The Orange County Fair usually has some pretty good concerts lined up. Last year, they were all free with admission, but this year, they opened up a separate venue and kicked up the price. Tonight it was Joan Osborne and Melissa Etheridge, which was a very cool concert. The volume got turned up too high too fast, but each of them put on a good show. I have to say, Melissa Etheridge has the most expressive face I’ve seen on a vocal performer in a while. They had two huge HDTV screens showing whatever the cameraguy of the moment was focusing on, and when it was on her, she could get a round of screaming out of the audience with just one note and an eyebrow. This concert made me sorry I didn’t pick up any more of her CDs during the big Wherehouse closeout a few months ago. Ah well, there are sales ahead….

The title of the post, by the way, is a misheard lyric from “I Wanna Come Over;” the real line is “To hell with the consequence.” We ran into another opportunity for humor during “Bring Me Some Water” when Kelson pointed out that not only did she already have a bottle of water, but someone had put it in a little holder on the mic stand–which was visible on the video screen. Of course, my brain started writing alternate lyrics. (Apologies to all necessary parties, including those of you who don’t know the song.)

*****

Somebody brought you some water
Can’t you see it’s there on your stand
You took it off the stage, right there at the front corner
A minute ago, with your hot little hand

Somebody brought you some water
Think I saw you sippin’ before
The music’s got my mind, and the music’s got my soul
But tonight I think logic, I think logic’s out that door

*****

Side note: They have some damn yummy fruit at the Terri’s Berries booth right by the theater. Must remember this for the Alanis Morissette concert in two weeks.

We’ve been meaning to get a picture of this for weeks, but it’s tough to get while driving past. So finally we just stopped at a nearby parking lot and Katie went out to take the picture:

Sign: A Unique Christian Thrift Store; Window: Sizzling Summer Sale (with flames!)

Ignore the abuse of quotation marks for now, and consider this: a Christian store has painted all its windows with flames.

We actually did brave the line on Friday, sort of. A line of kids running out of Borders at the Block just as we were trying to get in, around 10:30. We stayed to look at the entertainment, which the adults were enjoying at least as much as the kids, and then got some coffee for the drive back. One woman seemed very optimistic about the amount of stuff she’d be able to get done while waiting–I didn’t see it, but Kelson reported that she had a thick stack of things like Divorce for Dummies piled next to her latte.

Saturday, we went on our roughly trimonthly software spree and netted about 8 relatively cool things for about 40% of the original cost. Leaving Fry’s, Kelson said, “So, where to? Home?…Food?…Borders?”

“Borders.”

Three minutes later: “Crap! We don’t have the confirmation number!”

It didn’t matter. The petite witch in the corset handed me a ticket that said “Hufflepuff 707” with no more ID than my name. I went off and picked up the Spanish edition of Prisoner of Azkaban that I’d seen the night before, which I got for 10% off. $30 for both PdA and OotP–not bad. And I only had to be in Hufflepuff for ten minutes.

I don’t remember where I left off Saturday night, but I picked it back up over breakfast on Sunday and didn’t put it down until somewhere around page 417, when it took me half an hour to convince myself to pick it back up again. Tenth grade is hell, and I know it intimately, but it was all just hitting too close. Maybe that speaks well of JKR, maybe it says she’s beating an undead horse. All I know is it very nearly lost me.

I did finish, about dinnertime on Sunday. And sort of went whaaaaaah at the sheer monumentality of 1) the book having been written and 2) my having read it.

I’ll be going all comp-lit on it in another post. Right now, though, bed.

We have a “yours, mine and ours” set of computers at home. My system started out as a Compaq Presario in 1994 and has been upgraded piecemeal over the past decade, Katie replaced her Power Mac with a G4 last year, and we picked up an eMachine to use as a dial-up server when we moved in together. (I was going to cobble something together out of the leftover bits from my computer, but it was cheap and saved me the effort of figuring out what was working and what needed to be replaced. Plus it gave us an extra Windows system.)

I’ve been dual-booting Linux and Windows for about 5 years, and spent most of my last year in college using Linux almost exclusively. (Student housing with Ethernet. Having worked in a college computer lab for several years, I didn’t trust Windows 95 to be safe on the network.) Well, a few months after we got the eMachine, hardware problems corrupted my Windows installation. I didn’t want to “borrow” a Windows 98 install CD, I didn’t want to buy Windows Me (piece of ****), Windows 2000 was too expensive, and I really didn’t want the licensing nightmare that is XP. So I delayed, using Linux exclusively, and eventually came to the conclusion I didn’t need to reinstall Windows at all.

Unfortunately, there are very few commercial games written for Linux. Now I’m not much of a gamer, but I do enjoy RPGs, turn-based strategy, and the occasional FPS, and No Windows meant No Might and Magic. Continue reading

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