i survived work, i’ve been home for some time now. things were better in the afternoon because we had a meeting for a few hours where we just talked about ideas and i didn’t have to do any more of the drudgery. it was fine by me.

getting home was good because we had a tasty barbeque again. that little mini-weber is getting a mighty workout this summer. cheeseburgers and ball park franks. you know, i didn’t think it really mattered what hot dogs you bought, they all tasted like hot dog. but ball park franks are so much better than the generic ralph’s brand “meat weiners” that we’ve been getting until now. from this day forward i will spend the extra eighty cents and buy ball park! so dinner was good.

sadly though, it was josh’s last barbeque because he had to leave for down under at 7 tonight. so his mom and sister were at the barbeque with us and they’re really nice and it was a really good time. but it meant that afterward we had to watch him get in a car with his bags and drive away, not to be seen again until mid-december. holy shit, that just blows my mind. he’s just gone, just like that. damn. well i’ll relate his adventures as i hear them (unless he decides someday that he wants to start his own blog, or join this one, which would be fine by me. then he could tell the adventures himself), and i know we’ll be in touch as much as we can, cause he’s the greatest. if you read this, josh, i miss you already.

on a brighter note, not only is the new hey mercedes song good, but i got a new (well, it’s old, but new to me) castor cd in the mail today, tracking sounds alone. oh man, is it good. oh man. how many times do i have to say oh man to convey it’s goodness to you? it’s so rock. it makes me wish, again, and to a greater degree than i had before, that i was in college in the midwest in the mid to late nineties, so i could go to every possible concert of the great emo/indie rock titans of the time. i already wished to have seen braid, hum, and shiner in their hey day (or is it hay day? haiday? i’ll have to find out later), but now i have to add castor to that list. oh man. all that great midwestern rock, and three out of the four live no longer. oh well. at least shiner’s still together and hey mercedes is also an excellent band. i still miss the midwest though. to know how i feel you should buy or borrow these four cd’s, and listen to them while sitting in a comfortable chair and soaking in the glory: the aforementioned castor cd, shiner’s lula divinia, hum’s downward is heavenward, and braid’s frame and canvas. not that these are the best, necessarily, of every band’s catalog, but i know they should be sufficient to dazzle you if you are into good music. and i’d probably say they were my personal favorites. now go and rock. it’s time for me to weep at the loss of my friend to the land of men at work.