Viewing the other answers will bring you much more joy than my answer ever could.

(I'd make my own MP3 mix CD, (he said, cheatingly))

Well, assuming the weather doesn't turn on me, we're going to see Ben Folds in Fargo on October 23. He's probably at the top of my would-travel-to-see list, and, well, we're traveling out-of-province (out-of-country, even) to see him. So there's that.

I liked Ben Folds more a few years ago than I do these days, but I'm still totally excited for this show. I really hope the weather holds. He never plays anywhere near here. (Now watch him announce a Canadian tour as soon as we get back.)

Once that show has been seen, I don't know who I'd be most likely to drive a great distance to see. I've now seen most of my favourite bands in concert at least once. Maybe They Might Be Giants? Like Ben Folds, they seem to have a fear of Canada, so I'd probably travel to see them. There are a lot of other bands out there that I like, but I have a "they can come to me" attitude towards a lot of them.

I'm going to Stone Temple Pilots in November. In the summer between Grade 12 and university, I listened to their second album pretty much nonstop, as anyone who was ever in my car at that time could attest. I don't think I'd travel to see them, but I'm glad I'll get to go to the show (albeit 15 years too late).

Similarly, I need to see Our Lady Peace one of these years. I was in university when Clumsy came out and they were really getting big. They did one last series of small shows before moving onto bigger venues. They came to Saskatoon but the show sold out in minutes and I didn't get to go. Despite numerous opportunities, I've never managed to see them since. One year I will, though, even though I have only liked a few songs since that album. But again, I would never travel to see them.

For the record, I don't think going to Saskatoon really counts as driving to see a band since it's not that far and I'm there all the time anyway. But if we assume it does count, then I've probably driven to see a band 30 times by now. People around here don't seem to think it's that big a deal to drive a few hours to go to another city, even if you're only spending part of a day there. I suppose you'll miss out on a lot if you don't do that, and other travel options are overpriced or inconvenient (or both) as compared to other parts of the world.

Writing on the netbook. Let's see how long this works until I give up on correcting typos and/or hit the magical backspace touchpad command and erase this whole thing.

Glad to see some of you enjoyed the saga of my sunglasses. I took them to the place I bought them, and the nice lady bent them back into shape with the power of her bare hands. I like to tell the internet when stores do well, so if you're in Saskatchewan, you should buy your glasses from the Atrium Optometric Group. Fine, fine service. They even replaced Mika's dad's glasses after he dropped a tractor on his own self. I highly recommend them and buy glasses there even though I live two hours away.

There's a whistling noise coming from my kitchen. Not sure if it's from the deep freeze or the fridge or the fridge. TWO FRIDGES. I came home from work today and my old stove was gone. I knew this was going to happen soon, but it wasn't supposed to be today. I felt a bit bad, because I was supposed to clean the stove before it went away. But I didn't feel THAT bad - I had more time to do it, plus, y'know, I got out of cleaning an oven this way.

I actually liked my old stove, but the old fridge was a jerk and I am so glad it is gone. The new fridge is lovely. Both the fridge and stove appear to be the same ones that my mom has. I will try to not lock my oven door by mistake like I did hers.

Still haven't made those steaks. Most likely won't ever, even though I'm currently watching Cook's Country and they're talking about how to cook steaks right now.

Went to the farm this weekend. The farm cats have decreased in number but have become more affectionate, so I'll take that. The girl cat is soon to have kittens too, and I look forward to playing with them (unless they get eaten by the boy cat like the last batch).

Saw Franz Ferdinand last weekend. Pretty good, but not as good as The Hives were. Concert review forthcoming. Next concert: The Hold Steady. Mostly, though, I am super excited for Ben Folds. We're going to see him in Fargo near the end of October, weather willing. My tickets showed up in the mail last week, and they came with a warning. I must keep them someplace dark and cool so that they are not damaged by heat or light. Not sure how likely that is to happen, but the tickets are in my new fridge just to be safe. They're in the cheese drawer.

The tickets also tell me that tickets.com and the venue (called - really - The Venue) accept no responsibility if I get hit with flying pucks or balls at the concert. I will take my chances.

Sitting around, watching Raw, recovering from a backache. Felt perfectly fine this morning. Wandered over to the mall at coffee time and noticed my back hurt. By the time I made it to the chiropractor's office at a little after 4:00, I could barely untie my shoes. I got jumped on, felt crunching and popping and tingling to my fingers and toes, and I'm doing a fair bit better now. Going back on Wednesday for another round.

Typing this out on my netbook. I really hope I don't hit the magic keyboard/touchpad combination that triggers the browser's back button. That seems to happen a lot whenever I try to actually do something on here.

Haven't moved over to Wordpress yet. Will do so soon. I think. Maybe. The big driver is that I want a Twitter widget on my site, but I have recently been considering deleting my Twitter account entirely. I probably won't, but I would like to take in less information and waste less time. Something to consider.

Had a quiet weekend. Went to Saskatoon after work on Friday. Got free tickets to see Eagles of Death Metal on Saturday night. It was free, so we felt free to leave if the show sucked (unlikely) or if it was too hot in the Odeon (very likely). The opening act was a band from Toronto called Flash Lightnin'; Dave was sad that it wasn't a blind black man playing the spoons. We saw most of their set, and my impression can be summed up by saying "they sound like a band, all right." I saw nothing to make me like them, but nothing to make me dislike them either. I wasn't offended but I certainly didn't care, either. They did give me a chance to recycle Colin's joke about one guy in the band looking like the Burt's Bees guy, so that was good.

