This online stuff sucks up so much time. I going on a 48 hour no computer kick this weekend. I'm going to put a blanket over it and not even look at it.

Meanwhile, Bob Mould was fabulous last night. It's just Bob and guitar and gadgets and a screen behind him with different arty clips. And he hammered through a ton of music in 90 minutes. I loved it. And we got two new discs so I have new music all over the place that I get to dig into.

Last item: hilarious story about what happens when people collect too much music.

Still more Paul
I've got to get over this Paul thing at least for now because I'm seeing Bob tonight. But here's a good article/interview by Bill Holdship(!) with Paul that talks about new business and old business. And this is a pretty decent interview from the SF Chronicle.

Right now it feels like I've got about 600 pieces of paper with notes of things I don't want to forget: "plane tickets to Wisconsin," "return library books," "buy yellow highlighter," "use cranberries." Isn't there some law of physics or other scientific principle that measures the limit of how many things can be listed and remembered before there are too many things thus nullifying all efforts?

Still On Paul
Bob wasn't wildly impressed with Paul. He said it's the third time he's seem him and it's the same schtick every time: half assed. I defended Paul by saying that I've seen Cheese three times and they only played one song. Bob said, "At least they finished it."

I forgot to mention that Paul played a song written by Bob Mould who is going to be in town next week. Unfortunately I don't know what the song was or if I've heard it before or whether it's on Paul's record and I wish someone would tell me. Someone has posted a comprehensive report on the Seattle show but I haven't seen a fanatical report on Portland. Maybe I should have taken notes. Also I realized yesterday that I don't own Pleased to Meet Me on disc which is a crime. I need to take care of that.

I MARRIED PAUL

Not really but I just got back from seeing him tonight at Millenium. (To recap: we're talking about Paul Westerberg.) IT WAS SO COOL. The thing started at 7pm and I got there a little after 5pm and brought a book and was pretty close to the beginning of the line. I have no idea how many people they fit in that record store -- it's not a huge place but they crammed everyone in and I don't think anyone got turned away.

I got a great place to stand, I could see him completely from the guitar up -- a very rare privilege for a height impaired person like myself. I can barely remember anything that he played -- I'm not good at that. He played "I Will Dare"! Other songs I remember: "It's a Wonderful Lie" and a song from the Singles soundtrack, "Waiting for Somebody," "Achin' to Be," and part of "Skyway" and part of the Portland song. Skyway is one of my favorite songs and he couldn't remember the words to save his life and it kinda bummed me. He holds up the guitar pick and complains "This is like an angel hair" so they find him a stronger pick and he goes, "Oh, now I'll remember the words."

But he looked fabulous: sort of fresh out of the shower rosy and rumpled and he was wearing this goofy suit like leather that looked liked someone spray painted it with gold, and then a pink pin-striped button down shirt with a sweater vest. Not a lot of men can get away with that look. I love him.

We brought home a couple of bags of Doritos on out last grocery outing (Bob's idea). This is not something we normally have in the house. We opened the first bag and I devoured about 3/4ths of it before I even sat down to eat dinner. This is why we don't have this kind of food in the house. The rest of the bag sat there talking to me the rest of the weekend. I'd be sitting here at the computer working on a story I'm writing and I could here those chips talking to me, begging me to eat them. I resisted until Bob opened the bag and then I ate a couple of chips and let him finish the bag. There's is still one more bag sitting there.

In other news, I'm thinking about doing a full-on facelift on the pampage. I have a bunch of ideas floating around my head (graphical creativity is not my strong suit) and I've been marking pages I like to use for ideas. I'd also like to move the blog to the main page and rearrange some stuff and maybe finally take down the whole airline saga -- I don't know. I'm still thinking about it and have like zero free time for a project like that.

