“Your Nissan is really going to hate you.” — Chris, after I told him the trip I had planned.

He was right. I was just 15-20 miles from home when the right front blew on my truck. Someone had absconded with my spare [again! ... time to take action], so I had to call a wrecker. Thankfully, I found one 1) in my area and 2) going my way, so I was towed into Huntsville, where I got four new tires. [I was close on needing new ones, but they looked okay before I left on the trip. I was planning for this trip to be their end-of-life. Heh.] I’ll start calling about a spare tomorrow at the town junkyards.

The total mileage was something over 1070 miles, not counting the 10 miles or so of the tow.

Pardon me, but I need a really long shower and a beer…

There was a small part of me that wanted to keep the run going and head to Nashville tomorrow to see Sandra McCracken and Matthew Perryman Jones in Nashville, but … man. I just need to get home. As it is, I’ve got 428 miles to haul tomorrow, and I better get a move on as soon as I can get up and headed in one coherent direction.

I did get both shows taped tonight, and the sound was pretty good on both of them. Gary Maurer was back with HEM after a two-show break; his presence really made it worth my trip. I almost bailed on this show last week, seeing as a bunch of contracts came in and we’d be short-handed again this week with people on travel, etc. However, I took the healthy approach that I’d already scheduled all this and was going to just roll with it. [But yes ... if I get moving early enough tomorrow, and I get into Huntsville before 1530, I will stop into the office and put out any fires that I can. I'm just that crazy.]

This trip was largely reminiscent of a hockey weekend to me, especially just all the driving and the camraderie. It helped tonight that I had a view of Game One of the Stanley Cup Finals on OLN at the Vistulite’s bar, so I kept my head on a swivel when it looked like the game was good: concert, recorder, game. This was the first bit of playoff action I’d been able to catch on TV! Gotta love it when you win on a goaltender puck turnover behind the net. Dwayne Roloson probably won’t sleep tonight … but I sure will.

It never fails: I think I’m not going to write much, and I write a ton; I think I’m going to write a ton, and I won’t check in at all. Clearly, this weekend has been the latter—I have five setlists to post, and I haven’t even sniffed doing it. Been too busy to post, mainly because I’ve been with awesome folks. [Look ... if you're staying with Jeff and Adriene for two days, you don't have time to blog, people. You're having too much fun.]

Which is not to say that Sarah is boring, ’cause she’s not. We’re just running around and doing a bunch of stuff today, because this is what we do when we hang out.

OtR rocked it on Friday [and Brandi would agree]. Hem was … okay. It was their first show ever without Gary Maurer, so they were, as they noted, “overcompensating”. Saturday was better for both, amazingly, although Rick Plant’s wicked guitar solo during “When I Go” was better on Friday night. I finally figured out my recorder during OtR’s set on Saturday—yes, as always, I’m an idiot—so I did get all but the opening of that. CC was really great last night, too … best show I’ve seen from them in … three years. Booted that one, but I haven’t listened to it at all.

Okay … back to hanging out with Sarah. Besides, I’m listening to “Tommy the Canexican” by Eddie from Ohio and am laughing way, way too hard to think. OtR and HEM tonight, then going home tomorrow.

You’d think that, given the facts that I 1) have to leave directly from work to head to Nashville tomorrow and 2) won’t be back until, oh, Tuesday, that I’d be close to packed for my trip.

You’d think that, but you’d be wrong. [Well, you wouldn't think that if you know how I roll.]

I crashed after I got home tonight; I had a minor panic last night when I saw that one of my Japanese customers planned to call this morning. As I think I noted earlier this week, my boss is out of town on vacation, and so is one of my colleagues. My other day-to-day colleague went to KSC yesterday, which left me as the only engineer in the program office. Hey, if you’re going to be the boss, temporarily, it’s cool when you just have yourself to boss around.

Anyhow, the Japanese phone call kinda threw me—I’d wanted to have this conversation last week when I wouldn’t be the only one on this end. Now, it turns out that he didn’t call [and won't be calling in the morning ... whew], but I was a bit leery of winging it on my own. No real reason; I’m the one closest to this quote effort, and I knew all the answers to give. But I didn’t sleep well at all, mainly because I knew I needed to be up early and maybe into the office by 0600 if he was going to call. [The 14-hour time difference between Huntsville and Tokyo sucks when we're trying to have a phone conversation.]

Hey, it could have been crazier … it could be like the time I was on-campus at UAH, overseeing the construction of some barricades for one of UAH’s Frosh Mosh foam parties when another one of my Japanese customers called me on my cell phone. Kat was with me, and I think she enjoyed seeing my eyes bugging out of my head.

