Themselves + my birthday: The opening act was pretty painful to observe, so people stood towards the walls. He played with intensity, but he meandered and his complicated hand gestures were distracting. While I had hoped to miss the opening act all together, it gave ample time to visit with a slew of friends (SLDG, JRLY, WSPY, [ASSOCIATED SPOUSES / LOVERS & ROOMMATES]) and sip on strong drinks. And a shot of fine Whiskey (ELI).

Everyone seemed pleased when the opener announced his last song. But before it could sink in, he continued to speak, adding: "It's basically a 15 minute improv". I heard Ms. Kim groan.

The set eventually fizzled out. Ms. Kim and I managed to grab a spot near the center of the stage. After a wait of what seemed like ages, Themselves finally came on and played a loud, abrasive set. They favored their new material, but mixed in some obscure favourites from their debut. Further detail would be a disservice to the spectacle. It was wonderful.

All in all, it was a spectacular way to spend my birthday.

The following weekend, Ms. Kim hosted a party at our place. Best party we've had to date, without a doubt.

Since it was hot as balls, I constructed a drink based on the teachings of a wise man named Jos. He bequeathed to me a most sacred recipe. Mixing mass quantities of ice, limes, vodka and a little sugar (IN A GIANT BOWL) yields a delicious, thirst-quenching drink. It is mostly alcohol, but you can't taste it. At all. Which can cause problem.

While we sat on the patio, I noticed Jerly had a tall glass of the stuff. Look where he ended up:

*It should be noted that the tye-dye 'beater JRLY is wearing hadn't been washed since it's initial dye-job on July 4th. Later, he would develop a terrible itch. TOTALLY WORTH IT.

Many people (including myself), drank way too much of the troublesome drink. We partied for nearly 9 hours. I haven't had so much fun in ages.

While this is going on, Nicole was staying with us for the weekend. Ms. Kim's friend from the wayback, she was very easy to get along with. I didn't have to censor myself at all, which is nice, since I'm not very fucking good at it. Visiting from California, we decided to take her for a tour of the through the gorge the day after the party.

I drove. We took Ms. Kim's car, so I cruised well over the speedlimit most of the time. It was evident that we were all hungover from the previous night's antics, so it was a quiet trip overall.

It did give me a chance to play around with my new camera. Ms. Kim replaced my broken with with a nice point-and-shoot model. It has a strangest feature -- 'smile detection'. When triggered, this mode will identify all faces in the frame and detect just how much smile is showing. Once the smile meter hits a certain point, it snaps a shot.

After extensive testing, I've found that it doesn't work very well. Only a handful of the pictures taken with smile detection enabled were not completely horrible. In fact, they are pretty rad.

Keeping in the vein of awesome, after exhausting the local blockbuster of good(tm) things to view, I finally broke down and joined Netflix. I signed up after purchasing a most-wonderful product, the Roku box. I can steam commercial-free movies (some in HD) from Netflix's ever-growing online selection. They have an impressive selection -- I already have over 100 movies in my instant queue. I don't usually hype merchandise like this, but I don't care -- this thing is amazing. $100 for a small, simple box + remote and a $9/month account gets unlimited access to some impressive stuff. TOTALLY WORTH IT.

Okay. Enough shilling.

This past weekend was filled, to the brim, with a splendid visit from my parents. My father and I constructed a patio covering during the visitation. We traded sketches in the weeks prior and had things mostly planned, but we did have to improvise a bit. It uses wood harvested from the homestead and when you look at it from the inside, not a single screw is visible. I can cover it with shadecloth in the summer, but keep things clear during the winter, as I don't want it fucking up my natural lighting. Neat.

Bad scene: Me. Unforgiving 104 degree heat. Fred Meyer Bottle return. 4 machines total. 3 broken. A woman slowly feeds Tecate cans into the only functioning machine. She has two carts full. She looks painfully pregnant. Her mentally retarded teenage sister is holding a very young child. The child is crying and looks slightly sunburned. I'm next in line. I watch this. For nearly 30 minutes. For $6 worth of cans. SO NOT WORTH IT.

My parents departed early Sunday, so Kim and I had a chance to hit up the Escher exhibit at the Portland Art Museum. It was a wonderful collection. I enjoyed seeing his sketches. Some of them had a lot of eraser marks, which made me grin. Everyone makes mistakes. Right?