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Archive for October, 2009

The last 12 days

Friday, October 16th, 2009

On Monday the 5th, Meghan & I went to the Vikings game to hand out pink ribbons for her sorority alumni group.  We also got to go to the game, and had seats on the field, which was awesome.  I’ve only been to two other Vikings games, and it was pretty awesome to see the action from the field level.  On top of the that, it was the biggest home game of the year, being Monday Night Football and being vs the Packers.  And since the tickets we had were VIP seats, we happened to sit next to Staind and Creed.  Heh.  Meghan & I only stayed through the first half of the game, because we weren’t sure if we wanted to stay for the whole game, and I didn’t want to leave while the game was still going on.  So we watched the first half from the field and the second half from our couch.  It was a damn good game, and the Vikings won.  Woo!

Friday night, we went out for one of Meghan’s friend’s birthday party.  We started at Liquor Lyle’s, where we had two-for-ones and watched the Twins lose.  After that we went to Mortimer’s and hung out in the metal bar in the back.  Saturday, we spent most of the day lazing around.  That night, we went and hung out with Ben & Kerry, where we watched the Iowa homecoming game (they won, wooo!).  Sunday was another relaxed day for me.  I stayed home and watched the Vikings game while Meghan went out and sold coupon books at Herberger’s.

This Tuesday night, we went to the Metallica concert with my sister and Reuben.  Before the show, we had dinner at the Park Tavern, then home for a beer, then met up with T-Rav at the Hard Rock for a couple more beers.  We walked into the arena about 10 minutes before Metallica took the stage, which was perfect.  The place was sold out, so it was packed…. actually, just go read T-Rav’s blog, I’ll pretty much just say the same thing anyway.  Although, I have seen Metallica three times before:  1991 in Fargo, 1994 in Somerset, WI, and 1996 at the Target Center.

This weekend is Naomi & Troy’s wedding.  Meghan is a personal attendant and I’m in charge of the slideshow.  Should be fun!

ATTENTION: The new Mike Doughty album is awesome.

Thursday, October 8th, 2009

When Golden Delicious came out, I was really excited for new Mike Doughty. Meghan, Melissa & I went to a CD release party for it and watched Mike Doughty put on a little mini-concert at the Electric Fetus and it was really fun and exciting.
And then the album wasn’t that great. Too much of it relied on repetition and beat and it was honestly overproduced. Parts of it were honestly annoying to listen to on the first listen because he just kept saying the same thing over and over again.

A couple weeks ago I happened to look at Mike Doughty’s website during a moment of boredom and found he had a new album coming out. I had a short moment where I my heart jumped a little bit and I was really excited, but that was quickly replaced by a feeling of trepidation as I remembered my disappointment in Golden Delicious. So I made a mental note to keep an eye out for it and moved on.

About 20 minutes ago, as I was waiting for a server update to download, I had another moment of boredom and found out that Sad Man Happy Man had come out today. Not expecting much, but wanting to support Mike Doughty in his artistic efforts, I purchased the album from iTunes…

… and was pleasantly surprised to find an album full of the sorts of things I loved about Mike Doughty when I first started listening to his solo efforts: simple, moving songs with melody and grace played by a man and his acoustic guitar. And, even better, the album benefits from the addition of a cello and some honest-to-goodness rapping.

Basically, it’s album produced by one guy with a passion, rather than a record company.

Weekend Update

Tuesday, October 6th, 2009

Friday night, Meghan went to her friend Naomi’s bachelorette party and I was left to my own devices for the whole night.  I chose to use this free time… by watching a crapton of TV.  I had entertained thoughts of going to see an old friend’s band, but  after doing a driveby of the venue (Ground Zero), decided to just go back home.  I didn’t really feel like sitting by myself in a dark bar, even though I’m sure I would have enjoyed the death metal immensely.

I’ve been watching a series called Dead Like Me the past couple weeks, based on an iTunes recommendation (presumably due to my enjoyment of Reaper).  It’s a weird little show based on the idea that when certain people die, they get recruited to become grim reapers.  The show is centered on an 18 year old girl who dies by getting hit by a toilet seat that fell from an orbiting space station, and then, due to the fact that the grim reaper who reaped her had met his quota, becomes a grim reaper.  It only ran for two seasons on Showtime from 2003 to 2004, but it’s pretty entertaining (the was also a movie put out in 2009 and I guess there’s a possibility of the show being brought back).  Interestingly, the music for the show was done by Stewart Copeland, drummer for The Police.  Anyway, Friday night I basically watched about 8 episodes of that.

Saturday, after Meghan got home, we ended up going to lunch with her uncle, who was in town because his daughter is being recruited by the U of M for their soccer team.  We had already had plans to go to dinner with him, but we had lunch with him as well, since his plans to go to the Gopher football game fell through.  For me, it was a chance to eat some boneless chicken wings and watch three college football games at once. (Wisconsin beat Minnesota, Iowa won (still undefeated), and MSU and Michigan did something, but who cares about them?)

After lunch, we went home and rested up so we could go back out to Roseville again for dinner, again with Meghan’s uncle and this time also his daughter.  I ate a meatball sub and it was delicious.  During dinner, we tried to explain the concept of Facebook to Meghan’s uncle, which resulted in me posting a picture of him to Facebook, which only confused him.  Heh.

After dinner, I went over to Ben’s house to “roll up” a new AD&D character, along with T-Rav & the Lundos, since we’re switching to 4th edition.  As always, it was mainly an excuse to hang out and BS, although it was fun to figure out what was, to most of us, a completely new system for playing a tabletop RPG.  I had bought the new Player’s Handbook a couple weeks ago and already rolled up a character, but I did notice a couple things I hadn’t done quite right and was able to help out.  Also, the character I had rolled up before was just a test, so I was doing a new one as well.  (Hey, is this boring yet?)  After we got tired of figuring out nerdy fantasy math (and the Lundos just plain got tired), T-Rav, B33n3r & I played some Tetris Party before calling it a night.

On Sunday, we went over to my sister’s for lunch with my mom, and took a short trip to an apple orchard with the family.  We watched a good chunk of the Twins game before heading home.