This is a graph of the music I have/listen to by release year.  The blue line represents songs I have.  The green line is songs times the number of times I listen to them.

1994 was apparently a big year, surpassed only by 2008, which gets a huge bump listening-wise, I’m assuming due to the presence of Gods Of The Earth.

The program can break it out by genre, too, which is fun:

This is Metal only  (ranging from Black Sabbath to Goatwhore)

(Anybody know any good metal albums that came out in 1998?  Apparently, I’m missing out)

Rock: (a pretty generic category, ranging from AC/DC to Clutch to The Big Wu)

Alternative (Soul Coughing, Cake, The Decemberists, Murder By Death):

Punk:

(Note:  I lived with Ben in 2001)

Pop (LOL):

This stuff only covers listening history for the last three years or so since I had lost my iTunes Library somewhere in there and had to start over.

This year was fairly similar to last year.  We stayed at the Riu Palace, which was right next to the Riu Sante Fe, where we had stayed on our honeymoon.  The view from the balcony in the lobby bar brought back fond memories.  We got to the hotel around 1:30 on Thursday, after a direct flight into Cabo, and a slightly confused shuttle bus ride.  They had it set up for us to check in at the lobby bar, but unlike last year, they weren’t very clear on anything.  In Cancun, I remember when we checked in, they sat us all down together and talked to us as a group about how the hotel worked.  At the Riu Palace in Cabo, they just had a table set up and the guy gave us our keys and that was it.  This would become a theme over the weekend.  Compared to the Riu Palace in Cancun, the Riu Palace staff in Cabo are pretty lazy.

Our room wasn’t quite ready when we checked in,  so we hung out in the lobby bar and had a couple drinks.  After a while we decided to go see if the room was ready and found that our room had too large single beds shoved together, rather than one bed.  We had talked to another couple who suggested that if we complained about anything in our room, the Riu would likely upgrade us to a better room.  So we went and complained about the bed, but the staff basically shrugged and told us they were full and to try again tomorrow.  A few days later, one of Meghan’ coworkers suggested that the staff seemed to be looking for bribes to do anything.  I hadn’t thought about it before that, but now I kind of wonder if we would’ve gotten a better room if we’d slipped the front desk guy 10 bucks.

We ended up deciding it didn’t really matter.  We were on a free trip and we’d be happy with what was given to us.  So we went back to our room and changed into our swim gear to head out to pool.  While we were there, the cleaning staff came by and asked if everything in the room was okay.  We told him about the bed and he said he’d change the bedding.  I didn’t get it at first, but it turned out that they stuff a blanket between the beds and then put one big sheet and blanket over it, essentially turning it into one ginormous California King.

We headed down to the pool, but it was less than 80 degrees out, so it turned out to be a little cool for swimming.  I think we stayed down there for maybe an hour before deciding to go get dressed for dinner.   We ate at the buffet the first night and then met up with everyone at the lobby bar around 8 for a Meet & Greet.  We were a group of 35 people, so it was basically a big party.

On Friday, Meghan had her usual training in the morning, so after getting some breakfact, I went down to the lobby bar and sat in the shade and played Scrabble on my phone for a couple hours.  After her training was done, we got some lunch and then spent the afternoon in the pool.  1:30 to 3:30 was designated as “team-building”, which in years past has meant volleyball.  This year, it just meant lounging in the pool with cocktails.  Which was awesome.  It was warmer that day, and the pool was fantastic.  After team-building time, Meghan & I took a walk on the beach and then hung out in the pool a bit more.  Then it was back to the room for a little nap.  We had a group dinner at the Steakhouse (exact same menu as last year, although the Baked Alaska was not nearly so impressive).

As with many vacations, we took to going to bed early.  The first two nights I think I was asleep by 11.  On Saturday, we had the morning free, so we got some breakfast and debated about what to do.  We couldn’t come up with anything and ended up going down to the pool around 11.  After lunch, we took another walk along the beach.  We had fond memories of being hit by the waves on our honeymoon, so we walked along the beach near the water.  We caught by surprise by a big wave though and got knocked on our asses, which was hilarious, except for the fact that Meghan twisted her knee a little bit.  We sat on the beach for a while before going back to the pool again for more ‘team-building’.

