Dan was yelling at me to get some pics up, so you can now find pics of my housewarming party [here](http://baudburn.com/gallery/HousewarmingParty). If you were not there, I wish you were, it was a good time.

I just got home from Ula’s going away party. I am currently feeling slightly saddened by the thought that this party will most likely will be the last dance party I ever get to play my music at. It was a great time while it lasted, but soon Ula will move to law school, Sarah will move to Boston, and Jacob to Austin. Of course there will still be some great people around, but some of my closest Nashville crew are moving on. I did it once, and found it less satisfying. These parties have been more fun than most any party I went to in Austin. I know it is time for them to move on, as I did before, but I reserve the right to at least inwardly feel selfish and not want them to go. On the flip side, Barbara is here and will be spending time with me here in the coming semester. That will of course be marvelous. After that there is a good chance that I will be moving to France for a semester. I guess that there are wonderful things on my horizon as well, but at least in this moment, I want to hold on to what I have for as long as I can. The people around me this summer were all great people and I will miss them dearly. Enough of all that, it was a great time and I will post pictures sometime very soon.

P.S. I’m a little bit inebriated from the chocolate cake shots that Ula and Michelle graciously provided tonight. If there is any obvious blunders in this post, I apologize.

P.P.S. Thanks Ula and Michelle for the party and for especially for buying the ingredients for the chocolate cake shots. You guys rule my world!

Today is the first of a few exciting days to come. In a few short hours, I’ll be on my way to see Tiesto in Atlanta. All that stands in my way now is a review of my [NSREC](http://www.nsrec.com) poster, picking up some friends, and a three hour drive. Look for pictures and a review tommorow.

Then my love comes in Friday. Up anchor, throttle to full, good times ahead.

Yesterday I went to the [pride](http://www.nashvillepride.org/) [parade and festival](http://www.nashvillepride.org/events_2004/festival_2004/festival.htm) at centennial park and it was fabulous. Unfortunately I managed to forget my camera so I did not get any pictures of the parade itself, fortunatly, my friend Kym was going out for a bike ride and was nice enough to bring my camera to me so that I could get pictures of the festival. Overall it was a wonderful time and I’m glad that I was able to attend, thought I didn’t get to stay too long. Check out the photo’s [here](http://baudburn.com/gallery/NashvillePride2004).

Pictures from last nights party are up in the [Nashville Friends](http://baudburn.com/gallery/NashParty) section of my [gallery](http://baudburn.com/gallery/). It was a great time. Thanks to Ula and Michelle for hosting it. A great time was had by everyone there and you all passed this testing round. Keep up the good work kids, you need to get your stamina up if you think you’re gonna hang with me at [Tiesto](http://groovetickets.com/OrderSystem/groove/eventviewqb.asp?Affilid=93&EventsID=9809&PGName=Liquified).

Well, I do like to dance, but Kompressor does not…

>Here are pills for rave power
You eat and feel good
Go into the dance club
And go on to the floor
DJ starts the music
Kompressor lock the door
People start to drinking
They go into a trance
Kompressor hate them all
Because Kompressor does not dance

>Kompressor does not dance
Kompressor does not dance

>You do not use a Macintosh
instead you use a Tandy
Kompressor break your glowstick
Kompressor eat your candy
Kompressor open jaws
Kompressor release ants
Kompressor watch you scream
Because Kompressor does not dance

>Kompressor does not dance
Kompressor does not dance

>You like to eat the rave drugs
You get more energy
You think it’s worth the money
But we do not agree
We make pill of poison
With snuffing stimulants
Kompressor watch you die
Because Kompressor does not dance

*Lyrics from lyricsdepot.com*

Check out the mp3 at [kompressormusic](http://www.iuma.com/IUMA/Bands/kompressormusic/).

**Update:** The original post did not mention my buddy nox who originally sent me this link. Full credit for passing it on goes to [noxfu](http://www.livejournal.com/users/noxfu/). Sorry about that.

Today was hectic, but highly entertaining. My roommate Mike invited me to come out on the lake to celebrate Memorial day on an island he had secured for the day. I met up with everyone at the dock around 12:30 and we headed out to the island to relax. I had only expected to stay for a little while as i was supposed to meet up with Sarah, Jacob, Ula, and company for a party around 2:30ish, but was having such a great time that I asked Mike how he felt about entertaining a few extra people. He was more than happy to pick them up at the dock and so Jacob and Ula came to join us. We all had a wonderful time relaxing in the sun, riding around in Mike’s excellent [boat](http://www.rinkerboats.com), playing with the dogs, eating too much food, and chatting.

I also had the opportunity to go water-skiing which I have not been able to do for many years. It took me a few tries, but I was able to get up slalom and ride around for some time, however this presented at least two problems. The first was that the water was extremely choppy which made it difficult to get up and more difficult to stay up. The second and potentially worse part was that I did not have my glasses in (and on contacts) so not only were the waves large, but I could not see or anticipate them in any way. This made it difficult to get around, but I managed to stay on my feet for some time. Despite the treacherous waves, I started to carve around and go outside of the wake which was not a big deal. It wasn’t until I got a bit too confident that I fell. I had already proven to myself that despite being blind I could successfully move in and out of the wake as I please, so I thought I’d start carving harder. I carved out till I was quite a distance from the boat and then cut hard to see how fast I could get going. As I picked up speed I crossed over the wake of the boat (not being able to see still) and that’s all she wrote. Went down hard, slid across the water for some time, and had a great time doing it.

