Cheesy Musings at 11:25 PM

I’m on the road again for the second week of the training that I started last month.  This week brings us to the magical land of Oshkosh, Wisconsin.  I’m editing some old home videos here in my room at the Holiday Inn Express.  It’s good times.  Oshkosh is about a six hour drive from Kokomo, which I completed gladly instead of flying.  I’ve taken enough long trips in the car that six hours doesn’t really even make me flinch anymore, but the process of flying involves so much wait time that it drives me nuts.  Of course, there is indeed waiting involved when you’re driving through Chicago.  I drove through at about 3:30 local time yesterday and it was like rush hour (not a Chicago rush hour, mind you, but like a rush hour in any city with a reasonable amount of traffic).  Ridiculous.  How are that many people driving through Chicago at 3:00 on a Sunday afternoon?  

Speaking of Chicago, I’ll actually be temporarily interrupting my training tomorrow afternoon to travel again to the Windy City.  For what, you ask?  That would be for my first Pearl Jam concert, which I will be attending with resident Pearl Jam fanatic, Zimm.  I am extremely excited.  I haven’t been to a show this size (sold out at the United Center) in quite some time, and the fan club tickets that Zimm acquired for us promise to be of excellent quality.  Here’s my wish list for some things I’d like to see them play tomorrow:

“Evenflow”, “Alive”, “Yellow Ledbetter” (I think those are the ones they play at pretty much every show), “Leash”, “Dirty Frank”, “Why Go”, “Given to Fly”, “Porch”, “Rats”, “Present Tense”, “Hail Hail”, “Lukin”, “Off He Goes”, “Do the Evolution”, “Love Boat Captain”, “Faithfull”, “Evacuation”.  

That’s just off the top of my head, and it doesn’t include songs from the new album, because they’ll probably play most of those ones.  Of course, I don’t expect that they’ll play all the songs I listed (they haven’t played “Dirty Frank” or “Leash” in quite some time), but it’ll be fun to see which ones they do play.  And with any luck, they won’t play “Last Kiss”.

So after a long day today (pretty much eight hours of lecture), I’ve got another one coming tomorrow.  I’ll be leaving here at about 1:00 to make the 3 ½ hour drive to Chicago, and hopefully I’ll beat most of the really bad traffic that way.  Then it’s time for the before-party at a pizza place where Pearl Jam cover band Even Flow will be playing.  Because what else would you do before going to a Pearl Jam concert other than listen to a Pearl Jam cover band?  Then it’s off to the big shew, after which I’ll grab a few hours of sleep at the hotel (gotta love a free hotel room because I just happen to be on a business trip at this particular time) after which I’ll roll on back to Oshkosh and resume training at about 9:30 or so.  Hopefully I’ll be functional early enough that I’m not extremely late here.

Well, it’s time to get packed up here.  I’m checking out of this hotel tomorrow so that I can check back in the next day in a different room.  The next room will have a Jacuzzi if I’m not mistaken, which is fun, but not as much if one is by oneself, as I am.  I’ll be posting updates as I see fit this week, so peace out until then, faithful readers.