Michelle and I got back to Waukesha about 10pm or so from a very nice weekend in the Twin(ish) Cities…

We got to the theater for the Storyhill show after Aaron Espe had already started playing, but the people in charge over there were very nice to give us a couple extra folding chairs to park at the end of the 4th row, and we had a fine view of the stage.

Chris and John played almost all the songs off their new record, and a bunch of them we already knew, having been to Storyhill Fest on our summer vacation. I definitely like the new tracks. There were a lot of “repeats” or recycles on the ‘Dovetail’ that came out a couple years ago, but this one is all new (with the possible exception of “The Ballad of Joe Snowboard,” but I don’t recall that John ever formally released that one).

For an encore, they played “Boulder River” and then “Steady On.” We wouldn’t stop with the applause and managed to get them to come back again after the lights went up and maybe a quarter of the people left. Encore #2 was “Tremblin Tracks.”

Michelle picked herself up a pink Storyhill t-shirt and had Aaron Espe sign it (kinda funny). She wanted to wait around to see if the boys would come out, but I suggested that it didn’t seem likely, and we left the building about 10pm.

When we got outside, the car wasn’t there anymore. We walked over to where it used to be, and realized we had apparently parked in a taxi stand. I admit that I didn’t pay particular attention to the signs when we parked, but mostly because I expected them to say something similar to what the signs say in a normal town: “No Parking here from 5am to 9pm Monday thru Friday,” or the like. Not so in Saint Cloud, MN.

So have you had your car towed lately? I’d had mine towed never prior to Saturday, so I really didn’t have any idea where to begin finding the car again. Fortunately, there were a number of cabbies parked right there, so we asked one. He gave us a couple leads, and also offered the foreboding prediction that picking up the care that night would prove impossible. Just. What. I need.

We had a name of a likely towing company (“Andy’s”) courtesy the cabbie, but no other info. We next spoke with a couple mohawked bouncers at the nearest bar, who agreed on the Andy’s assessment, but also said that there was not a phone book in the bar. OK. They suggested we run across the street to the Radisson and find a phone book there.

I was fairly upset with myself at this point, but also trying to remain calm. We got the info we needed, made a call, and found out it would cost us 85 bucks to pick up the car, but we could do so right away.

So we did.

It was a little bit of an adventure, and I learned to do a better job reading the signs next time I park in a strange city. We got back to Dave & Dre’s apartment at about 11:30, watched the tail end of Saturday Night Live (didn’t we?) and then went to sleep.

On Sunday, everybody slept in, and a little later Andrea made breakfast. It was tasty. We took a ride downtown to the sculpture garden, which was pretty neat. I’d never been there before. I took some pictures, and they should probably be uploaded pretty soon.

We got back on the road kind of late, because I had to return a flash drive to Best Buy (man– I’ve gotta remember that: no matter how cheap it seems at Best Buy, it is ALWAYS cheaper somewhere else…), and then we did park in Tomah for a while because we needed the Internet. Michelle had to email some PDFs for work to Kinko’s in order to have them printed in time to be picked up in the morning… We both agreed we didn’t know why we didn’t think of it while we were still @ our friends’ apartment. But everything worked out.

Michelle got her new phone, so when you see it, make sure you tell her how cool it is. And if you’re Jen, try not to get so excited that you want one, too, because I am already TOTALLY planning to get the same phone in Dec…

Yeah.

I wonder if the Bears are winning…

Michelle and I are in the Twin Cities this weekend, and we’re staying with Dave and Andrea. They live in a large apartment complex, so you can imagine there are dozens of people with wireless Internet broadcasting all over this building. The one that I’m hooking through right now actually has an SSID of “TLA Best Stay Out Punk,” and it’s configured for wide open access… hey whatever.

Nice to visit these kids– haven’t been able to since they moved to MN. Dave is right, the layout of their current apartment is really similar to the place they had in Madison, so if you ever visited there, you have an idea…

Later on, Michelle and I are going to St. Cloud for Storyhill, but our hosts are unable to join us. I’m hoping we get back in time to do something social this evening, but if not, certainly that’s on the docket for tomorrow.

We did get to go out for coffee this morning. 😛 It was about 6:30 and the fire alarm went off in the building. There were some very pissed off 20-somethings tumbling down the stairs in their jammies at that time on a Saturday, let me tell you. But Dre bought us coffee at Caribou, and then she had to go into work. I couldn’t go back to sleep, so Dave and I talked about the latest goings on with our friends, agreed that X-Men? 3 sucked ass but Superman Returns was at least OK, and then we looked at some photos from Lorch’s wedding.

Michelle is still asleep on the couch, and right now Dave is getting his hair cut. We’re gonna bum around town a bit today, and I wanted to give Schneider a call. Not sure if he made it to Madison for homecoming or not. I sorta doubt it…

OK, more on these and other topics later.

So we have a kid working in our office who is really smart. Like, honestly—probably has the highest IQ out of everyone working here (students or permanent staff). I can tell he’s more “on the ball,” and picks up things a lot quicker than some of his student co-workers.

