July 19th - Bye, jeanie

9:45pm on Sunday.
A big part of my radio life right now is that daughter Jeanie is leaving for New York City in less than a week. She just graduated from the University of Wisconsin in, of all things, journalism, and now she's heading to the Big Apple where her boyfriend lives and grew up. I don't know why but it seems like it was a lot easier when we dropped her off at Ogg Hall in Madison four years ago. That didn't seem so final. This does.

We celebrated - if that's the right word - her accomplishments and departure with a little backyard barbecue of mostly family. I guess it's not entirely accurate to say "little" with anything that involves my family in that there's so many of us in a concentrated place that if you're gonna bed down you gotta check bloodlines. You also gotta believe that there's some family that'll click on a photo above and look at all the people having so much fun on a perfect Sunday afternoon and say - what the hell, why wasn't I invited? 

It started out small with just nieces and nephews and grandparents and then throughout the week whoever we ran in to got invited. If Alexis or I didn't see you last week then don't take it personally.

Anyways, there's a tinge of sadness to the party today and to the week coming up. Jeanie's leaving us. I tell the story on the air about my little sister, Allison, who's ten years younger than I am. We were pretty close growing up, despite the age difference, and it still kind of pinches my almost untouchable heart that she lives in Long Island a zillion miles away and she's not part of any of the stuff like you can see at the top of this page.

Ally went to Northwestern and after she graduated she followed her Long Island-grown boyfriend to New York. Bye bye. I was so pissed that I didn't really talk to Johh-Mark directly for several years, despite being asked to fly out and be godfather in a quaint Long Island church. As a matter of fact, after all of this time I'm still a little pissed that my sister Allison and her husband and three kids weren't here in our backyard today to see Jeanie off to New York.

But wait a minute, that doesn't make any sense. If nephew Alex and nieces Lisa and Marie were in the backyard today, then we probably wouldn't be seeing Jeanie off to New York. She says that part of the reason she can just pick up and move to New York is that Aunt Ally and the kids live an hour train ride away. Whatever. I just feel like the same thing's happening with my daughter that happened with my little sister - they go to a Midwestern college and some New Yorker steals them away to the East coast. 

And I f***ing hate New York City. It smells. Everywhere you go, you look at your spouse and say - Did you, you know, let one go?

No. Quit asking me that.

Well it stinks around here, so I thought it was you.

.... As far as radio goes, I got a shortened Monday tomorrow. Childhood chump Billy Baker comes in and we'll bounce it around for a while, and then I'll leave at 8am to the Chicago White Sox charities outing at Harborside in Chicago. I don't normally play outings but Johnny Salzeider asked me a while ago and I love that course on a garbage dump and, you never know, local radio guy (talk about yourself in the third person) just might need a little time away from the constant thump of radio and the nagging thought that another f***ing New Yorker is stealing one of my women. Go figure.