The second day of ACL was just as good as the first. Since our first show wasn't until 1:00, we picked up lunch. Selina had a chicken florentine pita wrap from Doc Green's while I had a smoked turkey wrap from Thistle Cafe. I have to say that I was a little disappointed in my wrap -- too little food for the price. Hel;, I could have made it at home. The Old 97's (4/5 stars) started the day off right by rocking AT&T stage. Sharon Jones (3.5/5 stars) put on a pretty good show, but we were too busy trying to stay in our tiny patch of shade off to the side to really enjoy it. We took in Black Joe Lewis (4/5 stars) while we ate dinner. Chopped beef sandwich from Stubbs for me and an avo-chicken combo cone for Selina. We met a guy at our table that apparently was so drunk last night that he was trying to jack someone for their bike so that he could go to Wendy's and ended up running into a tree. Haha.

We started the day with Ben Cyllus (3.5/5 stars) before we filled our water bottles and headed over to Asleep At The Wheel (4/5 stars). For lunch I had a Avo-Chicken Combo Cone from Hudson's on the Bend (freakin' delicious) while Selina enjoyed a turkey burger from P. Terry's. After lunch we listened to Jakob Dylan and the Gold Mountain Rebels (3/5 stars -- good music, but he didn't put on much of a show as far as I was concerned). We headed across the park to see Del tha Funky Homosapien (4.5/5 stars), then broke for dinner. I snagged a personal pepperoni pizza from Austin's Pizza and Selina got chicken and cheese flautas from Saba Blue Water Cafe. We staked out a spot in front of the AMD stage, ate our dinner and waited for N.E.R.D. to come on. While we were waiting, we ran into Chris and Jorge. N.E.R.D. (5/5 stars) was the highlight of my night. Pharrell and the rest of the guys know how to put on a show, although they picked some ugly girls to get up on stage with them. One of them was shaking her butt (it was a lot of it, and not in a good way).

We tried staying for The Mars Volta, but by that time the smell of cigarette smoke and weed had taken over (not to mention that we were both pretty damn tired), so we left after only half an hour of their show. I give them 3.5/5 stars, and most of that was for the big hair.

So the surprise band of the day? Gogol Bordello (4/5 stars), who put on a great show. Wow, I had no idea that I liked gypsy punk music!

Today's schedule:

Old 97's
Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings
Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears
John Fogerty
Beck

Looks like it's gonna be another long day. Man, my sock tan is going to be outrageous...

Selina and I have our "ACL Survival Packs" ready to go and we're about to head to Zilker Park to pick up our 3-day wristbands. This will be our first time as 3-day'ers and we are planning on being there practically all day today, so we'll see how we fare. I expect that we'll be stinky and tired, but I'm really looking forward to the music and the food!

Here are the bands we are planning to see today (we have two time slots with scheduling conflicts, one at about 2:30 and the other at about 8:30):

Ben Cyllus
Asleep At The Wheel
Vampire Weekend / Jakob Dylan / The Freddy Jones Band
Jamie Lidell
N.E.R.D.
The Mars Volta / Manu Chao

Yes, we ended up taking Dakota home on Tuesday. I picked her up Tuesday afternoon after she was spayed at TLAC. That evening was pretty quiet, mostly because she was fresh out of surgery and she was getting used to her new surroundings.

Wednesday I took the day off to stay at home with her. She, Ratchet and I spent the morning getting acquainted in the back yard before we went to the vet's office for her checkup. I got some really good pictures of her that I will post tomorrow...

Remember those comments that the TLAC person made about Ratchet and Dakota not going to get along? If they could see these two now, they'd wish they never doubted us. It's hard to keep them apart sometimes.

Anyway, it's getting late and all this typing on my PDA is killing my hand...I'll post the pictures when I get a chance tomorrow and will post more doggie updates as they become available as well.

Today Selina and I made a trip to the Town Lake Animal Shelter to fill out an application for adoption. Our intentions were to "just fill one out" so that we would have one on file in case we ever saw a dog online that we liked, but I think we may have found the next addition to our family while we were there. Seven possible candidates slowly dwindled to one: Dakota, a 5 month-old German Shepard mix.

Dakota came in as a stray with her sister, Cheyenne. We were told that Cheyenne was the dominant sibling, which was apparent when we took Ratchet in for the meet-and-greet. They largely ignored each other, but when they did do the sniff dance, poor Dakota responded with a submissive pee. Ratchet did bark at Dakota when I started petting her, but other than that it was pretty uneventful.

I would have thought that would have been a good thing, but the staff coordinator told us that she would rather have had them falling all over themselves to play together. I understand her point, but I feel that the circumstances were not exactly right for that sort of reaction. First, Dakota is a submissive dog. Secondly, they decided to hold the meet-and-greet in a hallway that was surrounded by offices filled with kittens, which obviously were far more interesting to Ratchet than Dakota was. In any case, she said we should think it over tonight and give the shelter a call tomorrow before 5PM.

Selina and I have been giving it plenty of thought, because we know it's not a decision that we should be taking lightly. After all, we don't want to be one of those people that takes a dog home only to take him/her back because he/she didn't work out.

Our team lead just got a job with another department, meaning that I once again submitted my resume for consideration of the position that opened up. Seeing as this will now be my third attempt at a team lead position, I'm not even going to get my hopes up like I did the last two times. There is one thing that really puzzles me, though -- why can't people in our department just get promoted instead of having to sweat it out in the interview process, especially when the position is limited to only current desktop technicians?

I promise to post something meaningful before the end of the week.