I’m not sure if I believe the weather forecast this week. It looks awesome outside right now, and it’s just about 100 degrees, but they say it’s going to storm all weekend? Ridiculous. Anyway, this weekend preview is so late that it’s already calling me about child support. Time to stop chit chatting and get this thing did.

Check out the weather and shows below the break!

Friday – 7/16 – Isolated T-Storms – 99/74

Saturday – 7/17- Isolated T-Storms -88/71

Sunday – 7/18- Isolated T-Storms -93/74

Friday

The Hogwaller Ramblers – Fridays After Five – 5:30PM – Free!

-I know I’ve picked on this sort of behavior in the past, but now I just kinda think it’s awesome. The Ramblers are playing 3 days of shows this weekend, and I think that’s just great. I also like the Hogwaller Ramblers, so I may be biased. I can’t not approve of a person that can make music with a washboard.

The Love Language & Drunk Tigers – The Southern – 8PM – $8/advance – $10/day of show

Saturday

The Hogwaller Ramblers  & Rose’s Pawn Shop – The Southern – 8PM – $8

-Rose’s Pawn Shop is actually the headlining band here, but screw it. It’s a Hogwaller Rambler’s weekend.

B.B. King – The Pavilion – 7PM – $33-$82

-You should go to this. If you haven’t seen B.B. King before, you need to see him once before he kicks off. I had this same theory about James Brown the last time he came to town, and he was dead within months. I’m not saying that I’m the angel of death, but I’m not not saying that either.

The Brian Patrick Band – Rapunzel’s – 8PM – $5

-A friend of mine plays pedal steel and guitar with this group, and it’s a sight to behold. Pedal steel is awesome, and you don’t find it very often. If you’re anywhere near this show, it’s definitely worth checking out.

Sunday

The Hogwaller Ramblers – Fellini’s #9 – 10PM – Free!

Lady Antebellum – The Pavilion – 7PM – $35-$45

-So… if I’ve got this right… this band is famous for a song about a booty call? Ok, maybe that’s not so bad. But still, that song is on the radio every five minutes and is a summary what’s wrong with popular country music. Meh.

Secretly Y’all: Secret Shame – Random Row Books – 7PM – $5 (suggested donation)

-Go. To. This. It’s the last SY for a couple of months, and everybody’s favorite MC may be retiring. Monday looks like it’s going to be a sick day.

What else is going on this weekend?

Ohhhhhh Thank God, it’s the weekend! This week has been craziness. Unfortunately, there won’t be much time to slow down, because things are finally coming back to life in this town. There are no less than 3 great shows this weekend, and at least one awesome thing to do each day. The weather looks a little iffy, and I checked at least 3 different sites to try and find a forecast that didn’t potentially suck. As it turns out, all of the other sites use words that are more complicated than ‘Isolated T-Storms’ and ‘Sunny’, so weather.com saves the day yet again. On the upside, I checked out the hourly forecast and it looks like it’ll mostly be stiflingly humid all day, and the rain should only last an hour or two. I know we need the rain, but I’m willing to stick out one more blistering weekend just for the sake of being outside. I’ve spent the last two weekends baking in the sun while participating in flipcup tournaments, so I don’t see any reason to break that pattern now. I’m predicting much barbecuing and cup flipping.
So… check out the weather and shows below, and let us know what awesome things you’re getting into this weekend!

Friday – 7/9 – Isolated T-Storms – 94/73

Saturday – 7/10 – Scattered T-Storms – 80/66

Sunday – 7/11 – Sunny – 91/67

Friday

Trees on Fire – Fridays After Five – 5:30PM – Free!

-These guys are awesome, and this show is bound to be a lot of fun. Definitely worth checking out.

The Groove Train – The Jefferson – 8PM – $8/advance – $10/at the door

-Check out the link for this show. This looks amazing. I need bell-bottoms, a silk shirt, and an afro wig, STAT!

Ted Pitney Band – The Southern – 8PM – $8

Saturday

Southern Culture On The Skids – The Jefferson – 8PM – $15/advance – $17/at the door

-Yet another show that the promo picture alone is enough to sell me.

The New Best Recipe – The Southern – 9PM – $5

Sunday

Final Match of the World Cup – Netherlands vs Spain – ABC/The Paramount/Any bar with a TV – 2:30PM – Free!

