Category Archives: Common Man

Kingston Mines: Magic Slim.

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On Friday I made my first visit to Kingston Mines to see Magic Slim and the Tear Drops.  The way Kingston Mines is setup is there are two stages each with their own band.  The first band starts at 9:30pm and plays for an hour and the next band plays on the other stage at 10:30pm for an hour.  This continues until the final set begins at 2:30am.  I didn’t make it past the second set on the main stage.

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Magic Slim is about as Blues as one can get.  Here’s the first senetence to his wikipedia page:

Magic Slim was forced to give up playing the piano when he lost his little finger in a cotton gin mishap.

The food at Kingston Mines is something to be witnessed.  We ordered two BBQ chicken pizzas and we kept getting two catfish sandwiches.  The whole ordeal took more than an hour to get sorted out.  My advice is if you must eat at Kingston Mines don’t, but if you insist then just order the catfish sandwich and you’ll save a lot of people some grief.

Iowa Irish Fest.

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This weekend Julie and I made our maiden journey into Iowa for the Mayberry – Fredrick Wedding in Waterloo.  It just so happens that this weekend was Iowa Irish Fest.  We spent the afternoon checking out the Highland Games’ caber toss.  The caber toss consists of men picking up a telephone pole and flipping it completely in the air while trying to make it land straight.  It’s something that is best seen in person as you can imagine.

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Side Notes:
*The rest of my photographs are on Flickr.
** I’m seriously pondering buying a kilt.
*** The top photograph is of the man who was in charge of the caber toss competition.  Yes, he’s carrying a giant hammer just in case.

Fourth of July BBQ.

Fourth of July has officially begun. Started the grills around 10am and the ribs are smoking.Two hours down, 5 to go. Smoking Ribs.IMG_0859.JPG

Yesterday Julie and I hosted our third consecutive Fourth of July BBQ.  Once again I spent the better part of the day smoking ribs.  At this point I think I have the smoking aspect down.  The sun and heat was unbearable most of the day until evening set in.  We did have a small shower of rain but it only lasted about 10 minutes.

Thanks to everyone who showed up, we had a perfect amount of food, drinks and people.

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Side Notes:

* Past Fourth of July BBQ’s: 2008 and 2009.