I don't want it, I just need it, to breathe, to feel, to know I'm alive

What's this?  A positive, light-hearted post?  Yeah, I figured it was time for one of those.

Spring's finally here and since it came late just like spring break did, that means its about time to enter summer vacation.  I'm getting all amped up for the stuff I'm going to do this summer and its going to be awesome.  Plane tickets, hotels and rental cars for Vegas/Utah are booked.  The Indy Mini is next week already and if this week goes well, I should be able to run it fast.  I will be going alcohol free this week to help with that as much as possible.  I bought a pair of baseball cleats for church league softball.  They are blue because I can't buy normal athletic shoes any more.  Also, because its church league, they're plastic and not metal so you don't get that lovely clacking noise whenever you're walking over concrete.  After playing throughout high school, that's one of the sounds I had come to love because of what it entailed.  I've scoped out possible bourbon tours in Kentucky to accompany possible hiking trips.  I've started firing up the grill again and I'll be disappointed if I don't go through a full tank of propane before the fall semester starts.  Summer season even means some of the better light beers are back out including Bell's Smitten, a golden rye that's currently in my fridge that I think is rather decent.

Also, since its been on my mind recently, I felt like coming up a with list of the favorite albums I own.  In no particular order, my top five are:

Thrice - The Artist in the Ambulance
The Offspring - Ignition
AFI - Black Sails in the Sunset
Rise Against - The Sufferer and the Witness
Tool - Aenima

Its hard to see this list and still claim I'm just a rock guy as there is probably a little more hard stuff in here than I originally would have expected.  This really didn't help when I had been listening to Aenima Friday afternoon before going over to meet Tori's parents for the first time and her dad asked me about some of the stuff I listened to and my recall was only on Tool and there is absolutely no way that's the music I would initially want them to associate with me.  The second five are a little more mellow.  Once again, in no particular order.

Local H - Pack up the Cats
Hole - Celebrity Skin
Foo Fighters - The Colour and the Shape
Weezer - The Blue Album
Slipknot - Volume 3, The Subliminal Verses

I should note here that Queen's Greatest Hits would have easily cracked the top five, but was disqualified for being a greatest hits album.  Also, I found it interesting that I valued consistent goodness over greatness, but with weakness mixed throughout, which is how something like Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness didn't make the cut.  Others that were considered were Green Day's Dookie, Everclear's Sparkle and Fade, Metallica's Master of Puppets and Queens of the Stone Age's Songs for the Deaf.

Give me another two weeks and I'm sure this list will have changed.