Doesn't make a lot of sense, does it?

I hate that my cute little badger has become my default cranky icon. I need a different one.

I did not get to see Tool tonight and I am all sorts of cranky, the kind of cranky that $50 worth of books and a cookie only abated a little. The kind of cranky that means I listened to Nick Cave and sulked on the way back from the god-forsaken hellhole of the Tweeter Centre. The kind of cranky that means my husband spent over an hour apologising for the following on the way home: the concert, the crappy parking, dirty old men, the weather, breathing, and the Teapot-Domes scandal. Also: several wars, the internet, bad porn, and lack of Britney Spears on The Superficial today.

I bought Tool tickets for myself as a birthday present with most of a pay cheque. I've wanted to see them for years and there have been many reasons why I haven't gone, most of them involving lack of money, rides, or available tickets. I did a gleeful little dance when I actually managed to obtain Real!Tickets to the tune of $139 and change. (The tickets were $100; the rest was venue and inconvenience charges) . I was even willing to ignore my long running hatred of the Tweeter Centre (formerly Great Woods) because I really, really wanted to see Tool. I have been looking forward to this for weeks now.

I was so excited that I picked an hour long fight about marriage with my husband on the way to. I do this on all car rides and he will confirm this. It's one of my endearing personality quirks. I hate car rides. I also forgot our mosquito wipes and my sweater. I should have realized that these were signs from God that tonight was Not Meant To Be.

We didn't time our arrival correctly, so we were directed to Lot 13, which is located in the woods, next to the fourth circle of hell on former wetlands. It's an awesome place to park. There are absolutely zero lights, tonnes of woods, mosquitoes that could carry off dogs under 25 pounds and lots of places to hide if you are one of the following: axe murder, mugger, rapist, pervert, or interesting in smoking and drinking in the woods. If I were to murder someone, I would hide the body in lot 13, next to the guy who was already passed out from too much tailgating. No one would notice since lot 13 has no parking attendants.

The only way to get safe parking is to pay an additional $35. Then you only have to sit in traffic for two hours instead of 4.

We walked a good 3/4 of a mile back to the entrance where we had to wait in line to be searched. I will say this, at least they had same sex searches. I will also state that I nearly always carry a bo'sun's knife. It has two kinds of potential weapons on it: the blade itself which is damn sharp and the marlin spike, which is pretty much a stiletto. Since we just moved, I have it either in my bra or in my bag at all times because it's really good for opening boxes and undoing knots. I forgot to remove it from my bag before the concert. I was not attempting to sneak it in.

It was not concealed and it was on the bottom of my bag, under my keys, and there was no way you could mistake it as anything but some variety of knife. The young lady who searched me insisted I open my bag to she could sufficiently rummage through it. She must have seen said knife because she questioned me about my keys. She wanted to know if they were dangerous, if I had a camera on them, or was hiding something in them. I told her that the worst thing on my keychain was a pink pig with blue LED lights in the nostrils that oinked.

She did not ask about the knife that was under the keys. She lifted the keys up to inspect them and ignored the knife. That little pig keychain, it's a dangerous one.

I snapped at the half a dozen poor college interns who tried to foist free latex condoms at me. I apologize. I am not usually that big of an asshole, but I'm married, allergic to latex, and already told the four people in front of you also handing out free rubbers that I didn't need them. I think you're doing an awesome thing, even if I do kind of think that Trojans suck.

Since I only paid $50 a ticket, our seats were closer to Lot 13 than the stage. The Tweeter Centre has recently removed all video screens so that no one except the very tall may enjoy any part of the show unless you pay for the most expensives seats under the shed. On our way to our seats, which were in the dead middle of the row, we had to pass a good amount of people, three of which felt that it was their god-given right to fondle my ass. I understand I am wearing really adorable underwear, but the only person legally allowed to touch my ass is my husband and possibly some of my friends if it's in a jovial manner. Men who look like their auditioning for ZZ Top and reek of beer are not allowed, no matter how adorable my underwear might be. I don't appreciate it. If I thought it would do any good, I would have threatened to break fingers. My ass isn't even that great! Touch your friend's ass, he might appreciate it more.

