Kevin's Journal - October

Made it home again home again. It was an excellent weekend of party. Only downside is that I can't seem to keep up with staying up till 4am drinking every night for 4 days in a row anymore.

The trip back was pretty uneventfull until about colorado springs when the snow hit. The snow was cutting visibility down quite a bit, but the roads weren't too bad. Unfortunately morons decided that they couldn't pass the snowplows that were driving along at 15mph and wouldn't get in the other lane so others could. That probibly delayed me a good 30min or so.

More details and pictures from the weekend later after I have caught up on some sleep.

Pretty easy and uneventfull trip down last night. I did almost run out of gas near Santa Fe, but luckily managed to make it. I usually these days just fuel up in Santa Fe once to avoid stopping all the time. I forgot this time that I hadn't topped off the tank before leaving though. Made it into Las Cruces about 8:30pm last night.

Today I have been working from here and also helping with some cleaning. Soon we are going to do a pile of baking. The big party doesn't happen until friday/saturday night, but there will be a few people over tonight. Should be a nice fun mellow gathering tonight.

Well, this morning I head down to New Mexico. It's our annual Halloween party going on this weekend. I wanted to get down and have time to relax and visit with folks before the big party on friday and saturday nights. Should be a nice time. I'm taking the dogs with me, which should be fun. I have traveled with Kurt and Twyla before and they do great. This will be the first long trip with Merlin. I suspect he will do just fine.

Bottled cider tonight. It turned out pretty nicely I think. It quite dry, but very yummy. It tastes a bit like the hornsby's dark and dry cider. Should be nice at the halloween party next weekend.

Got a ton of anoying around the house things done this weeked, including:

• laundry
• washing AND waxing the truck
• cleaning out the insides of the truck
• giving all the dogs baths
• cleaning up apples in front
• mowing
• draining the sprinkler system
• loading music for the trip next week
• bottling cider

I meant to wander down and see elusis DJ and play good music, but didn't finish dinner until pretty late and didn't manage to overcome hermithood. :(

Finally, I had run some sleeping bags through the wash tonight to have them nice and clean for the trip next weekend, and I made the mistake of leaving them out where twyla could find them. She promptly made a nice nest in them and went to sleep:

Last night I came home from hacking society to the great clock disaster.

I had this nice wall clock that my parents gave me a few years ago. It's large and wooden and winding. It was nice and comforting to see it ticking away. Sometime last night while I was gone the hook holding it up decided to give up. The clock fell down, ripped my thermostat off the wall and fell on the floor. Luckily the mercury from the thermostat stayed up on a shelf with the broken glass and so the dogs didn't get into it. The clock is pretty much a loss. It's cracked all around the top of the case and the hinges on the glass part are ripped out. I guess it could have been worse.

A nice low key saturday and sunday. Saturday I just relaxed and watched some netflix and cleaned up the house. Sunday I met up with sgailean and went for a bike ride. We did a pretty short one because it was looking like rain. I got my GPS mount setup on my bike, so I had the GPS along. Unfortunately, my data cable is dead, so I can't post a route. We only did 8.4 miles. Max speed was 14.8mph. We were talking while we were riding, so we were going kinda slow to keep up the conversation. It was a very pleasent ride tho.

Went out for a lovely dinner with friends at the Walnut. They had a so-so altbeer and a very nice red. The food was excellent as usual. Then we wandered over to trilogy for a show. We got over there around 9:30, and the opening act had "just started". They played until a bit after 10. They were pretty good. It was one guy with a gitar, and later he asked some friends from shanti groove to join him. The banjo player was amazingly good. The other guy was mixed down so far I couldn't hear him.

After the opening act we waited for the headliners to go on. They played a really weird mix of music between bands: punk, ac/dc, and old bluegrass. Which wouldn't have been too bad, but it was REALLY REALLY REALLY LOUD. Painfully loud.

