Last night we took “the kids” out for a couple of hours. We didn’t really do anything too exciting, but we have plans to get together with them again this weekend.

Also this weekend Kim’s cousin Katie and her boyfriend Bill are coming to visit. There is a plethora of things going on this weekend, including another race. This time we are only running a 5K, part of this weekends Kansas City Marathon. I’m sure I’ll have lots of stories from another crazy weekend.

If you are a reader who is local to Kansas City, then you probably also enjoyed 97.3 The Planet while it was around. There is now a website (actually just a message board) dedicated to bringing it back. Check it out and while you are there, sign the online petition to “Save The Planet.”

Last night I went and checked out Coldplay. I thought about going before, but the $20 lawn tickets sold me on going the day before the show. It was well worth it in my opinion. They put on quite a show, despite taking forever to take the stage after the opener (we’re talking a full hour between sets). Their lights and video board behind them were incredible! Chris Martin (not our BBQ friend) sounded great as did the rest of the band, but his voice really shined. They played pretty much every song I wanted to hear and I’d say that I knew 75% of the songs they played. It was a good night out at Verizon.

So what does everyone think of the new O.A.R. tune??

Nothing terribly exciting to add today. I was stuck actually doing work last night. I went over to my boss’ house so that we could update one of our clients together. We have to do this after normal hours so that everyone is off of the system. I am going to start doing some of these updates on my own, so Steve wanted me to do a couple of them with him first. I guess this is also a way to motivate me to figure out how we can use an installation script to do our updates for us or have the clients do it themselves. Honestly, who wants to do work at night from their home, I know I don’t. An install script is one of my projects to work on in my free time, now we just need to hire more people so I can actually work on my projects and not spend all of my time testing bug fixes.

O.A.R. is going to be on Leno tonight, be sure to tune in if you can. I’ll likely have a link to a downloadable version up on oarsa.org later tonight or very early tomorrow morning.

I went to the John Mayer Trio show last night with my friend Beth, who also gave me a free ticket to tape the show. Score! I hadn’t seen Mayer in over 3 years, I guess I stopped going to the shows soon after all the little girls started going. Anyway, the show last night was great. I think they played only two older Mayer songs, but everything else was brand new stuff that was all much bluesier. Of course this showcased Mayer’s guitar skills much more than his vocals. I loved it, although I’m still not sure I’d pay the hefty ticket price to see the show.

Ray LaMontagne opened the show, and I was so happy to finally get to see him. He played with only a guy on the upright bass. They played a pretty short 40 minute set, but it was nice. His voice is amazing!

I’ll be converting both tapes soon.

After professing my hate for fantasy football last week, I won all three games this week. To top that, none of them were against a team with no players set to play, they were all legit wins! My combined record is now 4-2, which isn’t so bad. Hopefully I can keep the winning streak alive.

We didn’t do much on Friday night. I made some pasta and we watched a little TV. That pretty much sums it up.

Saturday we got up at 6 to get ready for the race. We met up with Todd out in Kearney and sooner than later we were on the start line ready to run. There were only a hundred or so people total, and most were running the 5K. I know for a fact that there were only 26 people running the 10K. We started off pretty fast, the first mile took about eight minutes to finish. I think it was the downhill start or the fast 5K runners who caused this. Of course we slowed down and in the end we finished with a time of 52:20. I was really happy with this performance, especially since my goals were to finish and if possible to finish under an hour.

We attended the awards ceremony. Kim got first in her age bracket, the only female runner between the ages of 25 and 29. I got second in my bracket, aka last place for ages 25 through 29. Todd didn’t place, somehow the majority of runners were all around his age and fast. I think we were all happy that we finished though!

From there we watched a little bit of the parade with Doni and then headed out to the festival grounds to see what was cooking. The “Triple Fat Back” BBQ team were putting the finishing touches on their competition meat. We were there to help sample the leftovers. I had both the turkey and chicken that Todd cooked and they were both very tasty! I believe that Phil’s brisket won second third place, so it seems that these guys are ready for the real competition in a couple of weeks, the American Royal.