We sat down and immediately discovered that the people who were searching everyone were incapable of finding the poorly concealed drugs that everyone and their uncle brought in. I haven't seen so much pot smoked in public since I went to the Hemp Fest in 1998. It was absolutely repulsive. Someone flicked still smouldering ashes on my foot. I became increasingly grouchy.

Sound check was conducted by the deaf. The opening band was so loud that my teeth actually rattled. Even in nosebleed seats, it was too damn loud and I know I am not that old. Steven suggested that we go to customer service so I could complain about things and ask if they had headphones. We chose to climb over the seats to make our exit. (Note: If I am climbing over seats, it is perfectly acceptable to look at my ass. It's the reason I wore cute underwear.)

The customer service woman who I originally talked to was awesome. She empathized with me, apologized on behalf of the venue, and got me a complaint sheet without even having to be asked. She deserves a raise. While I was bitching about how many things were wrong with the venue, the crowd, like drunken roaches, increased. A lot. The hooting commenced. Apes would have been proud. The awesome customer service lady called the general manager for me and I thanked her profusely.

Then, we waited. And waited. And waited just a little bit more. All in all, we waited almost an hour because Audrey the GM seemed to not be capable of answering her little walkie-talkie. Finally, she showed up and I repeated my list of complaints (people touching my ass, holy pot smoke Batman, parking in Satan's backyard, and having to pay top dollar for all of this.) She Doesn't Get It.

Listen, sister, I know I have hot pink hair and could pass for 18 if you happen to be drunk, near-sighted, or just plain stupid, but DO NOT treat me like I am a fucking moron and patronize me. I've been going to concerts for almost 15 years and I know a good crowd from a bad. I have been going to Tweeter Centre since It was Great Woods. I know what I'm talking about. Don't try and placate me by telling me if I had a problem, I could get an usher. The ushers don't give a shit and are the average age of the kids I teach. Do not tell me that Tool is your favourite show to work because I bet money that you've never even so much as seen them before because you're easily at least four years younger than me. And God help me, do not look at my husband like he's going to talk some sense into me. It's not going to fucking happen. Ever. He hasn't done so in all the time we've dated, he's not going to start, and he probably agrees with me because he's been going to concerts for more years than you've spent in school.

She grudgingly told us she would upgrade our seats to the middle of the walkway and that we could leave early if we'd like to beat the crowd and be mugged/assaulted/murdered in relative peace. Fine. I didn't want an upgrade, I'd like things to change, but fine. Steven had the tickets, so he waited for them to find someone to sign off on them. I went to survey the crowd on the way back to our seats. Approximately 1.3 million people are attempting to crowd through while simultanously maintaining a high level of drunkeness and whooping like this was a Limp Bizkit concert. Essentially, it was human version of Cape traffic. I watched security half drag/half frog march someone who looked suspiciouly like they were OD'ing past me. So I did what seemed the most logical thing to do in that situation.

I had a full blow panic attack.

I told Steven I could not, for any reason, make it through that crowd, hyperventilated, and got upset because I was having a panic attack in public which made it worse and left me on the verge of tears. I guess this attracted a lot of attention because staring at someone having a panic attack is absolutely the best thing to do. I didn't noticed because I was too busy trying to calm myself down. Audrey finally waved Steven back over and told us that she would refund most of our money if I really wanted to leave. We'd have to eat almost $40, but we could have most of it back in a couple weeks. Steven graciously accepts because the Tweeter Centre never, ever gives refunds and he figured it was best to get us out of there before the sun set. This was at 9pm and Tool had yet to even have taken the stage.

Getting out was just as much of a nightmare. No one seemed to be capable of understanding that we were actually leaving. People alternately hooted and heckled us, depending on their state of inebriation. When we made it back to the car, we noticed there were already creeps hanging out in the woods and one couple having sex in a car. We were barely capable of backing the car out because of the drunken parking. There was no exit set up and traffic was still backed up to the highway an hour and a half after the show was supposed to start.

