the bad things travel in droves; the good wander alone

I want the T-Mobile G1. My contract isn't quite one year old, though, and I have to wait for it to be 22 months old before I can get the decent price of 179. However, I might just buy in earlier, but I don't really know. The phone and OS look very promising; if I could make my own phone, it would wind up having specs very close to the G1, only I don't know if I could get it to work X(

The show on Friday went pretty well. The show was kind of weird in the way that it was set up. The main show was something called Cartune Xprez. I'm not certain that all Cartune Xprez shows go this way, but this one had a group called Hooliganship performing in front of some cartoons. Their music was instrumental and sort of went along with the videos; the two guys moved around like they were actually part of the cartoons, though, so it was pretty sweet. After their show, they showed some more videos by other people, some of which were incredibly sweet.

After that happened, the show moved to the Scoot Inn where Hooliganship played another 15 minutes or so on the outside stage. After they finished, a band called Gayle Gold played inside. We only saw part of their set, though, because we had to set up/prepare some last minute things (Kerstan needed to write some of the lyrics for "Total Eclipse of the Heart" so he wouldn't forget them...only he still did). The guitarist was really good, but that was really the only impression I could get in the short time they played.

Kerstan and I went outside to set up on the stage, get levels and everything set up. It was weird, though, because we didn't have monitors. I could still hear everything, but because the guitar amp wasn't micced, I had no idea about the way the entire mix sounded. I basically had Erin tell me if I was too loud or quiet, but she only gave feedback in between songs...next time, I'd like instant hand gesture feedback. So, we get levels set up and tune the instruments and all. I wound up playing Kerstan's 3/4 scale classical guitar for two of the songs (he wanted an acoustic sound on those) and my pink stratocaster for the remaining 3 that I played on. Once Gayle Gold finished, Kerstan started by playing the songs he'd play alone. Because he plays to a dvd, it's not like I have all the time in the world to get on the stage and set things up before I'm expected to start playing, so I was pretty worried I'd forget something and play with the volume all the way down...or the amp turned off...or something like that.

When the song before I played reached the halfway point, I went up on stage, checked my tuning, turned on the amp and waited. By this point, I wasn't really worried anymore. I'd practiced enough and the songs are fairly easy, so I figured everything would be fine. It was. The nice thing about not miccing the amp was that, because I was so close to it, I could really hear myself sitting on top of the mix, while I don't think I was actually that loud for everyone else. The set finished, and went off without any major problems. It was a bit cold, so I fumbled the stretch for the Eb chord the first time, but it wasn't too bad, I just wound up muting notes. I'd like to play again. Maybe I'll learn some keyboard parts or something, though, because not many of the other songs actually have audible guitar parts.

Oh yeah. We skated a bit Saturday night and I fell and kind of hurt myself. Kerstan said it looked scary, but I thought it looked funny. I wasn't expecting to fall, so it probably was funny -- I didn't really prepare too much. I banged up my left knee and hip a bit. That leg was already kind of sore from (I think) running. Oh well.

I started running again, but I'm still working up to it, I guess. I usually run a mile, then run/walk another...that's as much as I have patience for. I tend to finish those in between 20 and 25 minutes...can't waste much more time than that. I'd like to be in the shape where I can run 6 miles in an hour again, but that just got so boring that I quit doing it.