Attacking the To Do list

Over lunch on Friday I put together a list of things to do this weekend. It ended up being two pages, including some items that have been on my list of things to do for six months. It wasn’t like they were some of the most difficult tasks in the world. One was to get a new battery for my watch but that apparently takes me half a year to accomplish. Looking at the list, I’ve probably taken care of about three quarters of the list. But man, was it interesting getting there.

My first task on Friday night was a fun one, which was going to see Los Lonely Boys and the Robert Randolph Family Band at City Market. This is the same venue that had me standing in an unmoving line for an hour last week, next to a girl that I failed miserably at hitting on and then was forced to stand next to her for forty five minutes pondering my ineptitude. Which means that when I looked at the weather report and saw a serious storm front making its way towards KC I wasn’t in too positive a mood. Got there and Martin Sexton opened the show. This is the second time I’ve seen Martin in the last two months and I’d describe his style as technically brilliant acoustic guitar playing. But like any of the jam band scene performers, it loses a lot of its luster when you’re sober. The Robert Randolph Family Band was a much better set, real high energy and it was a jam band the way I like to see it with more blues and rock influences than anything.

As their set was ending you could see the lightning in the distance. Then the winds picked up and the temperature dropped by about ten degrees in a minute. I then did a mental accounting of the situation. I am standing in the middle of a parking lot next to a metal stage. There is lightning all around. The only cover is under metal awnings. Yeah, once the rain started I basically decided to call it a night. I’m not sure if the people who waited it out got to see at least part of Los Lonely Boys set but given that it rained two inches that night and it was basically an open stage I doubt that it was a pleasant experience.

But that did allow me to get up early on Saturday and run all of these errands that I’ve been putting off. Got a ton of shopping done and in the process I’ve been faced once again with a question that I do not have an acceptable answer for: at what point can you ask a sales clerk out on a date. I mean, when she has basically become your personal shopper and has given you her card can you ask her out? What about the cute girl who works at Barnes and Noble and liked that I was buying a David Sedaris book? Can I set up a date while the credit card purchase is being authorized? I really need an answer here.

The rest of my weekend has been spent in clean up and organizational mode. (Oh, and playing NCAA Football. Where I somehow lost to Kansas. I’ve never been more ashamed in my life.) I haven’t gone on any grand life documentation adventures though I am trying to set up a few new goals to accomplish before the end of the year. Keeping my apartment clean would be a nice place to start. I’d like to avoid these all afternoon cleaning binges that I seem to undertake.

The five random CDs for the week:
1) Coldplay “X&Y”
2) Steve Earle “The Revolution Starts Now”
3) U2 “Zooropa”
4) Josh Rouse “Nashville”
5) The Smithereens “11”