Our flight to Newark got slightly delayed because of fog but we still landed before noon. From there we took a new jersey transit train to Penn Station, which cost a little more than I remembered ($14) but was very easy and pretty quick (less than a half hour). Once at Penn Station we met up with Fighty and Sharkey and headed over to the hotel, La Quinta Inn. We were a couple of hours ahead of check-in time, but luckily our room was ready. We dropped off our luggage and began day one of the tour.

Fighty led us most of the day and did a great job. We first walked down Wall Street, an area I had never seen before despite two previous visits to NYC. Next up was Battery Park, which is supposed to have a nice view of the Statue of Liberty. We knew walking over that we weren’t going to be able to see it because of the fog, but we went anyway. At the waters edge we couldn’t see more than 20 feet in front of us, I would say. Slightly disappointed, we headed off to the World Trade Center area. Not much has changed there since the last time I visited, but Kim hadn’t seen it before. After some time there we moved on to Chinatown and then over to Greenwich Village to have dinner and drinks at Torilla Flats. By this time we were joined by our friends Pat and Kristen, and the margarita pitchers were flowing. We polished the night off at a couple of other bars, including the hotel’s roof top bar.

The fog was gone on Saturday, but the rain had arrived. We tried not to let this ruin any of our plans, so we headed out to Times Square and then over to John’s Pizzeria for lunch. We ate a bunch of pizza while in town, but this is the only place I can remember the name of. From there we walked over to 5th Avenue and Rockefeller Center, where we caught a glimpse of the Stanley Cup and Mark Messier. From there we walked through part of Central Park, but by this time we were getting pretty soaked so we headed back towards the hotel. Soon after the pre-gaming began and before we knew it show time had arrived, a sold out show at that! The show was absolutely amazing! I’m sure I will never forget it, and can only hope for shows to come close to matching it. Words really cannot explain it, so hopefully I’ll get some of my pictures up soon.

We spent the rest of the time in NYC hanging out with so many of my friends. It was great to see everyone, although I wish I had more time to talk to everyone. It’s hard with such a large group though. Before we left we did take one last trip back down to Battery Park, despite the freezing temperature, and this time we could see the Statue of Liberty! With that my trip to NYC was complete and I could head home.

Here ye! Here ye! My compilation of songs for this year, NOW That’s What Ed Calls Music 2005, is done! I finished it up last night and have been working to spread it to all of my friends on the net. Some of them enjoy the CD in their own home, while others use it as a Christmas gift to their friends. I wonder what these friends think of the gift, and do they often wonder who this guy Ed is???

Back on topic though, if you want to download a copy, now you can. New this year, I have a BitTorrent available to allow for much faster downloads. If you are familiar with this file sharing method, I encourage you to click here and begin to enjoy the tunes! If you aren’t a tech geek and you would prefer to download it the old fashioned way, you can do so here. And finally, if you have never heard of these compilations before, what’s wrong with you?!?! Check out this page to see all of them that I have produced.

As always I will have hard copies of the compilation with me soon. The next week or so of blogs will comprise of me talking about Kim and I making copies of the CD. Chances are if I see you in the next couple of weeks, you can get your hands on the CD without downloading a thing.

Enjoy!

Thursday we left work early and headed to St. Louis for another show. This show was at one of the coolest venues I have ever been in, the Fox Theatre. It seats just over 4000 people between the main floor and a huge balcony. The truly amazing part is the architecture on the inside of the building. It is very detailed and well maintained, unlike many other older theatres that I’ve been in. The show did not disappoint either, it was probably the best one out of the three so far. We met up with my friends Josh and Dani, who live in St. Louis, and they were gracious enough to give us a place to crash.

Before heading to bed, we did go out after the show for a couple drinks. The bar was called Pin-Up Bowl and is a martini bar and bowling alley in one. A pretty interesting but really cool idea. Hopefully we can go back again sometime, I heard it’s one of Josh’s favorite bars!

We woke up pretty early on Friday so we could get to Cincy at a decent time. After dropping a few things off to Kim’s family, we headed down to the hotel to get checked in. We had a number of rooms at the hotel, and a pretty large group of people. Of course the partying began almost immediately. The show that night was good, although I was expecting the crowd to be larger than it was. The setlist was the best I have seen in awhile, maybe because some of us help write it. :) It was pretty cool to be watching O.A.R. play in a big arena, even if only half of it was being used.

