Rabbit, Rabbit

Last Thursday night, the CFO went to see Carrie Underwood at the coliseum here in town.  It sure is nice to be able to drive 10 minutes to see a national star perform live.  Her opening act was Hunter Hayes, a young performer who is just getting himself established in country music.  It was quite obvious, due to the high pitched screeches when he took the stage, that his target audience is young and female.  He was a little “boy band-ish” for my taste, but he is definitely a talented musician.

I found it interesting to see the big differences between this crowd and the crowd at the Kenny concert the previous week, even though they are both country stars.  Kenny’s crowd was definitely older, more evenly mixed males to female and a little bit more of a party crowd.  This concert there was heavily skewed towards the ladies, probably 6 females to every 1 male.  There were also a lot of young kids at this show that weren’t at the Kenny show.

Carrie’s show was entertaining, although I felt the numerous outfit changes were unnecessary.  At least the band continued to jam while she was off stage changing.  You definitely get more songs per show from a performer who doesn’t do outfit changes (ie most male performers!).  I have also come to appreciate singers who also play a musical instrument while they perform.  Other wise, I feel like they are trying to do too much running around/dancing to make up for the fact that all they are doing is singing.  Carrie falls into the latter category.

Her crew deserves a lot of credit, they definitely put a lot of effort into the lighting and effects.  Between the three big, movable LED displays and the rolling platforms that the band members were standing on, something was always moving/changing between songs. 

When we first took our seats I pointed out to Karen that there was a rig hanging from the ceiling that looked like it would carry her out over the crowd.  What we didn’t know at the time was that they would actually attach the front section of the stage to that rig.   Carrie and a majority of the band members got on the platform and it lifted them up and out over the crowd.  They performed several songs as they it slowly carried them across the length of the arena and then it rotated and took them back to the stage.  It was an impressive bit of concert engineering and pretty cool to see.  However, I was glad that we were in the stands and not sitting in a floor seat with the stage passing overhead!

 

As the previous three weekends, it rained most of Friday night and was supposed to rain all day Saturday.  We woke up Saturday morning around 7 am and I noticed that it was cloudy, but not raining.  I hustled down to the garage, gathered some tools and the vegetable plants that we  had bought and ran down to the garden to plant them.  I managed to get them all in the ground before it started to rain again.

After that, we went to the gym so that the CFO could take a class with one of her co-workers.  I did my usual Saturday cardio and leg routine and on the last set of leg presses, I was feeling good, so I decided to up the weight a bit.  Big mistake.  Evidently I dipped down too far on the third lift of the set, because I felt and heard a pop in my torso when I started pushing the weight back up.  It was definitely a strange sound/feeling, especially since I was working my legs.  Since I wasn't sure what happened, I ended the work out.  An area on my right side just below the side of my rib cage was a little sore, but I didn’t think too much of it.

After church on Sunday, my side was still a little sore, but I decided to go outside and work in the yard since it was nice outside.  Yet another mistake.  After working for four hours, I went inside and sat down, which is when my side really tightened up and started feeling real sore…  I did some research online (why go to the doctor when you have the internet?) and, evidently, this is a fairly common occurrence with leg presses if you dip down too far and I probably just pulled my intercostal muscle.  In my non-medical opinion, it is either that or I cracked a rib.  Either way, there isn’t much the doctor can do except charge me to poke around.  It looks like I just need to try to take it easy for a couple weeks and give it time to heal…   I’ll give it until next week and see how it feels.  If it still hurts badly, then I'll go to the doctor.

On Tuesday night, despite still being sore, I went back outside to cut the grass. This is peak grass growing season and I have to cut it every 4 days to keep from having to bag it.  While mowing along the east side of our house, I scared the occupants of a nest dug into the ground near my hostas. We have at least 3 young baby rabbits bedding down in the area.  They are still fairly small, smaller than my hand.  While they are cute hopping around, I’m also concerned that they are going to mow down my plants as they eat and grow.   I am not sure what to do with them, so for now I just took a couple photos of them.