One of my first two-day weekends in years where I didn't work on Deproduction or DOM... so I figured I'd share what a weekend away from work looks like.
The weekend started with our First Friday party with KGNU, which went quite well. Saturday I had a special gig as part of my occasional moonlighting for Wells Music, who donated the beautiful piano in our studio and does a lot to support local music education. I demonstrated the special edition Elton John Red Piano, a beautiful $80,000 6'11" piano that can record and play-back and has a full built-in synthesizer and multitrack recorder. Of course, that kind of money could feed thousands of people for years (see the new and enlightening Hungry Planet book, which is the ideal coffee-table book, by-the-way), but at least this piano is used to make music instead of pollution like an $80,000 car, and a portion of the $ goes to the Elton John AIDS Foundation.
After that, Saturday night, Ravi, Lindsay, and I went to the Bearded Child Film Fest, at Glob, which showed some great (or at least "interesting") and diverse films you couldn't see anywhere else... even on public access. Unfortunately, it was a very small group of people. Seated, that's Andrew Novick, Ravi Zupa, Matt Struck, Lindsay StAntoine, and Kurt Cole, pretty much the entire audience.
Sunday I updated my Criticker account (possibly my favorite new website), played music, browsed YouTube to check on the meteoric rise of the Flobots, and visited grandma. We had planned to see a movie, but there's nothing but shite at the theatres now, even at the new Landmark Theatre that opened by her assisted-living home. Last month we saw Charlie Wilson's War, which is superb and relevant (she LOVED it). also check out zeitgeist, which I saw this week.
So, instead of a crap movie, we ate at Chili's. :) She had two $5 Vodka-&-7's, which they don't let her drink at the old-folks home, and a steak, which she described to me and the waitress as "lousy". It gave us a chance to talk a little about world hunger and the number of people that could be fed with the amount of grain and water it took to get her a pound of lousy steak. It was a nice discussion, and our waitress took $13 off the tab.
On the way home, stopped by the Hyland's to help move some pool-table slate and see more of his nieces and nephews in suburbia. I didn't snap any photos, but here's a picture Mike gave me of he and I from over 20 years ago. If you can't tell, I was a good-looking 10-year-old. Mike had a bad hair-cut. I think I had a rat tail... or is that a mullet?
Then, off to a bar-b-q at Shawn Holiday's house. (Dave, I'm sorry you missed it) There was a trampoline there, so I got some pics of Ravi and Lindsay and I jumping in the darkness and posted them here. Trampolines are fun.
When I finally got home, I took a shower and stepped out to find this dangling at eye-level in front of me.
Spiders concern me a bit, just because I have little information beyond the basic fear we all are taught as children. I coaxed it onto some tissue and put it in the trash. After some online research, I decided its probably a Bold jumper (Phidippus audax) and like 99.9% of spiders isn't dangerous, so if its still in that trashbag when I get home, I'll help him out and let him roam the house instead of killing him like i did the poor mouse I murdered last month.
That's the weekend!