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I've been a bum about writing so I'm just going to make this a quick rundown of my summer.

Mid-May, my friend Josh paid me a visit from St. Louis. The idea was to sit down together and spend a whole weekend brainstorming music and hanging out. In the past, this has never been too fruitful (in terms of getting music recorded) but this time things actually worked out well. We stayed up late that Friday night setting up equipment, eating food, and sharing a few drinks. The next day, we caught lunch, shopped around, and relaxed around my house listening to old records. As a Yaz song played in the background, I joked that we should play this... and so we did... It was the song "Too Pieces", a non-single best I can tell. I think it turned out pretty good but more than anything it was good to just get a collaborative flow going with Josh. We ended up making that Saturday a late night and worked on some of Josh' stuff the next day.

Midweek after that, I began packing for my big trip to Oregon and Washington. I have been wanting to visit Portland for a long time. I even had plans made about five years ago but it never quite worked out. Having robots Adam and Tara living there made it just that much easier to just go out and do it. My friend Eric went with me and we piggybacked the trip along with a mid-vacation 4-day trip to George, WA to see the Sasquatch Music Festival. Portland was amazing. I love the public transportation, culture, and cleanliness of the city. It's really laid out in a neat way - making everything easily accessible without the worries of automobiles, crime, and urban sprawl. While I was there I hit several decent restaurants and a handful of bars (McMenamin's, Lotus Downtown, Rogue Brewery, Virginia Cafe, and several others which names have already slipped my mind). I had lunch in Chinatown one day and saw the infamous Flanders Street (where the name comes from in The Simpsons). I went to Powell's Books which I'm told is the world's largest independent bookstore. I also went to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry one day with Eric to see their exhibit on one of my favorite subjects, robots. Adam had a lot of classwork and work that week but we did make it out to a venue called The Wonderbar to catch the band Mogwai. On an off-the-beaten-path part of town on a street filled with converted church buildings we found the club, also a converted church. Mogwai was somewhat disappointing. Their new album is good enough but the whole show just seemed to lull me to sleep (literally, i had to sit down for a while in the back of the club). I'm sure it was just the combination of slow shoegaszing music, complete exhaustion, and jet lag that did me in. They didn't hit too many of their old numbers so it just seemed to me like a soundtrack of their new album, which I've still yet to truly absorb. I had a good time though, was just exhausted. Tara and Adam were great hosts the whole week and it was nice to see Adam again and get to know Tara better (thanks for the yummy all vegetarian meal).

When the weekend rolled around, we met up with three of Eric's friends (two of which turned out to go to the same college as me even though I didn't know them before). We loaded up a rental van and made our way to George, WA for the Sasquatch Music Festival. You can read about that trip here and see some pictures that we took here.

The last day of my trip in Portland was my birthday. A day before, I decided that I should not worry about going out in Kansas City (like I usually do) and instead threw a party at my house. I called everyone up from Portland and told them to come over to my house the next night. I was surprised at the turnout on one day's notice in the middle of a workweek. I barbequed some burgers and brats and everyone brought over beer. It was a nice welcome home and I had a nice new Northwest beard to show off.

June brought several family / friend get-togethers. My good friends Phil and Debby were married after dating for almost five years. Later that month I went on my annual ex-coworker's float trip on the Huzzah Creek in Steelville, MO. The water was lower than usual this year so we had to take a different branch of the river. It was super hot again this year and with everyone getting dropped off at the same spot, it made for a very congested float. We all had a pretty good time at it though. Believe it or not but we actually got a few drunken pictures from the trip this year. On the way back from the float, I made a few stops - including an antique store outside of Steelville, my old University town in Rolla, and my favorite Sunday afternoon gyro shop in Jefferson City. I also found out this day that my mom had won an auctionhouse bid for me on a nice 6-piece Walnut dining set from the late 1800s. It is really nice and unique and after living in my house for over a year and a half, it feels good to actually have something sitting in the middle of my dining room.

July started with a bang on a Fourth of July weekend trip to Table Rock Lake. My friend Sarah's family has a cabin there and graciously offered the place to a small group of friends for the weekend. It was a long-haul (almost all the way to Arkansas) but well worth it. We hung out, played games, ate delicious food, shot off fireworks, and went pontooning. I will forever be known as "the guy that almost sunk the pontoon boat in the middle of the channel" - something about danging my feet over the front while giant waves were crashing over the front. I spent the next night at my friend Rick's converted warehouse apartment in Springfield, MO. He's lived there for probably seven years now and I think this is only the second time I've stayed with him. I made the drive back to Kansas City the next morning and ended up skipping work that day and taking a nap, I was just so exhausted. That night my friend Michael had his annual Fourth of July block party. It wasn't nearly as big of a deal as last year's festival. The neighbors weren't as involved and only a few people brought fireworks but that was okay after a long weekend at the lake. I spent a majority of the night shooting off leftovers from the Table Rock trip and playing a heated game of nighttime croquet, that I managed to lose on the last wicket. Fourth of July was spent relaxing, I did go to one small barbeque but only for a short while. I caught my first Royals game of the season a few nights later as I'd been given tickets for my birthday. It was a great game but the post-game fireworks were a dud. Nothing went off and a voice came over the P.A. saying that they would give all fans a free rain check to any future game since the fireworks didn't go off. How nice is that? Free tickets, a great game, and I get to do it all over again.

