longpastbedtime

The last few days have been lively, to say the least. It all started Tuesday night. I haven't closed a bar in weeks, and not on a weeknight in months. It'd be a stretch to say I needed it, but it felt so damn good. Mostly my one circle of friends goes out and does the same thing week after week. I really hate having a "schedule" for fun like that. So this time I went out with a friend that I don't hang out with a lot. I met some new people, including an interesting, funny and sweet 31-year-old girl, and generally had a lot of fun. I also watched with some amusement as my friend dug himself into a deeper hole in his relationships (after which he requested that I become his contractual conscience, as his natural one just wasn't cutting it) and had another friend wander off and end up in the drunk tank.

Which brings us to Wednesday. You see, the timing was awful for closing the bar. My friend who was in the drunk tank and wouldn't be released until 9 AM, my friend who had to go pick him up a town over and had the most to drink, and I, the working stiff who had to be at work at 8 the next day, were going to see Green Day in Cedar Rapids that night. So we spent Wednesday in our respective alcohol-and-insomia-fueled dazes, and finally scraped ourselves together and headed to CR around 5.

We showed up at the venue with about 15 minutes to spare, and it quickly became clear that getting in was going to take more than that. At the US Cell Center, the line went through the usual line to the door and through some switchbacks, then went around the entire arena-sized venue, up the street and onto a bridge next to the venue, then around some buildings and down another side street. That's a mile, or maybe a little more. What's more, the doors had been open for an hour and a half, and there never wasn't a line during that time. So it took three-plus hours to fill the arena, and they only gave an hour and a half for people to get in. Weak. Oh, and it was windy and pissing rain the whole time. Double weak.

We missed My Chemical Romance entirely; we were over an hour from getting in when they took the stage. I'm not a big fan of theirs, and I did just see them a couple months ago on the Taste of Chaos tour, but still. Those tickets weren't all that cheap, and that's letting some of it go to waste. Luckily, we were well inside by the time Green Day started.

And rocked my socks off. They were amazing. They were musically spot-on, great energy, great stage presence, great rapport with the audience, there was nothing deficient in their performance. Okay, maybe there was one or two too many audience chant sing-alongs ("I say heeeey!!!" "HHHHHEEEEEEEYYYY" "I say hey! Hey!" "HHEEYY!! HHEEYY!!"... you get the picture), but that's a small thing. I've also never seen an audience so devoted to the band. I was one of thousands of fans who were screaming out songs at the band at each other, and the looks of happiness, nay, rapture on people's faces was more than I've ever seen.

We came home from the concert, and I got to meet my soon-to-be-puppy. His name is Bocephus (Bo for short), and he's a german shepherd mix. My soon-to-be-roommate Lucas got him, and I was initially against getting a dog for the place we're going to get come fall. He's gonna chew on stuff, pee on stuff, shed on stuff and beg for attention all the time. But he's just so adorable. He's four weeks old and all paws and wagging little tail at this point. I kinda pity the pooch, knowing he's going to be living in a house with us four drunks, and of which I seem to be the most responsible. (That means precious little, mind you.) But I think we'll take good care of him.

After that, life went back to boring. Slogged through another hellishly slow day at work, and back to my beloved intarweb to tell the world about it. Still, it was good to break the monotony.