Tag Archives: Manchester

Nov22

A relaxing and in-the-city weekend… AKA “I moved 2000lbs of wood this weekend!”

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Weekend of 16-Nov & 17 Nov

 

Many weekends, I want to adventure and hike and climb and party.  But sometimes a week is slow and stressful, and I need a bit of a breather.  This is one of those weekends.  At least mostly.

Saturday, 16-Nov-13

  • Adventures in moving wood pellets!
    • Since we have a Pellet stove at my house in Cambridge, pellets needed to be acquired before the winter hit.  So i looked into it, and found that you can’t really buy single bags of pellets… anywhere, actually.  Instead, they sell by the ton.  Well… fuck it!  A ton is 50 bags, we’ll probably use that over the winter.  Right?  I hope so, because I ordered it up and set it to be delivered early on Saturday.
    • I was up and moving early, though… not so much before the delivery was set to be… BI didn’t hear anyone deliver anything, so I was a bit concerned that they’d just skipped over me.  I’d assumed that they would call…  But nope, I walk downstairs and the pallet of pellets is sitting and waiting for me
    • Bring Ringo outside to hang out with me while I re-stack them all indoors… it’s a long and heavy process, but it’s a pretty nice day out, so I’m actually happy starting the day this way
    • It’s a full ton… literally 50 bags weighing 40lbs each.  2000lbs.  And I moved them all in less than an hour.  With a short break in the middle to play with Ringo of course, but still.  <flexes>
  • After starting the morning with some lumberjackery (yes this counts!  Shut up!) I headed inside to relax and make up an excellent (and for once, not so simple) breakfast for myself. Ground Beef, cheese, and jam omlette, with bacon and tomatoes and apple slices on the side.  With, of course, some “Thunder Mountain” espresso.  Yum!
  • Spend the rest of the morning and early afternoon relaxing.  I was originally going to put the wrap on the windows to keep the heat in, but it was an unbelievably amazing day!  So instead of shuttering down the house, I opened up all the windows and let it breathe in the last breaths of autumn while Ringo and I went for a long walk
  • Yeah, some video games happened too
  • Around 3:00 Chirag shows up, and we hang out for a bit before rolling out to Jordan’s Furniture, where we get a late lunch and check out furniture and such.  Woo much fun.
  • First party of the night is Liz’s International potluck!
    • Just a fairly standard-issue dinner party, with the disclaimer that all potluck dishes should be international.  Chirag made Bean Salad, and I cooked up some Matzos Ball soup.  And as a note?  My soup got rather amazingly rave reviews.  Mmmhmm.  Grandma’s Recipe for the win, every time.
    • hang out and gnosh on tons of small bits, people are quite good cooks!
    • We play a few hands of Cards against Humanity… but to be honest, I don’t particularly enjoy the game.  So after a bit Chirag and I head out for the next party… 
  • Pack up the soup all careful-like into the car.
  • And now… Second party of the night!  Katies Disney Drinking night!
    • Daniel’s sister has a fair number of parties based around a very specific theme: drinking booze and watching Disney cartoons.
    • It’s a kind of simple premise, but it works very well: the rules being that if you’re not singing along to the songs, you have to be drinking along to the songs that people are singing.  Leads to lots of horridly off-key voices, and even more completely beverages when people don’t know all the words.
    • Enjoy ourselves,  have Gin & Tonics, and watch movies!  Beauty and the Beast, along with Tangled.  I hadn’t seen Tangled before, but it was actually quite good.
  • Drop off Chirag, then driving home carefully so as not to spill the soup!

