Nashville, TN
• Memphis, TN
• New Orleans, LA

A few of my favs:

• Getting a Daiquiri from the drive-through Daiquiri place in New Orleans.
• Meeting my first alligator.
• Beale Street in Memphis.
• Our campsite in Nashville - about a mile from the Grand Ole Opry.
• Taking silly photos of Marisa: Holding up the pyramid, posing tough, hanging tough with the New Kids on the Block fans, and, Mom, we have big news (just kidding).
• Acting silly, sillier, and silliest at a New Orleans theme park.
• The bayou outside of New Orleans.

One day into our trip and it’s already everything we could have hoped for. It was a day full of southern style experiences starting with a trip to Churchill Downs in Louisville, KY for some horse racing. Marisa was robbed out of at least an $8 payout when the number 3 horse snuck into second place to ruin her $2 5-6 boxed exacta bet. Alas, Qdoba burritos will remain firmly outside of our daily eating budget. Good think I like Taco Bell.

After the disastrous finish to the third race of the day, we piled back into the Subaru Forester and made our way to Lexington, KY so we could have dinner with my cousin Pete and his family. However, there was major business to attend to first: 18 holes of Bible themed mini-golf! The most difficult part about the entire course was selecting which of the 3 championship mini-courses we wanted to play: Old Testament, New Testament, or Miracles. It was a difficult decision but we finally settled upon Miracles, and golly jeepers are we glad we did. My only dissapointment, besides the 10 strokes I took on the “Samson Destroys the Temple” miracle, was that the course ownership got cheap and went with the two for one sale on the “Nile River Turned to Blood” and “Jesus Turns Water into Wine” miracles. Both courses had the same exact “fairway” which consisted of half red and half blue carpet. Fortunately, all of the other miracles were so life like that I did the Christian thing and forgave them for this one transgression.

After some good wholesome fun we decided to change things up and head to my cousin Pete’s house. For those that don’t know, Pete and I are the same age and we grew up together (we live 4 miles apart and attended the same small school system from 1st grade on). The only people I’ve probably spent more time with are my parents and my brother Ben. It had been about 4 or 5 years though since I’ve last seen Pete and it was a blast…literally.

It turns out that Pete has made a connection with a guy that sells fireworks that are illegal in 49 of 50 states. Actually, I’m not even sure they’re legal in Kentucky but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. Within minutes of being there, Pete and his son had taken a diet Coke can and placed what looked like a rather small and harmless triangular “firecracker” on top of it. I use the word “firecracker” very lightly because the appropriate word in this case would be “small bomb”.

So here’s what happened: We’re all standing a few feet away and Pete says, “Ya’ll might want to back up.” As I’ve already mentioned, I’ve known Pete my whole life so I knew something serious was about to happen. I backed up and then hid most of my body behind their sport utility vehicle. Then Pete, with his son standing by jumping and giggling with excitement, lit the firecracker and sprinted out of the way. I stood still and watched as the wick burned. Then…

BOOOOOOOMMMMM!!!!

In the spot where there had once been an empty tin can and a small brown “firecracker” there was nothing. I mean, the entire thing wasn’t just blown to pieces, it had disappeared in a cloud of smoke and fury. In short, it was completely, totally, awesome!

This act was of course followed up with a series of more and more creative destruction. This included blowing up another can with water in it, blowing up a two liter bottle with the carbonated soda still in it, and placing two cardboard boxes, one on top of the other, with a firecracker in between them. One of these ideas was Pete’s, one was mine, and the two box trick has to be chalked up to the creative genius of Pete’s son Joey. What a kid!

Lastly, I have to mention what a great host Terresa was (and please forgive me if I mispelled that). She bought and cooked us some amazing NY Strip and Filet Mignon steaks as well as a whole bunch of grilled vegetables. On top of it all, her, Pete, and the two boys provided Marisa and me with great conversation, endless entertainment, and an amazing and incredible end to the first day of our trip! Thanks to ya’ll!

Monday night I decided to go out with someone to see a comedy show. The comedy was fantastic, the date, mmm…not so much (nice person, but, well, nice). Before the show, we discovered an incredibly fantastic restaurant called Vines on Clark. I won’t discuss it here because I’ve already blogged about it on my cafe/restaurant blog.

Let’s talk about the comedy. It was put on by the iO (improv Olympics) to honor the theater’s founder Del Close 10 years after his death. Okay, somber reason for the show but it was hysterical. If you’re ever in Chicago or you live in Chicago and you’ve never been, do yourself a favor and go check it out. These guys were a riot. One of my favorites was from this guy that hadn’t done improv in 10 years and was an old roomate of Tim Meadows from Saturday Night Live. He told a story of scoring pot for Del Close, some guy from Monte Python (whose name I can’t remember), and Bill Murray. Then making a joke as he handed Bill Murray a joint and a bottle of wine: “Cannonball comin’ at ya.” (That’s a famous Bill Murray line from Caddy Shack for those of you that don’t know.) Bill Murray then turned his back on this guy and shunned him the rest of the evening. The story loses a little something in my retelling, but trust me that it was hysterical.

Then the night ended when they played an old clip from Del Close. I’m assuming it was shortly before he died and it was a great philosophy. I will paraphrase as best I can here but trust me that he was inspirational even if I am not:

“A man jumps from an airplane and does all sorts of crazy acrobatics. Then, a few thousand feet above the ground, he pulls his shoot. It doesn’t open. He pulls the emergency shoot. That doesn’t open either. Seeing the ground rushing at him, he uses all of his years of training and practice to perform the greatest acrobatics of his life. Then, splat, he hits the ground. That man had style. I hope I can find such courage in my own life. After all, the ground is rushing up at us all, and in the end every one of our shoots will fail. So have the tenacity to develop some skill at something and the courage to put it to use your entire life.”

Amen, brother.

As many of you may be aware, my friend Tom and I run a small online company doing mail-in cell phone repairs and accessory sales. Every time we do a repair for someone, I send them a follow-up email a couple of weeks later asking how are service was. Just today I got the following response back from a guy:

I was enormously impressed with your service, organization, and responsiveness. The screen replacement was fast, 100% successful, reasonably priced, and completely “user friendly”. I just wish the Obama administration would give you guys all the bailout money and have you reorganize the economy…

I couldn’t stop laughing for about 10 minutes after reading it. Whether you agree or disagree with the politics of the last line, how random and hysterical is that?

Alright, back to work…

I’d like to say how proud I am of my brother Ben. He was offered and excepted the head coaching position at Janesville Craig yesterday. He emailed to let me know about it but then I heard about it again this morning from a variety of friends. Turns out it was on the Madison news station last night and there was a whole article on him in the paper today:

http://www.madison.com/tct/blogs/prepwork/437261

It was a great article and my personal favorite was the last couple of lines:

“One of the classiest student-athletes that I have had the privilege of covering during my nearly 20 years at the Capital Times, McCormick was a winner on and off the field. Now he will get the opportunity to turn the next generation of student-athletes into winners in the classroom and on the field at Janesville Craig.”

While I’m proud and very happy for Ben, this means more work for me. You see, we McCormicks are a competitive bunch and he is now one step ahead. So my next goal? A Wall Street Journal article about me within the next two years. Agh! That’s going to mean a lot of work.