What is the etiquette when someone else's pet follows you on a walk? Yesterday I went for a walk after dinner and this big yellow lab found me and decided to tag along. I never saw him before and don't know where he came from. He was the kind of dog who runs up to other dogs and barks, and runs into people's flower beds and runs in front of cars -- not the kind of dog I want to be associated with. I tried to ignore him. I tried to shoo him off and send him home. Meanwhile, people are saying things to me about "my dog." I just kept walking. I didn't feel like it was my duty to figure out where this dog belonged and take him home

Why is it so cold? I put away all my cold weather stuff a couple of weeks ago. Most of my tights were rags so I threw those out. Tax Day has come and gone -- I don't mind if it rains but I mind if it's less than 50 degrees. I saw in the paper it was like 90 everywhere else yesterday. I suppose I'll take 50 over 90 but my first choice would be a sunny 70.

Last night Linda talked me into signing up for the Baron Baptiste workshop in a couple of weeks. We'll see how I handle that. I'm not an athletic yogi - at least I don't think of myself that way.

I can't believe I've been running around like crazy since 8am (it's 5 now) on my day off and I can only cross one or two things off my list. I'm trying to psych myself into a quick hour of garden work -- perhaps cleaning up that last little patch in the corner and getting the front ready for the new plants I bought. But I really want to sit on the couch for a while. I think I've earned it and there's got to be something stupid on cable. Someday I'll be able to combine my workout with my TV watching. Billy is bound to think this is great news.

The death-flu is going around our house. I call any illness that makes us feel rotten the death flu. Bob's been suffering since Monday -- we thought his unhealthy feeling was due to allergies and weather changes and didn't come to the death flu conclusion until he was achy and fever-y and could barely crawl off of the couch. I'm still standing but feel a bit fuzzy around the edges. I'm hoping this is the worst of it as I'm not in the mood to spend the entire weekend immobile on the couch -- although that would give me the opportunity to finish this 6 Feet Under tape I made.

The Onion has a story that's very High Fidelity --- 37 Record Store Clerks feared Dead at Yo La Tengo Concert.

For the last two days the commute has been ugly. On Monday there were emergency vehicles zipping by with their flashing lights but I never saw anything -- no shards of white and orange plastic, leaked car fluids or skidmarks -- nothing. Yesterday was worse. It took one hour to get there. I'm dreading getting in the car today and I don't see how putting it off is going to help.

Today's URL is about this Indian Guy trying to grow some hemp. Also, yesterday I discovered Neil Gaiman's blog -- not like this is such an achievement. I'm sure about a zillion people read it, but yesterday is the first time I stopped by. I need to read some of his novels. All I've read was some Sandman which I loved.

Wow, the things people put their minds to: this "McDonalds Collector" has been to 11,000 different McDonald's restaurants. yuk.

Yesterday day I made amazing progress in the garden. I was so tired when I finished I thought I would have to be wheeled to bed. The garden part is all done -- I put up the walls of water ("easy to fill" my fat ass!) and set the tomatoes out. I planted a row of greens and beets. I made a whole new bed and put out some cucumbers. It's a pretty small garden, but I'm proud of it.

I'm trying to improve my shoe collection. I am timid about shoes. They have to be comfortable and I get scared when they have wild colors or basically when they are any color but black. I bought some new shoes - black slides, open-toed, with a bit of a heel at Ann Taylor and wore them last week. I walked to the bank and dry-cleaners and had blisters on both feet. So the next day I switched to some black flats and walked downtown and felt like I was getting a blister on the bottom of my foot. You can see why I like the Birks so much -- they're ugly but comfortable. What I want to know is, is there a secret to breaking in shoes or does everyone go through this?

Earlier this year I got to see Concrete Blonde which made me happy. Then I started to think it's been a long time since one of my other favorites: Bob Mould has come through town. Then I found out he's going to be here this month. (I also see I'm way behind on my Bob Mould product purchases.) So then I was thinking, now if only The Replacements or Paul Westerberg would go on tour -- that would be great. And then there's this news: Replacements Mull Reunion and Paul is doing an in-store here in Portland. Bob and Paul in the same month - how cool is that?.

In other news, I just typed in a URL from memory and turns out my memory is incorrect because I got into some rasty porn site with about 100 pop-up windows that took over my whole computer. I thought I was going to have to pull the plug out of the wall to get out of that one. Now I'm probably going to get spam from hell forever.