Well I survived my first Jim Beam Homegrown on the waterfront yesterday. Amanda and I spent most, well in fact all, of the time at the Rock stage. We managed to get great seats directly opposite the stage and apart from Amanda having “Smelly Man” next to her for a while they were great seats.

The Bands…

First up were Shotgun Alley. Haven’t heard much from them before but enjoyed them. Then were The Thomas Oliver Band, really enjoyed them, so much that I have just purchased their album from iTunes.

Next up were The Checks, great energy and although I didn’t know many, if any, our their songs enjoyed them.

Then came I guess what you would call the first of the big names, in OpShop. Great band, whom I had heard live before and wasn’t impressed, but they put on a great show and really interacted well with the now growing crowd.

The Feelers were next up, and to be honest while the music was good they seem a bit flat after OpShop. They had little or no interaction with the crowd and seemed to just go through the motions of playing their set and buggering off.

Not one of my favorites were next, Blacklist (aka Blindspot). The first couple of songs are what I would describe as mindless noise, but once they played something I knew I enjoyed them. They do however seem pretty bitter about not being able to call themselves Blindspot, and referred to it numerous times during their set.

Shihad… What else do you say. Fricken amazing live. Not hard to see why they are NZ’s top rock band. Very polished and great interaction with the by now huge crowd. This is the first time I have seen them live. I really loved the bit when the lead singer asked the crowd who are younger than 22 to put up their hands…. As the song “Screwtop” was older than them. Love it.

The biggest comment I would make is… Sound Engineers of NZ… Please please do some work on mixing the vocals correctly! Just about every band prior to Shihad, who had their own engineer, you couldn’t hear the vocals at all.

So thanks Amanda for my Xmas pressie, I had a great day.

Just watched “A Shocking Reminder” on PrimeTV.

While I was in Chch on Feb 22nd, I was able to return to a safe dry warm and most of all stable house in Wellington.

I have a huge amount of respect for you all in Chch living through this on a daily basis. Stay strong and know that you can and will rebuild and once again make Chch the great city that it once was.

I really want to say more but I am a bit lost for words.

Suddenly things with Census have taken off. I just seem to go from meeting to meeting at the moment. Not much time to get some actual work done. But I guess that’s what happens on the big jobs.

In fact life as a whole seems very busy at the moment. With the move a couple of weeks back I am still sorting through boxes and trying to find places for everything. I do however need to be a bit more ruthless when sorting things out and chuck out a lot of the crap that I really don’t need to hold onto. Good old TradeMe might get a workout I feel, might as well makes some $$ selling my junk!

So the boys and I are all moved into our new place, and so far everything is going great.

The boys have settled in nicely and so has Doris. Just got a final bit of cleaning to do at the old house before handing the keys back next week. Then I guess the fun will begin to see if I get my bond back, and given the interesting discussion I had on the phone with the landlord earlier this week I’m guessing it’s going to be a mission.

I’ll post some pictures of the new place once I get my shite together and take some

Hope everyone had a great night… And for those that went wild.. I am typing this very quietly!!