And speaking of the 1970’s...Fireside Pizza is a 1970’s icon. The place has been there since the 1950’s, but it was in the 70’s that the owners through some money at the joint and added these two huge fake trees dropped at either side of the place. It’s like some freaky movie set or something. The pizza is that great thin cracker crust style and Monday nights is jazz night. I like to get a Miller Lite Beer in a (real) frosty mug, a dinner salad (white ice berg lettuce) and we split a large mushroom pizza, easy on the cheese and sometime olives (black or green) on half. The jazz is always different, mostly sort of crappy, but so what. The locals come out to hear whatever’s being played and stuff their faces in the the sweet 1970’s wood trimmed decor that I can’t help but feel comfortable in. It reminds me of the places I used to go to when I was a kid and that doesn’t suck.

The band has had some serious time off. No complaints here because I have no problem filling the time, but it is cool as hell to play. We finally had our first practice in a long time. We need it. Good thing too because we have 3 gigs coming. One of them outside in broad daylight at an art crawl. If this practice was any indication we’ll be hitting a lot of wrong notes on Saturday. Oh well.

The security guard that works in Gavadae which is the building we hang out in everyday at the Caribou Coffee so we see this guy quite a bit. He’s a strange dude and i’ve never really talked to him. Like a lot of security guards he seems to like his power and uses it whenever he can. He walks real fast, leaned forward with his arms at his side. He looks like Lerch from The Adam’s Family. I saw him once at a bar out of uniform with his boyfriend. I never would have guessed he was gay. I think he tried for a while to think of any reason to give Mike and I shit...but he never found a good enough reason so now he never even looks at us. After about 18 days straight of rain I saw him standing at railing looking down at the fountain on the first floor...after a minute he pulled out a penny, rubbed it, and tossed it over. He stood there for a few minutes looking like he was willing his wish to happen. I wonder what it was? Something with the boyfriend? Family? Or maybe he just wanted the sun to come out like we all do right now.

Every year my whole life i’ve seen old people walking around wearing these red poppy flowers, but i’ve never known what they were for. My guess is some veteran’s thing. That’s bad i suppose, not knowing. I probably should have asked this lady here...but instead I just decided to draw her picture. She seemed pretty lonely.

Gotta be the coolest building in downtown Minneapolis.

Pam had the big idea to paint the downstairs bedroom. She’s actually painting it back to the color it used to be. I never wanted her to change it in the first place, but she did, so now i’m just sitting around watching her work. I pulled the cork on this bottle of wine and made some drawings while she worked and got pissed at me for not helping. Hey, I filled up her wine glass when it went empty...that’s work, right?

Like i said...she’s really just returning the color of this room to

what it used to be. I’m just trying to stay out of the way because the room is too small for two people to be painting in and we both have “different” styles when it comes to things like painting. And mostly i just want nothing to do with work like that.

So the real point of all this room painting and house cleaning bullshit was a party that Kelly planned at our house and that Pam was hosting. Hmmm. I tried to veto the whole thing given the house was a mess, I had too much work stuff to do and the damn dog (Frankie) just can’t handle having people over because she’s crazy and will “love” people to death. My veto power meant nothing and the party was on. Pam was in full-on nesting mode trying to get the house perfect for Kelly and Patrick, and Bruce and Peter, and Molly and Will, and Jon and Amy. Oh brother. My weekend was shot. Cleaning. Moving shit. Trying to stay out of the way. I think we had fun, but it was too hard to tell since I had to constantly keep my eye on Frankie so she would jump up and “love” people to death. That damn dog is a piece of work.

Sonny’s Ice Cream is pretty good stuff, but even better is their outside patio space. It’s the one place we can go to and feel like we’re somewhere in europe. How cool is that? The problem is it just makes me wish we were really there. It’s a pretty good walk from our house but Pam was in the mood to walk the neighborhoods and look at houses and plants and stuff. It was pretty cool. I had a root beer float. I haven’t had one of those in years. They used to be my favorite ice cream treat but I never order them anymore. I guess it’s the fat and sugar mixed of the ice cream added to the pure sugar of the root beer that I can probably live without.

I guess we can’t be too picky about what shows we’re offered, but tuesday nights are rough.Not the biggest crowd, but a pretty good show none the less. It’s a practice night for us anyways so we might as well get out and play for a few people, even if it is just for the bartenders.

Now this is a city. The tallest building with a big open court with benches for people to hang out and eat lunch and talk and look at people. We eat lunch every day on one of those benches. The people watching is amazing.

This is right by the drum shop i go to get sticks and cymbals and stuff. Some dude came up to me asking for 30 cents. I didn’t give him anything, but if i did i bet it would end up at this place.

It’s that time of year where the yard goes nuts with

green shit and Pam goes nuts planting the colored shit.