You Do It To Yourself, You Do

In Radiohead's song "Just", they described my weekend just right.
This blog is best viewed while listening to said song


I woke up at 615am on Friday morning. My flight was at 630am.

I was flying to Boise from Canton, OH. Two cities that could potentially be dubbed as very large towns. The smaller the city, the tougher it is to travel to by air.
So, I drove to the Akron/Canton airport, and they said there was nothing they could do... I assumed we'd have to cancel our Boise show, so I hung my head, and sadly said,"I'll just go home and go to bed". I was asleep for about 10 minutes when my phone rang. It was our manager. I almost ignored the call, because I had a premonition that he was going to have some crazy, inconvenient itinerary in store for me. I was correct. But I'm definitely glad I answered the call. He asked me if I could get to the Cleveland airport by 1pm. I had enough time to make it if I left right away. The airport is about an hour and a half from me, and my return flight was into Canton. This provided the slight problem that I couldn't leave my car at the airport for the weekend (as I had previously planned). This meant I had to find my stepdad, and ask him to sacrifice 3 hours of his life to drive my car back from Cleveland. I couldn't find him anywhere, but I called my Mom and she said he was out in the woods cutting down trees. I should've guessed. Isn't that what most people do on a Friday morning? Breakfast followed by a hearty session of TGIFSICCDST (Thank goodness its Friday so I can cut down some trees). So, as we were driving there, our manager called again and asked if I could possibly make a flight that departed at 12:20pm. Even though it seemed like a stretch, I accelerated to over 100 miles an hour and sped, screeched, and threaded my way through semi-truck infested waters. My step-dad said nothing, but I'm %94.3 positive that I scared him %47.82 to death. (thats almost ½) I figured that if Johnny Law had it out for me, I'd accept it as Freddy Fate telling me that Boise was no longer on the menu. (it is Freddy, right?) When I was getting close to the airport (at this time I was actually on schedule to make the unmake-able 1220), my phone rang again. It was our manager. Was he calling to tell me that my plans hadn't changed and that I was doing a great job getting to the airport? Naw. Naw, he wasn't. He and some other folks out in LA had decided it would be safest for me to take a 430pm flight instead. Boo. I was almost glad. I screwed up, and now I felt like I was getting punished. How just. I walked into the airport five hours early for my flight (at least I didn't oversleep this one). I sat down at a small round table outside a make-shift coffee stand. I didn't know what airline I was on. I couldn't check in. I had two bags and a big guitar, and I looked like a cat just coughed me up. Well... I looked like a lion or a snow leopard coughed me up. You know... a big cat. One that eats dudes. I also didn't want any coffee. I felt like I had no purpose. But then my phone rang. It was our manager. He said "Delta.", and I was on my way. At least until I went to the Delta counter and they told me they couldn't check me in. They had my reservation, but the payment hadn't gone through. I had up to five hours for the payment to go through, so I sat down at small round table at a mirror image, make-shift coffee shop... not to be confused with the other one that was 100 yards away. 20 minutes later, I finally checked in (I won't bore you with the details... [that's a joke {eff why eye}]), and I went through SSSSecurity (some of you know what that means). I sat down at Max and Erma's in the B terminal and ordered a bit of lunch. I glanced at my phone, it was a bit after noon, and I thought it was the craziest thing. I NEVER eat lunch at noon. NOT EVER. I looked all around, and all the power-suits, ties, and briefcases were eating their noon day meals with the satisfied look of tray wielding 4th graders sitting down in the cafeteria after the 5th period bell rings. Lunch at noon. The norm. The routine. I said a little prayer, thanking God that I'm not playing for team 9 to 5, when I realized that we're all pretty much lemmings in our own right. For instance, I know that I would've been having the best day of my life if it was a Saturday or Sunday rather than a TBIF (too bad its Friday). Saturday and Sunday provide me with the football that I routinely watch (with the satisfaction of a cereal bowl wielding 4th grader sitting down to watch Saturday morning cartoons at 5am). Matt Hoopes thinks I'm silly cause I like football so much. I agree with him, but I don't mind being silly. Its always looked good on me.

Okay, okay... If you're still with me, I applaud you. I'm really just trying to write the most boring blog of all time. I entered a competition.

I camped out in Max and Erma's for an hour or so, and then watched Flight Of The Conchords at the gate until it was time to fly to my connecting airport, Salt Lake City. There were definitely more guys than girls on the plane, so the gender percentage was Morman than woman. Groan. Cough. Groan. Ha. Morman jokes write themselves. Either that, or I am AWESOME. My flight in SLC was delayed to the point that when I deplaned in Boise, I was already supposed to be on stage for fifteen minutes. I was late. But we didn't cancel. And it all payed off. I walked onto the stage 45 minutes late and had a really really fun (not entirely professional) show. We were playing a homecoming pep rally for the Boise State Broncos' football team. (They were the one's that, last year, won their bowl game with an awesome statue of liberty play afterwhich the running back made a beeline from the end zone to the feet of his cheerleader girlfriend and proposed). A couple thousand people showed up to watch us, and they stuck around even though we were late starting. The sound system was way to small, but the energy of everyone was so electric that I didn't care about the tech problems, and just had a good time. After the show Joshy, Dave, and I played three quick games of darts in the hotel lobby. I was dog tired, but darts are my drug (Remember?)

The next day was Colorado. Highlights include hanging out with Quietdrive and Josh Hoge, meeting some of John & Sarah Warne's buddies, and seeing a guy's foot gushing out more blood than I'd ever seen a foot gush.

Matthew Thiessen



Oh yeah, today's highlights include my advancement to 2-0 in fantasy football, and the Browns kicking some Bengals' tail. Not just their tail... their cute, little, dude-eating cat faces too. Kicked em hard. In the face.

Did I mention I like the Browns? ↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