-Ok, so it looks like there may be some ‘Supporters of the Paramount’ membership thing needed to get into that venue for free, but if you’re in that club, congrats. We don’t really have a horse in this race anymore, but I guess I could get behind the Netherlands. Those people in Amsterdam really seem to have their shit together.

It’s a post-apocalyptic weekend! The town still looks like mayhem, and a lot of folks are still without power. Dominion is claiming that up to 60,000 people in the Charlottesville/Albemarle area were in the dark at one point, but now the numbers have been reduced to about 13,000. The UVA Hospital ran on backup generators all night, though I’m not sure if they’re back up and running by now. I have witnessed hundreds of people reduced to deer in the headlights when faced with a powerless stop light, and even resorted to directing traffic at a couple of intersections myself.

There’s not a ton going on this weekend, but the good news is that you’ll never have an awkward pause! Everybody that I’ve spoken to has had some crazy storm stories. You’ll never find yourself short of topics of conversation and anxiety drinking yourself into oblivion. Check out the weather and event info after the break, and let us know what kind of crazy stuff you saw in/after the storm!

!!Break!!

Friday – 6/25- Partly Cloudy – 89/68

Saturday – 6/26 – Mostly Sunny – 96/73

Sunday – 6/27 – Isolated T-Storms – 97/78

Friday

The Kings of Belmont – Fridays After Five – 5:30PM – Free!

-This is going to be one of the best FAF of the year. The band is actually worth hearing, but the acoustics suck over by the beer truck. This one might call for a path through the crowd that isn’t straight from the ticket counter to the boozemobile. The only thing that anyone is going to be talking about at this thing is the storm.

Invisible Hand – The Southern – 8PM – Free!

Saturday

Zombie Jello Wrestling – Check FB event for location – 9PM – $5

-I don’t know a ton about this event. I don’t even really know where it is, but I hear they have a location on the fb event. It should be entertaining at the very least. I fail to see the charm of the ‘zombie’ part, but I’m totally down to watch a bunch of  girls do some jello wrestling. If there is not a betting pool in place, I hope to create one.

Sunday

Jimmy Cliff – The Pavilion – 7PM – ~$35

-This is the rescheduled show, and a lot of people are pretty excited for it. I’d love to check it out, but I have other engagements.

Ladies FlipCup Tournament – 2PM – Location TBD – Free!

-I’m helping a friend of mine to coordinate this, and we’ve all been too drunk to finalize things. There is a location in mind, but we’ve still got to nail things down. Keep tuned here for location details. Per the team rules, it’s going to be 4 people per team, and your team captain HAS TO BE FEMALE. If the weather holds out, this thing could be bigger than the World Cup.

So… this weekend I did the usual and put off going to the grocery store as much as possible. That comprised of some delivery, some carryout, and a little bit of a la carte from the counter. The problem is… I’m losing track of how much you’re supposed to tip for each service.

Like most of you, I used to work in food service and I understand how valuable tips are. By that rule, I think I tend to err on the heavy tipping side. While dining in a restaurant, I believe that 20% is the absolute minimum… unless the server did something to dictate otherwise. I realize that food taking a long time to come from the kitchen is typically a kitchen or expo issue, and not the fault of your server. Mis-timed food (some hot, some cold) can be the fault of the server, but can equally fall to the back of the house. Things like terrible drink service, repeatedly forgetting to bring requested items, or likewise tends to fall directly on the server. There are extenuating circumstances such as that person being brand new to the job, but they tend to be easy to spot and I’m pretty lenient on those folks. Honestly, even for a bad server it would be extraordinarily rare for them to see less than 15% from me.

But… that’s not really the issue. Sit-down dining is easy to tip out.

I want to know how you guys handle the rest of food service. How do you tip on delivery? How about carryout/curbside pick-up? And what about just ordering from the counter (a la Michoacana or Durty Nelly’s)?

For delivery… I may be behind the times… but I dunno. For instance.. this weekend.. I ordered $40 worth of chinese food from Asian Express. That place is less than one mile from my house, and I know it to be fact that they take multiple orders out for each run. That being said.. I usually just tip the guy $4, as I’ve been scaling my delivery tips up since the old days when $2 was cool (what… 10 years ago?). I bumped it up to $5, but still I don’t know where that stands. Should I be tipping a percentage on delivery? Why? The guy just drove a Honda .7 miles from the resto (or his previous drop). I don’t suspect that he did any of the food prep, so I’m not sure why a percentage would be appropriate?

