Sorry about the extended absence. I'm in the process of buying a house with my girlfriend and it has taken most of my spare time and all my spare energy, so no posting here. On top of that, we're trying to keep to a budget to go with the house, so the number of concerts and other things I could report on that I go to is diminished.

So over the next few weeks you might get some posts on how the Oakland/Berkeley part of the East Bay is different from the Sunnyvale part of Silicon Valley.

On Sunday, I was lucky enough to attend a great jam locally. I've been taking a Tuesday night western swing jam class that clashes with the Tuesday night "garage" bluegrass jam I've been going to. One of the fiddle players in that class also regularly goes to the Tuesday night jam and he felt like he was missing the bluegrass experience so he invited all the regulars he knew to his house on Sunday. There was some good food, beer and 4+ hours of solid jamming. We had at least 3 of every instrument but fiddle and dobro, but the acoustics were still OK and there were lots of great amateurs to listen two. A couple of the people I know from the Tuesday jam have even gone far enough to start a band of their own. We got to hear them signing together on Sunday and they sounded great so I'm really looking forward to when they start gigging.

In other news, it looks like I made a blogroll even though I've only posted a few times and probably don't have a lot of general interest stuff. The link is from Sarah, who you might notice on my small list of links to the left. She is an old friend from back in Edmonton, which goes to explain why she linked here, I guess.