What in the hell happened to spring?

I've been lazy and haven't blogged for 2 weeks :( There's also just been a shitload of stuff going on. To start, Pam and I had quite the active Memorial Day weekend. Between her and I we got some of the outside trim painted, the garden planted, and a bunch of other little chores done that we've been sitting on for a while now. It's also been insanely busy at work (where I usually blog from). We have a large computer upgrade project right now and guess who get to deal with the computers that come back? That's right, it's me!

The other big part is that Pam and I went to Indianapolis this weekend for the NIN/JA tour show there. That was quite the adventure. I decided to go through Chicago, but I severely underestimated the traffic there. It took almost 2 hours to get from where Hwy 41 merges into I-94 to where I-94 meets I-65 in Indiana. On top of that, there was construction on I-65 so we were delayed by another half hour in addition to the hour lost to the Eastern Time Zone. Essentially we left at 11am CST and didn't get to the hotel until 8:30 PM EST. That meant our original plan of catching a dinner and movie was scrapped and we just got dinner instead. It was a very nice dinner though.

We went to Joe's Crab Shack and I liked it very much. We ordered 2 of their steampots which had quite a bit of food for the price. Pam got 2 bunches of crab legs, a pound of clams, sausage, corn, and potatoes. I got the Bean Town Bake which is 2 whole lobsters, 1 pound of clams, with shrimp sausage, corn, and potatoes. All of that ran about $55 which isn't bad considering the amount of food you get. For two lobsters (which were about 1 to 1 1/2 pounds) you would pay 35-50 dollars alone. Also the atmosphere was very nice and I do have a picture of me in my Joe's bib

Our hotel was a sweet deal through Hotwire. It was a single room, king size bed, with fridge, decent TV, free breakfast, etc. for about $40 a night. The breakfast was relatively decent, however the only hot food was biscuits and gravy and you could make your own waffles. Something about the food didn't really sit well with either of us (I think it was the gravy) Other than that, I can't complain.

I took Pam to go see Star Trek which was just fucking awesome. The best thing is that you don't really have to be a Star Trek nerd to enjoy it because it's a reintroduction to the cast and story (although you do have to kind of like sci fi a little bit). Even Pam had to begrudingly admit that it was pretty good. It's also kind of funny to take her to anything Star Trek because our first date some 14 years ago was to go see Star Trek: Generations. It's a wonder there was a 2nd date, let alone a marraige and kids.

After Star Trek went to the venue after that. It's really weird, there's nothing out there but the venue, some businesses and a upscale outdoor mall, which we killed some time at. As an aside, I got 3 new games from Gamestop (more on that later). The Verizon Music Center is a larger Indoor/outdoor ampitheater a la Alpine Valley so obviously there was quite a line when we got there. Even though we had preordered and got to go in before the rest of the general public, we still stood around for quite a while because they were late with sound check. It took about 30 minutes to get inside the outside gate and then we still had to stand in line for another 30 minutes to get inside the seating area, and another 45 minutes still to showtime. It amazes me how much these places fuck you in the ass for food and drinks. $9 for a 16 Oz glass of Busch? Gross. We did end up buying a little merchandise and actually the one thing they had at a decent price was a full size messenger bag which I needed anyways. It's canvas with plenty of pockets and it feels pretty sturdy for only $55 bucks. That's a lot of money you say? Well it's a steal when baseball hats and t-shirts are going for $30-40, $55 isn't all that bad. Anyways, here's what it looks like.

Our tickets were for the pit, and of course the "pit" is only 1000 square feet that they're trying to cram 500 (according to staff, I think there were more) people into. Pam and I have learned our lesson from before about getting too close to the stage so we sat by the back railing all night Still I was no more that 75 feet from the stage at all times so that was cool.

The show was pretty sweet but kind of disappointing at the same time. Street Sweeper Social Club was the opener. The band is a collaboration between Boots Riley of The Coup and Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine and they tore it up on stage. It's probably more funkier than Rage but still politically minded. They also did an awesome cover of Paper plates by MIA and I wish they would put that out somewhere but as of yet, I haven't found it.

Nine Inch Nails played next, which I thought was kind of bullshit considering this is a farewell tour (of sorts) for Trent Reznor, they should be closing. Maybe we've gotten spoiled from the Lights in the Sky tour but they didn't really do anything with stage effects. Yeah there was lights and stuff, but no video screen, no projections or anything of that sort. They also had a very mixed bag of music for the setlist, playing no more than 2 or 3 songs off of all their major released, and also doing their cover of "Metal" by Gary Numan. I like the song but I don't think it fit into their set.

Jane's Addiction closed and I'm not the biggest fan of them, but they put on a pretty decent show. It was mostly songs from Nothing's Shocking and Riual de lo Habitual but not too bad. The acoustic rendition of 'Jane Says' they played for an encore was pretty sweet.

Sunday we went on the most boring drive ever to get home. I-65 to Bloomington, IL then I 39/I90 to Madison and then US 151 home. Despite it being boring we still got home in only 7 hours (accounting for the time difference). I definitely am going to go that route if I ever need to go South of I-90 again. Well, it's either that or leave at 4 in the morning and then we don't have to worry about traffic.

We had a great time but it just makes me sad the with baby #3 on the way that vacations are going to be even fewer and farther in between because of the logistics of getting people to watch all 3 kids. Oh well, that's the price of admission for the parent ride. Besides it won't be too long before we'll be taking the kids on large scale vacations and if I keep them glued to a TV set in the car, it'll almost be like not having them there :)

The iPhone came in quite handy on our trip, helping us find all the places we needed without having to drive all over the place. We were able to stay connected fairly well. However, one thing that pisses me off is the coverage by AT&T. I had 3G outside the gates at the music venue, but when I went in it was Edge only and not good coverage at that. Spots on the Interstate were completely dead and it's still dead in Juneau where Pam works. Strangely enough when you are 1 mile east of there it's a perfect signal. I swear if the iPhone was on a different provider I'd be all over that. In the meantime I just hope that they continue to improve their infrastructure.

On the gaming front, I've been going pretty nuts with games. A week and a half ago I got Buzz for $20 at Walmart (buzzers and game) I'm almost to the Platinum trophy there (1 more to go). The games I bought at Gamestop were Bad Company, Burnout Paradise, and Alone in the Dark. It was a buy 2 get 1 free sale and all were 18.99. With my Gamestop card, I got all three games for $35 bucks, so that's pretty sweet. I had a day off Monday and managed to get my trophies for the Endless setlist on Rock Band 2 on Expert. That finally made me able to reformat my PS3 hard drive (I couldn't copy the RB2 save game). Now I can actually put more than one game's data on the hard drive :) Soooo, I'll be pretty busy for the next few months.

Well, I'm all typed out. I'll be posting photos of the concert later when I get home, but for now use your imagination :)