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Excuse me while I kind of barf out the last month.

Tuesday, August 18th, 2009

You ever procrastinate so much that you convince yourself that you didn’t really need to do whatever it was you were putting off, and then a month later remember that you were supposed to do that thing but by that time it’s too late?

Yeah, me too.  Especially blogging.

I suppose the one thing I should touch on is the fact that I turned 32.  Happy birthday to me! … like two weeks ago!  Wooo!  I didn’t go crazy this year for my birthday.  Meghan was nice enough to get me some gifts (beer kits, Tiger Woods golf for the Wii, and some underwear), and I got to go to River Falls and hang out with Reuben and golf and then eat at Luigi’s, which was a pretty damn good birthday.  I enjoyed myself and got Reuben in trouble, so that’s always good.

Oh, also, I went and saw Clutch again at First Ave on August 5th.  It was a good show, although I don’t know if I was really in the right mindset to see Clutch.  I’ve been deep into Phish most of the summer, for obvious reasons, and they had just started the second leg of their tour that week.  Obviously, I still enjoyed Clutch, but it didn’t quite feel like the sort of epic experience the last couple shows did.  Hopefully they’ll come back around this winter or something when my metal/jamband pendulum has swung a back farther the metal way again.

Somewhere in there recently I also finally got my car fixed.  It had been doing some goofy shit the past few months, overheating, not shifting, engine stops at drive-thrus… it feels good to have it back to to normal and know I can trust it not to die.  I’ve owned this car for around 5 (6?) years now, and it only have about 120,000 miles on it.  Given that I don’t have any commute whatsoever anymore and a lot of my work with client’s can be done remotely, I figure it’s possible I could have this car for at least another three years.  And I LOVE not having a car payment.  So, even thought I had to pay $1900 to get it fixed, it’s totally worth it.

I’ve also had a couple of miscues in socialization the past couple weeks.  Meghan & I were supposed to go tubing one Saturday, but it ended up being too cold.  We were going to go to Irish Fest a couple Fridays ago, but the weather put the kibosh on that one, too.  We did end up going bowling with Naomi & Troy that night, though, so that was fun.

Other big news includes the fact that Meghan finally got her tattoo that she’s been talking about for a year or so.  She struggled for months about what to get, just knowing that she wanted something.  She wanted to get something in memory of her grandma, but couldn’t figure out what.  Finally she settled on angel wings.  After looking through a bunch of pictures on the internet, she found a pair of wings she liked and decided she’d like the wings, maybe with a halo, her grandma’s initials and the date she passed away.  After some more thought, she decided to not get the halo, just the wings, and in between the time she had the consultation and the time she got the tattoo, she decided to lose the date too and just go with the initials.  I say all this to point out the amount of thought that went into this tattoo, so you can better appreciate the result, which I think is pretty awesome.

Mary Jane Bonekat

Mary Jane Bonekat

The whole thing was custom-drawn by the tattoo artist (Damion, at Electric Dragonland) after one consultation and it turned out awesome.  It’s on her left shoulder, if you were wondering.

That basically catches you up to this past weekend, which I feel deserves its own post, so I’ll probably bury this one in about an hour.  Hope you didn’t miss it! ;^)

The listening project continues.

Tuesday, August 4th, 2009

A while ago, I decided to listen to my iTunes library alphabetically by artist.  I’m now up to the M’s.

The M’s are a fun place to be because I got to listen to the entire discography of Megadeth, directly followed by the discography of Metallica.

And…  I’ve forgotten my point.  There’s your update.  HOPE YOU’RE HAPPY!

PHISH PHISH PHISH PHISH

Monday, June 8th, 2009

Loard, I sound like a spammer!

I cannot possibly overstate how fucking excited I am about Phish being back! Basically every night (by “night”, I mean after Meghan has gone to bed) this week has consisted of me sitting at the computer reading Phishhook forum posts about the setlist rolling in while listening to the previous night’s show, and, thanks to UStream, I’ve even gotten to watch and listen to some of the shows live.  It’s freaking amazing.  Right now, it’s 2:30am (I know–go to bed, Ryan!) and I’m listening to a soundboard recording of a concert that ended in New Jersey  about 2 and a half hours ago.  IS THIS NOT INSANE?!

Welcome to the Future!

When I first got into Phish, people would trade cassette tapes of the live shows and you were lucky to hear to a show within a month of it happening.  Now it’s standard to listen to a show the very next day (and the sound quality of audience recordings has vastly improved).  Since the advent of CDs and then the internet, the speed of distribution of fan-recorded shows is fantastic.

And to now be able to listen and watch (VIDEO!) of shows as they happen is simply astounding.  I remember in 2004, Phish simulcasted a couple shows to movie theaters so people could buy tickets and watch the show live in the theater as they was happening.  At the time, the very idea of such a thing was incredible.  And now people are doing the same thing (albeit at much lower quality levels) with their cell phones.  It’s awesome.

And, even aside from the technological miracles, the shows have been phenomenal.  New songs peppered in each show along with well-played and tastefully jammed classic stuff… it’s like pure heaven.  And they’ve managed to keep up They Mystery Of the Show (you never know when you’re going to get with Phish– last night had a fairly boring setlist, but everything was so well-played it was still awesome, and tonight’s show was completely over-the-top setlist-wise and jammed out hardcore (22-minute Sand!  10-minute Fee (Since when is Fee ever a jam vehicle?!)! Tweezer played after what is usually a set-ending Character Zero?! Four song encore, including RUN LIKE AND ANTELOPE?!?!?!?!?!  WHAT?!???).  I MEAN.  Good Gawd, I LOVE PHISH!

OH, And have I mentioned the fact that I and at least six of my friends are going to see Phish play at Alpine Valley in less than 2 WEEKS?!