That night we had reservations at the Mexican restaurant.  We had fajitas.  Then later, we went out as a group to Cabo Wabo.  We had gone there on our honeymooon, but only during the day, so we were excited to go out at night because it had been talked up to be such an awesome place by a lot of people.  We had a fun time, but Cabo Wabo wasn’t really anything special.  They had a really good cover band, but, as one would expect, everything was pretty overpriced.  Especially for Mexico.  Still, Meghan & I managed to drink 4 or 5 beers each and only pay for 3.  So yay!

Sunday was a completely free day, so Meghan & I decided to take a boat out to Lover’s Beach.  We took a taxi down to the Marina and wandered around looking for a water taxi.  Despite a lot of people down there actively trying to sell us stuff, we had a hard time finding one.  Eventually, the host of one of the restaurants guessed what we were doing and called one of his affiliates.  We ended up on our own little tour, because the water taxi guy couldn’t find anyone else to go on the tour.  The arches and rock formations were really cool and it was a glass bottom boat, so we saw a bunch of fish.  It was a fairly short tour, since we didn’t want to pay an extra $70 to go whale watching.

After the tour, we had lunch at the restaurant with the helpful host (Alexander’s).  I had coconut shrimp (served in a coconut).  After lunch we decided to try and find some souvenir’s.  After looking around at several places, nothing jumped out at us.  We didn’t ended up buying anything, so instead we found a tattoo artist and Meghan got a henna tattoo on her arm.  Along the way, some (American) girl in the street gave me a beer somebody had given her that she didn’t want.  Yeah, I totally drank it.

During the trip, we had heard a couple of Meghan’s coworkers talk about an awesome bar they had been to called The Office.  We decided to try and find it.  We handed seen it while walking around looking at shops, so we asked a guy at a little information stand and he informed us it was one the beach.  He gave us directions and we decided to start walking that way and see how far we got.  We ended up walking through almost all of downtown Cabo, including a couple shady streets and an alleyway next to an abandoned movie theather that had graffiti all over it.

We eventually found The Office, which, as it turns out, if you’re not getting way drunk on tequila poppers, isn’t really that fun.  It’s literally on the beach, with wrought-iron chairs sitting in the sand.  We had a beer and then decided to go back to the hotel and lounge in the pool.  We took a taxi back and were in the pool by 4.

That night we had dinner at the buffet.  After dinner, we had another drink at the bar.  Around this time, I started feeling really cold and kind of nauseous.

A couple days before we had found out that the bus to take us back to the airport on Tuesday was scheduled to leave an hour earlier than was listed on the itineraries.  Meghan informed everyone we saw and even made an announcement at dinner on Friday night, but word didn’t seem to be getting around.  So Meghan decided to try and have the front desk send a message to everyone’s rooms.  After getting the usual shrug from the regular staff, she talked to the guy who manages the group bookings and he got her hooked up.  We went back to the room, since I was starting to feel gross.  After about an hour or so, we still hadn’t gotten the message delivered to our room, so Meghan decided to call everyone.  Of course, not everyone was in their rooms, so Meghan ended up wandering the hotel grounds while I laid in bed trying to get warm.

It all turned out fine eventually.  Everybody made it to the bus on time the next morning.  Although, I’m still feeling kind of queazy even now.  I’m not sure if was the free beer on the street, the shrimp, or maybe just something random, but Montezuma got his revenge on me.

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Back in the late 80’s, during the heyday of hair bands, there were a lot of groups of long-haired make-up wearing dudes trying to make it big.  Slave Raider was one of those groups.  They also happened to be from Minnesota.  I’m just slightly too young to have ever seen them live, but my good friend Reuben introduced me to them back in our younger days, and I’ve always thought they were a fun band with some good songs.  Since then, several of my friends have met various band members in other capacities (lead singer Chainsaw was Jabberwocky’s drummer’s other band’s agent).

About a month ago, I was listening through my iTunes (in alphabetical order by artist) and Slave Raider’s ‘Take The World By Storm’ came up.  It occurred to me how awesome it would be to play those songs.  So I decided my next recording project would be to record a bunch of Slave Raider songs as Kathetor. A month later and here we are.  It’s a 5 song EP.  The last song technically isn’t a Slave Raider song.  It’s from an EP of the lead singer Chainsaw’s side project:  Chainsaw.

