Blogvalanche

So, I have some confessions to make. I've been seriously skimping on my blogging commitment. There are several reasons for this, but I'm going to do my best to nip them all in the bud by posting more. Gasp.

Anyway, it was an eventful weekend. I'll break it up into more posts because I can, so I'll start with the Friday night. Most of my testing for the week was axed, I found out on Thursday, so I ended up saying 'screw it' and taking the rest of the weekend off. I took ten hours of PTO, including a holiday float day and two hours of comp time I had just sitting around.

I worked fairly late into Friday morning and ended up leaving around four, heading to bed, and waking up at about two in the afternoon. I woke up and drove into Philadelphia, parked, and headed to a random coffee joint to meet Claire. Soon enough, and after learning an important lesson about purses not needing chairs of their own, we were off to get something to eat.

Claire had a coupon for a restaurant, but before we could get there we spotted a place called Tapas y Vinos which we decided to try out. After walking in the wrong door (and plodding over some rocks), we sat down and started looking at the menu. I was overwhelmed, but pleasantly so, and let Claire make the calls as to what we got. The shrimp and shirred egg topping was delicious, and after splitting up the check we high-tailed it to the concert.

Eventually we found a place to park on the street, and I had the sneaking suspicion that the spot wasn't all that perfect - there was a hydrant a couple yards behind me, but I figured it'd be okay. We got there just in time to see the (mediocre) opening band, Crooked Fingers. They were pretty run-of-the-mill as far as opening acts go, something akin to the TOMAHAWK band that opened for Tool, but not that bad.

Then the main event! Neko Case and her band came onstage. The performance wasn't as epic as some of the other events I've been at, but it made up for that and more by being far more intimate a venue. The tickets weren't outstanding, but the small size of the theater (the Keswick in Glenside, PA by the way) made it easy to see the stage from wherever. I was surprised at the set list she sang, since it contained a lot of Fox Confessor Brings the Flood stuff that I have listened to (and liked) a lot more than her newer stuff. Among my favorite renditions were "Maybe Sparrow" and "Teenage Feeling," the latter being a song I wasn't all that fond of until I saw it performed live.

Accompanying Neko and her band was a movie screen behind them playing videos for each of the songs they played. Of particular note was a few very bucolic video scenes, including one that had me transfixed featuring a plane skirting some clouds over the pure blue sky. Also of note was the little quips that the titular singer and her backup exchanged over the course of the concert, including a mention of a "suit made of sleeping back parts" and some kind of potato-chip-delivery-system somehow involving a vacuum. Of course, the encore is always obligatory, and they ended up playing a half a dozen additional songs. Once the concert closed, Claire was half asleep and ready to head home, so I dropped her off and walked into my apartment at a little before midnight.

I talked a bit to some folks after getting home and made the spur-of-the-moment decision that I'd be going on an adventure the next day. More on that later!