Last week, I saw one of my favorite bands of all time. Black Sabbath. They were touring under the name Heaven & Hell, and here's why. The original singer of Black Sabbath was John "Ozzy" Osbourne, and this is where he first became famous. When he was kicked out, they hired singer Ronnie James Dio, and their first album with his was 1980's Heaven & Hell. They have had many member changes, but for about the last decade, Ozzy has been the singer for the band. Thus, when they tour with Dio and perform material from his era, they have to use an alternate name. In my opinion, this is still Black Sabbath. Any way, their guitarist is one of my guitar heroes. He is often praised for his riffs and rhythm playing, but I absolutely love his solos too. At the end of their set, the bassist, Terence "Geezer" Butler threw some promotional picks out into the audience, and I got two, one of which I gave to my friend. It is kind of funny, because he rarely uses picks. I may post a picture of the pick later, and my friend took some picutres, so I may post some of them here for the hell of it.

Interesting fun fact: some of you may be familiar with the "horns" gesture that is associated with heavy metal music. Well Ronnie James Dio brought that gesture into the metal world when he was in Black Sabbath in the 1980s. It was originally a gesture his grandmother used to ward off the evil eye.

There were two downsides to the show however. First, there was an unusually high concentration of *ahem* very rude people. You might think this would be common at a heavy metal concert, but most people are actually pretty cool. The second was that after moshing, crowd surfing (after which I noticed a rip in my jeans with my leg cut underneath) and seriously fighting to hold my place in the constantly shifting crowd, and then leaving at 3 the next morning (four hours after the concert ended) for an eight hour car ride I was probably more sore than I had ever been in my life.

There was some serious drama at the furmeet I attended on Thursday, and surprisingly, it was not caused by furries. There were three guys kind of hanging around near us, and a couple of times they asked us things like "What game are you guys playing?" which was a little confusing to us. Later that night, at which point they may have been drunk, they started yellign at us, calling us faggots and threatening us. One guy stood up to them and one of them got right up in his face, but the other two held him back. I didn't think it was going to get physical, but I and several people tensed up and got ready to act in case it did. Luckily, two of the furries had the presence of mind to call 9-1-1, and one of them announced it to these men, which is probably what drove them away. The police showed up, and he filed a report. Of course after they left, some of the furries got all badass and started talking about how badly they would have kicked the guys' asses. I spoke to one of the people who had been attending the meet for a while, and he said that that was the first time he had seen something like that happen, so I'm not too worried about it happening again.

I'm really glad I started going to these meets, as I have met a lot of really great local furs that I have a lot of fun hanging out with. I even brought a really close friend of mine who is not a fur (he is very fur-friendly), and he enjoys it too.

I start school again in two days, and I'm not too worried, but I will definitely miss the summer break. I won't be able to stay at these furmeets as late (last Thursday's meet lasted until almost 2 in the morning). After visiting another college (I am going to be transferring) I learned that my school's counselor's screwed me over even worse that I had previously thought. I had already figured out that they didn't know their subject as well as they should. They often (admittedly not always) give out incomplete or false information. But I suppose it could be worse.

Thanks for reading!