I got into Laramie after two days of driving. It wasn’t terrible, but who wants to drive two days straight? Truckers, I guess. Anyhow, we got into town and relaxed for a while. All of us went out to a pizza place (I think Grand Ave. Pizza) that had a good Thai pizza. I started reading for a little bit when we got home and fell asleep at about 7:30. Luckily Evan saved me from my boringness and woke me up asking if I wanted to go out for a beer.

Thoroughly bundled up (after all it was about 5 or 10 degrees out when we left), we headed to Altitude. It’s a nice microbrewery and it’s more of a restaurant with a bar attached. There wasn’t too much going on there, so Evan suggested we go to the Buckhorn bar. It was pretty busy there and they had a “dj” of sorts that was blaring the most treble-high songs way too loud. I saw Ray from Teenage Bottlerocket walk in and so I said hi and his brother Brandon came over and I talked to him for a while. I’m trying to find flight out of Denver so I can stay here and see them play/record a music video for In the Basement, a song off of their new album, Warning Device. Brandon actually had a few copies with him so, I bought one and last night before I went to sleep I gave it a listen.

It’s a great album. Kody’s songs are always good, and everything was recorded damn near perfectly. But to me the best parts of the album were the songs Ray sang. For some reason, I just really like them more and even though they can be really simple and not have a whole lot of lyrics in them (like Go Away, etc.), I think there’s almost more to them. On Warning Device, it’s apparent they’re written even better songs. The most standout song I think is probably Pacemaker. Ray sings, it has an awesome bass line and it’s just great. I suppose I could really do it justice by describing it a lot better, but I’ll leave that for another time. I’ll just say that it’s a great album, and they’re getting better and better with each album they put out. I remember when Evan told me about them, when they hadn’t put Total out yet, and Jeff and I were emailing them. We had some stupid idea that maybe we could hang with them musically, but damn, that’s proven to be impossible, not just because of our lack of talent, but these guys are some great musicians, and great song writers.

Like I said earlier, it was cold out last night. But when I woke up this morning at 5 a.m., thanks to my sister’s dog, Duncan, it was -8 outside. I had left my laptop charger in the car, so I threw on a coat and went to get it, and the cold just stabbed at me. It was a sharp, sharp cold. The charger had frozen and the cords were stiff. The high today is supposed to be 18. Fahrenheit, not Celsius. Evan and I are going to rent some skis for the week and go up to Happy Jack outside of town and attempt some cross country skiing. I’m excited to do something new and to get out in the snow. Here’s what weather.com said about today’s weather: “Mostly sunny. Cold. Wind chills approaching -10F. High 18F. Winds W at 10 to 20 mph.”

Should be fun. And cold. More to come later today.