Congratulations Jolayne! This past weekend I made a trip back to Columbus so that I could attend my girlfriend’s graduation ceremony. I almost didn’t make it as a delayed flight caused me to miss my connection in Chicago and resulted in an overnight stay at the always lovely airport Hilton Days Inn. My early am flight got into Columbus at 9:05 and graduation began at 9:30 but I managed to make it. Hard as it may be to believe, this was my first time ever being in the stadium, even after spending almost 5 years at OSU. Christopher Reeve was the commencement speaker, and did an excellent job. The rest of the weekend was great too, and I was glad to get a chance to see people back there.

The excitement didn’t stop after I got back though, since Monday night the Dismemberment Plan brought the rock to the Granada theater in Lawrence. Apparently, on their “farewell tour” they’ve been doing all requests at shows rather than having a setlist. The show ended up being over an hour and a half of every single Plan song I had been hoping to hear. It was amazing. They were able to play every song requested from any of their albums, only turning down one. (“One Too Many Blows to the Head”, due to not having a trombone with them.) All the D-Plan trademarks were included, like the audience-on-stage-dance-a-thon during “Ice of Boston”, closing with “Ok, Joke’s Over”, and Travis deftly slipping bits of other artists songs into the middle of some of theirs. Hard to imagine why a band who’s still clearly at the peak of their live playing ability would want to disband, but I’m just glad I got to catch this show. It was easily the best show of theirs that I’ve been to. After getting back from Lawrence at 3am I was pretty much dead all day at work yesterday, but it was completely worth it.