I will never go to another concert at the Tweeter Centre. Ever year I go, it gets worse and worse. Security is so lax that they missed a fucking knife. The amount of pot being smoked there is enough that I've come home smelling of it. They're so busy trying to cram a few more tickets in that the venue is severely overtaxed. The only two concerts I've ever walked out of have been at the Tweeter Centre. The crowd was horrible. Most of them were intoxicated to the point where I wouldn't've felt comfortable going to the bathroom by myself and some of them could barely walk before the concert even started. The concert was mostly male and what seemed to be stereotypical college frat boys.

I'll probably never see Tool if the fans are like this. I don't even know if these are typical Tool fans or just people who were going because they have too much spare money and wanted to drink and do drugs in public. It sucks because I really wanted to see them.

I should go to bed. I consoled myself with a book about The Essex, as well of a couple other inexpensive books, so I'm going to continue being a cave troll and read for the next few days.

We chose cake.

Steven made an appointment at Konditor Meister today at noon. We've had a couple switch ups on the cake and finally decided to just bite the bullet and expend some cash on it (about the same as it would've cost to have one of Mum's friends make it). My stepbrother's girlfriend works there, so we figured we wouldn't get totally snowed. She actually ended up being our cake consultant, so that was even better.

We retasted everything and decided to ultimately go with banana cream filling rather than the tiramisu because it was the only one that was consistently great. Probably not the most elegant choice, but still delicious. The cake is going to be 3 layers, swiss dots on frosting, and clear pillars so it looks like it's resting on snowflakes

( Glorious picture )

Total cost was $464, including delivery, which was a little more than I expected, but not much. So I put down a deposit of $400 and off we went to meet Chad for lunch at Rock Bottom. Steven had oatmeal stout and I had pumpkin ale, which I liked a lot. I took home most of my monte christo because I will never, ever learn that the food there isn't that good.

We popped over to the Plaza after because I wanted to show Steven the suits Beth and I saw when we went out a week ago. We ended up deciding to just get them, since the Plaza's going to get zooier as it gets closer to the holidays and they weren't cheaper on eBay. All the kids need now are white shirts and black shoes, which isn't bad.

We're going to see Alice Cooper tomorrow night. Thank god it won't be raining. It also looks a bit warmer than originally thought, too.

Our trip to Tanglewood was a huge waste of money. Everything we planned went by the wayside and, with one exception, we definitely could have just stayed home.

The ride to there was terrible. It took us 4.5 hours to get out to Pittsfield, where we stayed. We got a little lost finding our hotel, but it wasn't too bad. We were about 20 minutes outside of Tanglewood. Literally, everything else was booked up and even our hotel, a Travelodge, was expensive. Anyhow, the hotel manager was a friendly, but crazy Serb who asked if we were part of the wedding. What wedding? Turns out the rest of the hotel was full of wedding guests. Ok, great.

We had dinner at the IHOP cum thai restaurant and the food was pretty rough. I like salt and I couldn't even eat half of my pad thai. It was that too salty. It also was too late to send it back and get something else, so we packed it up and headed back to our room. Steven discovered our heat lamp wasn't working, so he got the Crazy Serb to come and fix it. It was unfixable, but the guy worked very hard trying. We left around half past 7 for the concert and proceeded to get lost because Pittsfield has no roadsigns. On our way there, I noticed a sign for Herman Melville's house and squee'd at Steven. He said we could go, but with the kind of reticence reserved for moments like eating bugs or starving.