1.  Take The World By Storm

2.  The Black Hole

3.  Youngblood

4.  Bigger Badder & Bolder

5. The Devil’s Drivin’ My Car tonight

(right click any to download or right click here to download a zip of the whole EP)

So Friday night, Meghan & I stayed in, ate pizza and watched TV.

Saturday morning we slept until almost noon.  Meghan had had a pretty rough work week as well (and for her that actually means something), so we deserved it.  Plus we needed to rest up for Saturday night, since Meghan’s sister was taking us out for dinner.  So after an afternoon of… umm… watching tv… we headed out with Melissa & Mark to Barrio downtown for tequila shots and tiny food.  It was a fun place and I confused everybody by refusing offers of food.  Honestly, I just wasn’t that hungry.  The food was delicious, but beer was more delicious.  So is their cocktail known as “The Good The Bad & The Ugly”, which is tequila and cinnamon soda.  After dinner, we decided to move the party next door to The Local, and enjoyed some more fine brews.  Then we got the idea to go out to Hamel to Inn Kahoots, which is a local bar there that Tish frequents.  So we picked up Tish on the way and then proceeded to shoot some pool, shoot the shit, and drink some more beer.  Or, in Tish’s case, rum & coke.  Or, in Melissa’s case, just Diet Coke, since she was the designated driver.  And a good thing, too, since she got pulled over right outside the bar on the way home.  The cop thanked her (quite profusely, I thought) for being a responsible citizen and carting our drunk asses around.  He even declined to cite her for his completely bogus charge of forgetting to signal when she changed lanes.

Obviously, we had a good time.  This night of revelry was in celebration of Meghan’s birthday, by the way, since we were in Chicago on Meghan’s actual birthday and Melissa wasn’t.

Sunday, we spent the day waiting around to watch the Vikings game.  Then we watched the game and wished we’d done something more productive.  Oh well.

We got up Thursday morning at 6am to catch a 9am flight to Chicago.  This was early for me, and I was a grump.  But we got coffee on the way and the flight was uneventful.  We got into Chicago around 10:30.  We had rented a car (a first for both of us), so after picking up our luggage, we headed to the National Car Rental place.  We ended up with a Impala, which was about perfect.  From there it was on to the hotel.

We had picked our own price through Priceline and ended up staying at the Hotel Felix, a very nice hotel whose rooms are roughly the size of most people’s bathrooms.  We couldn’t help but laugh when we saw the room because it was literally a 12X12 square with a queen size bed in it.  Which meant that the room was a bed with two feet of space around each side.  We were only staying one night there, though, and we hadn’t planned on hanging out in the room anyway, so it was all good.

We decided to have lunch at Portillo’s, a local “hot dog” chain.  I had a delicious jumbo chili dog.  After lunch, we stopped by the Rock N Roll McDonald’s, about three blocks from our hotel.  It’s basically a regular McDonald’s, except way bigger, and with a tiny Rock N Roll Exhibit next to it.  According to Wikipedia, there’s a small museum on the upper level too, but we must have missed it.

We decided to walk around a bit, and since we had planned on going to the Field Museum, we walked in that general direction.  We started out going what I thought was east, but ended up being south.  We kept looking for Michigan Ave and checking the GPS on my phone, but we never seemed to get any closer to it.  Eventually we figured out that the GPS on was just plain wrong, and we were going in the wrong direction.  After walking about a mile or so, our feet were getting tired, so we decided to try out the subway.  We had no idea how to ride the subway in Chicago (Meghan’s been on the New York subway, I hadn’t been on any subway), but, after wandering around the subway station*, we managed to buy a transit card and successfully navigate to the train.  We got off within a couple blocks of the Field Museum.

The Field Museum, as it turned out, was pretty boring.  I’m sure if we’d been less tired it would have been more interesting, but being that we’d been up since 6am and flown into Chicago and then walked over a mile… well, we were tired.  As it turned out, general admission to the museum was free that day, so we bought tickets to see the Diamond exhibit, which was basically a big lo’ How-To on diamond mining.  I learned that diamonds stick to grease.  I think about 10 minutes in, we were both ready to do somewhere else but I was determined to get my 10 bucks worth.  They did have some interesting jewelry pieces on display once we got past all the diamond mining training material.  We also took a quick walk through the ancient Egypt exhibit, which basically confirmed that mummies are freaky.

