So last night, Vienna Teng was playing Boston, with her latest band, which consists of herself and Alex Wong.

I've been a VT fan since Kellnerin suggested her to me. I felt kinda bad walking past her swag table in the lobby without buying anything, because I have all 4 of her CDs and a tote bag and toxicfur has a t-shirt. The concert was fun, including half a dozen songs from her latest album, Inland Territories, which came out last spring. They also covered a Radiohead song, as a kind of a quasi-encore. Actual encores being impractical since they were the first of two bands on the bill.

The second half of the concert was Over the Rhine, which I was only dimly aware of before. Really cool country-rock-blues-fusion kind of a sound. This was their 20th anniversary tour, mixed in with their annual holiday tour. They played what I think I recall aethucyn saying is the only Christmas song he can stand, with the title All I ever get for Christmas is Blue.

Oh, and Alex Wong was playing the oddest instrument. Well, as Kellnerin said, he was playing fifteen instruments all at once, one with each hand. This includes a cajon (aka "box") which one pounds on with hands, sticks, etc. to make percussive noises. The waterphone  was a bell-shaped object played with a violin bow, which made atonal screeching noises. Well, it would for anybody else. For him, it fit in with the music very nicely. During the break Kellnerin poked around with her iPhone (or is it D's?) and found on wikipedia an article about the instrument, including a picture of Alex Wong playing it.

There used to be a meme, back in the day, that went like this: "if you look up clumsy in the dictionary, you'll see a picture of me." Well, we looked up the instrument in wikipedia, and there was a picture of the guy we'd just seen playing the damn thing. There has to be a Latin phrase to describe this experience.

We had dinner before the show at india samraat, which was fun. D and Aethucyn had vindaloo and pronounced it adequately hot, but not by any means the hottest they'd ever eaten.

This afternoon I baked oatmeal cookies and made eggnog lattes to eat with the warm cookies.

I haven't touched my nano since December 1, even though it's in a state of being perhaps 3/4 of the way through the current draft, and needs finishing before I forget what I was doing.

Oh, and the back porch is done. The painter came on Friday and finished the deck and the ceiling of the new overhead roof thing, and primed the risers and bannister railing and such. He'll be back Monday, weather permitting, to do the top coat, and to attempt to repair the dog's footprints in the tacky deck stain/finish. I came around the corner just in time to see Rocky carefully ducking under the "WET PAINT" tape and starting up the stairs. He's so confused by the idea of going in the front door.

Tomorrow is the second sunday in Advent already. Just under 3 weeks left before Christmas. We're staying here this year over the holidays. That worked well, having a nice dinner for just the two of us, at Thanksgiving. And all the nephews and nieces and my one brother who's teaching have spring break the same week in March, so we're doing the family get-together for my side of things then. And toxicfur's sisters-in-law (two of them) are spawning in the spring and summer, so we'll probably be wilting in the NC heat in July or so.

Go read, listen to, watch, or otherwise enjoy the WTFC entries.