Hmm... should I watch the state of the union? no. Not a chance. I know it will only make me furious. I just can't imagine that anything George W. Bush says tonight will do anything to vindicate anything he's done for me, or give me any confidence that his last year will be an improvement over the last 7. I think I'll watch Kill Bill 2 instead and then watch the Daily Show tomorrow so that I get a witty and satiric recap of the important stuff I missed.

I've been thinking about the things I'll miss when I'm gone. Things besides the obvious family/friends stuff. Of course I'll miss my parents and such. I'm talking more about happenings. Really, all the events I'm sad I'll miss right now boil down to two categories:

Weddings: I'm at that age where a lot of my friends are getting engaged and married. I already am aware of a couple of weddings I'll miss, including one I just found out about today concerning my good friends Stew and Jenna (congrats guys!). I enjoy weddings. You get to see a lot of people you don't see very often. The mood is always happy (if it's not, the wedding probably is a really, really bad idea), and then you gorge yourself on catered food. Except the dancing. I don't do that. The point is I'm sad I'll miss these.

Concerts: Those who know me pretty well know that there's not much I enjoy more than live music. You wait on Ticketmaster hitting refresh for like 10 minutes and then the tickets go on sale and you click like you've never clicked a mouse before cause you want the best seats and then you get them and you're all excited and you wait four months and all you and your friends can talk about is how excited you are for that show and then the day comes and you drive there and you don't listen to the band you're seeing cause that's bad luck and then you get to the venue and you wait in line and you all crowd into this tiny space and the opening band plays and they were pretty good but not great and then you wait for like 45 minutes more and then the lights go out and everyone goes nuts and the next two hours are awesome and the band sounds really good and I hope they play this song holy crap I never thought I'd hear that what will the encore be no way they haven't played that song in years wow that show was amazing I can't wait for the next one.
Seriously, concerts are awesome. While I look forward to being exposed to new kinds of music while I'm in Africa, there are two particularly awesome tours about to happen this summer that I will miss. The first being Radiohead, the top band on my list of bands to see that I haven't seen yet. The second being R.E.M., my second or third favorite band playing with The National, my fourth favorite band and Modest Mouse, a favorite, though unnumbered. While I have seen all those bands separately, that's like the best triple bill ever. And of course, the upcoming new U2 album this year will mean a monster world tour next year that I'll miss, unless they hit Cape Town or something like that. Luckily I saw them thrice on the Vertigo Tour.