Put It On Song Number 29

Sometimes I have days that don't get recorded in my memory as events and conversations and actions and reactions, only as music.  It seems to happen to me more and more lately.  (See:  New Jersey and "Free Fallin'").  This weekend falls into that category, and it makes it kind of hard to type out anything of substance, because to me it will always be a playlist, not a journal entry.  It begins with a 7th grader's rap about big women, takes a detour through a Two Cow Garage with a Patty Hurst Shifter and some Social Distortion and a whole lot of Cross Canadian Ragweed, includes some concerns that I'll never hear raindrops without getting "Thorn in My Pride" stuck in my head, intertwines hockey and "Where The Streets Have No Name", and generally adds up to a really good time (just for fun).

Lots of stuff going on this weekend.  I had dinner with Wags and Pipes on Friday night, where I think I saw Wags smile more than I've seen him smile in the last five years, total.  Then the race team had a group outing to see the Rockford IceHogs' last game of the regular season on Saturday night.  Unfortunately the IceHogs didn't show up in as great of a force as we did. 

We started with a backyard cookout.  We ate brats and drank some beers and did some bench racing, mostly gossiping about the cancelation at Eldora due to the adverse track conditions (which finally got DuMom out of the funk of not celebrating Easter at the Big E like all those years in my childhood) and giving our Driver Development Program some grief for racing a road course.

Then we hit the MetroCentre for some really really terrible hockey.

And back to the house for a bonfire, more video games, and more lies.

I had a visitor this weekend, a Player To Be Named at a Later Date due to the following:  1.) So many of you in my racing life will recognize him that I feel really strange assigning a fake name to him but I'll still never type out his real name here, and also 2.) He hasn't done anything in my presence to earn a funny and/or embarrassing name yet and I feel like he deserves that chance instead of getting something random and respectable.

In the past week and a half, I've gotten more messages from him than I can count that contain nothing but these 2 characters:

:/

It's apparently a half-smirk-smile-frown sort of thing.  I think what he's usually trying to say is "Seriously, that was hilarious but I am not going to reward your smart-assery and validate you by laughing at it."   Because. Well.  It usually follows a statement on my end that deserves a response like that. 

Anyway.  It was really fun to find out what :/ looks like on his real face.

Potential interpretations of that expression:

• You call this a hockey game?
• I think your dad is hitting on me.
• I can't believe you yelled "HEY ROB GREAT TO SEE YOU AGAIN" at the guy pissing right next to my truck because he couldn't see us sitting in it.
• Seriously, do you even know what hockey is supposed to look like?  THIS IS NOT HOCKEY.

He hit the interstate for the long drive home this afternoon.  Judging by my emails, there are a couple of you expecting this post to contain more dirt, but you know what, guys?  I have like 18 GB of music to buy before I fall asleep tonight.  And I can't blow all of my blackmail material before I really need it.

P.S.  IceHogs.  Seriously.  That sucked.