Had a real good weekend this past week. Not too much partying but just enough. Friday I went to the Billy Goat after work for some drinks. Stayed till about nine and then headed to Karyn's house for a late dinner and a few more coldies. Thought about heading down to the Majestic for some more brews around 11:00, but I thought it better to stay in since I was scheduled to work at 9:00 AM on Saturday. So's I hit the sack.

Got up in plenty o' time for work on Saturday morning, but I was delayed at 7-11 and wound up being about 5 min late. Had two employees call in "sick" so I was there by myself for the day. With a good nights sleep and two cups of coffee behind me, I was actually really productive. Got caught up on paperwork and filing and started doing some prepping for the coming month where we will be extremely busy (especially for February which is normally one of our slower months).

My dad had slept here at the shop on Friday night because he worked till 5 AM and had a mid-day appointment. After I was done at 1:30 or so, he took me to lunch over at Zia's on the Hill. Had a really good lunch special; charbroiled chicken breast in a white wine lemon-butter sauce topped with prosciutto ham, provel cheese, broccoli, red peppers and garlic. Came with a side salad that I added some Kalamata olives to, and a side of white cavatelli. Tried a Peroni (an Italian beer) and headed on my way around 2:30.

Went back to Karyn's to relax for a bit and take care of "the three S's". At around 6:30 PM we headed down for our dinner reservations at The Billy Goat. Once a month or so they do a fixed price gourmet dinner on a Saturday night. As much as I go there for lunch and drinks, I thought it was about time to go to one (although I actually worked one a few months ago). This one seemed logical because I could take Karyn since she would actually eat almost everything on the menu (she's a picky eater, sorry babe). They were calling this particular dinner "The South City Wedding Dinner". Of course it was their gourmet take on it. You can check out the enitre menu here for yourself.

We left the Goat around 9:30 PM with bellies so full I could hardly sit down to drive. We then headed towards "Off Broadway" to see "The Formula Kid" a band fronted by the amazing Drew Johnson. Drew is a Granite City native and a Webster University grad with a major in Jazz Studies. He's been playing solo acoustic stuff over at the Billy Goat for years now and I'm blown away every time. I have his first album with his original band "The Drew Johnson Band" and I still can't get enough of it. I've tried to convince some of you mo-fo's to come see him at the Goat when he is there, but you're all to lazy to ever come down.

At any rate, a friend of ours from the Majestic, Nate Williamson plays keys in The Formula Kid, so we finally got some people to come out to see these guys. I think we were all told 12 strong from the Majestic crew by the time they started the show. The rest of the house was pretty well full too. The band was amazing and tight as hell. Some of the newer songs they played sound like they could be serious radio hits and I'm constantly puzzled as to why they are not at least on local radio. Drew's voice has always been great, but Saturday night he was spot-on and the backing instrumentation and vocals only made it that much better. They did two nice covers; the first was a relatively obscure Beatles song (at least to a casual fan) called "Hey Bulldog" and the second, the song they closed with, was "Fortunate Son" by CCR. Drew posted some pictures on his blog if you are interested.

After The Formula Kid finished I went over to chat with Drew and Nate a bit and congratulate them on a great show. They gave us some free tickets to their next show on February 18th which is actually at The Pageant. It's a local music spotlight show featuring four or five local artists showing up "on the radar". Let me know if you are interested in attending (I have about 20 tickets and can get more if needed).

At this point in the evening it was only about 11:30 PM. None of us were sure what we should do next. Some of us headed out and went back to the Majestic immediately, others (Karyn and myself included) stuck around to hear what the next band sounded like. Bad idea. They were a female punk band trying their hardest to "be punk" but not very hard to "play music". Apparently from what Emily (a friend from the Maji and girlfriend of Nate) said, the lead singer was puking in the bathroom about 15 minutes before she went on stage. She was Courtney Love-esque in her mannerisms such as spitting on the stage, yelling at the audience, and oh... playing fucking horrible music. Man I hate punk rock with every ounce of my being.

So we headed to the Majestic quickly for a few more drinks and then called it a night right at 1:30 am. All in all a great day.

Sunday was lazy. I woke up around 1 PM at Karyn's and made myself some biscuits & gravy and some eggs. Mmmm tasty. Since Karyn had to work all weekend, I played nice guy and clean up around her house while she was gone, all the while watching some classic 80's movies like Ghostbusters and Clue on Showtime. When Karyn got home we made some more grub and watched LOTR-ROTK.

Unfortunately this might be my last weekend like that for a while as we will soon be getting slammed at work. We've got stuff going on every weekend for the next month or so. Hopefully I'll at least be able to make the Superbowl party.

- these thoughts flowed through Jeff's fingers @ 11:06 AM