Dumbek's Random Stuff

This is how I spent a good part of the weekend. I'm all about the heat and humidity this summer. Bring it on.

We decided to have a small cookout on Saturday. We figured we'd have a handful of friends over to break-in the pool. Things started off a bit shaky though. Our power was out all morning. That meant no refrigerator, no music and we couldn't vacuum the pool. Then our friends started canceling, with lame excuses like "I have to take the Bar Exam on Tuesday and I'm panicking!" and "A tree fell and smashed both of our cars." OK - Those aren't exactly lame excuses. I'll forgive them for those.

In the end, it all worked out fine. We loaded-up some coolers, picked up my battery-powered boom-box from work and about half of our friends showed up. We were outside swimming and barely noticed when the power came back on mid-afternoon. Less people meant less work for us. Fun was had by all. I love it when things work out.

Sunday was our neighborhood block party. We had officially decided to blow this off. Easier said than done. Having developed a bit of a rep for skipping these things, our neighbors were determined to make us attend. They decided to have the block party in front of our house. The party was literally in our driveway. There was no escape. So we went for a while. It wasn't so bad. Most of our neighbors are actually kind of cool.

Still, we had a great excuse to head out early. Bob had invited us to the listening party for his new cd Body of Song. That was a great way to cap-off the weekend. Thanks, Bob. We picked up the cd yesterday. Very nice. I may have to breakdown and pick this up on vinyl. Can't wait for his 9:30 gig in October.

Monday took me to Fort Reno. Factory Incident/Chop Chop/The Greenline. The Greenline was really good. Peppy-punky goodness. Very cute singer. I'd check them out again, but they said it might be their last show. Oh well. Chop Chop was ok, but forgettable. Stabb mentioned something about them having members of Velocity Girl and The High-Back Chairs. Two great bands, but they just didn't grab me. Maybe I was just distracted by the things going on around me. The Factory Incident features GI's John Stabb. He's still quite the showman. Not bad at all. His band sounds more like Joy Division than Government Issue.

Last night was spent at home with the BF, a couple beers and The Dead's Truckin' Up To Buffalo dvd. I wasn't at this show (7/4/89), but I saw them 4 times the following week (7/7, 7/9, 7/12, 7/13). They were really cresting in the summer of '89. Damn they were good. It's hard to believe Brent has been gone 15 years. I've fallen behind in my Dead cd/dvd purchasing. There's a lot of interesting stuff out there. Particularly the new JGB releases. I may have to pre-order the JGB dvd so I can have it by 8/9.

The rest of the week is fairly quiet. I'll probably checkout Travis Morrison on Thursday. A couple of friends are celebrating birthdays this weekend. Tickets for the second Devo show go on sale Thursday.

I guess I need to head to work now. Drat.