Last Saturday, Helena and I went up to Haight Street to get lunch and a hookah. She's been thinking about a second tattoo, so after the hookah, we went to check out Braindrops. I've been considering stretching the front holes in my earlobes back out for a long time so, somewhat spontaneously, I decided to try having the Braindrops piercer put in some 14ga circular barbells. Well, the 14ga rings popped right in like nothing and, before I could even properly feel disappointed that I hadn't felt anything, the piercer was all "hey, you can go a lot bigger and did the guy out front tell you about our glass buyback program...?" So I wound up with a set of clear 8ga plugs which I'll get 50% back for when I stretch to 6ga in a few weeks. I also bought some new jewelry in the 0ga range for the other set of hole, but I haven't taken any pictures of it.

Saturday night, I saw Dream Theater at the Paramount in Oakland. Good gods, it was nice to go to a frikkin' ROCK CONCERT for once. Don't get me wrong, I'm as committed to electronic music as the next guy, and I know first hand that a DJ can get just as much energy flowing with a couple of turntables but a DJ set or even live PA electronica just isn't the same as watching a band. They were really good too, with very tight syncronization with their lights and video. Very cool.