The headliners, Split Lip Rayfield went on around 10:45. They were pretty cool. Kinda like speed bluegrass. However, they were also REALLY REALLY REALLY LOUD. In addition the venue was packed. It was so packed the guy next to me kept elbowing me. I'm not sure what the capacity of that place is, but it was very much at it. Around 11:30 we had had enough and fled. The band was good, pity they weren't in a nicer place, or one with less people/better sound people. When we left there was a pile of people waiting in the alley to come into the bar.

Hurray! I finally got the brightness buttons working on my laptop. Ever since I got the laptop the brightness buttons would work fine until I started X, then they wouldn't work again. Was poking around and looking at the laptop market tonight and found a page that mentioned that they had the same problem and they fixed it by adding:

To their X Device section. I'm not sure this card is even a 4x agp card, but adding that in there seems to fix the birightness button pretty handily.

Got to sleep in today some. Missed V and C leaving (they had a super early flight out). Breakfast was followed by a trip to target to get new shoes, then a movie. We saw Resident Evil: Apocalypse It was basically Escape from New York but not as good. Oh well, it was a way to kill some time. After that we had lunch and then I headed to the airport. No problems at all today, and everything on schedule.

Saturday was a good faire day. Got up and had breakfast and caught the shuttle bus out to the faire. We took the 10am shuttle, and it was abandoned except for us. Nice new comfy bus.

We had our usuall fun wandering from pub to pub. We caught a few shows (the birds of prey and the commedia). A number of goods were looked over and examined. A pickle selling bar wench was visted several times. Arogant Bastard ale was consumed.

Here are some pictures of the day at TRF.

The evil friday kept going. I managed to get on the next flight, which was packed, which was good. Got into Houston around 11pm, and quickly headed down to the bagage claim. Waited while all the bags came out, and mine didn't appear. So, I started walking to the counter to ask about it and noticed my bag sitting in a pile of other bags. I thought they weren't supposed to send a bag on a plain that the passenger wasn't on, but it sure looked like my bag caught the flight I missed.

Getting the rental car was pretty painless, and finding the hotel wasn't too bad either. As a final farewell to friday, my sandal fell apart in the parking lot of the hotel and I had to limp into the hotel.

Not a good beginning for the weekend. Traffic was horrible out to the airport. The near lot was full, so I had to park in the far away lot. The bus there waited for-ever to fill up before leaving the lot to head to the terminal. We must have waited close to 20min to get moving. Got to the terminal with 44min before my flight. 45 min is the cutoff. Talked an agent into trying to check my bag in anyhow. Ran to the security checkpoint and it was fucking packed. That took about 25-30min to get through. I just missed the train to the B concourse. Got on one finally, got to the concourse, ran off the train to the gate only to miss the door closing about 1min before. Went and stood in line at the customer service line and they put me on standby for the next flight: 6:22pm. Sucky, but ok. Then, I noted that the 6:22 flight is now delayed to 7:45. And I am still only on standby. I might not get on even then. Oh well, guess we will see what happens. Wish me luck.

Well, uneventfull week, but hopefully a very fun weekend. It's our annual gathering for TRF near Houstin. I head out later today and meet up with folks, then tomorrow is faire all day long. Sunday some relaxing and then head back, so it will be a quick trip, but hopefully fun. Should have lots of pictures and such.

Yesterday was an all greyhound day. Went out to the monthly meet and greet at petsmart and hung out for a few hours. It wasn't all that crowded, so was kinda borning, but the dogs had a nice time. We got to see Jackson the great dane as usual and got a few people who sounded interested in adopting or fostering greyhounds. Then it was off to the annual Colorado Greyhound Companions Dinner and meeting. It was nice to chat with everyone at the group. They had a metric ton of stuff in their silent auction, but I managed to only win one item (a greyhound color poster with frame).

Today sgailean and I were supposed to meet up at Caffe Sole up in boulder and do a bike ride around boulder. Unfortunately he managed to pick up some kind of bug and wasn't feeling up to going. So, determined to bike ride today, I went back near my house and went to the Big Dry Creek trail. It wasn't bad... it was soft gravel on hard packed earth, except in a few places where the recent rain turned it into mud or mushy gravel fans. Probibly only went 5-6 miles, but it was a very pleasent ride.

Here's a link to a few pictures of the trail

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