Well, I can’t really say it was the band’s fault. For those people who recognized the songs, it must have been OK, but the sound was muddy and I couldn’t make much out. I figure it was the third time I saw them, the first time in 1992 at “The Bite” on the waterfront, once in 1999 at Portland Brewing’s Oktoberfest, and once tonight. So not much was that familiar.

But the worst part was being treated like a criminal at the Roseland. They have a metal detector and they wanted my Leatherman Micra because it was a “weapon.” It’s a pair of folding scissors. I think it’s a popular thing for 40-something guys to carry, because when I got there at 8:30, before most of the crowd, there were already a half dozen in the confiscation box. I guess aging 40-something frat boys are likely to cause fights using tweezers and scissors.

When I tried to retrieve my scissors after the show, they gave me nothing but attitude.

“Stand here in line.” (The line had one person in it: me. The two 21-year-old girls were just exercising their power.)

“There’s only one Leatherman in here.” (Another guy came up beside me and got his, so that wasn’t true.)

“So that’s not yours? You have no choice. That’s the only one in here.”

Well, I gave it back to them. Who knows what kind of crap someone else used it for? Unfortunately, it slid all the way off the counter into the security girl’s drink.

Oh, the band wanted to sell merchandise after the show, but the staff was busy trying to get us all out of the building. Very friendly people there at the Roseland.

Well, at least I got to see Megan.

I have no idea how I got my antenna up the last time. I’m going to need to put a ladder up on the roof to get high enough to mount the thing. In the mean time I cut myself on a pipe and had the ladder fall down. I thought I might have to jump off the roof. Fortunately, I’m fine and my friend Greg is coming by to help me tomorrow.

In the mean time, I dropped a speaker onto my foot the other morning.

OK, so here’s a picture of the Nike t-shirt I’ve been complaining about:

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Huge, isn’t it? And that’s a men’s medium.

Also, notice that there’s an image of an alien on my shirt. Some people get the virgin Mary on their tortillas, I get a scary creature from a horror movie on my shirt.

Fortunately, when I started putting antennas on the garage roof I had the forethought to cut the overhead wires. The little lightbulb out there wasn’t doing much good, anyway. I’ll rewire it someday, but for now it’s off.

So I took down my old vertical antenna. It was 26′ long, and the bottom of it is about chest high on top of the garage roof, mounted on a tripod. Taking it down means I had to unbolt the base, hold the bottom of it and lift the bottom to about head-high, and then ease it to the ground. You can imagine how hard it is to maneuver a 26′ long aluminum pole from the bottom 3 feet. It came crashing to the ground.

The new antenna is 24′ long, and much thicker. I tried to put it up the same way (big mistake) and ended up with it in the neighbor’s tree, with the bottom u-bolt all bent to hell. There was no way to get it off the pole with it bent like that, so I had to cut it off with a Dremel. This means standing on the roof, with a high speed cutting wheel that’s likely to shatter, with no safety glasses, in the dark. I couldn’t leave the mess the way it was. Fortunately, it’s all down on the ground, and I didn’t break anything other than one u-bolt.

I did this all in a hurry because there’s a rare country on the radio. I think the antenna will be finished too late to talk to them.

I think it’s because I keep staying at work late. I got home around 8PM and I didn’t even go to the gym. My legs were sort from the 10K yesterday, so I decided I better run a couple miles to get the muscles moving. But before I ran, I had to call my brother-in-law, who told me more than I needed to know about large sailboats and then I had to go feed Morticia, a cat who hates me. She got me good, though, peeing all around her litter box but not quite in the litter box.

Dinner was a bit of cold tofu with bonita flakes, grilled zucchini (cold by the time I got it), some Ritz crackers, and a couple of biscotti. And even though I need to write a few cheques to pay my bills, I’m typing in this box.

Time management skills. That’s what I need.

10K, and I made it in an hour and three minutes or so (I can’t find the official results), slower than I was hoping, but I hadn’t run in months. Plus, Warren Finke, the ultramarathoner, ran it in 1 hour exactly so I don’t feel so bad. He was fooling around, though.

At the end of the run, Devo played a concert that was mostly songs off their first couple of albums. They sounded great and they looked like they were having fun. Along the route the bands were kind of pokey and the one band I wanted to hear, General Public, wasn’t playing by the time I got to them. I ran the extra 5K so I could hear two extra bands and it really wasn’t worth the extra pain to hear Tommy Tutone and whoever replaced Kajagoogoo at the last minute. When I got to the mystery band I was expecting General Public and when I saw the singer wasn’t Dave Wakeling, I just ran by without paying muhc attention. I think the best band on the route was was Tone Loc since he was early and having fun.

I knew that if Patty Finke of Team Oregon saw me, she’d tell me that being a weekend runner was a good way to get injured. Guess who I ran into at the finish line? It was all good fun and mostly worth the dehydration headache I got from it. If only I got to hear General Public or Bananarama (like they got at one of the other races) it would have been perfect.