My Weekend in Ann Arbor

ork let us out at 2pm today. I’m trying to figure out what to do with all this extra time I wasn’t counting on. I’m all out of sorts. So I’ll sit here, listen to Kidd Chris and try to type of my account of the Michigan trip while I still remember it.

Liz and I didn’t get out on the highways until 7pm Friday night. (A freaking WEEK ago already! Jesus… I’ve been so out of it and tired this week. I must have been sleepwalking for the majority of it.) The trip there was fairly easy. No real problems and I was awake enough to get through it all. There was torrential rains though about mid-PA. It was near impossible to see through. Upon arriving into the general Ann Arbor area, one of the exits I was supposed to take was closed. EEK! I hate that. I did manage to follow the detour well, though, and we arrived at The Red Roof Inn at 4:30am Saturday. Pretty much went right to sleep despite the fact that Expedia mistakenly booked us a non-smoking room. I would deal with that when I woke up.

Woke up at 12:30pm or so. We didn’t have much on the agenda, but we wanted to go eat before getting to the Blind Pig at around 5. When we arrived, we were definitely the first ones there. Not too long after though, another Tally Hall Message Boarder, “Oliver” and his mother, who drove from Wilkes-Barre, came walking up. We just talked and stuff in the chilly weather outside the venue until some other people started showing up. Eventually, some other Forum members showed up. Jennie and her father drove from New Hampshire! (see… it’s not so much that the parents are roped into doing this, they actually like Tally Hall) “Kitsune” from Syracuse met up with us also. We started to notice we were kind of losing our place in line but figured everyone knew we were there first so we were one of the first people to get in when the doors opened around 7/7:30. By that time, there was a line of people down the block and around the corner. Lotsa people. In fact, just over 800!

The shows were great. The venue was open to all ages during this first show, so the younger ones could get a chance to see them. They were quiter than the 2nd show which was 21+. The band plays there often so they like to do something different and special each time. On this night, they chose to get dark cover-alls and sew x-mas lights to themselves. Each member wore their respective color (see: necktie colors).
Ok, so they kept the houselights off. They hooked up a switch they could control with their foot. The first 2 songs were performed with this outfit. The best thing about it though, was that the person who was singing and/or playing at that moment in time of the song, were lit up. Otherwise, they were blacked out. So if two members sung a line in harmony, ony they would be lit. When one person was playing, only they’d be lit. When they were all playing, they’d all be lit. Clever, eh? I could see transposing that idea into a music video in a better, more professional manner.

The 2nd show had a lot more college kids, so they were loud and it was a bit distracting. Plus, my back was hurting me so badly even after the first show that I could barely enjoy anything. It was at times some of the most excrutiating pain I’ve ever felt in my back. I’m thinking it was just from sitting for 9.5 hours, then the next day, standing fairly still for hours on end (about 8 after the 2nd show ended — but it was already hurting kinda bad after only 5 hours.)

Got back to the hotel and slept for about 5 hours only to get up at 10:30 or so and get ready to check out. We planned on getting to Marvin’s Marvelous Mechanical Museum at around noon when it opened, but we ran into more roadblocks and detours. It was so frustrating! Ended up riding on “8 Mile” though and that was kind of amusing. Finally at about 2:30 or something we found our way to this magical place. Luckily, I had exchanged numbers with Oliver (who we were supposed to meet there at noon) and they helped me get there. After spending a little bit of time at Marvin’s, we all went to McDonald’s and talked to some local folk about how to get back on the highways we needed to get on. Half the roads we would normally take were shut down! It was absurd! GRR!

Eventually, we got on the right track and made our way back to eastern PA. Not a pleasant ride, honestly. Whatever. I’m glad I made it back home with my new TH shirt and my new MMMM shirt and my few pictures. I really disappointed myself with the lack of pictures I took. Dunno why, I just didn’t see much reason to take all those pictures… plus, some of the things I wanted to shoot were things no one would understand why I’d want to so I was thinking the locals would laugh at me. Oh well.

Now, Tally Hall is coming to Millvale in mid-May. That’s just outisde Pittsburgh. I just might do it.

Here are some pictures:

My pictures

Jennie’s million pictures
(Most of these are the pictures I should have taken. You get to see the long line, too.)

Adam’s recent pictures of Marvin’s.
(Adam lives out there but he’s a great photographer and I thought it would be relevant to give you more shots of what MMMM looks like.)

So, then. www.hiddeninthesand.com hasn’t been updated much with any more content but it tends to get an average of 93 unique visitors per day and an average of 284 page loads per day. Not bad. I’m sure there will be more once it starts getting in the search engines and once I get more content in there.

Hmm… yes… ok…
I don’t have much more to say, I suppose. Happy Keester.