I spent $47 on gas yesterday. Ugh. I really need to switch to the bus.

Matt, Petey (Happy Bday!), Derrick and I checked out Massive Attack tonight at the Paramount….and it was an AWESOME show. Supposedly, they haven’t toured to the United States in 8 years, and on this tour alone, they’re only hitting 4 U.S. locations: Seattle, NYC, Chicago and Coachella. Nice. They brought on a bunch of old favorites like Angel, Teardrop, Safe from Harm, etc…and they were all powerful and explosive. It was fantastic to hear them live, in particular to catch parts of their music that I couldn’t hear before, like a backup vocal or the bass line strumming. One really cool bit of their performance was that there were TWO…

There’ve been a lot of shootings in Seattle recently (or maybe the media is paying attention to it suddenly) and one of them happened last night in Capitol Hill at the corner of E. John and Broadway, right in front of Twice Told Tales, the cute used bookstore with all the cats. This is a block away from my first apartment in Seattle (and still a 5-10 min. walk from where I live now). Craziness.

Don’t you hate it when you schedule a meeting with all these people to a room that CLEARLY is available on the free/busy tab…only to then shortly get a “DENIED! YOU LOSE” email from the conference room saying that it’s actually, in fact, busy but likely unknown to me because people with special powers booked it without saying so in the free/busy tab?!?! argh.

This has been a really nice, chill weekend. Friday, Matt and I attended Jocelyn’s dinner-ish party where for the first time, I was in an environment where most party guests introduced themselves by asking “So..are you an attorney also?” (Jocelyn and her boyfriend, Ivan, are recent Seattle U. Law School graduates). I did get to see another former Amazonian there, Daniel–so it was nice to catch up with him a bit. Saturday evening, Kabir invited me and Matt over for dinner with his parents, Sri, Noreen and his former boss, John. We had a yummy homecooked meal c/o Kabir’s parents and just an overall good time catching up. And today’s…

Okay–I went ahead and edited the podcast interview with Doug Hall to show on the clip that references Aaron. It’s about 2 minutes long and it’s an mp3. Check it out. Note that this radio interview was taped way before the show aired but it was already after the taping of the show and the finalists determined.

Here’s the brief clip of Aaron on American Inventor from last week. This clip’s shorter than the previous one but at least you can see his name written on the screen. I talked to Aaron a bit more about the audition after he was eliminated. I complained about seeing so little of him in the Top 24 show and he told me that during his final presentation, a pigeon came out of nowhere and landed 2 feet in front of him. Because of that, he thought that was why they didn’t show a clip of his final preso. (Personally, I thought that would’ve made some funny tv) He also told…

Well, I sat through the grueling 2 hours of American Inventor tonight, hoping to see some more good airtime of Aaron—instead, I just saw more and more of the inventions we’ve already seen, like those edible snowglobes and the wig lady. What I also did see was a lot of Aaron sitting dead center in the middle of the whole group of the top 50. Hour 1 ends—-Aaron makes it into the top 24. Yay! Okay, onto the 9pm show. Surely, in the next full hour with the top 24, I’ll see more of Aaron. Near the beginning, there are some quick frames of him with the group of contestants.…

It looked like tonight’s episode of American Inventor was the last of the general auditions and that next week’s show will show the top 50 contestants, who will then get narrowed down to 24 and then to the 12 finalists. What’s exciting is that my brother, Aaron, appeared in the previews for next week’s show….meaning he’s at least in the top 50. And in the clip that he was in, it was joyous group celebration clip, which I hope means that perhaps he even made it to the top 24. Who knows–he’s not telling anything to the family. In any case: for all my friends that I’ve mentioned to about…

I haven’t had time to write about what’s been going on for the past 2 weekends, so let me get it out of the way quickly. 2 weeks ago, Matt and I headed back to Kansas to attend my high school friend, Matt Hillmer’s wedding in Lawrence (did I mention the best man was a Matt and the usher was also Matt?). Fun times and I got to see a lot of people that I haven’t seen in a really long time, so there was a lot of catching up. The time in Kansas was short and sweet—we ate dinner at an old favorite, the Savoy Grill, in Kansas City…