This past weekend - Nickel Creek!!

This past weekend I found cheese nirvana. Cheese Traders is the most awesomist cheese place ever. They have cheese ends and pieces from Cabot cheese at incredibly low prices. Unbelieveably low. At the regular grocery store it costs $2.79 for 8oz of Cabot cheese. At the Cheese Trader, you can get about 2 lbs for $3-4!!! Sure, it's an ugly lump to look at. Might even be hard to grate. But it is cheese. And good cheese at that. Who cares what it looks like! They have all kinds. I also bought spatzel, which I have been looking for ever since I found it at Ikea ages ago.

THE FOLLOWING IS FROM NOTES I TOOK WHILE WAITING FOR THE SHOW ON SATURDAY NIGHT...

7:40. I am sitting on the stairs to the bar of Higher Ground wating to see Nickel Creek. I had forgotten to buy a ticket today at work so after the Cheese Trader, I came over (it's right next door) and waited in line, hoping to get a ticket to the second night of the show. There were signs everywhere that said it was sold out. That was sucky. Then after about 15 minutes of waiting in the line, they began to let us in. A bouncer dude asked if anybody was looking for tickets. I raised my hand and he motioned me out of the line. A woman had 4 tickets she couldn't use and they were for last night's show (which had been delayed by about 2 hours as one of the performer's flights was reeeeeaaaallly late.) I wrote her a check and was in!
MOMENTS LATER...
The woman talking to the guy behind me said that on Tuesday night they had Drag Bingo. I have got to check that out at the Red Square bar, if they still have it. LOVE IT!
8ish - The first act is Leona Ness, she's a guitarist chick with dude who plays just about everything else - drums, percussion, trumpet, keyboard etc. She plays for about 40 minutes and it takes them about 20-30 to set up for NC. I am thinking back to the days when I went to the Lido with Kitty to see some comedians and saw NC for the first time. They were still in their teens. I remember being really impressed with their talent though I was not a bluegrass fan. Their album came out about 4 months later, which I got as soon as I could. I remember they had to carry their own equipment at the time. I am so happy to see how they have grown. I saw them last year at the Hollywood Bowl. They are on their 4th album. Glad they are in Burlington. I was going to hang out with Sherri this weekend, but she's not a fan of the band or music so we rescheduled for two weeks from now. We will go apple picking.

9:10 they play! They have so much energy and play long riffs (I don't know my music vocabulary for jamming for long periods of time, but they did it.) They played mostly from their new album, which I bought. Burlington was amongst their first stops on their Fall Tour. Isn't that nice, to think of us? I never really liked bluegrass until I heard them. It's toe tappin' tunes. Even the ballads are really good. It's ALL good. (How do you like my really articulate description of the show?)

They played until about 11:30. I am so glad I went!

SUNDAY

I can't say much about Sunday. I went to church where it was Missions Sunday. There was a woman doctor who talked about her experiences in Africa where she helped people for two weeks. Very tough job. She seemed really eager to go back to help next year. She is finishing her residency at the university here. After church I took a three hour nap, which was a pity as I had only planned on a little snoozer. It was a lovely day out, but by the time I got up, I didn't want to venture outside. I did watch a whole bunch of movies and even managed to go to the theater.

Really exciting weekend, wasn't it?