Epic Birthday Weekend Part One: True Blood=Win, Percussion Ensemble show featuring Chris Coleman

In general I had a good 27th birthday, despite spending a portion of the week rolling around in pain and begging my gall bladder to not require surgery (I think that is my issue, but it has chilled out for now). I got my nipple piercings done again on Thursday, an awesome friend who I briefly dated is giving me a bass guitar and an amp at some point in time, James is paying for my newest tattoo (whenever that happens).
I successfully made it to Friday, which was Percussion Ensemble night, Saturday was a rather lazy day (I called it my pre-pre-partying before Cleveland), Sunday was an adventure to Cleveland for a concert, and Monday was wandering back to the Central Ohio area kind of day.
To kick off my rather epic weekend James repaired the starter in my car. Which may not sound that great, but it had only been halfway working for several months, it was pretty obnoxious. I also found out that True Blood was running a contest on their Facebook page to win passes to some True Blood Ultimate Fan Experience event, so I registered and when Columbus rolled around on their rotating list, I clicked. And I won! Although when it said I was a winner, it also said that I had won tickets for an event in Burbank, California. When the confirmation e-mail hit my inbox it was correct for Columbus, so that was a rather entertaining way to start things out.
Friday night was my sister’s high school percussion ensemble show with guest drummer Chris Coleman who is currently the drummer for Prince. The percussion group usually plays a variety of music including George Hamilton Green Xylophone solos, classical, swing and pop music. Back when I was in High School I only did lighting for the group even though I was in the percussion section, I never auditioned for it because I guess I wanted to do something other than play percussion sometimes.
Chris Coleman’s drum solos were really quite good. He also made “Sing, Sing, Sing” interesting again, and I’ve heard that song performed a lot. His style was warm, dynamic and expressive, which impressed me because, even though I should probably be supportive of drummers in general, there are some times when I think that drum solos only sound like noise and not music. If that makes any sense.
In honor of going back to my high school to watch this performance I will share some random High School stuff.

I used to drive around listening to this at an uncomfortably loud level...and I still do that actually:


When I was 17 I went to see the Bloodhound Gang’s concert in Cincinnati:


I was going to subject you to a poem I wrote in High School, but lucky for you I have almost 1000 photos to sort through from the Chemlab and 16Volt show, and I’m too lazy to find my notebooks.