birthdays

so many birthdays coming up, but one should be most important to you: ours. mine and allison's birthday is on september 22nd, that's right. it's a monday, so we will be celebrating early for all you people who aren't functioning on what i've been calling "playtime". saturday the 20th is the east bay alley cat eli is throwing. hopefully we will do some hard hanging out (bbq? in east bay?) after this most awesome event and then later on, we would like to go out back in san francisco. serious thought has been afforded to karaoke since we were so unsuccessful in chicago. recommend us some good, cheap, out of the way (aka: not overly crowded and obnoxious on a saturday night) and we will be stoked to see each and everyone of your shining faces back in sf.

our last days in chicago were stressful, but ultimately awesome. we crashed at rex's in andersonville for a couple nights, went and saw a double feature of forgetting sarah marshall and sex in the city(!) and it rained a lot. a lot. we finally signed the lease on an adorable 2 bedroom on ohio and paulina street in south ukranian village/west town. jason and ilya made it into town. and we did a lot of walking, ate amazing food at earwax, and went to the lawrence arms bar up north. ilya finally got in touch with the kid we were staying with--we arrived at his house and promptly squeezed allison, jason and i into the most comfortable bed and passed out. we all grabbed coffee in the morning at atomix and parted ways until boise. the driving's getting too normal, 8 hours seemed like nothing. when we stopped at burger king, the woman asked allison if she wanted "onion ring sauce" with her onion rings. allison asked, "what is onion ring sauce?" to which her only reply was: "zesty." so it goes.

we're in omaha right now, living out my high school dreams of saddle creek. saddle creek is, as eric said, just one big, major boring street that runs through the middle of omaha, but i've still been fascinated, picking up references all over. i lost my shit driving in from chicago when i realized nebraska's slogan is the good life, and i saw this while listening to the good life just as tim kasher wailed about council bluffs and we drove over the river from iowa, whew.
omaha is how i imagined: small town, indie amazingness full of kids in tight jeans, big glasses and sweaters. it became insanely colder since we arrived which is all so fitting. we ate at mcfosters last night, pierced ears, cut hair, and walked the 3 blocks to a house show. today was an overcast lazy day with coffee and exploring the downtown, watching brazil and making sweet potato tacos. we went out to slowdown, the saddle creek bar and saw dan deacon and forever flowers for free, and some how scored free ice cream (they even had fruit popsicles!). we tagged along with laura to her hilarious friend's house where we drank whiskey on their fine ass porch and listened to some elton john and rolling stones. oh nebraska.