I didn't make it to many concerts over this summer but I did get to see The Eagles of Death Metal and Peachesat the Granada in Lawrence. I would say that this show probably makes my list of top ten favorite shows. Peaches was just great, cheeky rock and roll that doesn't stop. Her backup band for this tour is called "The Herms" - as in hermaphrodites. "Peaches and Herms", get it? She played all my favorite electroclash tracks as well as most of the stuff from her new album Impeach My Bush. The show was full of great costume changes, props, sweaty dance moves, and sexed up songs. Some friends from a local burlesque troop even made a special cameo for one of the encores. What a night.

Mid-July, St. Louis got hit with a nasty thunderstorm and over 600,000 people were left without electricity. Among them were my friends Josh and Jessica. They were unsure of how well their cat would deal with no a/c during the hottest time of the summer so they asked if I could put them (and the cat) up for the weekend. They rolled in about midnight on a Friday and we chatted for a while before picking up some beer. This was also the night of the big annual midtown Pirate Partee put on by a group of guys from McCoy's Publichouse. I mentioned this to Josh and he seemed anxious to go, so we made it to the place LATE - I'm talking 3:00 AM... and the thing was still going strong. The best part was that it was walking distance from my house. Within my first hour there the cops showed up for a noise complaint and the music was extinguished and most people made their way home. There were quite a few hangers-on however and with the host and hostess already asleep, close friends began politely asking people to leave. There was some to-do about this and at least one person got "escorted" from the premises. With the party much cozier, it actually turned into a pretty good time. We made it home at 6:30 AM I believe. The rest of the weekend was spent recovering, watching movies, and eating lots of food. I just hope I made a stressful time for a couple friends better somehow.

Ending July, I had two things going on. My friends Mike and Katina had a wedding reception at their house in south Kansas City. Lots of friends and family were in attendance and even though it was super hot and everyone was dressed up, it was still a most happy time. The more I think about it, this is the way that a wedding reception should be - no frills or formalities, just a good time with good friends and family. Of course everything went wrong with the private wedding reception earlier that day (the groom's family visiting from New Jersey got an extreme case of a stomach bug just before the wedding and ended up in the hospital) but we'll just pretend that didn't happen, just like the bride and groom attempted to. The next day I headed to my parent's house for the farewell dinner of my sister. She was moving to Minneapolis after a summer spent saving money post-graduation. I'll miss having her around KC a bit but some time away from her home state will probably be really good for her. Sometimes I wish I had done this. I wish her the best of luck.

August has been relatively quiet thus far, I've been keeping it that way on purpose. Just lots of lazing about so far. They had an Alfred Hitchcock marathon on cable last week in honor of his birthday. I recorded a bunch of that on my DVR and also bought a DVD of a lot of his early works. I suspect that will keep me very busy for quite a while. Heh, now that I'm done with the Six Feet Under series and have watched almost every one of the original Twilight Zone episodes.

I managed to come up with some great music finds over the summer. As part of a neighborhood garage sale, I strolled across the street to my neighbor's house to find a stockpile of old records. I met some new neighbors out of the deal and came up with a really nice hand-crafted wood chess set and three boxes of records for $25. There was some really great stuff in there, about 5 Brian Eno albums, Captain Beefheart, Beatles, Police, Pretenders. Top that with a lot of other used LPs and CDs that I've bought and my music collection is shaping up nicely. I have more stuff than I'll ever be able to listen to... So if for some reason I get barricaded into my house for a year, I'll be sure to keep myself occupied at least.

And now the part where I talk about trivia and band and stuff. Our trivia team has fallen on some bad luck. We never get challenged (or "clashed") anymore so it makes it hard to steal points and be in a position to dominate. We're always stuck near the top at the final question and inevitably make the wrong decision of betting it all or betting nothing. I did play by myself one week on a new team and we managed a second place finish so I've at least done something right this summer. I've been practicing music weekly all summer with a group of guys in a subleased rehearsal space. My drum work has gotten a lot better although I probably look like a poseur compared to some of the band vets that hang around the space. The rehearsal space lease is up though so I'm not sure what we'll be doing from here out. There are at least some prospects on the horizon.

Damn this was a long one, that's what I get for not keeping things updated. And that's how I spent my summer vacation...

-ick!