Tasha’s working on her dress for GenCon this year, so I had the distinct pleasure to go with her to the fabric store tonight.  She got some ribbon and other miscellaneous stuff, and while she was getting the fabric cut the lady doing the cutting asked how I was doing.  I told her I was doing fine, and she said that I sounded like most guys that come in there: ready to leave.  I laughed, and said that I probably sounded like most women sound when walking around somewhere like Gander Mountain or Bass Pro Shop.  She agreed.

So now I need to take some extra time on a manly pursuit to counteract the impact of my time in the fabric store.  So far all I’ve been able to muster is CSI.

My buddy Paul took possession of his new home today, and I offered to help him move a few carloads of stuff from his apartment to his new digs.  I have to say, he’s moving up in a big way… his new place is HUGE.  I think his basement is more square footage than the first floor of my house, its pretty excellent.

Today marked the end of our development iteration at work, and several of my coworkers and I took off over the lunch hour to hit some golf balls at the club right next door to our office.  I haven’t really played golf since high school, but I did fairly well with the borrowed 3 iron that I was using.  I put several of them past the 150 yd flag, but I also put plenty of them around the 105 yd flag too.  As I said before, I used to play quite a bit of golf when I was in high school and I took lessons when I was younger than that… a lot of the muscle memory was still there and it was fun to play a little!  I might have to get a set of clubs and hit the links a bit more while I’m out here, there seems to be several avid golfers in my office so I should have plenty of company!

That’s all for now!

Payday came a bit late this month, so we were scraping the bottom of the proverbial barrel.  So tonight we went to the grocery store, I got my propane tank refilled, and we also hit Omaha Steaks and refilled the freezer with enough meat to last at least a month.  Tasha convinced me to get a Quizno’s while we were out, I really like their torpedos… the beef, bacon, and cheddar one is really good.

One of my favorite blogs, Glassy Eyes, reported a good sale on a cool pair of glasses so I’m gettin’ em!

Tonight I finally made it back to the gym.  We did legs and some arms on the machines upstairs, I noticed that my right knee was complaining a little so I went light on the leg curls.  We then went downstairs and did some free weights, abs, and rounded out the workout with a little basketball just for fun.  It felt good to do weights again!

I had a handful of small trees growing in our garden near the front door, so when I got home I did a little bit of yardwork.  While I was chopping up the fallen small trees, I bent over and I smelled something… well… minty fresh.  Upon closer smelling, I found that we had half a dozen small spearmint plants right in front of our yard.  Neat!

Aside from that, I worked on my guitar a bit and hit a bit of a milestone: I was able to play along with Bell X1’s Eve, The Apple of My Eye with the song.  Now I’m hungry, so I’m going to find some food.  Go me!

This is a rare weekend when we have two D&D engagements on one weekend.  Unfortunately, this one is going to be truncated due to Kate showing back up from her camping excursion tonight.  Last night’s D&D session was very fun, our group finished the module we were working on and finally moved on to my campaign material so its getting more and more fun for me as a DM.  I got to sprinkle in some fun stuff to start out my original content last night, giving one of our characters that is modelled on Steve Rogers (Captain America) a throwing shield befitting of his namesake.

It’s time to go get cleaned up to head to D&D session #2 for this weekend!  More later!

Last night we venured out to Boulder to see Meniskus, a local band that we like quite a bit.  We got there around 8 (which is when their website said they were playing) but found out quickly that they weren’t on until 10 pm.  So we had a few drinks and waited for the opening guy to get on stage.  After the bar manager moved us three times to different tables while they decided where they wanted to set up their soundboard, it was time for the music to start.

The guy that opened for them was ok… he could really play the guitar, but he did vocalized drumbeat and trumpet that was way more annoying than it was talented.  That, and a few of his songs had utterly ridiculous lyrics.  Boulder is a very interesting place for people watching, there were SO MANY HIPPIES there last night.  But I digress… around 10 pm Meniskus came on and had a pretty rockin’ set.  Their band features an electric violin, so they’ve got a pretty interesting sound.  We ended up buying their first album from the merchandise table, so in all it was a pretty good night.

Also, The Brickhouse in Boulder has pretty cheap drinks which is always a Good Thing.

Going to see one of our favorite local bands, Meniskus!  Expect a good post tomorrow!!

I will join the cavalcade of people on the Internet bidding farewell to Michael Jackson today.  While I considered him a creepy, somewhat detestable plasticine mold of a human being he also provided me some of my earliest memories of music and musical artistry.  I remember listening to a cassette of Thriller when I was very young (probably 3-4 yrs old) in my parents bedroom while jumping on the bed, and I remember that Vincent Price’s laugh used to scare the crap out of me.

I also remember being at my Aunt Mary Ann’s house waiting with my older cousins for the premiere of the Billy Jean video on MTV.  That light up sidewalk was EPIC.  I was probably too young to really appreciate it at the time, but I remember how excited my cousins were to see it so it was exciting for me as well.

I’m going to reserve any criticism for another time.  Instead, I present to you three strange galleries of detrius that MJ auctioned off earlier in the year.

Heading up the Dunes

Originally uploaded by dalcher2

This is a great shot of the perspective from the bottom of the Sand Dunes. If you look at the full-size version of the photo, you can make out that those little spots at the top of the highest dune are people.

That is where we climbed to.

Before Eric chimes in… yes, I know its a big sand pile. It is quite hard to climb to the top of a giant sand pile like that, though!

In case you are curious, here I am at the top!

We had storms in the area tonight, but I decided that no paltry rain would prevent me from having our Omaha Steaks for dinner.  I got the grill fired up and the steaks thawed, and put them on while I was talking to my Dad on the phone.  After a bit, I noticed that wasn’t seeing smoke or hearing that satisfying sizzling sound that I’m supposed to.

Yep, ran out of gas 3/4 of the way through cooking my steaks.  The George Foreman grill finished the job up, but its time to swap out the propane tank for a refill!  I’m actually pretty impressed… we got it at the beginning of May and grilled practically every day in May and most of June.  We’ll get it refilled this weekend and it will be back in the land of grilled meats soon!