For lo, I have been tagged by Madeline.

1. I only recently noticed that I’ve become increasingly enamored of taxonomies over the past 10 years. Now I’m to the point that my sock drawer looks like this (prompting much commentary by Mister Husband and C) and I’m writing a dissertation on encyclopedias. Turns out I like putting things in order, and I’m fascinated by the way other people order various stuff. (In retrospect, this probably started to come out at UPS, when my work on peak volume plans basically involved getting a lot of people to gather up a lot of data and then give it to me to put in order so we could make predictions.)

2. In spite of this, I am sort of repulsed by the idea of implementing a more universal system of order like Getting Things Done. But I remain a big fan of lists and calendars. I have my own little system that works pretty well, except for the once a year when I accidentally stand someone up for lunch.

3. Earlier this year, I was regularly unplugging entirely from digital media each Saturday. This article on a related study at Carleton, one of our local colleges, reminded me that I should get back to that. NaBloPoMo makes it kinda difficult this month, though. (Aside: I brought this up when I was guest-lecturing in Mister Husband’s FYC class yesterday afternoon and the students were positively horrified.)

4. We saw Neil Young last night. It was the most I've ever paid for tickets, but the cheapest date on his current tour.

5. That said, it was totally worth it. And so is Chrome Dreams II. I’m a fan, but not a properly committed one (that would be Mister Husband), and neither of us are hardcore Rusties. But this album will be on repeat in the house for awhile. Both of us have commented that this is the first CD we’ve bought in awhile that really needs to be listened to as an album instead of just dumped into iTunes and shuffled.

6. I ended up feeling really bad for Pegi Young last night. People came and went and talked during her opening set, despite the fact that she and the band were in great form. I’ve never seen a Minnesota concert crowd be this rude before, but then again I’ve never been in the middle of a concert audience that skewed as heavily yuppie as this one did. They made it extremely clear that she was not the reason they came. When she finished and Neil came out, everyone went nuts and paid strict attention. I couldn’t help but think that despite the fact that she’s an accomplished, experienced musician in her own right, there’s no way she’d ever play to this size crowd if she didn’t open for her husband in a slot that’s more typically given to young bands who are still paying their dues. That’s got to be hard for a spouse — to open for a crowd who doesn’t care, to have your merch shunted off to the very side of the merchandise display out front. She seems to handle it well, though.

7. We had the first tiny flakes this week. Must be winter, even though they melted before they hit the ground. A couple of months ago, I was wandering around in Fergus Falls with the Nikomat when a very energetic older gentleman came up to talk to me. He must have been in his 80s or early 90s, but he had a quicker step than I do. He said that when he worked in the northland saw mills as a teenager, it got down to the -40s. The cold and friction would cause the saw teeth to snap and fly out at him. It seems like such a far-fetched idea now, a winter that cold, but the local histories I’ve read say it was indeed so.

Updates: Mister Husband’s review of the show is here. I couldn’t agree more with his comments about the crowd.