Virgin Mobile Free Fest

I went to the Virgin Mobile Free Fest yesterday and had a great time. I ended up getting to Merriweather around 12 so that I could be there when other people I had tickets for showed up. As I wandered around the grounds I was impressed with the number of booths there were and the variety of sponsors that had promotional tents set up. I went to the Charm City Roller Girls booth and found out my friend was there skating around (she tried to do the half-pipe on roller skates and that ended in a predictable outcome; her pulling wood out of her fishnets).



There were also a lot of performance artists there. I ran into the below group several times so I figured after our tenth encounter I should get a picture. There was a woman on stilts towering over everyone and my favorite was a group of people dressed as garden gnomes and two people that looked like moving bushes and they would set up different scenes all over the place.



I ran into several people I knew while I was walking around, which was amazing since there were 35,000+ people there. The pitcher Magda is holding below was the best deal in the festival ... with the exception of the free tickets, of course. These pitchers were only $16 and were around 64 ounces, a pretty good deal for this kind of event.



Even though I spent a lot of time walking around and going between the different stages and different events, I still did spend a lot of time watching the bands. The first act I was was The Birthday Massacre; damn could that girl sing, and scream. It was heavier than a lot of what I listen to, but I will definitely check them out more because her voice was awesome. I went back to the side stage and caught a little of St. Vincent's act, but couldn't really get into it so I wandered around more. After a while, I went over to see Taking Back Sunday on the Main Stage. I've always liked TBS and they put on a pretty good show. My favorite line was, "There's really no pressure if we mess up because it's not like you paid anything," or something along those lines. I didn't really see anyone else until Weezer came on and their line-up was great. After their set, we made our way to the front of the lawn area before Blink came on, some people were not happy to have a 6'4" guy blocking their view of Travis' ridiculous drum skills. There were rumors going around that they may not play because of DJ AM's death, but they come on on-time and played a full set. They were awesome and they played everything I wanted to hear. Throughout the set I found myself realizing that I knew the words to almost all the songs they played. I didn't know the were so many Blink songs I knew.



All in all, it was a great time and I am glad I ended up going. The event was very well organized, there were plenty of vendors so lines weren't too long, ditto for the bathrooms. The staff all seemed happy to be there and again, there were plenty of them. The fans seemed to not get out of control like I have seen at many other festivals of this sort and with the exception of some overly drunk people, I didn't see anything that required someones intervention (cops, EMT's, staff, etc.). I hope they have this, or more fests like this, at Merriweather again next year ... I would even pay ... but not too much.

Fantasy Football

My league had our draft Wednesday night and I had the 2nd overall pick. I love theses drafts because the entire time we are making fun of each other's picks or giving someone shit for taking too long. We hold our draft at a sports bar/restaurant and sometimes it gets out of hand toward the end when everyone's had several beers and we're cursing at someone at the other end of the 12-15 person table about taking our handcuff too early while the geriatric couple sitting near us looks on in horror. This year they gave us our own room and it was a good thing, as I think we were louder than usual. I especially enjoyed this year's draft because most of the people in the league are from the company I left only a month ago and it was good to see them again.

Here's my team:
1. Maurice Jones-Drew
2. Roddy White
3. Drew Brees
4. Reggie Bush
5. TJ Houshmanzadah
6. Jericho Cotchery
7. Donald Brown
8. LeSean McCoy
9. Visanthe Shiancoe
10. Donnie Avery
11. San Diego
12. Earl Bennett
13. James Davis
14. Brian Robiskie
15. Kenny Britt

I went down the high risk, high reward path from the seventh round on picking mostly rookies and pissing off the guys that picked Westbrook and Addia. Overall, I'm pretty happy with my team but will need to drop someone and get a kicker before week 1.

Charm City Roller Girls

I went to my first Charm City Roller Girls event tonight at DuBurns arena and it was great. I recently found out someone I went to college with is one of the girls on the Charm City squad and made it a point to check it out. I've wanted to see what it was all about for a while but never got around to actually going to one of the events.

I was honestly surprised when I got there and the place was packed, I had no idea how popular this was and how much of a following there was. Almost every seat was taken and there were a lot of people just standing to watch. I had a friend get there before me so I kind of had a seat saved for me and made it up to the first row.

The girls I knew was awesome ... even though she kinda reminded me of Happy Gilmore at times; she kept getting sent to the penalty box. When she was the Jammer, (I had to read the rules in the program about 4 times before I had a decent understanding of what was going on) she was great and got the crowd into it when she got points. Hell, even when she fouled someone she raised her arms and got cheers like she didn't why they sent her to the bench.

My pictures aren't great, but all I had was my iPhone. The Charm City squad lost, but it was fun to watch and I am definitely going again.

Wow, two months

It's been a little over two months since my last post and I am completely OK with that. Work on my house has stalled (for the most part) over the summer and I have been busy with other things. I changed jobs and am now in a comfortable position that I can see myself in for the majority of my career. I went to the beach for the first time in several years for a relaxing week of reading and finally got to play some tennis. I also got this, which I am excited to use for drilling into brick and the 100 year old wood that is as hard as brick:



That's all for now, more to come.

Lots of wood to keep me busy

This will keep me busy for a while. Over 300 square feet for a new sub-floor.



More to come ...

I'm Back ... Kinda

It's been a long time since my last post but don't worry, you haven't missed much. I haven't really done any work to my house and other than a few fun nights out I've been pretty boring.

I have a pretty busy Memorial Day weekend as long as I can survive past the sunburn I got from golfing yesterday ... or at least attempting to golf.

This morning I am waiting for Comcast to show up so I can get faster internet (currently have slow Verizon DSL). I'll be saving around $15 a month and get about 3x - 4x the speed ... as long as my cable internet is as fast a my neighbors. While waiting in my 4-hour window, I decided to fix something that's been bothering me and really needs to be fixed for a multitude of reasons.

When I exposed the brick in the living room, I noticed that light was coming through from my alley. Today, I decided to scrape out the remaining mortar and clean the area so I could fill it back in. Since it's a relatively small area, i just used regular mortar for the outside layer and will fill the rest in from the inside with something different.

As always, instead of writing, I'll opt for pictures:


From the outside looking in


Living room to the alley


Outside layer of mortar

Once I get the rest of the supplies and finish the inside, I'll take more pictures.

Have a great weekend everyone.

Chimney TV Walls

I haven't posted anything in a while because I've been busy with friends visiting and doing other fun and exciting things that I could write about, but don't want to get back to this being just a bunch of pictures of me hanging out with friends.

The only work I've done on my house involves cleaning ... and it is definitely cleaner than it has been in a long, long time. I even had some of the aforementioned friends sleeping on the first floor. Anyways, the next thing I want to do is frame out around the chimney. This is basically what I want to do:



I used IKEA's room design freeware which limited me from showing what I actually think it will look like, but you can get the idea. The shelving will be built into the wall on both side and there will be a HVAC duct on the left side of the image closing in that section of shelves. The chimney will have a mantle on it with the flat screen hanging above. I am going to use an in-wall mounting bracket so I can wire electric to it and easily hide all the wires. I am looking at the Sanus LR1A system (below). It will bring the TV flush against the wall and also allow me to extend it out and rotate toward the "dining" area in case I am working over there and want to watch something.






If I find better freeware to use, I'll make a better mock-up of this and other areas I need to work on.