The Great Procrastinator does some catching up

This is my last day of my spring break vacation, so naturally I put off writing in this blog until the last hour of said last day. Such is the life of a habitual procrastinator.

We went to Chicago and were there from last Sunday until late Wednesday afternoon. We did most of your typical touristy things that families with kids tend to do: Millenium Park (on an unseasonably warm Sunday afternoon), a long Monday spent at the Art Institute and then a few minutes at the top of the Sears (aka Willis) Tower, a stroll through Navy Pier with lunch at the Billy Goat Tavern (or what passes as the Billy Goat Tavern), and finally a brief shopping excursion on the Magnificent Mile, where I felt completely out of place at Nordstrom's, but picked up some Cubs swag at the Lids store. Finally, it was a long train ride back home in the cold, dark Midwestern drizzle.

I had the opportunity to decompress and relax a bit from Thursday until today. I watched the Tigers' home opener on TV Friday, and have actually enjoyed quite a bit of early season baseball. The MLB Network features different teams playing each day, so I've seen Hunter Pence hit a dramatic grand slam for the Giants, the Blue Jays stumble against the Red Sox, and the Mets take on the Phillies today in a sun-drenched (but probably chilly) Flushing, NY.

I'm currently trying to read three books simultaneously, something I almost always fail at. I picked up Tim Wendel's Summer of '68 on remainder at Schuler Books & Music about a week and a half ago. I'm enjoying it immensely.

I'm also immersed in Bob Mehr's enormous and thoroughly researched book about The Replacements, Trouble Boys. He deserves a tremendous amount of credit for the digging he did, and for avoiding the usual, "look at how wild and crazy those guys were" shallowness of most stuff written about the 'Mats.

Finally, I'm trying to get into Charles Leerhsen's Ty Cobb bio. I don't know what it is, but it's just not grabbing me yet, and I've been going back and forth with it for months. I have a feeling I'll be finishing the Wendel and Mehr books long before the Leerhsen.

Oh, one final note. I picked up the new Bob Mould album and it's great so far. Maybe more on that later. Now, I need to get some shut eye.