Blessed Mabon

It's finally fall. I meant to do this post over the weekend when the fall equinox actually arrived but I was too busy sitting on my fat ass watching football all the live-long day. I swear I need Mondays off because I generally spend Sat. and Sun. vegetating and recovering from the work week and get nothing done. I still haven't put my Portland pictures in my photo album although I did type and print the captions for them.

So we are coming into my absolute fave time of the year - fall and winter. I love Mabon, Samhain and Yule. The trees are turning colour, the geese are heading south and the weather is finally cool and cloudy. Even if we get a sunny day, it won't get that warm. I used to love fall on Cape Cod. The light gets this beautiful golden glow, from what I can only imagine is the way the sun reflects off the water. Artists and photographers call it "Cape Light", and some of the best photos I've taken on the Cape were in the fall. I'll have to dig out some of them and blog them. The cranberry harvest on a sunny day is especially colourful.

I have a pretty busy week! Yesterday was my annual "Squeezogram" which is just sheer torture. The tech goes, "But we're digital now!" As if that is supposed to reassure me that they aren't squeezing my boob into a pancake. The top view is bad enough, but the side view has to be the worst. I've got the damn flat thing shoved into my ribs at the bottom, I'm standing with my feet turned one way and my hips turned another, my face is shoved up against that plastic shield, and she has the audacity to say, "Relax your shoulder, and breathe..." Riiiiiight. It's bad enough that I have a zero pain tolerance. Who the hell designed that damn machine anyway? A man, no doubt. I know I blogged this same cartoon last year but it's really amusing so I'm posting it again.

After work today I see my podiatrist to go over the xrays he took of my feet last week. It looks like all I'll need is orthotics. Apparently my right leg is 1/4" shorter than my left so I stand and walk weird to compensate, and that is what's causing the terrible pain in my left foot and heel. Now, if insurance pays most or all of the orthotics, I'll be all set.

This Thursday Brian and I have tickets to see the Dark Star Orchestra at Pantages Theatre in downtown Tacoma.

They aren't a real orchestra with strings or anything, but a Grateful Dead cover band. However, they are different than most cover bands in that they don't just go out there and play a random selection of Dead tunes. What they do is take a show that the Dead actually played in the past, and recreate that show. However, you don't know which show it is till they get onstage. So we could see anything from the 1960's to the mid-1990's. I am hoping it will be a show before or after "The Donna Years", 1973-1979, because that was my least favourite era. Donna sang so off-key in concert. It's too much to hope to see a show that I might have been at, because I only got to see about 35 Dead shows (from 1988-1994) before Jerry died in '95. Brian saw about 118 shows between 1978 and 1994. Except for 2 shows, all the rest I saw have been with Brian.

I've heard great stuff about the DSO and seen a couple of their videos on YouTube and they really do sound a lot like the Dead. We scored 4th row tickets too, and Pantages only holds about 1,200 people. We haven't been to a concert since we saw the Dave Matthews Band at the Gorge Amphitheatre in George, WA back in July, 1999. (Yes, you read that right, there is a town here called George Washington).

Saturday is the annual East Pierce County Fire & Rescue Open House in Bonney Lake. They get a great turnout each year. We always go just to get our flu shots, so that's what we'll do on Sat. afternoon.

Other than that, I'm very stoked for the new LOCI season. That promo they are showing on the USA Channel is intense so I know where I'll be next Thursday night at 10:00 p.m.! The rest of the new fall shows look pretty lame, although I do want to check out "Carpoolers", and maybe I will watch the first episode of "Cavemen" but it looks really, really bad and the early reviews are trashing it as well. As much as I love those GEICO cavemen commercials, I really don't think a half hour sitcom is going to fly. Yes, we get it - cavemen are sophisticated, metrosexual, educated. How many ways will they be able to say it in one episode of the show, much less a series?