Sunday, 17-Nov-13

  • No rush, up slowly.
  • Link up with Chirag, and grab brunch in Davis, at a place called Foundry.  AMAZING!
  • Another long walk with Ringo, since Lizzie isn’t home yet, she’s at a wedding with friends.  Maybe that’s why the weather is so perfect…
  • Head out to see Trans-Siberian Orchestra in Manchester!
    • Fun drive, without much difficulty
    • We park, and go out on a mission to Dunking Donuts.  However, due to Chirag’s “unique” method of reading a map, “one block up that way” turns into “a mile or so up the street in the wrong direction, so that we barely make it back to the arena in time”
    • The show itself!  Amazing and jaw-dropping! The music itself dealt with slightly low sound quality, most likely due to it being in an arena instead of somewhere with actual acoustics, but the show itself was amazing!  The lights and Pyrotechnics were top-notch, and the band members were obviously having a great time.
    • The stage itself was a prop too – different tiers, and sections would move around and swing out over the crowd, or raise up with neat lights underneath.
    • I definitely recognized most of the lights as things I’d worked on at Color Kinetics.  Kind of neat.
    • Damn though… symphonies are loud.  I think I got my hearing back two or three days later…
  • Drive home, no problems there.  Nice and simple actually
  • Nachos for dinner, then League with Das ‘Rag before bed.
Nov2

Holy Crap I saw Rush!

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Friday, 07SEP12

 

Rush is one of those bands that I should have been listening to since I started getting into fantasy and sci-fi, but for one reason or another I never really listened to. I’d heard of them sure, but never listened to one of their albums clean through.

Until I was introduced to the greatness that is 2112. After I first heard it and started desciphering the lyrics I was hooked. That one song, if you can call it a single song, kept my iPod busy for nearly half a week straight before I even moved onto their other classics.

So when I heard an ad saying that they were playing Boston as part of their new tour, I immediately called up Mike and informed him that we were going. Of course, he’d already heard of it though, and had a date set and tickets ready to buy.

Instead of Boston we’d chosen Manchester since it was a ton cheaper, a slightly better venue, and nearly a month earlier than the Boston shows.

And so, I headed up. Friday night, Mike and I met at a park and ride a bit North of his place and started the mostly-short drive into Manchester. On the way we had an interesting run-in with salesmen outside a Dunkin Donuts trying to throw paint on Mikes car, so they could show off a hood-cleaner (he nearly killed them), but otherwise the ride up was pretty boring and full of random Engineer-talk.

The fun really started when we sat down next to Rush’s drummer at the bar we’d chosen for dinner. It wasn’t actually Neil of course, but the guy seriously looked so much like him that even I did a double-take as we sat down to the bar. We started chatting with the guys, hearing about their front-row seats (the jerks) and shooting the shit with the Bartender. It was packed to capacity, something that the bartender said never happens, but as soon as word got out that the main doors to the show were open, the place was a ghost town within seconds.

Except for Mike and I, of course. That’s the whole advantage to buying tickets (and thus assigned seats) ahead of time, right? So we leisurely finished up our beers, said goodbye to the bartender and the waitresses, paid out the tabs, and headed over to find our undoubtedly amazing seats.

And they were honestly some of the best in the house. Some people want the front row, and some want box-office suites. Not me – Directly above the stage, a bit to the front, is my ideal. That way you’ve got the whole show lined up right in front of you, and no part of the stage is hidden from what we can see. The cheap seats are the good ones, if you ask me. There is always the danger of being seated right behind a support column though… but thankfully we weren’t so unlucky this time around.

And then, Rush took the stage.

No opening band, no MC, just… Rush.

And everyone saw that it was good.

More than good – the show was epic. I’d never been to a true “arena rock” concert before, and I honestly don’t think there are many, if any, bands left touring that can control an arena quite as well as Rush did. They easily filled the massive Verizon Arena, and the energy coming off the stage was nearly enough to keep me knocked back in my seat. Almost.

The set itself was almost an exhibit of its own – massive “science equipment” pulled straight from a mad scientists lair adorned the whole stage, and every once in a while an extra would walk up and start adjusting the knobs and dials as the band played in front of him. I think there was even a popcorn machine somewhere…

The show went on for ages. Seriously, new-age bands can learn a thing or two about stamina from these three guys. There was an intermission, complete with a few drunken assholes running around like idiots, but the show went on for at least three hours of nearly uninterrupted rocking.

Once it was actually over (they did two encores, one of which was Tom Sawyer, and then had a teaser video on the stage screen) Mike and I headed back to the cars. Traffic was hell, complete with random super-duty trucks trying to drive over us “small fry” – thankfully Mike’s brakes worked quite well, though we stopped with less than a foot to spare. With that, we wisely decided to trust my old-remembered knowledge of Manchester, and took a few winding back roads to find our way back onto the highway, and onto our way home.