Speaking of rock gods…	November 24, 2006

Hey all! It’s the day after Thanksgiving, and I’m at work, but I can’t say I’m working particularly hard (there is NO ONE else around in downtown DC–it’s creepy). Lots of things have happened since I last posted – turkey was eaten, I had a blissful week without classes, and I watched many hours of Six Feet Under. Below are two things that are worthy of comment:

I saw Bob Dylan! Live in concert at the Patriot Center last Friday. If you squint, you can see a little Bob Dylan-shaped blob in this picture (we didn’t have the best seats ever). It was a great show. I gotta say, I liked it the most when he did old songs that I know by heart (“Masters of War” was my favorite, followed by “All Along the Watchtower” and “Like a Rolling Stone”), but it was good to hear what sort of new things he’s up to nowadays. Folks who know stuff about records have been saying good things about his latest release, and I’d agree that it’s all good. He is getting old, though! I read that he’s playing keyboards on this tour because his arthritis is too bad to play guitar. Poor Bob!!

And… nowhere near as noteworthy… I saw Tenacious D: The Pick of Destiny last night. And I did enjoy it very much, more than I thought I would. It is, of course, silly, and full of dumb jokes and drug use, but they are just so damn endearing in their pathetic desperation to become rock gods. And what do you know… they succeed at the end.

Metal-mouth?	November 16, 2006

I’m someone who has, for years, neglected my teeth.  I brush and floss and stuff, but I hate going to the dentist.  And once I got to be old enough that my parents didn’t force me to go, I stopped going.  Lots of years of student-hood and shitty non-profit jobs that didn’t provide dental coverage only compounded this problem.  So, I confess, it’s been a while…

I finally got off my keister and made an appointment, which was today.  I was astounded to learn that hygiene-wise, my teeth are doin’ fine – no cavities, no gingivitis.  All I got today was a good cleaning and a free toothbrush.  However, Mr. Dentist seems to think I need to see an orthodontist.  That’s right, at the tender young age of 28, I may become a brace-face.

He gave me a referral, and I will make an appointment, and do a little assessment of what I need and what my insurance will cover.  I think that I have already come to the conclusion that I’m only going to do it if I can afford to get the invisible ones.  If I can’t afford it, I’ll wait a few years and try again. 

Steve’s response when I told him this? “Hee hee--my girlfriend's gonna get braces--it feels like I'm in high school.”

My weekend in Chi-Town	November 15, 2006

Last weekend was Veteran’s Day.  Hence, I got an unexpected day off!  And… Travelocity sent me an e-mail telling me that I could fly to Chicago for $103 that very weekend.  And… my best friend K-Co happens to live in Chicago!  What a cleansing piece of synchronicity. 

So, Friday morning I hopped on a plane and went westward.  I arrived around noon and was greeted by the loverly K-Co, who promptly shuttled me back to her phat pad in Andersonville, where she is dog-sitting in exchange for cheap rent this summer.  It occurs to me that I never took a single picture of her place or the dogs.  Which I totally should have, as the dogs were, well, omnipresent throughout the weekend.

After perusing the pad and meeting the pets, we grabbed some lunch (hummos and calamari salad… awesome) then scouted out some evening activities.  We discovered that OK Go (those guys who do the treadmill dance) were playing with the French Kicks at the Logan Square Auditorium, so we got some tickets to that.  After stopping at my favorite junk/toy store, Uncle Fun’s, we grabbed a quick dinner (wild mushroom polenta with red pepper sauce… hellz yeah) and hit the concert.

The opening band was a trio of fucked-up Swedes called Quit Your Day Job.  They were awful.  I will not dignify them with a lengthy diatribe about how awful and disturbing they were.  Stay away.

The French Kicks, however, were very adorable.  I had never heard of them before – K-Co was the one who caught their name in the Reader, and we played a few of their songs before we went out, but it was my first exposure.  I’m going to have to pick up one of their CD’s. 

OK Go was, in a word, OK.  I hadn’t heard anything of theirs but the treadmill song, so I was coming in with a fairly fresh ear.  They put on a good show, with wacky waving inflatable arm-flailing tube-men, and dancing, but their music?  Eh.  Certainly nothing original. I kept thinking, “this sounds like the Pixies.” Or the Flaming Lips.  Or whatever.

That closed down Friday night – though we had discussed going out afterwards, I was too pooped from the travel.  I slept ridiculously late on Saturday, upstairs with the dozen cats.  That’s right… twelve cats. These folks K-Co is sitting for are some serious animal fans.  Anyhoo, after waking up at 11:30 or something, we went to Ann Sather for brunch (the V4 omelet is totally yum), then met up with Scott the navigator.

After taking the train downtown and wandering somewhat aimlessly for a while, we arrived at our next destination – SOFA!  The SOFA show is something I tried to go to every year while I was a fledgling young metals student, but never succeeded.  SOFA stands for Sculptural Objects and Functional Art.  It’s a crafts show, but not the Crafty Bastards kind of crafts; more like $60,000 glass bowls and $20,000 earrings.  Fun to look at, but 99% of the stuff was out of my price range.  I did come close to buying a few pieces by this artist, but frugalness got the best of me.

K-Co’s birthday was in late-October, and after the show, I wanted to take her out for a birthday dinner.  We said farewell to Scott and headed toward a sushi place in Andersonville, which was a BYOB place, which meant we could bring our own giant cans of Sapporo and down them with reckless abandon (and we did).  Here is K-Co showing off a dragon roll we ordered.  At this point, we were pretty tipsy, but you can’t tell to look at her, because she’s the queen of composure.

Capping off our Saturday night was a trip to another Andersonville establishment to say hello to our friend Angela, someone we knew way back in the day.  We first met Angela in high school, and though we’ve kept in distant touch over the years, I hadn’t seen her in forever.  She looked great, it was great to see her, she seems to be doing well, and her girlfriend is totally hot.  It was a shame that I had a flight out the next morning – I would’ve liked to stay out later!

After another cat-filled night of sleep, I was hopping on a plane to come back home.  The weekend went by entirely too fast!  I had such a great time.  Travelocity needs to incent me to fly unnecessarily more often. 

It’s here! It’s here!	November 14, 2006

My Christmas present to myself has finally arrived, after HBO delayed its release for two excruciating weeks. Lookit how beauteous!

The Astroturf-ey stuff on top is shedding all over my desk. But this is doing nothing to squelch my enthusiasm. Now I don’t have to relive my love affair with the Fisher family on the swear-and-skin-free Bravo network.

So happy I could cry	November 7, 2006

As I have whined, at length, I am struggling somewhat with my work + school schedule, which leaves me little time to do things like blog. Or sleep.

I just found out that next semester is going to be much better for me. There is a class I really want to take that is only offered on Friday during the day. I asked my boss if I could perhaps take it and make up for it by staying late on other nights. She responded today that I can take it and count it as work hours. Get paid to go to school! What I’ll be learning in the class is directly relevant to what I do (offset print production), so it makes sense, but I honestly didn’t think this would happen. Oh, I am so happy!

She even brought up the possibility of helping me out with tuition, but that gets a little thornier – there are a lot of other folks here that are in school, and to throw me some money would mean we have to throw everybody some money. I’m just happy that they’re thinking about it.

This means that I’ll only have one night class next semester, and it happens to be at the downtown campus, which is closer to work, so I don’t have to leave work early to get there (or spend $10 to take a cab home). So I can go back to a 9:00 – 5:30 schedule. So I can sleep more!

Everything’s coming up Millhouse!