lvidmar

Rock show, half price.

Last night I went to the Wow Hall for a metal show. $5 to get in, bar in the basement, good times. Bluntpoint (they still apparently don’t have a website– but contain former members of a band called sic9– whose website is now a search portal) opened up and really got the crowd going. As a fan, it worries me that the main draw is the fact that they do a cover of Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing in the Name of…”. I think the main reason this excites me is I never got to see Rage live. Also, I think it it’s moreso acceptable since RATM has broken up and isn’t recording anymore. Just so long as when they do break, the cover doesn’t become a single, it’s all good and fun. It’s just wrong to cover a song in nearly the same style of music and try to sell it.

After that, Fivefootthick came next. They’re from Spokane Washington, and they rock hard! I picked up their latest CD after the show. I’ve listened to it a few times today, and it is definitely going on the iPod next time I sync-up. They say they’re coming back soon, so I look forward to picking up some of their older material at their next show in town, provided I have more cash than I had last night.

Then came Domeshots from Oakland(?) California. For some reason I didn’t like them as much as the other bands, though it was likely the context, and the fact that Blake from Northwest Royalle got the crowd so hyped up. I would make a point to see them again.

And finally Northwest Royalle capped off the show with their trademark aggression and silly humor. I’ve seen these guys quite a few times now, and the only song I can remember they didn’t play was the pornographic boy-band number. It seems to me these guys are working their asses off opening for bands like Slayer on the Jagermeister Music Tour, headlining shows here in Eugene and in Portland, and playing shows all over the Pacific Northwest and California.

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Now, I’m not sure what’s going on with grocery stores around here, but I’ve done this before at Albertsons, but tonight I went to Safeway. Just by having a free piece of plastic with their logo on it, I saved over 50% on my groceries!! Just shows what you can do when you make a shopping list containing mostly advertised loss leaders, and sticking to said list! 🙂

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Did you hear about The Boy Who Pierced His Labia?

Skifest 2005

I really need to get into the habbit of blogging when stuff happens. Blah. I’ll split it up into 2 entries or so to try to be reader-friendly.

So… around Martin Luther King Jr. weekend I had skied 6 of 9 (and subsequently 7 of 12) consectutive days. The Sunday before MLK weekend, I went to Willamette Pass and skied for about 3 hours (landed most of my 360 attempts), then raced home to watch the Vikings/Packers playoff game. w00t, the Vikings won, at Lambeau. Then Thursday I had my “Downhill Skiing” class at Hoodoo. I got placed in the group of people who ski better than the instructors, because I’m that good.

Then it was on to Boise, where I skied with my COUSIN!! at Bogus Basin, 4 days in a row. [edit 2/22/05: OMG PHOTOS] In the middle of that skifest, on Saturday after eating dinner with some extended family, Kristin (cousin from Minnesota, who I was skiing with), Kirk (cousin from Idaho, who I hadn’t met since I was maybe 2yo), his wife, and I went on the town for a few drinks and attemted to dance a little. The night started out great, some great stories were told, played some pool and foosball. Then I’ll just say things took a bit of a dive, and we headed home. Kristin played DD, and we all fell asleep and/or passed out at my brother’s house (Kristin and I were staying there for the weekend anyways). In all the commotion, I forgot my debit card at the bar. I realized this after we got home, everyone else was sleeping, and I was neither fit to drive nor did I remember how to get back there. I guess the point to this paragraph was I had to request a new card after I got back to Eugene. [edit 2/22/05: I got my debit card back on Friday. It was still at the bar along with at least 30 other cards]

Sunday, the Vikings were losing their playoff game against the Eagles(?) pretty badly, so we went skiing for the afternoon.

Then the following Thursday, I drove to Hoodoo for my class, and they were hurting BAD for snow, and my class was cancelled. Well they still wanted full price for the lift ticket, so I decided to make the best of the situation and drove another hour to Mt. Bachelor. I’ll say the snow was less than exceptional (worst. snow. evar.), but the coverage was there. I tried working on my 3’s, but I only landed one of maybe six attempts.

And.. I haven’t been skiing since. Skiing class was cancelled again last Thursday, as Hoodoo is now closed until they get more snow, and judging by the last time I was there, the [3 hour] drive to Bachelor isn’t entirely worth it. Maybe one of these days I’ll make the trek down to Mt. Ashland, and I am tentatively planning on going back to Boise and Bogus Basin / Pomerelle / (maybe) Grand Targhee over spring break. I think I’m on track to hit up more ski areas this winter than last. Wewt.

wtf?

So, Death narrowly missed Aaron Carter yesterday. The 17 year old pop “musician” was quoted to say “You think you’re invincible when you’re behind the steering wheel of an SUV but you’re not. I’m OK but you can imagine I’m still in shock.” WTF?! This kid should have his license permanently revoked for making such an idiotic statement. Also makes a person wonder if there should be a written exam before people can drive, oh wait THERE IS! What state would grant him a license to drive?! And Death, I think Mr. Darwin would appreciate it if you tried harder next time. (Don’t take this tone to mean that I wish grim death to any and all pop stars, I swear I don’t, they are human beings, I think. It’s just anything to prevent them from continuing to “make” more “music” would greatly benefit mankind, IMO)

On a more personal note, my Christmas was quite nice. I left Wednesday night after work and stopped at Anthony Lakes for about 5 hours of early season skiing. Stopped and chatted with their race club for a while and they let me run their gates a couple times. I still wouldn’t be that enthusiastic about seriously racing again, but it’s always fun to bash a few gates. Christmas treated me to some cash, some shiny coins, a DVD, and a 7(!) pack of beer, among other things. Then Sunday we went up to Bogus Basin to ski with the kids.

Then it was back to work on Tuesday for a grueling week. Got the office computers all hooked back up in their proper location, and eliminated 3 fifty foot ethernet cables which were strewn about the office before, replacing them with less excessive cables. All kinds of other stuff too over the last couple of weeks, setting up several new eMacs and cleaning up some old iMacs for use in offices. It’s a bit of hard work, and a lot of time consuming work, but the net result is still a “fun” job. Not that I’d want to do this work forever, but I do enjoy it for the time being.