soapbox

I completely forgot about the hockey game (I know, I suck) until just a few minutes ago. It just figures that they’re kicking ass 5-1 the one time I don’t show up. I’m now listening over the ‘net instead.

Snuck up on us, it did!

I just happened to notice in my flurry of posting this evening. Lucky me, I reckon.

Since Michael will say it if I don’t, “w00t!”

Way to go, blog-people! Soapbox is self-perpetuatingly sized! Huzzah!

Congrats again to Nathaniel for his successful experiment in social engineering, or whatever it was he intended when setting this thing up for us to play with instead of working.

Now, y’all slackers out there need to get to posting already!

Battleship!

The computer opponent has some pretty solid search-and-destroy algorithms going, so watch out!

I only wish it would let you place your own boats, but you can always hit the refresh button to get a new game and a new deployment.

Well, no surprises here, but that was a heck of a show last night. I think Becky and Winton even had a good time.

A few notes on the trip:

1) The drive down to UNH (in Durham) takes a little less than 2 hours, about half an hour less than MapQuest and Yahoo! would claim.

2) Durham is probably a really bad college town, from what we saw, but it does have a good falafel/Greek/Mediterranean fast food joint, Pauley’s Pockets, right on Main Street.

3) The Whittemore Center, normally a hockey stadium, is a pretty decent concert venue, but their idea of “best available seats” doesn’t seem to have any actual meaning. Our seats were okay, and the stadium design gave most everyone unobstructed views, but there were definitely better (unoccupied) seats in terms of both viewing angle and distance to the stage than the ones we had.

As for the show, well, there’s a number of great things to note:

1) I don’t care how old he gets, Willie Nelson is still one of the better country guitarists you’ll ever see. Even I knew what I was doing with a guitar and thought I was hot stuff, I’d be a little intimidated going toe-to-toe with Willie. And his guitar’s got a dang hole wore in it.

2) He still opens with “Whiskey River”. I once saw an interview where they asked Willie how come he always open that way. His response: “If ain’t broke…”

3) As the first note is played, the stage lights up and the biggest danged Texas flag you ever saw unfurls as the stage backdrop.

4) Willie crams more songs in an hour-and-a-half than most folks a third of his age. His set list must have been pushing thirty tunes. I remember hearing (in no particular order) “Whisky River”, “Blues Eyes Crying in the Rain”, “Crazy”, “I Saw the Light”, “Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys”, “Will the Circle Be Unbroken”, “Good-Hearted Woman”, “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before”, “Always on My Mind”, “City of New Orleans”, a new song called “Superman”, 2 songs I was less familiar with and don’t remember the names of, “Jambalaya”, “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground”, “Georgia On My Mind”, “Me and Paul”, “Night Life”, at least two completely instrumental pieces, “Forgiving You Was Easy”, “On the Road Again”, “Whiskey For My Men (Beer For My Horses)”, “I’ll Fly Away”, and probably several others I’ve forgotten since last night.

5) His band rocks! Three of the members (his sister on piano, the drummer, and the bassist) have been with him since he left Nashville in the sixties to go back to Texas to make his music. In fact, the bassist was celebrating 39 years with the band last night. And, the younger harmonica player they have is awesome; I’ve seen him with Willie on Austin City Limits before, so I knew it would be good.

6) The audience at a Willie Nelson show is probably one of the most diverse you’ll see in all of music. This maxim doesn’t hold as true in Durham, NH, as it does in Texas for a variety of reasons, but the folks at the show last night were probably a fairly reasonable cross-section of this region’s population distribution.

Best $40 I’ve spent in a long time…

It’s definitely worth noting when the medical geniuses out there hit on something as extraordinary as a 100% successful preventative for cervical cancer caused by HPV (human papillomavirus). Given that cervical cancer is one of the real silent-killer types, this is a monumental achievement in medicine, particularly for women’s health issues.

Of course, someone will always object; scroll down to the blocked quote from conservative Christian sources (the Family Research Council, specifically), if you don’t believe me.

Thanks to my buddy Greg down in Houston, who drew my attention to this one via a post on his blog.

Bank-robbing, American style = tommy guns & the mafia look.

The Canadian version is much more gentile.

There are literally eleventy billion starlings outside, I just counted every one. There are so many of them that they sky is dark and trees are dying.

Ok, so that’s a little bit of an overstatement, but there are an impressive number of birds flying around and the cats are going crazy.

It’s off to Boston though for us.