We decided then that the thing to do would be to get a drink.  So we decided to take the subway back up to the John Hancock building and have a drink at the bar that’s at the top of it.  We got out at Chicago Ave and walked by the old water tower.  We weren’t exactly sure how to get up to the bar at the John Hancock building, and ended up taking a tour of the observatory, which, as it turned out, was pretty awesome.  The views were amazing.  After the tour, we figured out how to actually get to The Signature Lounge, and had a couple cocktails next to a window overlooking downtown Chicago from about a 1000 feet up in the air.  It was pretty awesome.

By that point it was around 4:30pm, so we decided to make a reservation for dinner at the Rosebud on Rush.  So we hopped in a cab and went back to the hotel to freshen up.  By the time we got to the restaurant (which was a 4 block walk from our hotel) around 6pm, we were pretty much dead to the world with exhaustion.  The restaurant was really nice and the food was good though.  And Meghan really liked the Cendrica Italian candy.

After dinner, we decided to check out an Irish Pub we saw on our earlier walk that was less than a block away from our hotel called The Kerryman.   We had planned on grabbing a couple drinks with Meghan’s childhood friend Jessica, who lives near Chicago and happened to be in the city for dinner that night.  So we had a couple beers at the Kerryman while we tried to coordinate with her.  As it turns out, we weren’t able to hook up with her that night, but we had a good time hanging out at the Kerryman.  We headed back to the hotel around 10:30 and the bartender made fun of us for turning in so early.

The next day, we headed out of downtown Chicago for the suburbs.  Meghan used to live in Naperville when she was a kid and wanted to drive by her old house.  On the way down, Meghan called Jessica and we decided to have lunch together.  So we drove to Shorewood and picked her up and had lunch at a little sports bar near her house.

After lunch, we headed to Naperville and Meghan gave me the driving tour of her former hometown, including her house, her other house, her elementary school, and several of her friends’ houses.  She amazed me with her ability to remember basically every kid on her block’s name.

Then it was time to go to her friend Jen’s house, who would be housing us for the rest of the weekend.  Jen & her husband just had a baby in October, so we were excited to see the new addition.  They were good hosts, even though they were completely delirious with the exhaustion that comes with being new parents.   Friday night, we went to dinner at a Texas Roadhouse, where we ate barbeque and delicious fresh buns with cinnamon butter, and then spent the night in Jen & Wojtek’s newly renovated basement, which has the distinction of being perhaps the warmest place on earth I’ve ever slept in.

Saturday morning, we got up and ate Lucky Charms and watched TV with baby Finn and the two pugs.  Then Jen brought us donuts.  Yum!  Later, Jen & Meghan made Meghan’s birthday cake (yellow cake w/ chocolate frosting). We hung out for a while and then two more of Meghan’s friends came over and we all went out to dinner at The Clubhouse, where I had a delicious ribeye and Carlsberg Lager.

Then before we knew it, it was Sunday morning and time to go home.  So we did.  Then the Vikings beat the crap out of the Cowboys.  LOL  Wooo!

* – while waiting for the subway at the station, I was a little worried about getting mugged or something until I saw this girl in a plaid mini-skirt standing nearby.  I figured if she felt safe there, it must be safe and that made me feel better.   Until her pimp showed up.

I tried to change or add things where I could to make it more interesting as an acoustic album, and I recorded the whole thing in order.  My favorite of the bunch is Children Of The Grave, both because it was the most fun to record, and, in my opinion, ended up with the best results.

(Download ZIP file of whole album)

Sweet Leaf

After Forever

Embryo > Children Of The Grave

Orchid

Lord Of This World

Solitude

Into The Void

9: The Company Band – The Company Band (iTMS)

8: Tardy Brothers – Bloodline (iTMS)

7: Mike Doughty – Sad Man Happy Man (iTMS)

6: Weezer – Raditiude (iTMS)

5: Mastodon – Crack The Skye (iTMS)

4: Flight Of The Conchords – I Told You I Was Freaky (iTMS)

3: Slayer – World Painted Blood (iTMS)

2: Clutch – Strange Cousins From The West (iTMS)

1: Phish – Joy (iTMS)