Bullet points from the past two weeks.

I don't have time to blog properly right now, as I'm off to Pittsburgh to play at the Jubilee 2007 conference. I have had one of the strangest, most adventure-filled months of my life so far. Here are some of the alternately funny and sobering moments, in no particular order-- and now in bullet point form! In the past two weeks, I:

• had two separate people think I was British (one because of the coat I was wearing)
• had three or four different people refer to Tennessee as "the midwest"
• mugged a thief (more on this later)
• toured Apple, Inc. headquarters at night
  
• played a wine party in California's wine country where, strangely, most of the wine seemed to be from Argentina
• ate half of the brie available at said wine party
• repeatedly defended Yuba City against mockery (my argument: YC has great people and great prunes!)
• was told that I sound like Green Day (note: I do not sound like Green Day)
• bought a Superdrag record at Amoeba Music
• encountered several bizarre incidents of automotive rudeness in San Francisco, including a car honking at me repeatedly for sitting in my parked car because they wanted my spot
• got creeped out by the Haight-Ashbury district (mainly because it seemed that every time I glanced around, people were staring at me-- am I paranoid?)
• laughed at seeing a McDonald's at the end of Haight (I guess hippies need Big Macs too)
• found out that people in the Bay Area think they live in "northern California" (though they clearly live right in the middle of the state)
• played a concert in a Jewish temple
• experienced the beautiful Sierra Nevada mountains
• ate at a late-night vegetarian restaurant in Reno
• shared hotel premises with Mel Gibson in Guatemala (though I never saw him)
• developed an irrational fear of Geoff Moore (I'm not kidding about this) and avoided him at all costs
• stood in a very small home with dirt floors where two adults and ten children live
• realized that my hotel in Reno didn't have HBO because watching movies cuts down on gamblin' time
• experienced how a government agency (the TSA) can practically cripple an organization: the San Jose airport.
• had dinner and Belgian ale with a Senior Engineer Scientist who is working on the iPhone.
• had a wireless mic die on me in the middle of a concert after I had left a comment on Bob Kauflin's blog earlier that day roundly condemning wireless mics and praising wired mics
• stayed in an appropriately leopard print-themed hotel room in Cupertino
• forgot to refill my gas tank before returning my rental. An expensive mistake.
• had an amazing lunch in Cupertino with some of the best beef I've had in a long time

Thanks to everyone who came out to these concerts, I had a truly amazing time!