I find out today that he’s in College of Business for finance or accounting (hasn’t decided yet). And in my head I’m going, “Nooooooooo-ooo!!” My question is, does it make me a ‘humanities snob’ to look at this guy and say, “Man, what a waste of potential to be sunk into bean-counting. He oughta be working toward something that deals with ideas and innovation, not facts and figures…” (?)

Other than that, I’m sorry to have been neglecting the blog a little over the last couple weeks. Truth be told, I have busied myself around the house with either computer tinkering or (sighs) Madden. Inevitably, I get caught up in it for a week or two each year, and I think it’s passed now. Last Monday, I sat there playing and said to myself, “What the hell am I doing this for?”

The nice thing is that my stretch of Madden-play is usually followed by a guilt-provoked streak of mad-crazy productivity, so let’s be on the lookout for that!

In other news, I briefly entertained the notion of moving just one door down, to a 2-bedroom apartment, earlier this week. I found out my neighbors were moving out, and thought I would check into it. Turns out the place is already re-rented and it wouldn’t be a cost-effective move for me anyway. I was thinking of “saving” the money I spend on laundry every month (since the 2-bdrm has a washer/dryer), but the extra rent is a lot more than I spend on laundry. If I had a roommate, different story. But if you know me, you know how I feel about roommates at this stage of my life.

Michelle and I will be driving out to the Twin Cities this weekend, and we’re staying with Andrea & D-Slo?. If you’ll be around, gimme a call, maybe we can meet up for… something. We are also going to St. Cloud for Storyhill on Saturday night, so that night’s gonna be out, but…

Anyway, back to it.

Learned a life lesson this week, and I’m thinking it will change the way I approach this topic in the future.

My car insurance just went through the damn roof with my latest policy renewal. Having been covered under my folks’ policy for longer than most people, and only ever having had one company for auto insurance, I never thought a bit of what the rate was. I’d get a new policy renewal in the mail, file it, and watch the money fly out of my checking account once a month.

It never changed that much, but this month, the difference was to the tune of 20 bucks. Over six months, that’s a bit o’ cash. So, I went shopping a little, found a better rate, and I think I’ll be switching sooner than later. It seems too bad, though, having been with one place ever since I could drive a car…

Anyway, in the future, I’ll be watching that rate with every renewal, and I’ll be ready to switch at a moment’s notice.

Thinking of heading out to LaCrosse? for the weekend. They’ve got Ocktoberfest wrapping up, and Michelle has a friend who lives near the downtown area and enjoys the… debauchery. I also want to visit Grandma & Grandpa’s grave stone, and pop in to Uncle Jim’s, too. It occurred to me that I haven’t been out there since Grandma’s funeral.

In unrelated news, I was in the throes of more computer modification last night, and did two things:
– I installed a copy of Windows Vista, and it’s quite pretty. I don’t know if it’s any better than anything I have now, but aesthetically, it’s definitely an improvement.
– I somehow managed to break my TV box. I’ve done this (sort of) before, and one day it just magically fixed itself. I have to tinker with it a little bit more, but I might end up doing a cost-analysis to see if it would be cheaper to try to find a new motherboard that would fit the chip that’s in there, or try to do a whole different setup. I was going to put Linux on there in order to run Freevo, but then I ended up with some error or problem where the mother won’t boot.

At work, the speed is considerably lower, and I’m even online for the IMs periodically. Maybe I’ll see ya.

Oh, and I thought this was funny from yesterday – I re-registered to vote, what with having moved a couple months ago, and my new polling place is actually closer to my old apartment than the place I used to go. I dunno, maybe you had to be there.

Just got a new dual-layer DVD burner for my desktop computer. Which, if you’ve been keeping up, you’ll know is now running Ubuntu.

I plugged it in and realized, “damn, this is the 7th or 8th different optical drive I’ve had in this mofo…” OK, so, disclaimer time– you’ll probably only appreciate this post if you’re a nerd.

I got my desktop machine as a gift from my mom and dad for graduating from college. I graduated in December ’01, but they were nice enough to buy me the machine before my last semester started, so just at the end of August, this computer crossed the 5-year mark for age.

I could note that in that time, I have also had a grand total of 7 laptops (although 2 of them I didn’t buy, and three of them were someone else’s used shite by the time I got to them via ebay).

The machine was pretty near the top of the line when I got it (in the upper 95% for standard home/office use anyway), and when you think about how quickly people throw out computers these days, it’s pretty amazing. Obviously, there have been upgrades time to time, but man– that processor just keeps on chugging, and doing a damn fine job of it. There have been times I’ve tried to retire this thing and it just won’t lay down.

Granted, there was the fire in 2002 out in Bozeman, and when all was said and done, that resulted in a ‘TMP’-level refit (new motherboard, hard drive, heatsink and power supply), but I don’t think anyone can say you haven’t gotten your money’s worth out of a computer that is still extremely useful after more than 5 years.

So Red-Five: long may you run.

OK, yeah… this is a really weird post, but whatever. I’m gonna go install Vista RC1 now.