July 17, 2011

• Project Days Or Q1OhNone

  Those of you not from the Chicagoland area might not be familiar with our legendary radio station Q101. The station was started back in 1992 and was, to my knowledge, the very first alternative radio station in the entire country. Not liking alternative music when it first came out, I did not listen to Q101 and actually did not like it for quite a few years. But, as happens, my musical tastes changed over the years and eventually I found myself listening to it more and more and quite frequently actually. Unfortunately for the station though, less people started listening to the station less frequently. It got so bad that a few weeks ago I read in the paper that their ratings were something like 23rd out of 25 stations in Chicago. This of course, was not a good sign. And it was even a worse sign when the new owners of the station decided that being 23 out of 25 really sucked ass and decided to pull the plug on the station. So, this past Thursday, the station died

  The article I read in the paper stated that more and more younger people who used to make up the bulk of Q101′s listeners were now going elsewhere for their music, like on the world wide internets and whatnot. What sucks for me is that I primarily listen to the radio while I’m driving and unlike most people, I don’t have a computer hooked up into my car. So now where am I going to go to get the same music that Q101 played? Oh sure we have other stations that will play some of the music they played, but none that will play the harder edged stuff that I like. For a city in the middle of the damn country we seem to have an awful lot of country and Spanish stations.

  In my group of friends, we have quite a few that have birthdays in the month of July. So we traditionally have a birthdays in July party every year, which, if nothing else is an excuse to have a party. So yesterday was that party. As expected, it wound up being a really good time and left me wanting more parties with my friends.

  So one of my friends came up with an idea some time ago in which we would all sign into a pact that we would each take turns every month doing repair work at each others houses. So we signed this sacred parchment with our blood and seamen and chick juices called it Project Days and off we went. This really works out well for me as I have a TON of stuff that needs to be done at my house but I have no clue how to do any of it. Also, I have no desire to learn or do it either. And I also don’t want to pay for it. So this presents the perfect opportunity for me to show up at their houses, pretend like I’m working hard and act like I know what I’m doing and then eventually they get around to my house which has the serious shit that needs to get done.

  Well, today was the first day of projects at a friends house. We had to do some landscaping work in the front and backyard. As fortunes would have it, today was well over 90 degrees out and with the heat index it was pushing 100. It didn’t stop us though, we still worked about six hours. Oh sure, I wouldn’t have been offended in the least if the weather decided to be oh, I don’t know, 10 or 15 degrees cooler, but hey, we still made it through. I’m proud to say that the yard looks pretty damn good; hell it almost looks like it could have been done by professionals. Shit, I can’t believe people pay other people thousands of dollars to do this sort of thing. I’m looking forward to the next Project Day.

  • 9:45 pm
  • 2 Comments