Teresa and I have just returned from a visit to Southern California. It's always nice to see family and friends, of course (if you're one of them, Hello!)...and it offered the opportunity to go on yet another Rush pilgrimage. Rush shows nineteen, twenty, and twenty-one in the Life of Adam were, as expected, nothing short of amazing. Of particular interest was the San Diego show at cozy Hospitality Point, which was something like having a multi-platinum band playing in a friend's backyard, albeit with a bit more spectacle than a typical backyard barbecue or kegger party (the multi-platinum part rearing it's head, as your typical garage band isn't likely to have quite so many lasers).

Another highlight of the week's proceedings was the long-awaited Premonition Reunion/All-Star (okay, No-Star) Jam. After collecting a few years' rust (Rowland Ebright has put together a Premonition page that actually contains several factual errors at the moment...we're working on it...but does explain the gist of everything), the band (or some reasonable facsimile) has sounded better, but the simple reappearance of the many-headed behemoth that is my former band was cause for some kind of celebration.

In other, more Alameda-centered news, Teresa and I are currently reveling in the glory of Wave Two of furniture acquisition. We've outfitted the living room with a clever sofa/loveseat combo, bought chairs that match the dining room table that sat fallow for a couple of months, and equipped the Western/California King bed sitting in the master bedroom with a mattress of comparable size. For those of you traveling to approximately our part of the world, this also means that we've got a mattress on the bed in the guest bedroom -- and we're more than willing to share our abode with weary travelers. In any event, the house is starting to look like a home, to be pithy for a moment.

Site update: I've actually got something new up in the Writings section. Sorry, it's not the long-awaited discussion of Post-Progressive music. I've got a nifty little community study of my hometown: Long Beach, California: Industrialization and Deindustrialization in a Port City. It's not actually light reading, but it's probably a little more accessible than The Correlation Between Evolution and Ethics. Aside from that, not much has gone on here -- I've tweaked a few things and have been updating my list of visiting nations to this site, but that's about it for the moment. I've spent too much time slaving for The Man and vacationing to escape, I suppose, to have accomplished too much in the last month. In the meantime, I invite you to enjoy what's here.