And what about curb-side pickup? To me, this just seems like a glorified expo. I’ve been told that the person assigned to curb-side pickup for the night gets paid a different wage (not exactly back of the house, but not exactly front of the house). So… I feel obliged to tip them something for carrying my bag of food out the door and to my car (where I’ve been waiting for 10 minutes). I know that they are supposedly the ones that are packing the food into a bag, and making sure you get that sweet plasticware…. but does that deserve the same level of gratuity that a server bringing you drinks and being attentive deserves? How would you guys tip out a $40 order of curb-side pickup from Outback?

And from the counter a la carte… this one is particularly tricky.. and I feel like I’m in the minority here, for sure. I tend to tip for over the counter orders. This is likely because I frequent local restaurants that I’d like to see succeed. I’ll personally finance La Michoacana if I have to, just to keep them in business. So, for instance at Durty Nelly’s…. I order a $7 sandwich, and I tend to drop a couple bucks in the tip jar. You wouldn’t tip extra at McDonald’s or Wendy’s, so why do so at a deli? I do so for the reason mentioned above… but I’m not sure that the majority works that way.

I’ll be honest that I think I know what got me started tipping on a la carte orders. I pay for EVERYTHING on my credit/debit card. By that rule, I see a lot of blanks where you are supposed to write in a tip. Leaving a tip blank empty just feels like bad karma for me. I ordered breakfast from Italian Villa this weekend, and it was just $16. By the time I got there to pick it up, the place was such a zoo that I felt bad for the girl at the register. After she cleared the six tickets in front of me out of the register, I decided to tip a few dollars just because she was working so hard. After leaving, I realized that I had tipped over 20% on a take-out order… and that seemed great for the karma… but perhaps a bit much?

How do you guys handle tipping around town? Feel free to add advice on tipping for drinks as well. I definitely overtip at the bar, because I have a sick infatuation with bartenders. However, that one tends to work to the favor of all parties in the end.

I love my dog. He’s almost 14 years old. He’s was born in Charlottesville, while I’ve only been here about six years. He’s also a total jerk. He does things like beg to go outside at 3AM, then run to the top of the hill, turn around to look at me and bark his face off. He knows I won’t run up the hill after him, so he just bounces around going apeshit, and wakes up the neighbors. Really, he’s great.

I’ve always chalked his aloofness up to being too intelligent to put up with my bullshit, and basically figuring out that I’m going to feed him and give him fresh water no matter what he does. Of course, he knows that when he’s going nuts barking in the middle of the night, I’ll always cave and bribe him with food. You see, food is his only true weakness. When he sees people food, he enters the zone. In the zone, nothing takes his attention away from the food.

So, a few friends (and their dogs) were over, eating pizza and watching TV. Begging space was tight, but all dogs were in attendance. Nothing was really out of the norm until a friend remarked:

“Your dog is on fire.”

A quick glance to the fireplace confirmed this. My dog was so in the zone that he didn’t realize he had backed his tail right into the fire. I pulled him out of the way, and surprisingly his thick coat hadn’t burnt all the way down. He was a little spooked, but hardly enough to break his attention away from his food objective. While a pretty impressive test of dog durability, it was a pretty horrible way to keep company around. The place stunk like burnt dog and the party promptly ended.

So,… sometimes I think maybe my dog isn’t so smart after all. He’s cute, but he might be real, real dumb. A few minutes after the fire incident, he went and laid down in front of the fireplace again. I have my doubts that he walked away from this experience with a single lesson learned.

Damn it, Kodiak.

Petit Pois – Hanger Steak, topped with caramelized onions and thin sliced frites.

Incredible.

I had the Polenta fries for an appetizer and they were delicious, but I would rather have saved the room for the steak. It didn’t matter, as I cleaned my plate anyway. It’s just that I no longer had room for beer, and had to switch exclusively to tequila for the rest of the night. I would absolutely recommend this meal.

Here are some reasons to continue your coffee habit:
1) Caffeine increases the effects of painkillers like aspirin.
2) When you’re high as a kite, impress your friends by reading the grounds.
3) Reduced risk of Parkinson’s disease and diabetes. [credit]

Here are some reasons to knock that shit off:
1) If you buy coffee at drive through windows you’ll spend nearly 45hours a year waiting in line.
2) One punishment for drinking coffee was being sewn into a leather bag and thrown out to sea alive. [credit]