Monthly Archives: November 2008

OMG I still have a blog. Nice! Not sure about readers, but whatever, you people never liked me anyway. But I’m here to make good. To catch up. Because that’s what I’ve been doing. Catching up. And here I am, returning the favor, catching you up. You’re welcome.
Here goes.

A few weeks ago I caught up with Conor Oberst and his Mystic Valley Band when they rolled into First Avenue. That’s them in the pic. I liked the MVB sign on the synth stand. Nice touch. Conor looked thin and fragile. I’m sure you’re as surprised as I was. But the band rocked. The new album is borderline great. A couple songs for sure are. Like “Get Well Cards”, for example, a song that is so Dylan that I think he intentionally worked in the word ‘hurricane’ just to make sure that everyone knew he was aware of it. And it came off great in concert. Really the whole record did. Super loud, a little messy in places, but very much rock and roll. I was maybe even a bit surprised. Who knew, right? That reminds me, there were a surprising number of older people at this show. Like not just pathetic 30 somethings clinging to their youth like me, I mean like 50+ year olds. All leaving at 11 when the show still had an hour to go. Were they expecting “Wide Awake” or something? It was weird. Anyway.

Libby and I went down to the dome with the Conways to catch up with the red hot Golden Gopher Wait What We’re Good Now? Football Team. It was homecoming. The picture above shows the band in their traditional homecoming halftime cupcake formation. Oh hi cupcake. Anyway, the Gophers lost. They didn’t look all that red hot to me, but it was fun seeing them up close and the atmosphere was legit and the new stadium is going to be awesome I don’t care if we win or what. But yeah, if we win it’ll be better. So here’s hoping we win once we get there.

Oh hey, remember Halloween? I totally do. It was a wild Friday night spent running around the neighborhood trying to catch up with an elephant and a ghost. Here’s the elephant pre-Halloween. She was a riot. As usual. Also as usual, we didn’t hand out any candy, choosing instead to give out kazoos and halloween beads and those plastic monster teeth and stuff. The kids get enough candy, right? Right. But it’s still amusing to see their reactions. This one little girl said “thank you!” and it sounded all legit and stuff, then she turned around and started walking down the sidewalk yelling “DON’T GO TO THAT HOUSE, THEY’RE NOT GIVING OUT CANDY, JUST KAZOOOS”. Awesome stuff. Also this: it was amazing how many kids had no idea what a kazoo was. Well over half had no idea what it was or how to use it. I’d even say 3/4 of them. WTF, right? Right. After a while I just started giving lessons when I passed them out. I’d get 5 kids at the door, hand out 5 kazoos, watch them mentally flip out when they realized they weren’t getting their 1000th fun size snickers, then teach them how to play. 20 minutes later they’d all walk by on the sidewalk, still playing. Give a man a kazoo, you’ve fed him for a lifetime. Or whatever.

I took Panko out for a Jucy Lucy and caught him up with our local food scene. My favorite part was when he took one bite of his burger and set it down on the table and all the cheese started to drain out. OMG amateur.
And then there’s this BREAKING NEWS from the Used To Be Important Department: I quit my job of 10 years as a hotshot consultant who works for huge corporations and started a new one as a actual employee of a huge corporation. It’s going about like I expected. It’s a lot of fun. I’m learning a ton. I’m doing my best to catch up. Next week there’s a company 5k over lunch. I am not making this up. This big corporate lifestyle is cushy like a big soft comforter. In related news, I didn’t have to bring in my own monitor from home. But just keeping it real, the scrappy vibe at the old joint was awesome. Tear.
There has been a bunch of other little stuff, too. But isn’t that what twitter is for? Totally.
Nice to have you back.