Sometimes you KICK

Sometimes you get kicked. And on Thursday night, Lee and I kicked it with my all time favorite band, INXS. I heart INXS. From the first time I heard Michael Hutchence's voice, I knew I could only be a groupie for one band (okay - there was my brief groupie stint with Brett Michaels and Poison, but we all need to forget about that). Scott Stapp, former lead singer for Creed, opened for them. I don't like his music, but he's strangely attractive to me for some reason. It's like when you're in the music store and you make a wrong turn and suddenly you're lost in the indie section and there's that slightly grungy-looking guy in there and even though it's in the middle of summer he's still wearing some piece of leather clothing. There's also some sort of a tattoo involved - but not a prison tat - it's more like a giant cross on his shoulder or something. He's like the male version of Watts from Some Kind of Wonderful. But you know that nothing will ever happen between you and indie-listening-non-prision-tat guy because I.L.N.P.T guys never go out with girls who have ever owned an N*Sync album. Plus, I'm married.

Back to INXS. I was really expecting my heart to leap out of my chest when they took the stage, but there was one thing missing - Michael. As most of you know, Michael died in 1997 and through a tragic series of events (a reality TV show) the band replaced him. Replaced him. Brings tears. Now they have this other kid, JD, singing and it's not the same. Music was still good and I wanted to love it, but it was a little hard not to notice that they'd done a quick switch-a-roo with the lead singer.

On Saturday, we got new outdoor patio furniture, a housewarming gift from Mom and Dad. We got two chairs, two ottomans and a table to hold the scrabble board and wine. Now our little sanctuary is complete. We're thinking about having cable wired out to the patio so that we can watch college football down there in the fall, but now that I'm thinking about it, I don't want our neighbors to hear Lee scream profanities when a Vols game starts to go south. I may just tell people he has Turrets. We also got our new Riddling Rack in straight from San Francisco. Like it? It's going to take some time to fill it out, but I think it fits nicely in our dining room.

On Sunday night, we hosted our friends, Mike and Shanon, for dinner. Since it was a special holiday weekend, I made ice cream. That's right - Martha is taking it to a whole new level and making her own ice cream now. Beth and Elizabeth gave me an ice cream maker for a wedding shower gift and I decided to put it to use. I made vanilla-lemon frozen yogurt. I was a little apprehensive making our guests our guinea pigs, but it turned out pretty good. My parents used to make peach ice cream on the Fourth so I think I'll start a new tradition.

Due to the extreme heat and shedding, we shaved our 2 big dogs. I couldn't make it up the stairs I was laughing so hard when I saw them the first time. Through the laughter and the tears, I said "Morgan, what happened to your hair?!!". Her ears slicked back and she gave me her best "why do you hate me?" look (that look is captured in the photo below). Then I told her that God punished her for being a bad dog by making her hair fall out. I don't know if she believed me, but it's fun to scare them every once in a while.