This is what last week looked like for me and the missus:
06/19: Guster @ Boston Harbor Cruise
06/20: Guster @ Paradise Lounge AND Tavern on the Water, Boston
06/21: Guster @ Bull Moose in Scarborough, ME
06/22: Guster @ Providence
06/23: Guster @ Philly (and me not @ work...woo!)
06/24: Us @ babysitting duty
06/25: Us heading home
In case you're counting, that's six shows in five days, and four states in four days, though five of them were 45-minute promo/acoustic sets or in-store performances. Still, my first time seeing Guster (or ANY band) on a boat, my second Guster Tower Records in-store in Philadelphia (though oddly, they were at a different Tower Records last time), and I even managed to make it to one more show than the wife (the 6/20 afternoon gig was me "taking a friend to the airport" - except they didn't play Airport - but Mrs. Dave had to work).
Despite the fact that most of the shows were that short, though, each of them had something to recommend it - lots of goofy banter to make up for the fact that the sets were so short, the chance to get two metric assloads of things signed (CDs, mostly, for friends - I think we ended up buying or acquiring like five copies of the album - one we got for free, one we bought used [stamped promo copy!], and three we got signed for other people). The funny part about that was that we went through the line every night and got no end of jokes from the guys. All for a good cause, though, and you couldn't ask for a nicer band, crew and management team - the first three shows were private winners-only gigs and despite finding out about them last-second and writing only days prior to see if we could sneak in, we got emails back from just about everyone we wrote to, and managed to get the Golden Tickets. Kudos to Dalton, Liz, Andrew, Nicky and especially Seth for his gadget wizardry for real-time guest list updates. A band that treats its fans so well deserves nothing but success.
From there it was down to my mother-in-law's place for some good Filipino foodin' and a movie which I recommend so little that I won't even mention its title here. I think it was supposed to be a comedy, and if I had actually been enjoying it, the constant MST3K-on-stupid-pills commentary from behind me might have distracted from said enjoyment, but instead the bickering was so joyless that one of them commented "I could have stayed home to listen to this." How true. I anti-recommend this movie.
But the real point of the weekend was babysitting for our niece and nephew, pictures of whom Mrs. Dave has sprinkled over on her blog. I told work I was going to a wedding, but it was really my brother-in-law and his wife who were going. Eh, close enough. So we spent a day and a half playing Thomas the train and basement Wiffle ball, making noise with various noisemaking type things (ah, something to look forward to), watching "Homeward Bound" (narrowly avoiding Garfield the movie...thankfully) and causing general mayhem around the house. At one point my friend Chris called, and the nephew was cliff-diving with one of his Hess trucks (well, just driving it off the step down into the living room). I could barely hear myself think so I went upstairs to talk, and apologized. "You realize there's really no going back now, right?" he joked. Nah, I wouldn't have it any other way.
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