Wednesday night, we headed over to Chris and Pat's to watch the Grapes of Wrath, for the AFI top 100 film watching thing. It was a good movie. I brought over the bottle of white that I had chilled for valentine's day. The wine was ok, not great. The movie was pretty good. Certainly gives a few into how the whole depression worked. Good times...
As soon as I had gotten home from work, on Thursday, (Shannon had taken the day off), we headed up to Ames. We wanted to get there early enough to eat and maybe make it to the book store (I was going to buy an ISU diploma frame or two so I could put up my diplomas on the wall).
So the weather was supposed all nasty and awful, as was predicted, but it really wasn't that bad, or so I thought. The Interstate was fine, and until we turned off I35 on to Highway 30...Suddenly it was very windy. Apprenty the wind was blowing south.
I gave Seth and Briana a call and they agreed to meet us for dinner. I had been craving Great Plains Pizza for a while. It's one of the two resturants in Ames that I actually miss (The other being Battle's BBQ). So we went there. We had pizza and some soda and it was great. We caught up with Seth and Bri, which was great. I got to do my favorite part of the pizza, taking the end of the thick wheat crust and covering it in honey to finish it off. Their pizza is probably my favorite that I've had.
So being that we still had lots of time to the concert, we headed next door to the Corner Pocket. Seth, Bri and I had a Guiness and Shannon had a Bacardi Raz and Seth and I played a game of pool (which he let me win). Afterwards we said our goodbyes and Shannon and I headed to the M-Shop.
We parked, headed in, checked to see if the book store was open (it wasn't, it had closed 15 minutes before), and then, since we were still running early, headed in to the reading library (which during my 6 years at ISU I had never actually gone in), and hung out for a little while and read.
So we headed down to get into the show, and apprently because of some sort of delay, the show wasn't going to open it's doors until 8:30 (instead of 8). So we stood around and waited and waited...
and waited...
At around 8:50 they finally opened the doors. We had been near the doors, until we both started feeling a little crowded and moved more to the back of the line and less of a crowd.
It took us a while to get in and were a bit disappointed when we found out that they didn't have chairs setup...
So we took a spot to the side of the stage where it wasn't so crowded and then moved back a bit to get out of direct line of the speakers.
The first person up was Haley Bonar. She had a very breathy voice and she sang folksy songs about various things, including her cat. We both liked her, enough so we tried to buy her album, after her set...and...well...couldn't. The Andrew Bird people were not selling her stuff, and she was no where to be found...But after the entire show, we picked up both Lure the Fox and The Size of Planets. I'll let you know how much I like her albums when I get a chance to sit down and listen to them both...
Next up was Martin Dosh. Shannon really didn't like how much bass there was. But after it listened to it for a while, I kinda liked it, not enough to buy...yet...but certainly enough to see him with someone else I liked. A good example of his music and how he does it is in this video.
Then the headliner, Andrew Bird. Now this is the same guy where after I saw him in October in 2004 I went out and bought all the albums that he had. He played with Martin Dosh and Haley Bonar over his set, and he had quite the mix of the old and current (redone in the way that his music grows and changes) and the new as well. With the new really making me crave his next album, which his site says should be recorded this year. Sometimes when he was talking between songs, I wanted to whack some people on the head and tell them to stop talking and pay attention to the show. But I was impressed. By the end of the show, Shannon was getting very tired, so we prepared to go.
He did do an encore, and for that he also had everyone that had played over the night help him out on the last few songs. It really was a good time. Here's a good video from his website on how he does his shows., not the best audio quality... Over here they have an entire show, audio quality much better.
I bought Haley's CDs and then we headed home. It was really cold, but the roads were fine. We got home at around 1 AM. I had to print out maps and make sure Shannon's phone got charged up so I didn't get into bed until 1:30 or 1:45, which made getting up at 6:AM to shovel the light fluffy snow all the tougher, espically since it was windy and cold.
I was a bit grumpy until Brandon and I took a trip to La Mie and I got myself a mocha and a cinnamon roll, then my day started to look up.
Shannon's Mom was coming up to take a peek at the wedding venues, and spend some time with shannon to get a better idea of decorations, colors, and what not. So they headed over to the wedding chapel and met the caterer (Winstons/Chef's Kitchen) at the nature lodge. I met up with them and we had lunch at Palmer's over in West Des Moines.
So with discussions with the Nature Lodge and Winston's/Chef's Kitchen, we are going to have a Cash bar. The contract that I got from the nature lodge pretty much said we'd have to pay for everything, but when I emailed and asked, it turns out as long as our caterer has the license and the insurance, then it's fine to actually sell beer/wine. Of course I've now asked for a new contract, cuase the way this one is written doesn't make any damn sense, for what we want to do.
So to clarify and ask a few questions, Shannon and I went to Chef's Kitchen for dinner (through the very cold weather). They let us sample a bottle of Champagne to use for the wedding, which, for Shannon, got a "It's not to bad", which, from her, concerning booze, is more like a this is pretty damn good! from other people. It was not very strong and more fruity then dry, so I think it'll work out great for us. Dinner was good too...yes...we had champagne and french fries :) I had the muffeletta sandwhich and Shannon had the chicken alfredo sandwhich.
Aftewards we rented The Producers and Must Love Dogs, and went home to watch them. We watched The Producers, during which, since I had around 4 hours of sleep, I fell asleep once or twice, I'll probably watch it again today though. For me, around 9:PM I headed up to go to bed. When Shannon came up, I got up and brushed my teeth and actually got ready for bed rather then sleep in my clothes.
Busy at home, busy at work, it gets tiring.