Let there be light... and other stuff

Well, the weekend is gone. But at least something got done. My sis and her husband came up on Saturday. I had a couple of fluorescent light fixtures go bad in the basement so I was looking to replace them. I'm not talking about the bulbs going bad, but the whole thing went bad (aka the ballast). So, we got those installed with only a few casualties. Dan cut his hand on one of the fixtures, then one of the coveres cracked a little bit (cause we didn't read the directions... doh!) and then Dan got a little shock. But overall, it was a great success and now the basement doesn't feel like such a dungeon.

On Sunday my parents called and said they wanted to come to town for a visit (read: we want to see our grand daughter). I already had plans so, they came and I went. First stop was to the local "Play It Trade It" store. I've had some old video game consoles sitting around from my bachelor days and they were just sitting in the basement, getting in the way and collecting dust, so I figured I might as well sell them off and get a few bucks. So I dropped off the stuff. Since I had so much stuff, they needed to look it over and test it out and all that happy crap. They are supposed to call me with a purchase quote by Tuesday. Punks better not lose my stuff. It was sad to drop off the Intellivision, ColecoVision, Odyssey 2 and original Nintendo, but... I wasn't playing them. If I had even played them more than 5 times in the past 5 years, then I almost might be able to make a case for keeping them. But I haven't even played them that much, so it was time to bid adieu to them.

After dropping off the games at Play It Trade It, I headed over to Todd's house. We ended up watching Deathproof which is Quentin Tarantino's half of the Grindhouse double feature. It was pretty cool. The second half was much better than the first half. First half was more horror / thriller oriented, whereas the second half was just a big long car chase with dents and busting glass and cars running off the road. I like that kinda stuff. :)

um... what else...
On the Music Counter front I surpassed the 12K mark. I only have 3 CDs left from the original spindle. Of course, they are all Kiss MP3s. I think I'm just going to power through those even though I might drive myself slightly insane by only listening to Kiss for the next 3 or 4 days. But I just want to be done with that spindle so I can take it back home and say 'I've listened to all of this!'. It would be a little bit easier if it was a mishmash of different shows (a couple from 77, one from 82, another from 96, etc)... but the majority of them are from the 2004 tour so pretty much every single show sounds the same with the exception of occationally Gene's voice being screwed up and him having to sing an octave lower than usual. And of course, they are pretty much all fairly consecutive. So you'll have 07-03 in Indianapolis, then 07-07 in Wisconsin then 07-11 in Cincinnati, then 07-14 in New York. You get the idea. So if Gene's voice is blown out, then likely it'll be blown out for a week or so.

I'm listening to Somerset, WI 06-26-04 right now. For the past 3 discs, I've heard what I swear is a girl singing during love gun. But now, I'm convinced it might be Eric Singer since it has shown up exactly the same way and practically the same balance in the mix, which were from the Rock the Nation tour which were mixed from the soundboard. Or maybe it's Tommy Thayer. No idea. But it's really high in the mix for Love Gun and it's kind of annoying. Oh well. Wish me luck. 3 days of nothing but Kiss.