I had a spectacular weekend, which really started out at work on Thursday. The supervisors (me included) cooked breakfast for our employees. I cooked 8 pounds of bacon and 4 pans of cheesy potatoes. It was a good change of pace for once at work, and I think most of the employees appreciated it.

On Friday I went down and hung out with fellow storm chaser Adam Lucio at his cottage down near Colon, MI. The drive down wasn't bad at all, taking me about 90 minutes or so. We went to WalMart, and bought a bunch of random stuff, including me buying 6 bottles of hand sanitizer. We had the cashier laughing the whole time we rang up 3 separate orders (don't ask).

Adam and I spent a good portion of the afternoon fishing, or at least pretending to fish. It was the first time I had brought out my fishing poles in awhile. The only fishing gear I have used in the past few years has been my salmon fishing/fly gear. It was fun to finally put my other gear to use again. We didn't catch anything but a few small bluegill, but I had a good time nonetheless.

In the evening we went out on a pontoon boat to watch fireworks and the flare lighting. Adam and his girlfriend and his girlfriends friend Laura. It was a pretty good time, although a little chilly. Temps shouldn't fall into the upper 50's on July 4th weekend in Michigan. That's lame.

We all ended up staying up until about 6:30 am on Saturday morning before finally going to bed. We slept for like 5-6 hours before waking back up and going to Pizza Hut in Coldwater. I had to go that way anyway to head home, so we went there. After Pizza Hut, I headed home to get ready to go see the Staind, Shinedown, Chevelle and Halestorm concert at DTE Energy Music Theater in Detroit.

I arrived at the show about 6:40 pm, which was 10 minutes after the advertised start time. The first thing that I went by when I got into DTE was a tshirt stand. $35 for a Staind t-shirt (Oh yeah, by the way, $40 for my fat 2X size). I passed on a shirt because I really couldn't afford $40. By the time I found my seat, Halestorm was pretty much over. I saw the last 2-3 songs, but I wasn't familiar with any of their music to know what they were. After Halestorm was Chevelle. I recognized all but 1 or 2 of their songs. I'm not a huge Chevelle fan, but they rocked pretty loud and hard.

Next up was Shinedown, which rocked. The lead singer reminded me of Ozzy appearance wise. I don't recall the order of the setlist, but they came out and played "Sound of Madness" to start off, then went into 45. The other songs they played included Heroes, Fly from the Inside, Devour, Second Chance, If you only knew, Cyanide Sweet Tooth Suicide, and Save Me. They might have played more, but that is what I remembered at least.

It was obvious that Brent Smith, the lead singer for Shinedown was unable to hit all of the high notes that are in the songs. This was a bit disappointing, but they still did a good job at performing all of this live. I also had a very close seat (as can be seen from the pictures), and the music drowned out the vocals pretty much.

Next up was Staind. Staind has been one of my top 5 bands for about 8 years now, and probably more top 3 as they rank up there with Ozzy and Black Sabbath. This was my only second time to see them live, as I haven't been able to make shows in the past for whatever reason. They started the show off with "Raw" and then went into "This is It" and then "So Far Away". The rest of the setlist gets pretty foggy from here, so this is what I can remember at least. These are in no particular order.

Raw
This is it
So far away
Can't Believe
Paper Jesus
Falling
All I Want
Right Here
For You
King of all Excuses
Pardon me
Spleen
Come Again

Encore:
Outside
It's Been Awhile
Mudshovel

After "All I Want" Aaron Lewis threw out his pick and it hit me right in the eye and fell to the ground. I found it and pocketed it. What an awesome score. The only other pick I have gotten was at an Ozzy Osbourne (Robert Trujillio's pick) show in 2001. Definitely a great souvenir from the show. The pick has Aaron Lewis on one side and "Thank You" on the other.

For the encore, Aaron Lewis came out and did Outside and It's Been Awhile accoustically in the crowd. It kind of sucked, because he went quite a ways back into the crowd, so I couldn't see very well as he was quite a number of rows behind me. It was awesome of him to go sit out with the fans though. He finished up singing Mudshovel while walking back to the stage.

All in all a GREAT show, and well worth the money I paid for my ticket to go see them. I am considering going to see them again in Toledo in a couple months.