This past Tuesday March 28th, I celebrated my 4th 30th birthday. How did I spend my day….in the eye doctors office. I decided that after approximately 25 years of wearing glasses that I wanted to try contacts. Well and the fact that I haven’t had my eyes checked and have been wearing the same glasses since the turn of the century (that’s the year 2000 for the slow folk).

After spending the the first half of the day getting my pupils dialated and lights shined in my eyes…I had to come back later in the day for my contact lens consultation. I walked in and was immediatley scared….I AM PUTTING SOMETHING ON MY EYES…what if I mess up and put my eye out? Well I didn’t put my eye out and but it did take my a full hour, a lot of tissues filled with tears and snot to get the first contact in my left eye. I think it only took about 20 minutes after that to get my second contact in…was thinking that it wasn’t worth it.

Well it’s three days later and it only took me 20 minutes to get both contacts in this morning. I was sitting at my desk at work and repeatedly tried to push my glasses (which I was not wearing) up.

Seeing is a totally different expirience it’s like everything is in IMAX.  It’s talking a little getting used to cause everything is so damn bright.

Let me start by saying…OMG…OMG…OMG and for good measure I will drop in one more OMG!!!

Tonight at the Tabernacle Prince introduced the city of Atlanta to Tamar (pronounced Tay-mar).  The concert was billed as Tamar featuring Prince.  It was just that…Prince played the perfect sidekick (if he could ever be called that)…he was her narrator, her hype man, her guitarist, her first, her last, her everything.

The place was packed because Prince’s name, but the show was hot because Tamar can “SANG” and is a true perfromer and she also travels with twins…hell who doesn’t like twins.  The show was all covers, from Aretha to Mary to Janet & Michael Jackson. One of my highlights was when Tamar was singing “When a Man loves a Woman” (OMG this woman can BLOW). She was into it singing waving her hands and jumping around…she’s in the chorous singing “WHEN A MAAAAAAN LOVES A….” drops the mic and runs off the stage.  Prince walks over stomps his foor and says “SEXUAL CHOCOLATE……..SEXUAL CHOCOLATE”.  It was hilarious.

There was another song can’t remember the name of it but she was singing about how in love she was with this man who was cheating on her and broke her heart and was crying and ran off they stage….the twins ran after her….Prince took the opportunity to play a solo (off the chain).  Well the twins bring Tamar back on stage and she has a towel drying her eyes with one hand…and in the other hand she has a butter knife.  She was to the mic and begind talking as if she is talking to this man who cheat on her. She says “Do you think I’m crazy?  I’ll be outside your window with a gaosline can….filled with Ice cold lemonade…I’ll have on a ski mask and roller blades…you still don’t think I’m crazy…WELL TRY ME”  It was soo classic.

As I said…Prince played the gracious host….but then he couldn’t take it anymore and took over the show when Tamar and the twins stepped off stage.  He went into “Party Man” from the Batman Soundtrack.  Tamar and the twins came back out with a WTH look on their faces.  He looked at them and said this is between me and Atlanta ya’ll go on over there and sit down.  He says “i’m old Skool and ain’t afraid to show it” (I made old skool with a ‘k’ that was fro the BSU). He says “Tamar an ‘nem to young to know about this here” and proceeds to Jam for about 30 minutes.  He plays a couple of his songs and a couple of other classics”  He went into a rendition od Barry White “Ecstacy when you lay next to me”…hearing Prince do Barry was priceless.

Ok I wil stop now because it’s almost 3AM.

Tiff bought me the tickets to the show reason #345,762 I love her….

We hit the hotel at about 8pm (central time) or 9pm (crew time). The Capital Place is pretty nice and is in a good location in respect to the convention center.

At the first party we went to Friday night I met (not listed in any particular order and I’m sure a lot of people will be missing) Danah Boyd (who is simply off the chain), Marc Scheff, George Kelly, Lisa Stone, Baratunde and Liza Sabater.

We got to Austin pretty late and we were really tired so didn’t stay out too late or hit too many places.

Let me preface this by saying that I am a horrible writer and an even worse story teller.
The trip started out with a horrible lunch at Eno, which was so bad that the comped the meal. Then we were off the the airport…checking bags and going through security was relatively uneventful if you don’t count damn near having to strip to no make the buzzer go off. We breeze through to fing of course that our flight is delayed. Which is a problem because we have a connecting flight in Dallas. The flight is supposed to leave at 4:02 pm and we start boarding around 4:50. Which is 3:50 Dallas time….our flight in Dallas is scheduled to start boarding at 5:50. (Bored Yet) Well if not keep reading. If so, I’ll get wit cha.

Short version 2 hour flight leaves aroung 4pm Dallas time connecting flight is supposed to take off at 6:20 Dallas time. Flight lands right at 6pm BUT of course we have to taxi to the gate and then we are sitting in the crack of the planes ass so…..YEAH.

By the time we get off the plane it is 6:20…luckily we only have to go three gates over becuase of course our connecting flight was NOT late so we OJ’d it throught the airport and made our flight….only to sit in the crack of that planes ass too…and for a while it smelled like it too.