Crunchy Bass

I got Kim a MarkBass Distorsore pedal for her birthday. It can make some far out sounds, from a little bit of vintage overdrive to full–on crunchy fuzz. With knobs for tube drive, low pass, high pass, and clean/distortion mix, the possibilities are endless. She thought it'd be cool on a few songs. It's about time she started messing with sounds.

A Little Present

If everything goes well Monday morning, I will be employed again, this time at MakeMusic. After my first year at MultiAd, they gave me a raise. As a token of self–congratulations, I bought myself a neat pen that I still keep at my desk. Nothing fancy. It was maybe $25 or so. Keep in mind that my starting salary there was really low for a software engineer. So yeah, a pen. Tonight I decided I deserved more for getting this much better job, so I picked up an Orange Tiny Terror 7W/15W amp and a 112 cabinet. I asked Kim if I have to take it back if I manage to not get the job. She didn't say anything.

Sporting Bazookas?

It took me a while to realize the bazookas in the lower–right of this ad were actually sights.

Pork Sammiches

We played the Vadnais Heights Heritage Festival last night. They had a showmobile (take that, Leo!;) for the bands to play on. It was much cleaner than the truck trailer they had in Foreston a few weeks ago. We had plenty of time to set up (I hate being rushed) and they were still serving pork by that time, so woohoo!! But, the pork was overly shredded and sitting in those big rectangular warming tub things (ya know, the white things you'd see food in at a church social), so it wasn't what I was hoping for from a pig roast. Still pretty tasty though.

We played 2 sets, then they had a fireworks show. They gave Denny a CD to play. He had to call the guy, hit start, and count off the first 10 seconds so the guy knew when to start the computerized fireworks show. The last shell exploded almost exactly on the last note of the song. Pretty cool. We played one more set, then as we were tearing down it started getting windy. Some tables had umbrellas, and they all blew over. Then when the little tent they had over the sound board blew over is when I started keeping an eye on the top of the showmobile. I could just see that breaking and come swinging down and smash us against the back wall. Just as we were getting the last half dozen things packed into our trailer did it start pouring. Close call.

The 2 new tunes went over really well; Kravitz' Are You Gonna Go My Way and Is She Really Going out with Him? (I sing that one).

What I Did on My Summer Vacation

Kim took the week off and we had a staycation. Went to a small zoo one day. Laid in the sun another day. I started getting a cold last Saturday. It slowly got worse and didn't feel like doing anything at all. I felt better one day and recorded some drums (hi Leo!). Turns out that was too much work and it set me back. Laid around another day. Went to a small lake to float around in the sun, but they don't allow floaty things (the sign says something like "No floatation devices (ie toys)", but we asked to be sure if that really meant "that is, no inflatable toys". Nope, it means everything (they need to reword the sign), but she pointed to a small beach about 1/3 of the way around the lake where we could use them. It was a 15–minute walk on a nice path, and only 3 kids were there. So we floated until the clouds got too thick. Cold got worse for the rest of the week/weekend, but I'm feeling better today. We drove out to a big orchard we like to visit every year (usually closer to Fall) and got a bunch of good stuff. One thing even contained apples this time! I grabbed an apple–rhubarb crisp. Oh man is that good. I love rhubarb, but nobody around here ever makes plain rhubarb pie, goddamn it. But I did get my annual jar of rhubarb jam.

Hillbillies

We went out to dinner tonight at Maynard's on Lake Minnetonka. Nice place, lots of richers, it being a major part of the lake/boating scene and all. An extended white trash looking family took 3 tables next to us. They didn't exactly look like they'd appreciate the place, the food, or especially the prices, but who knows how people come into money these days. Not long after they had been seated, one of the big'uns let her extremely ugly daughter (for some reason reminded me of a leprechaun) out of the stroller and was messing with stuff in the various storage locations in it. I thought, "holy shit, she'd better not whip out a tit and start feeding that little troll." Thankfully, that didn't happen. Nope, it was worse. She changed her fucking diaper right there with people eating all around.

Don't they have an all–you–can–eat food court at Wal–mart where these people should be eating?