Two parts for the post today: one about the weekend, and one about me being a consumer. Hurrah! :)

The excursion to St. Louis was a great time, and I got to do all of the things I wanted to do, too! :) Grant and I went to Laumeier for a little bit when we first got there, and wandered around. Cromlech Glen is still technically closed, but we checked it out anyway. It really is one of my favorite places in the whole world. :)

After that, we went and wandered around the Loop, both of us finding CDs to buy at Vintage Vinyl, and spending a whole lot of time at Phoenix Rising. I used to really like that store, when it was mostly sort new-age-y stuff. Then it got really pop culture-y, and I didn't like it so much. It's still more along the pop culture-y lines, but I think I've learned to appreciate it for what it is, and not lamenting what it used to be. So we browsed for a good long while, and I, surprisingly, did not buy all of the pirate stuff... :)

We got dinner with Megan, Robert, and Leslie at a Thai place, and it was tasty, though mine was a bit spicy... and I even got mild! Ran right across the street to the Pageant, and got pretty decent spots on the floor.

The opening act, Michael Leviton, was this geeky looking guy with a ukelele, with very clever lyrics. I liked him a lot. :) TMBG, of course, rocked. A good long set, with two encores, and they played "Istanbul," which is what really matters. I'm pretty sure they've played that every time I've seen them. :) Megan and I tried to start a conga line during "Dr. Worm," and failed, but then another one came by, so we jumped on. :)

I was so tired and so sore when we got back to C-dale, but it was so worth it. :)

::..::

After spending a lazy Sunday morning-into-afternoon recovering, Jesi and I went out shopping, and I finally bought myself an iPod. Yeah, I'm a little late in jumping on the bandwagon, but waiting this long meant that I could get a 60 gig, in black.

60 gigs. My iPod is bigger than my computer's internal hard drive. This makes me cry a little on the inside. But it also makes me happy, because I have ALL of the music from my computer on my iPod, and still have room to spare. Almost 8000 songs on there at the moment, and it's over 30 gigs... so I really did need the 60 gig version... :)

Still figuring out some of the details on how to make it do what I want, but I've got a basic knowledge of what I can do... luckily I know plenty of people who have had theirs for a while, and can help me figure out what I can't get on my own. :)

So I've got it set up on my desk, with tiny speakers which sound mostly like crap, but hey, it's slightly better sound than the internal speaker on my computer, I can listen to any song I own whenever I want, and I can stop burning so many CDs to bring with me to work... I can just load them onto the iPod and go from there... w00t! :)
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