Later on in the evening, I got to hang out with Jeff, McCall, and a few other party guests. It was a wonderful evening to cap off a great day. Life here in Nashville sure can be great. Perfect weather, a beautiful lake surrounded in every direction by luscious trees and vegetation, and some good friends.

I’ve never been a huge fan of raver kiddies. I don’t have a problem with them, and of course they add a certain ambiance in the proper enviroment, but if you wanted me to be honest, I’d tell you that my idea of the perfect club is upscale but not snooty or pretentious. The sort of club people are free to wear interesting and unique clothes, but I still like the concept of maintaining a certain level of (for the lack of a better word) “classiness”.

That notwithstanding, I have to admit it, as much as I would like clubs to be a upscale and “bourge” as a certain faction of my friends call it, the whole concept of glowsticks on strings (colloquially referred to as “spinning strings”) is fascinating to me. When you see it happening it seems like some sort of impossibility. The sheer dynamics of making weights on a string spin through the same space is at a first glance simplistic, but when you stop to think about the relatively complex timing required to allow two of these objects to seemingly occupy the same space, the concept becomes more interesting. Of course adding to that the sheer “sparkly factor” of colored lights (or more traditionally fire) streaking in circular motions at very close proximity a dancing body is just the icing on the cake.

Last night, [Lea](http://www.livejournal.com/users/leeeaaaaaa) had a birthday party (Happy Birthday Lea!!) at her place. It was an interesting mix of people to start with (half raver kids from her Katatonic days) and half McGill friends. At some point the McGill came out in the Vandy kids and massive arguments that I didn’t care to follow broke out. Being more interested in having fun at the party I decided to go see what the raver kids were doing. They were playing with glowsticks as was to be expected. As some point I was asked if I could “spin strings” to which I replied, “I can swing them in circles”. So they handed them to me and I started to play. It was like something had possessed me. I was almost immediately able to do what they called the [”butterfly”](http://www.homeofpoi.com/lessons/poi_lessons.php?lesson=6) and the [”double wave”](http://www.homeofpoi.com/lessons/poi_lessons.php?lesson=11). Now I have played with them previously a few times when waiting for Lea to get ready, but never with any success, so I’m not sure what happened exactly. I just tried to watch their hand motions and mimic them, essentially ignoring the glowsticks altogether and it just came together. Noticing my success, they began to teach me more and more tricks, which by in large I found myself succeeding at. They were more than happy to keep showing me tricks, but did comment a few times at the length of time it took them to learn these tricks that I was (for whatever reason) just picking up and succeeding at. That being said, I’m sure my form was sloppy and it didn’t really look very good, but I wasn’t tangling up the ropes and they did keep spinning, so I guess to them that counts as a success.

After we all got tired of that, I hung out with McCall and Steven and chatted while I played laptop DJ on the back porch. It was a bit of a fight between music genre’s. Lea’s friends are much more a fan of a particular form of electronic music that is only mildly interesting to me. I’m not sure what genre to classify it in exactly, but its much more simplistic than the electronic music I get into. Usually it just involves a simple relatively shallow beat with lots of “clicks” and some song sample played back at twice the speed to create a noticeable increase in pitch (aka the chipmunk effect). At some point I talked with McCall about how as a general rule of thumb, I like my electronic music to have a bit more texture and a richer, more layered sound to it than is characteristic of that sort of music.

That pretty much summarizes the night. I found out that I have a hidden inner raver, played with some string, and chatted with friends. Overall, a very successful Saturday night.

After the harrowing experience that was getting my hair cut (see post below), I met up with Lea and Steven because she invited me to go to Zootopia. We met up with McCall, Jeff, Claire, and Ryan Rexxoff (I don’t know how to spell his name) at the Calypso on Thompson lane for some good eats before the show. Relaxing with friends is always a good time.

We got to the show right as it was opening (Lea very much wanted to be there right on time because of all the activities that were there) and ran into a small block. We had seven people, four free tickets and two pre-purchased tickets. Ryan was a last minute addition and was consequently going to just buy one at the door. When we got there, Ryan was informed that they had totally sold out and he could not get in. We were all disappointed and Ryan was getting ready to leave when Lea was able to get the lady to let him in. It’s nice to know connected people sometimes!

The entertainment was fun, we played that game where you hit a lever and try to ring the bell. It is not easy to do. In fact, I don’t believe anyone rang the bell the entire night. What a Jip!

Jeff and I duked it out in the boxing ring. The giant inflatable boxing ring with giant gloves twice the size of my head. That was a great time. I got him with a few good jabs to the face and he gave me the 1..2 combo more than a few times. We had a few drinks (grey goose apparently had donated over $5000 in alcohol to the event so we all had a few.

While we drank we watched this guy put a screwdriver into his nose. He was one hell of a sideshow freak. We also watched some girls do the raver strings tricks with fire balls. I was really impressed.

There was a dancing group called “panty raid” that did can can and other sweet dances on stage. It sure was cool. There’s something very sexy about girls dancing.

That covers most of the interesting things that I can remember. We all danced alot and had a great time. I can’t wait to go back next year.

Thanks Lea!