At any rate, with two songs left in their set, Mika wanted to step outside because it was so hot, so we did.  Then she didn't want to go back, so instead we went for beers. Had a very good time there so it was a good evening, all things considered. I did think it was weird, though - when we were leaving the bar, the guy asked us if we'd had a good time. We said he did. "Really?" he replied. It was very odd, like he didn't believe us.

I should remember where I put those two paragraphs as I can always tack them on to my next concert review.

Once again, Raw is doing a great job of making all of Chad's anti-WWE arguments for him. What a stupid show. I really need to find new hobbies. Such as actually playing all the video games I buy? Yes, that sounds like a better plan.

I have all kinds of topics in mind until I actually sit down to write something.

Listening to Neko Case. Going to give blood in an hour or so. Just ate some cereal; might have some more. Yeah, that sounds like a good idea.

Back with Froot Loops. Blogging!

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Tried a new DS game last week. Treasure World. Very interesting. You have this little avatar dude, and you can get costume pieces to dress him/her up, and you can decorate the little field he stands around in. But to get the costumes and decorations, you have to carry your DS around with you. Every time it finds a new Wi-Fi hotspot - whether open or protected - you unlock something. It's a very cool concept and I kind of wish that there was some sort of actual gameplay to it. All you have is this little dress-up thing, like a dumbed-down Animal Crossing - which is in itself, let's be honest, meant for eight-year-olds no matter how often you hilariously make the animals say "in bed."

It is said that the game encourages exploration, which is true, but it specifically encourages urban exploration. You won't find many hotspots in a park or a field or a beach or the woods, and I'm not sure I'd want to hand this off to my hypothetical ten-year-old and tell him to go roam alone downtown for a few hours. It was neat to have to take a different walking route home, and I laughed when I drove down Albert Street and the little chime of the Wi-Fi detector went off fifteen times in as many seconds when I got near a few hotels, but there's really nothing there beyond that.

Ultimately, I don't think Treasure World is anything more than a really compelling technology demo. There's another recent DS game called 101 Explosive Megamix, which is - as you might guess - a collection of 101 games. They're on par with weak Flash browser games, but at least they're games. Put them in Treasure World and unlock them instead of avatar hats, and you might be onto something. I mentioned this to Dave, and he suggested adding a pedometer too. I like that idea a lot. Add some games to interest adults, encourage walking, and let people unlock games by hitting milestones on the pedometer so that they don't necessarily have to walk where hotspots are.

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Upcoming concerts: Eagles of Death Metal, Franz Ferdinand, and The Hold Steady, all at the Odeon in Saskatoon. Can't find anything good playing when Sara's here, which is disappointing. I've even greatly relaxed my standards of "good" and have expanded the search to cover five cities across three provinces. No luck yet. Anyone want to do us a favour and book Hawksley Workman or The Weakerthans for a mid-August prairie tour?

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Got an email last week that Geocities is shutting down. That's kind of sad, in a not-sad-at-all way. For me and many others of my vintage (i.e., those of us who should seriously think about getting a small pair of scissors to trim the increasing number of white hairs out of our beards), Geocities was our first home on the web. Back in my day, we didn't have our Facebooks and MySpaces and Twitters; we had Geocities and if you wanted to put something up on there, you had to learn elementary HTML, and by God, that's the way we liked it!

Well, "liked it" might be a stretch. Anything I had up back then has long since been deleted, which is a blessing for my self-esteem and my career aspirations. My most recent Geocities page is just a link to JamesKalyn.com, which redirects to this here blog. My first Geocities page - from back when you had to pick a city and an open number when you signed up (I think it might even have started back when the site was called Geopages)  - contained a lot of horrible... well, everything. Horrible words, horrible design - if you remember that hideous orangey-pink background colour, I apologize - but at least it was an earnest sort of horrid. I'd much prefer to claim that I was just being hilariously ironic, but no, that was all me.

I'd like to think that I've become a lot wiser at choosing what I do and do not share with the internet in my old age, but I still manage to get myself in trouble every six months or so.

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Watched UFC 100 this weekend, along with what feels like the majority of the planet. Brock Lesnar is the greatest, scariest man on the face of the Earth. Someone that big and strong should not be that fast and agile, but he is. And he keeps getting better. And he knows how to make people pay to see him. I really wonder if there's anyone out there who could beat him today. He'll eventually get old and slow and have grey beard hairs like the rest of us; until then, he's on top of the world (among other things, if his post-fight interview is to be believed).

I was looking forward to Lesnar/Mir II from the day it was first announced and wasn't going to miss it. I had plans to see it if I wound up in Saskatoon that weekend, and plans to see it if I wound up in Regina. And I would have seen it somehow, no matter where I wound up. Scott Argue was at Craven for the Jamboree this weekend, and even he saw the GSP and Lesnar fights in a tent that some dudes had set up. WWE wishes they could get that kind of attention or had that kind of attraction. I'm going to three WWE shows in August (including two TV tapings) and I was more excited to watch Lesnar/Mir on TV. Might have to plan to go to a UFC show one of these years.