After that show, we headed to the viper room for the after show with Ordinary Peoples. I hadn’t seen OP in a long time, so it was nice to get the chance to catch their show. We didn’t make it through the whole show, but from what we were there for, it was a blast!

Saturday we woke up and got ready for the wedding. My buddy from college, Nick, was getting married to his long time girlfriend, Jessica. We drove out to the church in Middletown, and somewhere along the way lost a bunch of time. We walked in 20 minutes late and somehow the mass was almost over. It must have been the fastest catholic wedding ever, 40 minutes and everything was done. From there we headed to the reception. It was nice to see so many people that I haven’t seen in a long time, some of whom I had forgotten about and vice versa.

We went to Rock Bottom later on in the night and met up with some of the O.A.R. fans, my parents, and some others. Good times, good beers! From there we headed up to Mt. Adams and into Longworths. It was a good night out, but it didn’t help us stick to our plan of leaving on Sunday at 9.

We actually left Cincinnati on Sunday sometime after 1. The drive was miserable, but the weekend was well worth it!

We went to another O.A.R. show last night, this time in KC at Memorial Hall. I’ve never been to this venue before, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. It’s an older building in Kansas City, Kansas, that is actually named ‘Soldiers And Sailors Memorial.’ It was built in the 20s I believe, and I don’t think any work has been done to it since then. Actually it isn’t that bad, it just has that older building stench to it. The sound was alright though, which was a little surprising, since I’ve been in similar places that had horrendous sound. Overall the show was good, and I got to scratch another song off of my list of songs not heard live.

I’d write more, but I’m only working a half day today! We are off on a road trip, which will lead us to two more O.A.R. shows and a wedding for an old friend of mine. It should be quite the weekend. The next update will be on Monday, after we return to KC.

Friday night we went out to dinner for Kim’s birthday, just a couple of days early. We headed over to our favorite Italian restaurant on the plaza, if not in all of KC, Figlio. The dinner was great, the wine was good, everything went well except for one little incident involving Kim, a bottle of olive oil, a smashed wine glass, and my own dirty clothes. You may have to user your imagination a little bit, but you should get the idea. From there we went reVerse for a couple of drinks to finish off the night.

Saturday we headed up to Ames, Iowa to see O.A.R. I bought tickets the day they went on sale, and lucked into a couple of front row center tickets. Our friends Steve Christy, Courtney, Stacy, and Tarah all made the trip as well. The show was definitely a good one, and the venue is awesome! I should have some really nice pictures from our seats, that I’ll try to get online soon. I saw O.A.R. play at this venue back in 2003 during the spring break trip, and once I saw the date I knew that I had to go again. We hit up a couple of the college bars before and after the show. It was well worth the 4 hour drive.

Sunday, after a stop at Famous Dave’s for lunch, we got back into town just in time for my hockey game. We lost yet another game, but I think I played one of my better games of the season. We have another game tonight, and one our forwards might miss it, so maybe I’ll get to play forward again. This was not a terribly exiting birthday for Kim, that’s why we went out on Friday. For a few months she will once again be older than me. :)

Last night I went to see Matt Nathanson along with Matt Wertz in Lawrence. Earlier in the day I was a little reluctant to go, but I was convinced by several people to go. I hitched a ride over with Courtney and along the way we picked up a friend of hers. We met up with Beth and a new friend Emily, who was generous enough to give me a free ticket to the show.

There actually was another act opening the show, but we arrived too late and missed her. We saw about half of Wertz’s set, which I thought was pretty good. I’ve heard some of his music before, just never seen him live. Nathanson put on a good set, mostly with a full band, and rocked the place. The turnout was much better than the last time he played the Bottleneck, so that was a nice bonus. Overall I am very happy that I went to the show. I could have used a little more than four hours of sleep though.

The setlist for those that care:

Wings
Then I’ll Be Smiling
Sad Songs
Lucky Boy >
(I Want You To Want Me – Cheap Trick)
Princess
Bent >
(Such Great Heights – The Postal Service)
(Improv Funk Song)
Lost Myself In Search Of You
Stay
Angel >
(Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes – Paul Simon) >
I Saw >
(Trip Through Your Wires – U2)
Fall To Pieces
Church Clothes
(I Want It That Way – Backstreet Boys)
(Since U Been Gone – Kelly Clarkson)
Little Victories
Lose Yourself – Eminem
Detroit Waves
Laid
Answering Machine
Encore:
(Anyway You Want It – Journey)
(Dust In The Wind – Kansas)
Suspended

So we skipped the last dance class last night. Both Kim and I were supposed to head to the Virginia Coalition show instead. Kim didn’t get enough studying done throughout the week, so she opted to stay in a finish up. I thought a few other friends would be coming along to fill up the 4 guest list spots that I had, but the only one who came through was Courtney. Thanks to my buddy Scott for hooking us all up anyway.

