Monday, February 21, 2005

Haulin’ Oats

Your author (David) had a very unbalanced weekend. Thursday evening, I woke up at my usual time, did my usual evening routine, and then headed off to work. After work on Friday morning, I had a filling pizza and beer dinner. I knew that this could be disastrous because I had agreed to help my cousin Mary move out that morning. But I had timed the meal just right, and before the post-meal lethargy had a chance to set in, I was already off to Mary’s apartment. A second wind was easy to obtain.

The moving (or more accurately: truck loading) went fairly well. I sustain a couple of routine moving injuries, but nothing bothersome at the time. I was there from 10:00 to 3:30. For most of that time Mary had a professional mover friend that organized the floor plan of the truck as it was loaded. He left when my brother showed up, around 2:00. So for the last hour and a half that I was there, the Skelton Movers Incorporated utilized our soon-to-be-famous stuff sac approach to filling the truck. I suppose it was strategic planning on the part of Mary’s friend to leave right after the last of the “big and square” items had been given homes. My brother and I managed though. And by the time I left there seemed to still be room for most everything else.

I got home from Mary’s around the 24 hour mark. I knew I still had a couple hours before the Toasters’ concert at the Triple Rock, but I didn’t want to risk a nap for fear that Heather wouldn’t be able to wake me up. So I decided to finish sequencing a tune that I’ve been working on. Just as I finished, Heather came home and we got ready for the show.

Despite being too tired to enjoy the show on all levels, it was a great show. Heather enjoyed it too. We arrived after Umbrella Bed had played and went straight to the bar to wait for Westbound Train to take the stage. We ran into my old band mate John Huttner in the bar. He said that this was the first “ska” show he’s been to since the Jinkies disbanded. We chatted with him for a while and then took in Westbound Train and the Toasters (with another drink break in between). The Toasters have gone through a lot of changes since the first time I saw them. Unfortunately, most of them have been for the worse. But one thing I really enjoyed was their new bassist. On just about every tune he was playing either 8th notes or 16th notes. It made for an interesting sound that helped fill the empty space of their lack of keyboardist. And of course, like every other time I’ve seen the Toasters since that night in Chicago a decade ago, it was nice not to be stabbed this time.

The remainder of the weekend was spent either sleeping or just taking it easy. Sunday afternoon gave us the only other highlight which was having Andy over for the Daytona 500. Andy’s man Kenseth broke his rod, as usual. And our man Martin finished 6th after running in second for a while. Martin didn’t do as well as we had hoped, but it was nice to see him beat out Tony Stewart by a few hairs as they crossed the finish.

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