Kim and I left before the cooking was done because we had to get back to our place for a little party we were throwing. We had all of the regulars over along with my friends Steve Christy and Courtney. Joel and Amanda brought over most of the food, which Mike and I grilled up for everyone. From there most of us partied along the Falldo Waldo Crawldo (noisy site) route for a few hours. It was a great time and most of us even made it to all six bars.

Sunday was a lazy day for us. We were supposed to participate in the Walk to D’Feet ALS but someone had a “stomach bug” that prevented that from happening. Thanks to my parents though I was able to raise a little bit of money for the cause. The majority of the day we were on the couch watching TV, recovering from the run and party the day before.

One thing that really sucks happened over the weekend. My favorite local radio station, 97.3 The Planet changed formats and is now Max FM. Somehow The Planet had the lowest ratings in the city and I guess they were forced into this. I’m not sure what I’ll do in my car now, perhaps I should start looking into satellite radio.

We went to the DMB show at Sandstone last night. It was my third show of the tour and one of the bands lasts. I thought it was a good show, not quite as good as the Alpine shows I saw earlier in the summer, but almost any DMB show is a good show. My big complaint was the timing, it was a short show. They got a late start around 7:30 and were completely done by 10:45. With the encore break taken out, that’s at most a two hour set. We got screwed out of a half hour of entertainment! I think Kim actually enjoyed this show quite a bit, even though she claims to not be a fan.

The NFL season starts tonight along with those ever popular fantasy football leagues. I am participating in three different leagues, one of which had a live draft. I actually signed on to my computer that night and attempted to make a few choices but the clock kept running out on me. After a couple of rounds I put it back to the auto pick setting. Some people take this crap way too serious!

You can pre-order O.A.R.’s next studio disc, Stories Of A Stranger, here. I’ve already ordered the Limited Edition version and cannot wait until it’s in my hands! Not much to report for myself, I do have an update on Gabe and Brad’s situation though.

Well, the news has gotten worse and better for us. Let me explain. First of all, as you have all seen, the conditions in New Orleans “proper” are just falling apart. Looters (stealing shoes and jerseys, nice), fires, flooding, chaos, shooting at helicopters trying to evacuate people to Houston?! I don’t think it can get much worse. Diseases, no power – just terrible. I keep thinking about the kids I work with – some of them may not make this and it makes me sick.

However, we live in Kenner, which is about 10-12 miles WEST of the city. The west side did not get hit as hard as the east side and the city of New Orleans. Now, that is not to say it did not suffer any damage – it did – but it is not as bad as the city. From everything we can find out – internet, TV, friends, etc……….our house is probably ok as far as flooding goes. This is not set in stone for sure – but this is what we have good reason to believe. So that is one REALLY good thing. (Word is that if your house survived this with no flooding, the value might double or triple! Sell, sell!! :) Now, we could get back there and a tree could have fallen on our roof, or a car could have been put on the top of our house by the wind – there still could be HUGE damage to our house. We just don’t know. Time will tell. Unfortunately, the media loves covering the city, they are not too interested in the suburbs.

Ok. Parts of Kenner already have power, and City of Kenner police (we are a city and have our own mayor, police, etc.) are letting people back in on Monday to see their houses and view damage. You can’t stay on Monday though – just check your damage, get anything valuable, and leave. Brad talked to his boss yesterday. They need him at the plant – his boss is there, they are getting power today or tomorrow (they have their own power plant at the plant) Brad is a maintenance engineer, and is needed to fix machines that have been damaged and to start up that plant. Dow has apartments in Baton Rouge for Dow employees that cannot live in their homes. So, the plan as of 9:30 am eastern standard time on Thursday, 9-1-05, is to drive into Kenner on Monday, assess damage, then drive to Baton Rouge and stay in a Dow Apartment indefinitely. Brad has to get back to work, there is a press release saying that I may be needed to teach in another parish where students from the New Orleans area have registered (kids are going to school all over the state and in TX, AL, etc).

We have so many questions – we have bills to pay – will we get paid? I think we are going to call Visa, Toyota, and Countrywide Mortgages this morning and let them know the situation. Sometimes I am fine, sometimes I am a mess. Currently, I am feeling stressed. This is just unbelievable. We are driving to Michigan today, then back to Ohio on Saturday night. We are taking things day by day. Kenner might change their mind and not allow people back on Monday, we just don’t know. I will keep you all posted.