VACO was opening for G Love in a brand new venue at Harrah’s called the VooDoo Lounge. In fact, VACO was the first band to ever play on the stage. The venue itself is incredible, which I sort of expected given that it is part of a casino. The sound was good and the crowd was mediocre. It started getting fairly full towards the end of our night, which was before G Love even hit the stage. Due to conflicting start times from ticketmaster, the show was delayed for quite some time. Regardless, VACO put on a great show and definitely earned some new fans. I cannot wait until the next time I get to see them headline a show, who knows when that will ever be though.

I hope this venue markets itself well enough to pull in some decent shows. It actually fills a hole in Kansas City for medium sized venues in the 1000+ person range. There is the Beaumont Club, but I have really grown to hate that place. Besides that dump, I cannot think of another venue around this size. The only downer is that it is north of the river, much further than the rest of the venues in the area. I look forward to seeing another show at the VooDoo Lounge.

After work on Friday I met up with pretty much everyone who I ever mention on here, most of whom were already out celebrating Kim’s promotion and another Friday evening. We watched the Chiefs game at the Brooksider and then later hit up Bobby Baker’s to round out the night.

Saturday started a little earlier than I would have liked, but it was worth it. We picked up Dominique and Bianca and brought them over to our place. We made some lunch and then carved the pumpkins we bought last weekend. I never realized how tough the carving actually was. I’ll have to remember to get some pictures up soon.

From there we hit up Susan’s fish fry for a couple of hours with Mike and his visitor from out of town, Chrissie. It was a nice excuse to make some skyline dip and then try to eat all of it. Eventually we had to get back to our place for the Shaking Tree pre-party. My buddy Steve Christy was coming up from Wichita, along with a girl who is dating the drummer. Courtney also joined in the party, as did Steve’s brother Jeff and our friend Maria.

The show was good, although by the time it started most of us were getting pretty tired from a very long day. It was nice to finally get out to another show though. After the show was over, we had almost everyone mentioned earlier back at the apartment and when I woke up the next morning they were all still there, covering most of the floor.

Sunday I watched football over at Mike’s. He’s got the “sunday ticket” package, so we could watch whatever we wanted. I wasn’t happy with most of the results though, I don’t think Mike was either. From there we ran an errand or two and then I was off to my hockey game. I thought I played pretty well, especially since I was playing defense again, but my passing could have been better. I’m still trying to adjust to my new stick I guess. We lost the game, but have another game tonight. Hopefully we can get back on a winning streak.

I am so much better at fantasy football than most of you probably ever would have thought. I just had another 3-0 weekend, bringing my grand total up to 12-3. That means I am now winning 80% of the games played. I need to make a few roster changes this week, hopefully those don’t end up hurting my teams.

We originally thought that we were gonna have another homework night with Dominique and Bianca last night, but we never heard back from them. Instead we made a big Italian dinner and watched TV. Oh yeah, we also secured 25 tickets to the Bengals/Chiefs game, and helped some of the visitors with hotels on priceline. They ended up getting the Sheraton for $85 a night, which is a phenomenal deal. Typically the rooms go for $150 a night and every room is a suite! Let me know if you are reading this and need help securing a room, although I think everyone who wants a hotel has been taken care of.

With the lack of much else going on, I’ve added a new song of the moment from none other than O.A.R. Just in case you were a little iffy about buying the CD, “Wonderful Day” is one reason to do so.

This week my fantasy teams went 2-1. I beat my brother in a blowout match 133-81, eat that Tim! :) I also won in another league 109-70 and lost my final in a heartbreaker 73-87. My overall record is now 9-3, so I am winning 75% of my games, not too bad at all.

Not much exciting to report today. I spent last night at my boss’ house once again. That should be the last time I have to do an update with him. The next time I will be on my own from my own home. Sounds like fun huh?

O.A.R.’s new CD, Stories Of A Stranger, is in stores today. Let me know what you think of it, I think it is their best CD yet and I cannot wait to see it take off! If you actually do pick up a copy of the CD (and don’t just download it) check out my name in the liner notes. :)