Another Great Show...

On Thursday night, Stanley and I hit the Royale Nightclub in Boston for an awesome show from The Walkmen. AA Bondy were the main opening act and were pretty kick-ass, but The Walkmen were fan-freaking-tastic.

Another Awesome Show...

On Friday night, my friend M and I headed down to House of Blues for what turned out to be another fantastic show. Before I get to the headliners, I should mention that we were quite pleased to discover that both of the opening acts were actually pretty great. Things started with Dutchess and the Duke, a cool little 3-member Seattle folk band, who were pretty amusing when interacting with the crowd and also sounded great. They were followed by The Dodos, a San Francisco indie rock band who rocked pretty hard. I'm tracking down a few of their albums right now, and looking forward to adding them to the collection. It's a rare occasion to enjoy one opening act, so enjoying two was a nice bonus... Then, things got even more awesome when The New Pornographers took the stage...

Random Awesomeness: A Band and a Tree

In non-culinary, non-bunny news, there were a couple good items to report this past week. On Wednesday, I rolled over to House of Blues with my friend, Joe, to see The National in concert (again). As with the first time I saw them, they totally and completely rocked my world.

They played a lot of songs off of the newest album, but in general the show was a good mix of the last 3 albums.
They played pretty much every single song I was hoping they would (including rocking the house on Abel and Mr. November, as they do...), and again impressed me with how very awesome they sound live. Joe noted in the car on the way back (when I was playing Boxer) that songs like Squalor Victoria almost sound better live, since the band rocks them a little harder in concert...
Perhaps because I was riding the high from that awesome night, but more likely because I've finally become fed up with the lime leaf quarantine, I went ahead and purchased a Kaffir Lime tree on Friday. I picked up supplies at Home Depot over the weekend, and was ready for planting when it arrived at my door on Monday. As with everything I do in my kitchen that he can get to, Charley decided to help.
A layer of rocks goes in the bottom of the pot to help with drainage...
While waiting for me to add the potting soil, Charley decided to inspect it for quality...
My tree was looking pretty good for having spent 2 days in a box...
Here it is all planted:
And, look! A little tiny lime!
I threw it in the bathtub for its first watering, which resulted in dirt spraying everywhere (thus making me feel very clever...).
Right now the tree is living in my kitchen, enjoying a couple days of shade to recover from transit. I'm still deciding where it can live to soak in lots of sunshine... I'll let you know how things go, but I'm really really hoping I can manage not to kill it...We shall see...

UPDATE: Here's my tree in its new home... It looks like it should get a good amount of sun here... I'm feeling confident for the moment about my chances of not killing it...

What I Did Several Days Ago...

Long time, no post... Last work week was pretty rough for assorted reasons, but ended on a definite high note with a trip down to Bank of America Pavilion on Friday night to see Andrew Bird in concert. This was actually a really cool open-air venue. I'll definitely have to check out more shows there in the future...

So, I'd seen Andrew Bird once before (in Melbourne), when it was just him and his 4 instruments on stage. This time he had his drummer/homie Martin Dosh, a bass player, and a guitar player with him, but he still played several instruments for us. Before I get carried away talking about his awesomeness, I should mention that the opening band was Calexico and they were really quite awesome as well. They started pretty mellow, but picked up energy as the crowd trickled in. They have a really cool vibe, and I would probably pay to see them on purpose, so it was a cool treat to get them as an opening act. They also came up on stage for the last 4 tracks of Andrew Bird's set, meaning there were about 10 different musicians up there rocking out together. Good stuff. Calexico pictured below... (All of my Andrew Bird pictures were blurry, but note our proximity to the stage...)

Andrew Bird was absolutely amazing. He's so freaking talented, it blows my mind when see him in action. (I also suspect that he is the reason I seem to find tall, scrawny guys with slightly odd-looking faces ridiculously attractive...) He kills me... Aside from his amazing voice, ridiculous whistling prowess, crazy violin skills, and guitar-playing ability, the guy is a fanatastic songwriter and is absolutely charming and hilarious when he talks to the crowd. I heart him. (And, since he chose to do a second encore, I choose to believe that he hearts me, at least in my member-of-a-crowd-of-obsessed-fans capacity, too...) Here's a music video of one of my favorite songs of his, for the uninitiated:

We've been having pretty nasty weather around here lately. It's been raining/misting on and off, but the temperature is too high for that to be pleasant. Instead the air is super-thick and muggy and driving me crazy. I don't remember June in Boston being this bad, but that may be because August is so horribly hot and humid that it makes June seem pleasant by comparison. For the record, I can handle heat (with a bit of whinging), but I really cannot handle humidity... at all... This is why there are now 4 air conditioners in my 5-room apartment. (I won't be installing one in the bathroom.) On Sunday I broke down and bought an air conditioner for my kitchen. I'd been putting this off because of the stupid casement windows that don't let you install window units, but the nice cool air from the rest of my place doesn't circulate into the kitchen at all, which makes cooking pretty unpleasant and makes the bunnies sad and lethargic (although I may be projecting there)... Because of the stupid casement windows, I had to buy a portable unit and rig a venting system using plexiglass, duct tape, and a couple hours of cutting said plexiglass with the $4 tool they sell for such things (below, left)... I'll probably come up with something prettier to replace the duct tape later, but for now it's functional and behind a curtain (below, right) most of the time anyway, so I'll call it good...

After spending most of the afternoon dealing with that, I decided to grill up a nice summer dinner even though it was dreary, muggy, and sprinkling outside. Corn was $6/dozen at Russo's, and was ridiculously delicious despite the fact that it's often not in season here for a couple more weeks. I made a ginger "BBQ" sauce for pork tenderloins, grilled off the pork and some scallions, and grilled off the corn for use in my "Grilled Creamed Corn" which is actually really healthy (made with milk, not cream) and combines the deliciousness of basil and shallots with the grilled corn to make a perfect summer side dish. I will post the recipe at my other blog one of these days, because it's deifnitely one of my favorites. Anyway, here's how things turned out:This week has been crazy-hectic at work (thus not managing to post anything until Thursday) in preparation for leaving for Portland tomorrow after work. It will be awesome to have a bit of vacation and to get to see Stanley and Alicia (visiting from Dubai), as well as Max, Midge, and all my other Portland homies who don't have clever screen names...