The show on Friday night was a fun one. I taped the show, but had to do so without using my stand. Jack Johnson does not allow microphone stands at the shows, so I just clipped the mics to my shirt collar and hoped for the best. We’ll see how it turns out.

Saturday Mike and I took his brother to the Boulevard Brewery tour, a great way to start a Saturday! From there we went back to my place and started up some cornhole games with Christie. Kim finally got back from Cincy sometime that afternoon and Doni showed up later on with Gabe. Another fun night!

Sunday I worked on my computer while Kim continued her studying for a upcoming test. I removed linux and installed Windows XP on the server machine. I’m hoping that I can get everything running on there before the end of the week, although I’d also like to re-launch the site with a new design. I guess I could do that later though.

Later on in the day we took Dominique and Bianca out to Chuck E. Cheese’s for a couple of hours. I always remember that place being so much bigger than it actually is, or maybe it’s just the one that we went to that is small. We had a blast though, and the kids did as well!

Yesterday after work I met up with Todd, Christie and Chris Martin at the gym for a few games of tennis. I’d like to add that I cannot remember the last time I played tennis, if I ever really did. Overall, I could have been a lot worse. There is a free class next Monday that a group of us might attend. It was nice to mix it up and get a different workout though.

From there we had a few drinks at the gym bar and then headed over to Tomfooleries for some drinks and tunes from Gov’t Cheez, our favorite local cover band. Pretty nice night out if you ask me.

Tonight I’m actually heading to see Jack Johnson and others out at Starlight. We have quite the crew going, so I’m sure it will be fun. The lineup includes Mike and his brother along with Geoff. Perhaps we’ll have some good pre and post parties with other friends of ours.

Better get back to work so I can get out of here!

My entry before the trip pretty much sums up what we did the whole time. After flying and getting settled in at our hotel we had dinner and then went to the show at Wise Fools. The Alternate Routes played first and were great. Their CD is just as good and I recommend picking it up if you are searching for some new tunes. Some other band played who I think was local to Chicago and then Greenstreet rocked the house. They were happy to see all of us back at their show and with so many new friends. From there we went back to the hotel and hotel bar for the rest of the night.

Saturday started off early with the continental breakfast. We then hung around the hotel room for awhile. The cool thing was that we had a perfect view of the Air & Water Show. After awhile we had ourselves a nice little pregame party and then before we knew it we were off to the venue for the festival. I saw a ton of the bands of the festival and enjoyed some of them. I walked in as The Southland were finishing their set. They sounded pretty good from what I heard while setting up my recording gear. It was good to see Stephen Kellogg again, and they put on a pretty nice show. I didn’t really care about most of the other bands besides Citizen Cope, who played well but didn’t really fit in that well. O.A.R.’s set was great! Lots of the newer songs were played which was great for me and my friends. The crowd was pretty weak until later in the night but even then I was expecting it to be bigger than it was. The venue was nice with a great view of the downtown area, but the lack of a “village” with different booths setup was pretty disappointing. I guess I was just expecting big things from the show and it ended up probably being worse than all the past festivals in Cleveland. The good news was that O.A.R.’s set and hanging with my friends was well worth the trip!

After the show I hung out with my email buddy Nasim and the guys from the band for awhile. I ended up going with them to a bar called Rockit where an after party was going on. There was a line outside to get in, but we were quickly escorted in and to a sort of private area of the bar. I met some cool people up there and had a couple of free drinks. From there I went back to the hotel to meet up with everyone for a repeat of the previous night.

Sunday we didn’t do too much. We had some Chipotle and then realized that we had some extra time. We then went over to my buddy Pat’s apartment and played cornhole on the roof there. The Air Show was going on again, so we also watched that while playing a few rounds. Then we all went out to the airport and went our separate ways. Kim picked me up at the airport along with Dominique and Bianca. Kim dropped Amy off earlier in the day and so she brought our brother and sister along with her to keep her entertained. We dropped them off and then headed home to relax for yet another exciting work week. Bad news to end this entry, I have to work all five days this week.