Virtually Home

1) Go back in time and tell myself not to move to Minnesota. 2) Go back in time and tell European settlers not to move to Minnesota. (Bonus: The Dakota and Ojibwe will be psyched.) 3) Go to summer. Never come back.

Midnight Reruns When I owned a drumkit -- before I moved to a small apartment in Saint Paul -- it had a Rural Alberta Advantage (RAA) sticker on it. I like their lyrics; I like their drumming; I like their singer's weird voice. I first heard them on a Saddle Creek sampler when I lived in France, and since then I have frequently wished they would make music faster. The good news is that they have a new record on its way out, and their short tour that began in Minneapolis last week is kind of a test run for new material they're recording right now. Midnight Reruns Midnight Reruns opened the show. They're a four-piece rock act from Milwaukee who played the first two nights of the RAA's tour, after swinging back up from Austin (they played the Soundpony in Tulsa on the way). I liked some of their riffs and the way they smiled when they played. I liked that they visited the Como Zoo before the show that night. And so I bought their record after the show. Their dr...

I vastly underestimated the extent to which the weather would have a major effect on my emotional well-being. When it is this cold, I fail to be productive, and I hate everyone and everything. It is a truly terrible way to exist.

I'm in my ninth year of devout Decemberists fandom. There is something about the storytelling, the melodies, the little guitar hooks, the accordion and harmonica and melodica -- hell, just about everything about it appeals to me. I especially adore all of that prog-rock complexity reduced to Colin Meloy with a guitar. I've traveled to see Decemberists shows in Maryland, Texas, Washington state, and London, England -- accordingly, there was little that could have stopped me from seeing Colin Meloy play in my own backyard. This was my second visit to The Woman's Club of Minneapolis (the first was to see Ben Gibbard with Advance Base). Very little about the venue appeals to me. They have tragically little parking, and are located in a neighborhood plagued with "residents only, violators will be towed" signs, so you have to get there ridiculously early in order to be able to leave your car somewhere. This is tragic because it's a seated-only venue, so there'...

Animals have sensory systems that allow them to take in and make sense of information present in the environment. Some animals (like me) fly airplanes and go to grad school, and their nervous systems are used frequently for knowing which way is up and worrying that they might not be in the right place. When you're an instrument pilot in training, you spend a lot of time learning to trust your instruments during flight in the clouds because sometimes, when you fly in featureless grey, the part of your brain that integrates information from your visual and vestibular systems gets really confused. This confusion can cause your brain to have very definite opinions about which way is up -- and these opinions frequently do not coincide with any kind of reality. Spatial disorientation can be very dangerous when you consider that the airplane is traveling at some relatively rapid rate near an object (the Earth) of much, much, much greater mass. The solution to this disorientation problem...

Today, I lost a great uncle. He was a wonderful, earnest, slow-smiling kind of man. He was good, and I will miss him.

Autumn is like that feeling when you get on a really huge and rickety rollercoaster and the car stops at the top of the first drop and you think, "Oh god, I want off." But there's no stopping the rollercoaster car and there's no stopping autumn from turning into the relentless misery that is winter. Sure, at the end of the ride (er, winter) you convince yourself that you're proud of having done it, like it was some kind of accomplishment. And at least you're cooler than that wimp who didn't try it. But it's not fun. Particularly not at that moment, waiting for the drop, when you realize what's in store. I want summer back, and I want it back now.