We parked in Upper Northwest Bumfuck and had to walk what I think was seriously a mile to the venue. It was full of people. We barely got a seat right on the trail. There were no mosquitoes, which was really nice. That's where the niceness ended, though. I shall preface this by saying the music was amazing, but they only played two short sets and one encore. Last year, there were three. People started leaving in the middle of Yo-Yo Ma's performance and continued all through the Star Wars set. They played ET as the encore. Steven Spielberg was somewhere in the audience and I bet he was disgusted. I sure was. Some jackass was standing up, watching the concert with opera glasses and blocking everyone's view. Steven told him to sit down, so we got to see some of the screen.

I went to use the bathroom during Across the Stars. Because I am lucky, there was a pervert standing in front of the bathroom. He passed up the four, older women who went in and asked me to help him find his wife, who was in there. I told him, in german, I didn't speak english. Better still, when I went into the bathroom, no one was there except the aforementioned women. I waited for a bit and then snuck out the back door. The police where finally getting ready to move him when I was almost back at our seats. Great.

It took us more time to leave than we spent watching the concert. We also discovered that there is nothing around to eat in Pittsfield after 11pm. Even the many Dunkins are closed. We raided Cumby's before heading back to our hotel and finally, around 12:30, had a real meal. We watched Clerks before going to sleep in the not altogether uncomfortable bed.

We got up around 10 to check out. The Crazy Serb was still there and informed me that he hadn't gotten any sleep and was going to quit his job. Steven offered to buy him a cup of coffee, but he declined. We then went in hunt of breakfast. One place was a dive, the second place had a plague of fruit flies, and we finally ended up at Friendly's who gruesomely undercooked my bacon and had eggs that made me cry. We then made our way to Herman Melville's home.

This was the best part of our trip. The tour was very cool, we got to see where Moby Dick was written, I bought a mug, and then peed in his barn. I've been kind of excited about that all day. I peed in Herman Melville's barn! That's revenge for having to read Bartleby the Scrivner in high school. All kidding aside, it was the nest part of the trip.

We headed home after that, I slept in the car, and we went to the grocery store. I'm damn tired and I have to work tomorrow. I need like two more days of week-end.

Does anyone know anything about Jack Johnson? I won tickets to see him tonight at the Rox.

I GOT MEAT LOAF TICKETS! I GOT MEAT LOAF TICKETS! I GOT MEAT LOAF TICKETS!

And, I had really great sex last night. Those two things probably shouldn't go together. But anyhow, I'm really excited to see Meat Loaf again. As many of you don't know, he was the first concert I ever went to, back in 1993. I was not quite 12 and I went with my mom. I, in fact, still have the tee shirt from his Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell tour.

Now, adding to my coolness quotient, I'm going out with my mother wearing Steven's Raise Your Fist and Yell Alice Cooper shirt from the 87-88 tour. I was like 7.

First of all, CONGRATS BETH!! Steven and I totally wish you the best.

I took Steven out for his birthday dinner a little under a month early because when his actual birthday rolls around (March 12th.), I'll be four days post-op and we won't be able to go anywhere. I feel so shitty about it, too. I know he doesn't care; he prefers to just hide out at home, but I feel like a lame ass girlfriend since I can't even bake a cake (which is something I love to do anyway).

Okay, enough whining about that. We went to Bugaboo Creek Steakhouse, which is somewhere we went a lot when we were first dating. We've always had good meals and very few problems there. Steven had the spit roasted chicken and smoked baby back ribs and a Bass. I had the Black Magic top sirloin, sans spices because they bother me, a skewer of seared scallops, and a glass of shiraz. We had to wait a longass time for our food, which wasn't to bad, considering that we had bread and salad to eat and good conversation. Eventually, I decided to go potty because that always hurries up the food. Sure enough, it was there when I got back.

That's where the problems began. My steak looked pretty blackened and there were no scallops. So I flagged down out waitress and complained. She went off to get my scallops and I attempted to check out my steak. When I cut into it, it was well, well done. As in how Steven would have loved it, well done. He commented thusly, in fact, about how it would be perfect if it had been his. Mind you, I ordered medium rare. I don't eat well done steak.