Been an interesting work week: everyone leaves town, and most all of the contracts we’ve been working to get all show up. I told my boss that he has to take vacations more often. Of course, all this work focus has made trip planning wholly secondary, which stinks as I need to be packed and ready to go in … eight hours. [Don't you love my coping mechanism, babbling through this entry? Me too.]

Okay. Must pack. Must find food. Must … hit … Publish …

Well, I now have my itinerary confirmed:

• Friday, 2 Jun 2006: HEM and Over the Rhine at the Exit/In, Nashville, TN. Stephen will be riding up with me for the show, and Brandi, Trey, Andrew, and Alison may end up coming. We’ll have to see.
• Saturday, 3 Jun 2006: HEM and Over the Rhine at the Variety Playhouse, Atlanta, GA. Some may say that it’s silly to see the same two artists back-to-back; I say that it’s a rare opportunity. Combine that with the fact that I’ll not only get to stay with Jeff and Adriene and get to see Jason, and it seems like a good idea; given that Jeff is who hooked me on OtR in the first place, it’s a necessity. I have warned Adriene that I may spontaneously cry and hug Jeff before, during, and after the show.
• Sunday, 4 Jun 2006: Caedmon’s Call at Church of the Apostles, Atlanta, GA. We hadn’t planned on this show happening, but when Jeff saw it on the schedule, he said, “Dude! You have to come with us!” I think he’s just using me for my ability to get guestlisted. [It's okay.]
• Monday, 5 Jun 2006: Over the Rhine and HEM at the Vistulite Theatre in Charlotte, NC. This is the show I had been planning to see for about two months, really. Why this show? It gave me a ready excuse to visit Brandon and Sarah, with hopes for seeing Mike and Kari as well. We’ll all four be going, as will Andrea. It’s me and my Carolina crew! [Even if they all hate Duke.]

Some call it obssession. I call it commitment. I’ll drive home on Tuesday and be back at work on Wednesday the 7th. My boss is out tomorrow through next week, so I will be looking forward to a little time away.

Dear BNA, OAK, and SAN: Thanks for sucking and not having free wireless.

Dear PDX: Predictably, you have open and free wireless. You rock.

It was everything I thought that it would be, and more. Here’s the setlist for Hem and Over the Rhine at the Wonder Ballroom in Portland on Monday, May 8th, 2006:

Hem: Sally, Daniel, Gary, and Steve were out for this show and, presumably, the whole tour.

1. The Golden Day Is Dying
2. Rainy Night in Georgia
3. The Fire Thief
4. Reservoir [a new song for the upcoming album, Funnel Cloud]
5. Lazy Eye
6. Betting on Trains
7. Strays [Daniel: "I wrote this song, about marriage, long before I was ever even married and knew what I was talking about."]
8. Jackson
9. When I Was Drinking
10. Hollow
11. We’ll Meet Along the Way [another new one from Funnel Cloud]
12. Sailor
13. Carry Me Home
14. Half Acre

Encore

1. Pacific Street
2. Stupid Mouth Shut [by audience request, over All That I'm Good For]
3. My Father’s Waltz

Funnel Cloud is due out in September. I cannot wait!

Over the Rhine: Karin and Linford with Rick Plant and Devon Ashley. I saw Rick and Devon with them in Nashville just before Christmas, and it was just as wonderful then as it was tonight.

1. Latter Days
2. I Want You to Be My Love
3. Born
4. Looking Forward
5. What I’ll Remember Most About Dying
6. The next song was one of Linford’s solo piano numbers; I thought when I heard it that it was “Weak in the Knees Across the Sky”, but back in my hotel room, listening to my iPod, I can’t place it. Blast!
7. Little Did I Know
8. Hush Now (Stella’s Tarantella) [just K&L]
9. The Seahorse [just K&L]
10. Some cover I didn’t recognize
11. Firefly
12. Trouble [new ... although they've played it for months now]
13. Drunkard’s Prayer

Encore #1

1. I’m on a Roll [new]
2. Cruel and Pretty

Encore #2

1. When I Go

I did not tape this show; I wanted to soak it all in. I’ve seen OtR before, but I’d never seen Hem, and they were everything I’d hoped they’d be. I’ve heard some bootlegs of theirs before, and they’ve been hit or miss—sometimes because Sally’s voice has been shot, and sometimes because the sound behind them has sucked [especially the monitors ... when Steve is trying to pull BGVs out of his ass, that's a bad thing]. This was totally worth flying out to see, even if this very tour will be in my neck of the woods in a month.

Well, they do. I’m just not cut out for vacationing, I don’t think. What did I do when I got up this morning? I checked in with the office because I had a bad feeling about things—and that feeling was proven right, as the meeting we’re hosting this week wasn’t Thursday-Friday as we’d been told but instead Tuesday-Wednesday. We would have never learned that if I hadn’t tied in today, and that would have been bad … foreign nationals + corporate visitors + 1 day early = one very frustrated Geof.

