So for my birthday (which just ended about an hour ago) I treated myself to a 4-day weekend. The weekend of course goes on for another two days, rock! Well it started off with a bang, Friday night my friends Dawn and Alex showed up around 10pm to take BGE and me somewhere. It turns out 'where' was Emo's and the live music for the evening was Gogol Bodello! We didn't know what to expect. They had two warm-up bands (we arrived in time to see most of the set of the 2nd one) and it was all very fast, very loud punk rock. When Gogol Bordello took the stage they immediately turned the dial up to 11 and kept it there for over 3 hours. It was an amazing, extremely loud and very high-energy good time. As for what kind of music they played, I don't even know if I can describe it. Well, I'll try. Think "Gypsy musicians on Crystal Meth find crazy Russian folk performers and decide to play punk music in 4 (or more) different languages." Yeah.. except louder. Louder than that. Maybe even a little louder.

It was quite impressive.

On Friday I traded in my EX500 (or more formally 2002 Ninja 500R) sportbike for a new 2006 Suzuki M50 cruiser. The selection and haggle process took forever, but eventually I did get to ride it home. I love it. You can check the specs on the link if you are interested. I've already purchased some accessories; saddlebags, a sissy-bar with backrest and rear rack, and gel seats. Hopefully with these upgrades I'll be able to ride longer distances than I was comfortable doing with my Ninja.

Today except for eating out it was pretty quiet. Andrea paid for all the food today.. yay! I thought dinner was going to be the highlight because I've been looking forward to lasagna for a long time, but I unfortunately chose Macaroni Grill and was surrounded by crying babies and the food was just allright, but not amazing. It turns out the real food highlight was breakfast! We went to Antonio's on IH-35 and I had the chicken fajita migas with refried beans and tortillas. It was excellent.

Oh yeah, I also went to Sears and bought an elliptical exercise machine. Since it comes in such a large box I am having them deliver it next week.

I have been a pretty severe recluse so I knew I'd have a pretty quiet weekend, but I allowed myself some splurging on some expensive toys and yeah, I'm excited about them. Especially the motorcycle. Man, I can't wait to take some road trips.