Day Before the Main Event

On Friday last I headed out to Star's around 11a so that we would have appropriate amounts of time to prepare for the weekend. We should've known better; of course, we got sidetracked. We ran a few errands for her and her business, wandering around to meet with people and stopping along the way. We were at the coffeehouse (yes, The coffeehouse, every group of friends has one) and ran into a ton of people, so we lingered outside sipping away at iced coffees and regailing eachother with tales of business and stupidity. It was great playing catch-up with some of these people whom I've not seen in a month or so. Eventually it was time to get going again, and we went back to her house to center ourselves and decide what we needed to get done.

One of my main reasons Star had wanted my help this weekend was to improve the visual presentation of her business at events. So we worked out a rough design of a fancy little sign and set off to the internet café to work. Now, I love this cafe — great central location, tons of different things going on in one place, and hey, I've got an in with one of the tech guys so I have a free account — but the actual equipment isn't that great, save peripherals like printers and scanners. So we're sitting there working in PhotoShop on this computer, which is going freakishly slow. I mean, it takes 5 minutes to send a job to the printer, and double that to save the damned file. Finally we're almost done, and I set the program to run a macro that will of course take some time. Star and I went off to eat at a vegan restaurant and had some great fake pork and fake fish things with lots of noodles and rice (see Rhys, even if it's vegetarian trying to be meat, it can still be good!). The perfect dinner, giving us some good energy for the weekend ahead but not weighing us down on this hot evening.

Upon return to our computer at the café, we discover that not only did the macro not finish, but the whole computer decided it was time for the project to be over. PhotoShop wouldn't perform any actions, nothing would print or save, and we were screwed. Luckily we had one version already printed out so we went with that, going down to the printers to make copies. On our way back to her house, we found this awesome retail/restaurant space for rent and ran around the outside peaking in broken windows and barred doors, fantasizing about what an awesome modern-day speakeasy it would make. We stopped at the café one more time to pick up some of the bulkier items we'd left, and of course ran into a few more friends. There was a really great group playing on stage, Ala Zingara. Earlier we'd heard their sound check, and I was really groovin' on the exotic drum stuff they had going, but their actual show was much more melodic and a bit folk-ish in its way. I still really liked the music so I picked up their cd (which I'm playing now). However, we couldn't stay for their full set because we had another show to get to, and we really needed to go home to get ready.

Half an hour later we show up at the bar and nightclub for the first night of its 10th anniversary weekend extravaganza. We saw The Minus-5 and Cabinesence play. Someone told me that Minus-5 had members from R.E.M. and Ministry, although I've since only been able to confirm the R.E.M. ties (any help here?). The place was packed and the weather hot, but the music wasn't really the type you could dance to (kind of an edgy 80's surfer rock sound to it) so most people were just lounging about drunk as a skunk. Star and I were drinking margueritas, which didn't affect me at all — though that was probably a good thing considering all the cute boys there that night. Eventually we got tired of that scene and just went home, hoping to get lots of rest in preparation for the next day. Now, I'd thought that our wanderings that Friday were very busy and all, but they were nothing compared to what was to come.