Then, as the talking buffalo behind us illuminated, I saw that they had, indeed, put the damn spice rub on it. At this point, I realise that I absolutely cannot eat this. The waitress comes back with my scallops and I point out that the kitchen has totally screwed up my order. I know this isn't her fault because I saw her write down what I wanted and the specifications. She's upset now because the kitchen effed up, I'm upset because I'm starving, and Steven is upset because I'm upset. She takes it back to recook while I munched my baked potato and scallops.

The manager personally brought out the steak, as well as the entire rest of the meal for a second time. I'm cutting into it to make sure it's okay and as I'm doing this telling him about the reason I can't have the Black Magic seasoning is because I'm mildly allergic to caraway seeds. The dolt tells me that there are no caraway seeds in their food and I should order my steak without spices. Hello, Idiot? That's what I did. The kitchen fucked up, not me or the waitress. Of course, rather than saying that I politely informed him that I had ordered it without spices and it was the kitchen's error. Then the waitress told him that the Black Magic rub did, indeed, have caraway seeds. Ha ha.

Of course, then I was pretty full, so I now have a full baked potato, a skewer of about 8 scallops, and 8 to 10 oz of steak for lunch tomorrow. Yay! Steven took home most of his ribs. Oh. My. God. I normally hate ribs, but these were pretty damn amazing. I would consider getting them, which is saying a lot. Seriously, the meat was literally falling off the bone. The only place that Steven could think of that had better ribs was Chris's BBQ in Fields Corner.

We split Bananas Mountain Foster for dessert. Holy Jesus, was it huge. We couldn't finish it. It was totally big enough for three people. And, it was really good, though Steven's version of it actually is better. He's been crowing about that all night. I'm cool with it because that means he'll most likely make it for me on a more regular basis.

The manager ultimately ended up taking my dinner off our bill, probably because of my pointing out that I had not misordered my food. Honestly, if he hadn't, I would have called and bitched. I'm not looking for a free meal, but if I order what I want correctly, it's written down correctly, and it comes out wrong, I would like to be compensated for the inconvenience of having to wait another 20 minutes for my meal. Seriously.

I also bought Steven's big present today. I got him Duran Duran tickets to the tune of $133 and change because all of the super cheap tickets were sold out. I'm cool with it because I also love Duran Duran. I missed them on their last tour for The Wedding Album (which Steven went to) because I was a little too young and my mum didn't want to take me. I actually don't know if he's more excited or if I am. I think may see U2 and split the cost possibly for our anniversary. We'll see.

I also might get Steven an X-Wing as a little present, since he loves Star Wars more than life itself. What do you guys think? I may also replace his Boston Terrier sox, since they ripped out (that was his birthday present last year). Bleh. I don't know anything other than I'm damned tired and going to bed.

We went to see Alice Cooper last night and I will never, ever, ever go to the Cohassett Music Circus again. Circus is damned right... The place is a hovel. The only good thing about it was that WZLX was there giving out free mosquito repellent packs. I need more of them.

I digress... The place was full of people who may once have been cool in the 70s, but had long since sold their souls to corporate America, squeezed out several preppy children, and were now viewing this as a family outing, since it was Cohassett.

The venue is a tent set up around a sunken little stage. I don't think there are more than 20 "rows" in the whole place. Put it this way, in the 7th. row, we were close enough for Alice Cooper to see and point at me during Poison. We were also close enough to see his scantily clad, very hot daughter who is my age. Again, digressing...

It was a stripped show because of how horridly small the place was. As Steven said, he didn't even kill himself this time around. There was basically no stage show (which he usually has a huge, proppy one) and all the people were dumb beyond words. The tent was hot and close and some asshole decided they needed to smoke up. What else..? Oh, and the 6'5" gentleman in the third row who decided to stand up for the last three songs, even though no one else was standing and he blocked everyone's view... That was ok, because I was choking from a combination of pot smoke and latex at that point. I couldn't really see to well.

The band was overpowering because of the lousy acoustics, even though we were that close. I could hardly make out any of the songs. Twas not fun on that level.

