All right, I meant to post earlier today to be extra-sure I got this project started in time, but right now will do just as well. Also I do want to note that I'm running on PDT (soon to be PST), so if you're out there in New Jersey or Virginia or Florida and you notice that it's 12:01am and I haven't posted yet (because, obviously, you will be refreshing your friends page and glancing alternately at your watch continuously all day, every day until you see my daily), don't you give up on me. I'll still have plenty of time.

Anyway, I didn't have time to post earlier because I slept in and then had to go to work to do my usual selling of iPods and talking up the new MacBook trackpads (which, seriously, are so, so awesome).

But what I really want to get to tonight is ( pictures of Wallace in Halloween costumes. )

Yeah, cat pictures. Classic. More tomorrow! (More content, I mean, not more cat pictures. Not yet, anyway.)

And speaking of tomorrow: good luck in the marathon, k1cup!

So, yeah, a long weekend with too little sleep, then four days of work and now I've got a moderate cold and despite the doses of DayQuil and albuterol (that's to ease the coughing) I'm feeling pretty shitty. But I've got work tomorrow and I hate letting a show recap get to its one-week anniversary, so I'm gonna give this a try. I'm thinking the happy memories will distract me from my ills. ( Golden Gate...Divisadero...Turk...Fillmore! )

It was really an excellent weekend, not just for the shows but for seeing old friends and meeting new ones! Maybe next time I'll get to go out East instead. In the meantime, I have memories and pictures. k1cup, hope you had a good trip home!

I really wanted to get this recap done earlier, before all the memories trickled out of my brain, but, you know, there's that job I have to go to now, and the fact that I'm getting old and tired, so now it's four days later and I don't know how this is going to turn out. Probably short, and summary. ( But I've thought that before and it didn't turn out that way, so let's just plunge into it, shall we? )

Now that I'm done being a killjoy, you can take a look at the pictures and setlist. Fillmore recap coming up! (Maybe tomorrow? Depends on how late I stay out with k1cup. :P )

I think the two most important lessons I learned last night are

1. never lose faith in Dan Miller; and
2. it is possible to arrive at a show 15 minutes before doors and still get into the front row, without being rude

I've decided for this set of shows I'm experimenting with embracing the ephemerality of the experience. Which means basically that I might not be doing so much the extremely detailed blow-by-blow I usually do. ( We'll see how that works out. )

I think I might need a nap before heading down to Santa Cruz to meet up with k1cup. And here are last night's pictures and the setlist. I hope tonight will be good too (and longer!).

I think this one is going to be shorter than usual, partly because it's so very much after the fact, and partly because the show itself was so short. ( But let's see how it goes. )

Wow, that report was really short. That's got to be a record of some kind. And here are the photos and stuff. Can't wait until September!

I'm not saying we drove 400 miles each way just so I could go to a They Might Be Giants concert, but the fact remains that those 400 miles had to be driven in order to make it possible for me to go. And it's been an excellent trip so far (we're heading back home on Sunday).

I have pictures and one video, and, of course, ( lots of memories. )

But as always, I can't wait for the next one!

Weird, I just heard a Pogues song in a Cadillac commercial.

In other car news, we got our Corolla back from the shop and it really does seem fixed now. Even after the second "repair," it didn't feel quite right when accelerating, but finally it feels back to normal. Let's hope it holds.

With that worry out of the way, I am free to obsess about something else, which is that Wallace has this weird balding, bulgy spot on his nose. ( Pictures within. )

Naturally I assume it must be cancer, because I'm optimistic that way. Also another of my family's cats has had skin cancer on his face (although his tumor didn't look much like this). wallacecat has put forth the hypothesis that Wally just got a bump on his nose from trying to open doors. It's true that he has been trying to nudge doors open with his head a lot lately (we've been closing him out of the bedroom at night, which means he tries to bust in in the morning to demand his breakfast), so I hope that's actually the true explanation, but I will be taking him to the vet soon. We needed to get him a checkup anyway and also get some advice on how to help him deal with the move (yes, he's coming in the car with us to California. It's going to be a long, noisy trip). Here's hoping he checks out all okay.

I'm not actually going to write a full report, especially since hobbitgrrl already wrote a pair of good ones, and you can download both concerts from archive.org and hear for yourself what happened. But the shows were absolutely wonderful, as I've come to expect from the Decemberists. Two in a row is always a treat since they mix their setlists up so the two nights will be quite different; and in fact I happened to be in Madison the next night where they were also playing and considered trying to get a ticket for that one as well, but ended up not really having the time to go. (And later found out that they played The Tain as the encore there and was rather disappointed that I missed it.)

But anyway, here are the pictures from Wednesday and Thursday. They seemed to have a whole new lighting scheme which, besides looking really cool, contributed greatly to the (if I do say so myself) high quality of the pictures. For example, I can't believe I got one this crisp with my little 3-megapixel pocket camera. The Thursday ones are slightly less good (although still better than average for me), but I did get some wonderful compositions, like this tableau—the poses are just so perfect. Fantastic showmen, those Decemberists.

Colin announced that they would be doing a free concert with the Grant Park Orchestra in Millennium Park in July, which totally annoys me since I won't be living here anymore by then. I don't see a date scheduled for the Bay Area either, so boooo! Maybe a road trip down to the Hollywood Bowl?

So, cptmoll and I went to that live This American Life show last Thursday. It was pretty excellent. No, I still haven't forgiven Ira for moving the show to New York (and judging by the hissing from other parts of the audience, I'm not the only one), but he can still put together an entertaining program.

I actually liked Sarah Vowell's segment the least—the humor seemed a bit labored, or maybe it was a little too much like stuff I've already heard from her. David Rakoff and Dan Savage were both splendid, though. And I did enjoy the preview clips from the soon-to-premiere TV series, although I'm still not totally won over to the idea. But as I don't have Showtime and don't plan to get it, it doesn't really matter to me.

I was also thrilled to discover, after we got into our seats and perused the program, that the house band was to be Mates of State, whom I adore but had never gotten to see live yet. They only performed like five songs, but it was still pretty awesome. They did, after all, include their cover of Phantom Planet's "California" (aka the theme song to The O.C.). TAL does always have excellent music at its live shows. (And when Ira mentioned having seen Quasi play at the Empty Bottle, my respect for his musical taste only increased.)

So, definitely worth it. I had a most excellent time and cptmoll gave me some useful career advice. Then Friday leahrosmerta did a wonderfully generous thing and bought me some yarn, which is so pretty that ( I must post a picture of it. Yes, just a picture of yarn. )