It's summer. Oh yeah, baby.

Summertiiiiiime... and the livin' is eeeeeeeasyyyyyy...

Indeed it is summertime. And indeed, the livin' is easy.

Tomorrow I'm off to Europe for a couple of weeks. I'll either be in France, or within about 20 km of it. So I just tell people I'm going to France and leave it at that.

A couple of days ago, when I tried to reserve a spot on a tour at CERN, the website told me everything was booked up tighter than a nun's hoo-ha. So I emailed them and asked, "Hey, buckaroo, can you put me on a waiting list, at least?" Because there was NO GOD DAMN WAY that I'd go all the way to Geneva and not get on that tour. I received a reply this morning cheerily telling me I was on the 11am tour on the 14th. I've been stoked as hell since then, obviously, because I am a fucking nerd.

I still can't decide whether to pack my laptop or not. I'm going to pick up one of those travel-plug-adapter dealies today, and I'm going to take my iPod Touch and my cell phone (I'll buy a SIM card on it, and it'll have The Internets on it, because it's cheap as hell in Europe). Honestly, I don't think I need my laptop. That's it, I'm not bringing it.

All the places I'm staying at are through Airbnb. Most are full apartments; I splurged in Geneva and have a rooftop penthouse all to myself. Because I'm a god damn baller.

Most of this trip is solo, but I'm meeting up with an old university pal in Luxembourg for a couple of days. There happens to be a free all-day rock music festival in a public park in town for one of those days, so, hooray for that! Plans, made.

Speaking of rock music, I saw Rush a couple of weeks ago at the ACC. They played their songs in reverse chronological order, because obviously they would. For the first half of the show, though, I was mostly sitting there thinking, "Um, I don't really know this song. It's decent, I guess, but totally alien to me. And, my goodness, those guys are talented musicians." Then, after the intermission, it was all hits-and-nerdery to the very end. The air-drummers in the first few rows on the floor were really something; they knew every note to every song, no matter how convoluted or obscure.

At the show, my friend and I were discussing just how weird it is for Rush to have been so successful. Their biggest hits are really complicated, both musically and lyrically, and have truly bizarre structures; it's like they were unable, for about a decade, to write a typical verse-chorus-verse song. (Which is great, obviously.) But it still boggles my mind that a song like "Red Barchetta" was ever popular -- or, of course, that albums containing songs that were the entire length of a side of an LP sold in the millions.

I guess the moral of the story is that there are a hell of a lot of weirdos out there, so you might as well just let your freak flag fly.