I uploaded some pictures of Boston and Durham to Flickr. Enjoy.

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• Chicago, Illinois: Visited Thursday thru Saturday for the Big 10 Men’s Basketball Tournament. I played in the pepband for the Gophers. We won our first game, but lost the second to Illinois.
• South Bend, Indiana: Visited Notre Dame Wednesday thru Sunday to visit my girlfriend, Ann Marie. The trip went well. I especially enjoyed all the Irish flair on St. Patrick’s Day.

• Durham, New Hampshire: Playing in the pepband for the Women’s Hockey Frozen Four. Go Gophers! We are flying out of Friday morning, returning Monday morning. I’ll let you know how it goes when I get back.

Two days only!

• Sat., Nov. 20 – 7 p.m.

• Sun., Nov. 21 – 3 p.m.

Call the Northrop Ticket Office at 612-624-2345 for tickets.

Here it is:

In case you didn’t get it, it’s a take on the Molson labels.

Minnesota Brass had a performance Saturday night in Blooming Prairie so I caught a ride down there with some friends in Minnesota Brass. I watched the Minnesota Brass rehearsal on Saturday afternoon and then they performed at nightfall as part of a a 100th year anniversary for the local bank. The Govenaires from St. Peter also performed their show. The event was finished with some fireworks that were “choreographed” to music, but the CD kept skipping so it was really quite terrible. The fireworks, however, were pretty awesome, especially for a small town like Blooming Prairie.

That evening almost a dozen of us crashed at Gary Tashima’s house. His mother was way too polite, going way out of her way to make sure everything was perfect. Gary’s younger brother looks just like Gary—it’s quite remarkable.

We sat and talked for a while, it was awesome to be able to reminisce with old band friends and meet some new people who will be joining the University of Minnesota’s Marching Band this fall. (Spat camp starts in under a month).

The weather during the night was quite nasty, lots of noisy thunder peals and bright flashes of lightning. I slept in a tent with Matt Beyer and Ryan (aka “That Guy”), but we didn’t stake out the corners—“Oh it won’t be windy or storm…” I had the joy of dashing out in the rain at 5am to grab tent stakes from the car and put stakes in the corners so that the tent wouldn’t try to blow over with us in it.

On Sunday we drove over to Le Sueur so Minnesota Brass could march in their parade. Sarah Henning and I helped distribute water to the corps members during the parade. Afterwards we enjoyed some overly buttered corn and other fair goodies.

The weekend was wonderful with the exception of the numerous down times that Sarah and I faced since we weren’t in Minnesota Brass like everybody else we were traveling with.

And if I have to eat Dairy Queen one more time this weekend…

In case you missed the show on TV, you can watch the 6 minute segment online at Kare 11’s website.

I saw Brent Turner, Brian Hadley, Beka Hammer, and Matt Renz in the segment.

Does anybody have a suggestion as for what I should put down for my “nickname” to go on the Spat Camp name tag?

That article that I posted about earlier this week about the worst bands of 2003 got me to thinking . . . which band is the worst band in the history of rock and roll? Being a stats and numbers and research geek, I’ve developed a system for who qualifies and process for then honing the qualifiers down into a sheer hard ball of ultimate badness. It’ll probably take a week’s worth of posts to type it all out here with explanations and what have you, so watch this space to see the worst of the worst pulled from under their rock and beaten to death with sticks.
??Via: The Worst Rock Band Ever??

The article goes on to list out a bunch of bands that suck and has head-to-head competitions in a NCAA Bracket style. The worst rock band ever turns out to be Motley Crue.

Here’s the official breakdown:

• Math 5615H — Honors Analysis
• Phys 4001 — Analytical Mechanics
• Phys 4051 — Methods of Experimental Physics I
• Mus 3480 — Marching Band
• Dnce 1321 — Ballroom I

• PE 1031 — Sabre Fencing

All in all, it’ll be 13 academic credits & 3 “fun” credits, making this my easiest semester at the U yet.

In case you were wondering how it looks time-wise, he’s a screenshot from iCal:

The big game is Sunday, I hope y’all watch. They are showing the game at William’s Arena (for free) if you are interested. It sounds like they might get a band together and play during the commercials and such.

It should be a good time. Although Duke’s band seems pretty dorky (maybe I shouldn’t talk). We got into town on Friday night. Saturday we played at a pepfest thing at a local mall here. It was a competition between the respective bands/cheer squads. We (of course) took first place and won a free movie ticket.

Saturday we tried to go visit Virginia Beach (25 miles away maybe), but the bus service took forever. After about an hour of being on the bus, we had made it half way. So we had to turn around and come home in order to get back for a pep rally or something.

That night, we hung out with the Louisiana Tech band. They were staying at the Marriot Courtyard, which was infinitely nicer than the Radison we were staying at.

Today, we’ve got the day off so I slept in and am now at the library. Some people rented are car and are driving to Washington, D.C.—a 3.5 hour drive!

Ok, I’m sorry this post is grammatically poor and littered with incorrect spellings, but I haven’t the time to proofread it as I have 2 more minutes with the computer.

Hope everything is great back home in the Twin Cities. See y’all on Wednesday.

Ooh, it’ll be fun!

Although at the moment it looks like I might have to take one of my midterms at 7am on Friday. Here’s to hoping that instead the departure time is later and I can take it at noon like everybody else in my class.