starchild228

I took a 4-day weekend over the 4th of July. Holy Christ, was I ready for it. My dad and stepmom were out of town, as was my mother, so it was just me and my brother at the old farm house most of the weekend. I spent time with my boyfriend every single one of those 4 days. On the 4th, I got up to discover that my brother and his best friend were here. And they had fireworks. I promptly texted my guy, and told him about the utterly frightening situation (Brother + Best Friend + Fireworks = Potential Disaster) and he offered to come protect me. I took him up on that offer. I couldn't really see my brother's truck at this point, but I could hear it, and I had pretty much figured out that he was tearing around in the fields. About the time that they came walking ( i.e. not driving) up to the house, I was officially concerned. My brother had managed to get his truck stuck, and since he's not supposed to be in the fields anyway seeing as the family rents them to a neighboring farmer, if he didn't get un-stuck, he was going to be dead meat when Dad got back. My guy agreed to try and pull him out with his truck. Unfortunately, the truck wouldn't budge, and ran out of gas during this process. So it was still there the following day when I went to Lazerfest with my boyfriend and some of his buddies. It was a lot of fun, there was a lot of good music... and some bad music. We were there from 2 - 12:30 pm. The first band we saw, and I have blessedly blocked out the name, was absolutely awful. The singer was horribly off-key, the guitar player sucked, the bass player sucked, the drummer was the only musician in the entire band with any talent. I was impressed by one of the newer bands that were opening for the more well-known bands- Destrophy. They picked up the slack in a huge way after the previous band, and the vocalist nearly made my jaw drop. He is a big ol' boy with a helluva lot of voice and a charismatic and energetic stage presence. We saw Five Finger Death Punch, who put on a great show- but unfortunately the left-hand speaker tower on the stage cut out at least twice during their set. That was definitely a buzzkill, as we were positioned on the left side of the stage and could only hear a weird echo and feedback from the speakers on the other side. Drowning Pool tore it up, and they did an encore after their set. I was just sad that they weren't headlining this year- thus their set was only about a half hour. Then came Hinder. Although I admit to liking some of their songs, the vocalist was off-key at least half of the time. I spent their entire set either wincing or laughing my ass off whenever he hit a bad note. At least it was entertaining, though.
The headliners were Staind and Stone Temple Pilots. Despite the fact that the lead singer of Staind had a cold, he did a great show. Unfortunately, most of their songs have been so overplayed that I can barely stand them. Stone Temple Pilots was a lot of fun- primarily watching Scott Weiland's antics onstage. Unfortunately, by the end of their set, my legs were shot from standing 10 hours on uneven ground, and my neck was killing me from doing the short-person thing at a general admission concert (i.e. craning to catch glimpses of the band) My boyfriends knees were almost gone, too. I'm sure we were a sight, staggering to the car through the field like a couple of drunks. We not only managed to lose the car on the way out- we lost my guy's friends, one of whom was the one driving. That was interesting. After wandering around in the field a bit, we finally came upon the car while we were on the phone with them trying to triangulate their position. After we got back to town, my boyfriend drove me home. After he'd bought the concert ticket for me, bought me a t-shirt while we were there, and bought me supper on the way back, I thanked him by smacking him with his truck door. He'd opened the door for me, and about the time I thought he was heading back around to the driver's side to get in and started to swing the door closed, he stepped in to hand me the concert tees we had purchased. The door hit him with a solid thud. I was mortified. I think I apologized about 8 times. Poor guy.
The next day, my brother told me he had managed to pull his truck out Saturday with our antique farm tractor. What he didn't tell me was that since he didn't have any gas that day, he decided that my car was fair game and had it started and was getting in when my Dad & Stepmom got home Sat. evening. He could text me to ask me to get him a concert tee, but not to ask permission to take my car. I probably would have let him if he had asked. Finding out that he had planned to take it without permission, apparently figuring what I didn't know couldn't hurt him, really pissed me off. I tore into him over that one. I thought that was really crappy and disrespectful- especially considering how many times I had helped him out and covered for him when he did something stupid. He apologized and seemed to realize that he'd messed up. I told him that I loved him and that he really needed to stay out of trouble for a while. I keep hoping he'll make it to 17. I'm not so sure he will, though, unless he starts using his brain.