Almost Travel Time

On this Monday morning, I'm thinking back to the past few days and looking ahead to what's in store.  At the tail-end of last week, Julie and I had a garage sale.  Since we bought the house and moved in, we've been trying to turn it into a "home" and part of that is to first, purge the crap!  So on Thurs/ Fri/ Sat we opened up our garage to neighbors and strangers alike and offered them the relics of our past for a dollar or two.  I would say in total, it was a disappointment.  Julie and I made $102...hardly worth the time spent getting it ready and vacation time taken from work in order to man it.  But, at the same time, that probably equates to about 100 less items in our house, so in that respect, it's good to at least get some of the crap gone out of our lives.  Mom, being the g-sale pro that she is, has offered to just pack up what we have remaining and take it all to her house for storage through the winter.  Then, in June or so, she'll have another g-sale at her place and see if we can't get rid of the rest of that stuff.  My momma treats me so good!

On the first day, Ruby had her lemonade stand set up, which is always a little bit of a draw for the neighbors.  Nothing cuter than meeting the little girl across the street to buy some lemonade.  It was cute in the days leading up to it, because we had talked about it ahead of time.  She said to my mom with a furrowed brow, "I'm excited for my lemonade stand, Gramma...but I don't really know how the dollars work."  After a little clarifying, Gramma figured out what she was worried about was making change for poeple...haha!  My little lovie!  Needless to say, she did just fine.  How come we don't see more kids with lemonade stands anymore these days?

After the garage sale was done on the last day, I was ready for a drink!  One of Julie's longtime friends, Jolene, was in town for the weekend, so that worked as a good excuse to go out and blow off some steam.  Jolene  now lives in Chicago with her husband and was just back for a short family visit.  We all met up at the Empress and proceeded to "get it on"!  Julie and I got there about 8:30pm and didn't leave until after the 2am close....a full night.  I remember that we told Jolene how rad her name is and that if we ever have a daughter together, that's what we're going to name her.  Everybody was quite excited about that.  Promises, promises....

Now, we're 4 sleeps away from leaving for the Gorge to see the Dave Matthews Band.  Right now, that's all I can think about!  I've been to the Gorge twice before; once for DMB and another time to see Phish.  Julie's gonna love it there.  I've always been lucky with the weather there, never having anything other than extreme sunshine, so I hope it works out that way again.  As it sits right now, I have zero idea where we're going to stay once we get there.  I tried calling around to the campgrounds and hotels when I bought the tickets back in May, but they were all booked up already.  Mind you, I didn't have a place booked in advance the last time I went down, so I'm hoping everything works out  again for us.  I'm confident it will.

One thing I'm sure everyone can agree on with seeing DMB are the expectations laid on the set-lists.  Being a jam band and prolific performers, they keep their shows different every single time out.  You have to think of the set-lists as kind of like collecting hockey cards; what are they gonna play?  Are they going to bust out any rarities?  New stuff vs. old stuff?  Standards and cool covers....the set-list is an important reason as to why you have to see bands like this as often as you can.  Speaking of which, I've seen DMB six times so far....with these two Gorge shows we're about to catch, that'll bring my total to eight.  Here are some links to the set-lists I have so far in my collection of DMB experiences:
http://dmbalmanac.com/TourShowSet.aspx?id=453055783&tid=12&where=2002
http://dmbalmanac.com/TourShowSet.aspx?id=453055997&tid=72&where=2003
http://dmbalmanac.com/TourShowSet.aspx?id=453056306&tid=87&where=2006
http://dmbalmanac.com/TourShowSet.aspx?id=453056305&tid=87&where=2006
http://dmbalmanac.com/TourShowSet.aspx?id=453056307&tid=87&where=2006
http://dmbalmanac.com/TourShowSet.aspx?id=453056628&tid=104&where=2009

The opening band for DMB will be Ben Harper, who I'm pretty stoked about.  I mean, let's face it, he's a headliner in his own right.  We saw Ben with Relentless 7 at the New Orleans Jazz Festival in 2009 and I thought he killed it.  When Ben was here in Edmonton for the Folk Festival a couple of weeks ago (which I was unable to atttend) he played an acoustic set and said it was due to a serious illness with one of the band members in Relentless 7, so I'm curious to see what happens at the Gorge show.  Either way, I know I'll enjoy it.  So, the countdown to the Gorge is on!  Awesome way to close out summer...I can't wait!