Junk mail works

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All those "love letters":http://www.flickr.com/photos/feralboy/134309489/ that my pool kept getting finally paid off. I guess it sprouted opposible thumbs and started calling some numbers, because some guy started coming and dumping chemicals in this week. At 6 this morning, in fact. All he really does is pump in some chlorine gas and whatever else it takes to get everything all balanced, and I'm in charge of vaccuuming/skimming. I even tested it out for 5 minutes this afternoon to cool off before coming back to work, and the chemical guy must know what he's doing because I ain't dead.

MovableType Upgrade

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Got tired of all the comment spam, so I finally bit and did an upgrade to MT 3.2. Upgrade process was fairly painless, except that most of the comments showed up as pending, but didn't show up easily in the admin interface. It seems like I'm getting more comment spam than ever, but at least they're all getting trapped, and I can delete them at my leisure without them getting published.

Maybe some hot WordPress action is in my not-too-distant future...

Kristin Hersh @ Plush

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After a few fits and starts, including 2 reschedules, "Kristin Hersh":http://throwingmusic.com/ came to town last night to play at the very small and very intimate "Plush":http://www.plushtucson.com/ on 4th Ave. I was lucky in that I happened to be sitting by the door that Kristin and BillyO walked in, and I chatted with her a bit while he was introducing her and explaining why, due to their "recent move to Portland":http://www.throwingmusic.com/blog/2006/04/not-in-this-lifetime.html, they didn't have their usual stock of t-shirts and other stuff, so instead they had some awesome handmade gift bags.

billyo warms up the crowd

I admit that I totally geeked out and turned into a slobbering fanboy talking to Kristin. We talked about her move to Portland, my move to Tucson, and the different states that I had seen her play in.

Then she was on, and did her pretty standard acoustic set. Setlist was as follows:

White Bikini Sand Two new tracks off the forthcoming album Gazebo Tree Hook in Her Head Another new song William's Cut Your Dirty Answer Trouble Sundrops Your Ghost Clay Feet Sno Cat (encore, this time with the electric guitar) Cottonmouth Serene Listerine

Kristin playing

Her voice was a little scratchy, due to her losing it about a week prior, so she stayed away from the high notes, but she gets a pass from me. She told great stories in between, from dead/crazy people on buses to blueberry bagels looking like necrotic tissue, to being in Throwing Muses and playing an impromptu gig at a bar in Scotland filled with very drunk Scottish folks.

After her set we once again chatted a little bit. She talked at length about her new album which should be out in January. The songs that she played live had sounded darker than the last few albums, but she said with arrangements were lush, orchestral and "happy", and she was really, _really_ pleased with how it had turned out. I managed to completely humiliate myself and ask for a picture with her, so today in the light of day I'm happy that I did.

me and kristin

Enduring

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The number of bike-related posts will probably be drying up here as I've started shifting all my fitlog-style posts to a fantastic site that my friend Joshua has been cooking up called "We Endure":http://weendure.com. At its core it's a community-based endurance training logging application, but it's got all the pre-requisite Web 2.0 features like tagging and a spanky AJAX interface. It's closed beta at the moment, but should be open and then I advise everyone to get an account there before it gets bought up by Yahoo! and becomes less cool. You will notice a list of my most recent activities on the sidebar, so that's where my fitness info will be going. You can also check out my page "here":http://www.weendure.com/user/mattcomroe. If you like the site and can't wait for it to open for public beta, shoot me an email and I'll get you an invite.

links for 2006-04-06

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Training starts today

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In a month and a half I'm going with Jobie to do the "Whiskey Off-Road":http://www.epicrides.com/wor/wor.htm ride, which is an endurance ride starting up in Prescott, which is about 200 miles north of here, past Phoenix. I think it's out of the valley and up at high enough of an altitude (about 5500 feet according to "gmap pedometer":http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/) that it won't be a brutally hot as Tucson or Phoenix would be. I'm doing the 50 mile course because I'm insane like that. The longest one-day ride I've done so far was the 80-mile day one of "the MS150 ride":http://feralboy.com/log/archives/001118/. And that was on pavement. And on a road bike. With gears. I'm trying to mentally calculate just how many bottle cages I can fit on one bike to supplement my Camelback. Today Jobie is busting out his single-speed road bike, and we're going to do a climb up Mt. Lemmon. The plan is to ride at least twice a week until the ride, and I'm hoping I don't turn into a complete jellied mess today given how much time I've had off from hard exercise.

If I don't pick up a bike between now and then I'll be using Jobie's Rig again, but with the swap meet coming up this weekend I'm hoping to be able to find something.

LA Weekend

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Ryan has blogged "our LA weekend getaway":http://providencelife.blogspot.com/2006/03/totally-us-weekly.html, and it's pretty much spot on. Except for the part when I totally had sex with Nicole Richie _and_ Paris Hilton in the bathroom of the Starbucks on Hollywood Blvd. I know you heard all the stories about them "hating each other":http://www.realitytvworld.com/news/paris-hilton-dumps-nicole-richie-from-the-simple-life-4-replaces-her-with-kimberly-stewart-3415.php, but I'm totally a peacemaker like that. My pictures (which are pretty much the same as Ryan's, just more of them) "are here":http://www.flickr.com/photos/feralboy/sets/72057594091889773/.

hotel, west hollywood

Something new

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Saturday morning I met up with Jobie, one of the dealers at the local casino for a bike ride. We went over by Tucson Mountain Park (near the Desert Museum), and he had a mountain bike for me to use, since I didn't own one. Both of his bikes are pretty sweet; one was a "Gary Fisher Rig":http://www.fisherbikes.com/bikes/large_image.asp?series=trail-genesis&bike=Rig, and the other a Surly Karate Monkey that he built. Both were set up as single-speeds, which of course was way cool. I got the Fisher, because it was geared a little easier. Both bikes were "29ers":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/29%22er, which basically is like riding a bicycle version of Bigfoot. We went out on about an 18 mile loop around the park. It was easier than some of the rides that Jobie usually goes on (he's pretty accomplished), but there was still some pretty technical sections. At first I was just trying to stay alive; whipping around tight turns inches away from _very_ scary looking cactii or plummeting down into rocky washes isn't something I'm used to with road biking. After a little while I started to get the hang of it, and started to think that I wasn't going to die, and then it started to get really fun. The huge tires on the bikes just swallow up rocks and other irregularities, but the steel frame still let you know where you were and what you were doing.

About halfway through it started to actually feel like exercise, but I didn't mind. Riding through the desert scrub, cresting turns around giant saguaro; it was beautiful scenery for the ride.

Along the way we met a few other mountain bikers, and they were all really nice. They all wanted to talk gear and trails; you know, shop talk. Jobie has some other really good trails in mind for us to go on around town, so it looks like I'll have to start budgeting for a bike. Apparently there's a swap meet next weekend, so I'll have to have him keep his eye out, because I'll be out in L.A. Damn you mountain biking, why did you have to be so fun? I thought I already had enoug hobbies!!!