Monday night, Kim and I headed to the Bluebird Theater to see Matt Nathanson. You may remember about a year ago, we saw him play at this very same venue. This time was a bit different. First, I don’t think the show sold out last time, but this time it sold out in advance, forcing myself to find tickets on craigslist. Fortunately I found a pair for barely over face. Just like the last time, I was hassled by venue security about my recording gear. I managed to get inside the door with my equipment but was told that I couldn’t record the show. Another taper from the the last show was in attendance working the merch booth, so I told him of my problems. He paged the tour manager, who stopped by immediately and solved all of the problems. She was a big help!

So I was able to tape with little problems, though I did have to find a power outlet half way through the night. I was a little unprepared to be taping the show. We arrived in the middle of the first opening band, The Break And Repair Method, so obviously I didn’t record them. I thought that they were alright, their last song was probably the best. It’s their current single, “You Won’t Be Able To Be Sad.”

Up second was Jessie Baylin. She announced during her set that her friend Brett Dennen sang vocals on one track of her album. It didn’t really surprise me, as I thought early on in her set that she sounded like the female version of Brett Dennen. But for some reason I just couldn’t get into her music, and that’s coming from a Brett Dennen fan.

It doesn’t really need to be said, but the Nathanson set was good. The sold out crowd definitely didn’t know the older songs, for the most part, so the setlist followed songs from Some Mad Hope with some random covers and a few rarer songs thrown into the mix. Despite not being able to set my recording rig up near the soundboard, I feel that the recording turned out really well. Though I will let you all be the judge of that. You can find it here or you can try out the player below to take a listen to the concert.

To kick off this past weekend, I dragged Kim out to the movie theater to see the latest movie from my favorite director, Kevin Smith, called Zack and Miri Make a Porno. Don’t let the name fool you, this isn’t a pornographic film, though there is some nudity throughout. The IMDb entry linked above sums up the plot pretty well.

Lifelong platonic friends Zack and Miri look to solve their respective cash-flow problems by making an adult film together. As the cameras roll, however, the duo begin to sense that they may have more feelings for each other than they previously thought.

I wouldn’t recommend the movie if you are easily offended, but the results are absolutely hilarious. Even with all of the humor there is still an underlying love story that makes this one of the better romantic comedies in quite some time. I thoroughly enjoyed it and I know that Kim did too. That’s two thumbs up!

For the third year in a row, I watched the University of Denver hockey team take on the University of Minnesota Duluth Saturday night. Surprisingly, tickets were not sold out on Friday evening when Kim stopped by to pick some up. In fact she was able to get second row seats, however we later found out these seats were directly behind the goal judge. Luckily the arena was less than half full, so we just moved up to the area where I usually like to sit and enjoyed the game from there. Just like the last time, we watched as DU claimed victory over the Bulldogs of UMD, final score 2-1. As always we had a blast at the game, and with tickets being relatively cheap, I was shocked at the low turnout for the game. We’ll definitely be back soon.

For Kim’s birthday, we headed out to dinner at the Wash Park Grille. This has been on our list of places to eat since moving here, but for some reason or another we had still yet to have gone. Thought I’m not sure it was necessary, I made a reservation for 6:30, and when we arrived we were given a booth table. Surprisingly (at least for Kim) there was already a bottle of wine on the table for us, a gift from her family. So we were able to have a glass of wine while looking over the menu.

I decided to have the Italian Penne Pasta with sauted chicken breast, Italian sausage, mushrooms, sun dried tomatoes and onions in a spicy tomato parmesan cream sauce, along with the French onion soup to start. Kim had the Fettuccine Aglio e Olio, pan fried fresh pasta with artichoke hearts, extra virgin olive oil, garlic, chili flakes, Italian herbs and grilled chicken, along with a salad to start. I would highly recommend the dish that I chose, the Italian Penne Pasta, which was just a bit spicy and very delicious. I don’t know that I would order the Fettuccine Aglio e Olio again, as I thought it was just average, but regardless the food was overall excellent. We will definitely be back, and I hope it’s sometime soon!

Today is Kim’s birthday, the last one she’ll have in her 20’s. That’s a scary thought! Hanging onto the edge of that hill everyone always talks about. We’re heading out to dinner after work to celebrate. Today is also the last day that Cari, our roommate for the last couple of months, will be with us. Her mom is flying into Denver this evening, and they will be on their way back toward the Midwest. We wish her the best of luck in her future endeavors.

What an exciting week in sports! The Cincinnati Bengals finally won a game, just in time for a bye week. I’m not sure if this will hurt or help the team going into the second half of the season, but it really can’t get any worse.

My adult hockey team nearly won last night. We finally started putting the puck in the net, including a goal by yours truly. In the end we had some bad penalties that allowed the other team to take a 6-4 lead and eventually win 7-4 after an empty net goal. The surprising thing is that the team we played is in second place, so maybe we are finally making some positive progress.

Finally I had another fantasy football victory. Two in a row! And I didn’t even play Cedric Benson who had a big game for the Bengals. Now I’m hoping I can somehow make the playoffs after now being tied for second to last place in the league of twelve. Only the top six make it into the playoffs so I’ve got some serious work to do.

Sunday, Kim and I did something we haven’t done in a long time, we played golf. We took a bike ride on Saturday down the Platte River Trail past numerous golf courses and decided if the weather was still nice the following day we would go out and hit some balls. Well the weather Sunday was really nice, so we went out to a nearby par three course called Harvard Gulch. Neither of us had been here before, but we wanted something nearby and fairly quick.

This course was really quick with some holes barely over sixty yards in length. Despite the easy and short holes, I managed to really stink up the place. I was hitting off the tees well, sometimes too well, but I couldn’t putt at all. The worst part is that the greens were overall very flat and should have been easy. The first couple holes I got par, and it went down hill from there with a few triple bogeys to finish off the round of nine. Kim ended up beating me by at least three strokes, but she’s played various times throughout the summer for work. I’d like to blame the poor performance on all the leaves scattered around the course, but I think they had very little to do with it.

After no trick-or-treaters showed up last year, we opted to skip it this year and instead head out ourselves. No, we didn’t go door to door, we headed to a bar down the road to see SoundRabbit play. It was a great time, and we ended up staying much later than originally planned. Some friends of ours were having a big party downtown, and we wanted to go there as well, but by the time we arrived it was pretty much over. It appeared that everyone had a good time, and the train ride home was hilarious.