Another cram-packed but amazingly fun and varied weekend.

Friday we headed down to Orange County, making various errand stops on the way. Yes, we went to I**a, and survived the experience. (Mostly. Some of those patterns and colors will no doubt reappear in acid flashbacks in the years to come, when I least expect them.) The cheap, reasonable bookcases turned out to be just cheap—they weren’t wood, most didn’t have adjustable shelves, and they were boring at best, ugly at worst. However, we did find the only sofa bed that will actually fit in the media room, and it isn’t even especially ugly. (It’s the Fågelbo, if anyone cares to look it up.) And we found a very fitting cabinet/butcher block/workspace piece for the kitchen. (It had to be something narrow width-wise.) At some point we’ll go and pick these things up; we haven’t had the chance yet, and the closest store is still all the way down in Burbank.

We had dinner with Ken’s mom, Ken’s brother Steve, and Steve’s three active, cute boys. It was amusing in its minor mayhem. We crashed at Ken’s mom’s—Ken was doing some computer work and silly me, I waited up for him, and went to bed way too late for the time we had to get up.

Collegium on Saturday was great fun. All of my classes were awesome, and made me want to stop all the house stuff and make more Italian Renaissance gowns and do tablet weaving.

We left immediately afterwards, stopped at Mom’s to change and drop off SCA stuff and pick up mundane stuff, and then headed towards Arizona. To our unhappiness, we hit dismal traffic, and the first leg of the trip took much longer than we expected. We’d planned to get within an hour or so of Helen’s in Scottsdale, but instead we stopped in Blythe and found a cheap motel at about midnight. I couldn’t write whilst we were in traffic, and I took over driving once we were in the desert, so I got only a couple hundred words written. They were, however, enough to break me out of the stuck part on the story I was finishing, so in that respect it was good.

We were up early the next morning and to Helen’s in a decent amount of time. I put on makeup, changed into a shirt more appropriate for the concert (translation: cleavage), and we headed south to Sahuarita (Tucson, essentially). Got there, scoped out the venue, ate an overpriced Sunday buffet lunch, and were the first people in line, at about 2:15 p.m. Good thing, too, because the line began forming behind us almost immediately. I’d brought Uno, so we played that for a while, which helped pass the time. Chatted with Casey, the band’s merchandise guy, and Keith, the production manager. And were the first ones inside, against the stage, in front of the guys we’re always in front of.

The concert, in a word, kicked ass. It was one of the best shows I’ve experienced from Styx, and that’s out of 10 this year and 32 lifetime, so it’s saying something. An extra-long, 2-hour set, and the energy from both the band and the audience was incredible. The band was in rare form and the audience matched them. Because Helen, Ken, and I were the only “regulars” in the crowd, we got a fair amount of attention from the band, too. Can’t complain about that. :-)

We didn’t get a chance to talk to any of them afterwards, but got waves and hellos from several of them as they boarded their buses. The ride home was as fun and silly as the ride down. Helen and I were full of après-show energy, although Ken was starting to fade. We all did crash fairly early after getting back to her place, although not before I sent an e-mail to Ricky, the bassist, and we looked at the photos Ken took.

Helen had to work on Monday, but we were able to sleep in. I’d hoped to arrange lunch with a fellow OCW writer, but we’d been playing telephone tag and never actually hooked up. Eventually Ken and I got ourselves up and out, found a Baja Fresh for lunch, and headed back to CA. I drove for most of the day, so again, no writing (oh, and as it turned out, the cigarette lighter in the car isn’t working properly, so we couldn’t charge the computers anyway. Mine has a long enough battery life, but Ken’s crapped out pretty quickly.). We had dinner with his mom, packed the car with all our stuff (including an oval stand-up mirror we’d bought just before we moved, and the mattress to one of our sofa beds), and drove up the coast, admiring the stunning full moon and the dark, deep ocean below.