I guess, all in all, I had an okay time and I did get a really cool Alice Cooper shirt (since I actually "went" this time). It's not as cool as the Dragontown shirts, but still. I need more of an excuse for people to look at my chest. It says "Is it my body?" with his face on a red tank top. I needed more tanktops anyhow. Steven got an "Elected - Alice Cooper" shirt.

Anyhow, time to leave... Bottomline is that I liked the Halloween show I saw at the Orpheum better, but I'm still glad I went. If I went back to that awful hellhole again, I would sit further back. Oh, and I would bring earplugs.

My bras came today. Shall post pictures of the designs tomorrow at some point. I need to go to the mall with my mom so I can get some funeral-appropriate attire for Donna's dad's funeral.

I don't want to be uuuuuuuuuuupppp. It evidently snowed last night which was the very last thing I wanted to see when I woke up. Unfortunately, this also means it's cold and, according to the weather guy, windy. Dammit.

So, I found an assload of new places (many with free shipping!) to buy new bras. Now I just wish I had the money to frivolously spend on undergarments. I spent too much yesterday at the Wrentham Premium Outlets. Boo. I did desperately need another pair of shoes to wear around work and they were buy one, get one ½ off. The pair that Steven got are like $75 shoes. We paid $20 a pair.

I need to balance my bank account tonight before we go to see Crystal Method tonight. I'm super tired because we stayed up way to late last night, again. I swear that it's the time change, because I know we weren't that tired around 1³⁰.

Well, off is the shower. Time to balance the bank account and get my act together.

Yay, early long week-end. I'm done with classes until next Wednesday! I'm psyched. I'm also very sleepy and my stomach is bothering me, but that's probably from breakfast (2 brownies and a convenience store cappuccino).

So, I am indeed a mature adult. I have Hello Kitty sneakers. In case the link goes away, they look like this:

They match the blue HK sweater that I bought a few years back. I need to remember to throw that in the hamper when I do laundry this week-end. It's grubby looking.

I'm still astounded by my maturity. I needed Hello Kitty sneakers. Besides... they're super cute.

~*~

We're going to see a boxing match at Mohegan Sun tonight. Steven won tickets from HJY for that and to the premiere of Eurotrip, which I know nothing about, but free is free. I had to do some scrambling to get Tuesday off, since Evil Julie said that a week was not enough time to change the schedule. Luckily, someone was willing to cover for me.

I think I may have found a place to apply for, though, which would make me really happy. I hate my job.

Anyhow, I'm getting tired again, and I want to take a nap before I need to pick up Steven.

I wish I were in the Caribbean.

Long day... I absolutely cannot spend the whole day shopping without coming home dead tired.

I just got totally distracted.. There are football players behind the ESPN reporter doing funny little dances and making faces. Good to see maturity in sports.

So, yea... I went to the Emerald Square Mall today with my mom and we shopped for most of the day. I did not find the shoes I want/need for work, but I did get 5 new pairs of underpants from Frederick's: 2 prs. that say I'm Always Right, one that says Control Freak, one that says New! Improved!, and one that says 100% Pure and Innocent, which everyone snickers about. I can't imagine why. I also got a cute pink tank top with cherries on it, rather like my Queen of Hearts one that I wore today. I've finally found a way to wear my old buttondown shirts: with a tank top. Yay for new workwear.

Mom and I are trying to get Simon and Garfunkel tix for the Fleet Centre. I'd love to see them. Steven's seen them and he said they're great. So, here's hoping. I don't care if I'm in nosebleed territory. I'd just really like to see them. Bowie is also coming around, but I can't afford his tix and, plus, I've already seen him. He was fantastic, and I'd love to see him again, but no cash and when I do have it, he'll probably be sold out. I'm more concentrating on affording tix to see Alice Cooper. I'd like to see that stage show.

I can't wait for my cheque on Thursday. I'm antsy to have regular money again.

I'm stupid tired. I need to go to bed. Hopefully tomorrow, I'll be updating about S&G tix.