The Dog Ate My Concerts....

And I couldn't be happier about it.

WRUR played a Carbon Leaf song early last week, which reminded me to check when they'd be on tour near here. Didn't have to: Scott Regan came out of the song announcing that they'd be in Rochester on the evening of April 27th, and near Ithaca the night of the 28th. (Oh, and at some gig in Buffalo the night before those two.)

It's been years- almost five, to be precise- since I last saw them. At a free-ish concert in downtown Rochester with Emily and Cameron and two Buffalo friends who met us for Dino and tunes by Leaf opening for Great Big Sea.  Alan and the headliners have split up, but Barry and the boys are still going strong, with at least two albums of songs since 2013.  I checked around to see if friends wanted to go to the one here downtown, now, three nights ago.

In the end, though, I was the one who didn't- because Ebony had her Episode on Thursday morning, and I'd been up since before 5 a.m. worrying about her, taking her with Eleanor to the vet, and still wanting to check up on her. My Thursday workday wasn't bad- just one mid-afternoon court hearing- but by the time came that I had to make the gametime decision about heading back downtown, I said no. Maybe tomorrow at a Rochester venue I knew (under previous ownership) far better.

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Nope, not that, either.

Friday, the dog was still shaky. Woke around 5, again experiencing the vertigo symptoms, which she took out, #1, on my office carpet and #2, right before I left for Rochester, on the dining room hardwood floor. But by the latter, she was alert again and had her appetite back (hence the #2), and I didn't feel bad leaving her for the morning. All I had out of town was a 10 a.m. appointment with one client and a need to file some already-signed stuff for another....

Except Mister 10 AM turned out to be Mister 3:30 PM. I did get my stuff filed in between, and got other work done while I was waiting for him, but I could not imagine staying there past the end of the workday, driving to an 8 PM concert which probably had an opening act, and likely not getting home before midnight.

So I didn't.  Got home round 6:30, roughly 12 hours after I left home- and the dog was fine. Also, my closing was fine- the one here in Buffalo I got referred in and did virtually nothing for. Coworkers covered it in my absence, because they're awesome that way. We finished the original Star Wars  movie in the new setup, which visually was fine but was starting to raise audio questions with the missus.... which we resolved over the next two days.

We also resolved the issue of Carbon Leaf. I did not see them in the 585 that night, and I was not seeing them in the 607 last night.  But it finally occurred to me, duh. The band is from Virginia. I KNOW people in Virginia- some quite well. And they're playing in and near there, like, a lot- two weekends from now in Baltimore and Leesburg, in July in Richmond, and in October in Arlington. So I and/or we will work them into our schedule to go see the kids down there for the first time on one or the other of those times.

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And on the sabbath day, he rested. 

A good twelve hours in the rack (minus a half hour for feeding, itself minus any vertigo from or cleaning-up after the dog, whose appetite and attitude both seemed immensely improved).  Eleanor had already been up and atom well before I finally was, and she was well into the process of replacing the previous weekend's sound system.  It was fine by me, but she had actual ears that work, and found that for an extra Benjamin, we could have a better soundbar in front of the audio zone and actual speakers behind or around us. So she went off to sample and purchase; I stayed home (until I went to my office for the first time in two days) to pack up the old one to return.  They gave us a 15-day no-questions-asked return period, and it would be easy enough to return the one after buying and connecting the second.

Buying is easy; connecting is hard.

The new speakers connected to a remote receiver by traditional speaker wire, but the connection to the rest of the audio is wireless- bluetooth, to be precise.  The manual said, pair the speakers by pressing the VOL button on your remote until MAGIC CODE appears. Only it didn't. I tried other buttons on the remote- they generated codes, but not a pairing one.  Finally, it was time to leave; I'd been given a free-ish ticket to the new Avengers  movie and took three hours out of Saturday to wait for and eventually watch it. (It will get its own post here, but it's well done, filled with laughs and sads.)  I picked up Chinese on the way home, we finished watching Coco minus a soundbar, and resolved to regroup this morning.

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Sunday is usually Dog Park Day, and when puppy was again her old self, we did head over for a chilly  but nice time. When we got home, Eleanor was on the phone and chat lines with Best Buy support about the pairing issue- their only solution was to repack the entire thing and take it back in case it was a hardware problem.

Ultimately, it wasn't; it was an age issue.  Remember that instruction: pair the speakers by pressing the VOL button on your remote until MAGIC CODE appears. Now. To anyone over the age of 35 who went to a public school, press means PRESS. But to anyone UNDER the age of 35, a button is a joystick and you intuitively ask, "Which way? Straight down, forward, back, left or right?"

The answer is, LEFT. And once we finally figured THAT out, and I pressed the VOL button to the left, the MAGIC CODE appeared, the speakers were magically connected, and we have TOUCHED THE SOUND!  Eleanor tried out classical things; I went with Pete Townshend and, eventually, we both settled on Who's Next. I don't hear what she does, but I hear more than I did from even the previous soundbar.  After a run to return the first attempt and a  Blu-ray purchase of Loving Vincent, we've done even  more experimenting with the limits of this new audio- including dancing with the evil older cat to the finale of Local Hero.  I think we're set for quite some time now.

The Bills got their new stock of players for the coming year. The Sabres won the draft lottery and hopefully won't fuck it up. And the Mets won two out of three in San Diego, including today when their best hitter deposited a home run in the enemy bullpen's garbage can.

It's all good.  It SOUNDS good.