That effectively killed my morning, between emails and calls. Grrrrr. I’ve gone out and explored again today, but my photographic muse has been silenced, mostly—when I did want to shoot, it started to rain; when it stopped, I didn’t have anything I wanted to shoot—and I’m just plain tired. I also recognize that I have to be out of the hotel super early in the morning, and I’m beginning to wish that I had chosen a hotel out by the airport. Oh well; I’d have a longer drive from the show tonight.

But as much of a blah as today has been—and don’t get me wrong; I’ve had a good time here, hanging out with my friend Holly as she’s had time—tonight is the show: Hem and Over the Rhine. Good times.

Turns out that I had to MAC-authenticate to get on the wireless network here at the hotel, and given that it was really late when I got in last night, I just decided not to fool with it.

Flights were nice; I finished Blue Like Jazz—which I recommend, Rick —on the first leg of the trip, which meant that I was left to my standard airplane fare [namely The Economist and the Harvard Business Review] for the second leg.

It’s a gray, rainy day here in Portland, although right now it looks like it’s going to clear up a bit. I hope so. It’s been too rainy for me to feel like I can haul out my camera [although I drove around with it for a while]. I’m saving my Powell’s run for tomorrow when I won’t be fighting the 9-to-5 crowd.

[Yes, I will write much more about BLJ. I'm still processing all of it.]

Consumers of my Flickr photostream will see new photos for the first time this year. Last year, I bought Alex’s Canon 10D body, but after that, I didn’t have any desire to take photos. [I never claimed to be a rational actor.] My old Sony went to some friends, who have put it to good use.

As I got ready to go to Portland, though, I got the desire up to take photos again, so I picked up some lenses for it. Just today, I got my 4GB Compact Flash card. I installed it in the 10D, turned the camera on, and saw the beautiful result on the LCD: 999. Yep, I can well exceed 1,000 photos on that card, which means my battery will run out long before the storage does.

My hotel has complimentary Internet access, and my iBook will be going with me on the trip. I plan to take lots of photos. [I don't presume that any of them will be any good; my brother is the shutterbug in this family.] They’ll start coming out as soon as I get there, I’m sure.

In 24 hours or so, I should be most of the way to my parents’ house in Tennessee; I will then do as quick of a job installing their DSL modem and setting up a small home network as I know how [having just done this here at home with virtually the same equipment, I should find it easy]. I’ll get up on Saturday and haul ass to Nashville to fly on out. Both of my plane changes happen in California, which will technically indicate that I’ve spent time in the Golden State; while I’m tempted to not count it, I’ll spend much more time there than I have in Delaware.

As I prepare to go to Portland, I’m reading the book of one of Portland’s up-and-coming adopted sons, Donald Miller. I enjoyed his Through Painted Deserts, and I’ve been told that I’ll like BLJ. We shall see!

Noooooooooooooo! And YESSSSSSSSSSSS!

That describes my emotions about five minutes ago when I read the latest email missive from Karin and Linford: Hem will be joining them on the Mid-South dates after all. I’m still going to Portland, though; that’s gonna be my vacation for the summer, as things are gearing up here [I think].

It’s almost a given that I’m going to Atlanta on Sat 3 Jun; I’d get to see them with Jeff, and Jeff introduced me to OtR. It’s pretty certain that I’ll go to see them in Nashville at the Exit/In on Fri 2 Jun; I can find crashspace with one of my peeps there. I’m also thinking about making the trip to Charlotte to see them on Monday the 5th, largely so I can see Brandon and Sarah and hopefully Kari and Mike.

My heart may not take this much OtR. [It's almost a guarantee I'll be buying the bootleg rig I've been eyeing. Four shows in five weeks that I want to bootleg? Yep.]

Well, we rolled into Doug E’s driveway a little after 1900, and I got home about 15 minutes ago … to a way-hot house. It’s 81F upstairs! Phew. A/C is on for the first time in 2006, so that’s fun. [Not.]

I at least had yesterday to get over losing on Saturday. If we were going to lose, I’d rather have lost in the semifinals, almost, because at least we wouldn’t have lost in the finals again. Ugh. I’m really beginning to get sick of this.

Well, must go to attend to my computers, start laundry, etc. A new work week beckons in 12 hours!

Anyone reading this that has access to CSTV … I’m in a brown polo on the first row of seats just behind press row. I’m sitting exactly on the center line. I’m in the crowd for the Mercyhurst-Niagara women’s game right now, and I’ll likely stay here for the Bemidji-Niagara men’s game at 2:00 ET.

Unfortunately, our coach gave away last night’s game, so I won’t be doing radio today. :sigh:

Well, I got more sleep last night than the last three combined. Always nice.

Practice is up and the boys are just about showered, so I better shut the laptop back down…