I'm ready to go!

This weekend has been absolutely amazing. I can honestly say I probably have the best group of friends I have ever had in my life. Friday night I went out with my old roomie Jake and some friends to Gluecks in downtown Minneapolis and watched the buzzaroake and had a few beers because I said, "why the hell not?". I had a really good time and with really good people. Saturday morning sucked for the most part. Hangovers suck for the most part! Yeah, blah, blah, blah I know you shouldn't drink before you're surgery. I know I was going to be clean, but I had to get it out of my way a bit. The funny thing was I only had 3 liters and a couple of tall boys. This whole cancer and surgery is really effecting my drinking skills. hahahaha. Know it is bad when you are ranked and the person who can drink the most on facebook. So Saturday I went to check back into the Hope Lodge and gotten that taken care of. Then I went down to Club Underground for my benefit show. It was a very shocking to see the amount of support I got from people and random people at that. Yeah I know I do the same thing to other people but try being in my situation and having you're friend, family, bands, bar staff, and random people coming up to you telling you stories and giving best wishes. It was freaking nuts. I had my easy button repeating thank you all night long. The show was spectacular. All of the bands were bad ass and on their game. I must admit that I was pretty skeptical of the bands on the bill except for two of them because Chris and I never worked with them before. No worries anymore. Having the Stnnng drop off of the bill was probably more of an advantage considering Ouija Radio jumped on and brought a bunch more people with them. Dallas Orbiter would have been awesome to have seen, but like I said take care of family issues first.

If I had to rank my favorites of the night by what I really dug it would look like this:
1.Ouija Radio-I have waited a while to see them including 3 misses in Madison that I had other things happening. Considering they jumped on the bill with 3 days notice they sounded fantastic and were fun as hell to watch. I also talked with their drummer and guitarist/vocalist(who had ovarian cancer). Super nice people and hopefully I can book a few shows with them in the future.
2.Casanatra-The new tunes ruled and of course they just flat out kicked ass. Dennis seriously has the best vocals in the entire scene.
3.Orange Blank-I haven't seen them since Josh joined the band and they are a million times better than before and I really liked them before. Chris also wrote a song called "5%" in dedication to yours truly.
4.Chooglin-As some of you know that when I really got into music I listened to bands like Reel Big Fish, Goldfinger, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Pennywise, and so on. Thier horn section totally made me go back to those days. They were fantastic and closed the show on a fun and excellent note.
5. Landspeeder-Pretty new to the scene, but the songs were excellent and reminded me a bit of Nada Surf by the story telling song style. Those guys will be around a while.
6.Country Dollar Love-The odd ball of the bill. A country band which is normally a rock band. Funny isn't it? They played some Cash tunes. but since I don't like Johnny Cash I didn't care. They only the other hand were actually very entertaining to watch.
7.Condo$-I liked them for the first 5 songs and then it got really repetitive. They have a lot of stage prescence and I would totally want to book them for a few shows myself. The guys I met in the band were cool cats.

I haven't counted anything yet from the door, raffle tickets, and people giving me money I am guessing just over $2,000. That put the grand total to $4,500ish. My bills are almost paid off so that is awesome. I really must thank Chris Peters for putting the whole thing together, Mike(DJ Filth) for being a sweet MC, Josh from Club Underground doing the sound, and to all of the people who donated things to the raffle. It was a great night and I had was feeling great and lucky then went to the casino with two of my friends and put everything on black. No, I took out $60 of my own cash and realized I wasn't that lucky at all. It was awesome though.

Today I went and watched the Packers lose with my friends. I was actually really itching to listen to the Brewers game. I got in my truck afterwards and then listened to the Braun 2 run homer in the 3rd and right then and there I knew they were in. They won and the Mets lost giving the Brewers the wild card spot for the playoffs. I have waited my entire life as I am sure many of you out there have to see this team finally get back to post season play. I shed a tear of happiness over this team finally. Considering we had tickets for this entire weekend series I am a bit dissapointed not to be there to see this moment I have waited for but I don't need to be there to know that my team finally did it.

One last thing wish me luck tomorrow. I am really nervous, but it is time to take care of this thing and finally live my life again. If curious at all I will be at the University of Minnesota-Fairview. I have to be there at 5:30am for prep and surgery is scheduled for 7:45am I am booked out for the entire day in the OR. They say 4 to 8 hours long the surgery could be. I am going to keep my phone on so if anyone wants to know how I am doing you can call 612-210-0626. My folks will have it on them. I should also be in the ICU for a day or two then out to a room for who knows how long. I am ready and it has been a journey from hell and there have been a ton of good things that have come out of this so far. I'll write you all afterwards sometime when I am able. Thoughts and prayers are accepted at my window so wish me luck!