Went to Rudyard's last night to see the Asylum Street Spankers. As always, it was a great show, and it's nice to be able to see them do two full sets, something which they don't do at the Mucky Duck due to the Duck's two-show format on weekends. The price you pay for that is in cigarette smoke, since the Duck offers non-smoking shows. The smoke was so bad at Rudz that at the start of the second set the band (most of whom are smokers themselves) asked people to not light up for a little while so we could all breathe.

Anyway, Ted Barlow was one of the people who joined me for the show. We had a nice long chat before the Spankers took the stage. He and his fiancee Leslie are doing well. (In the odd-coincidences department, both Leslie and Tiffany were up in Chicago on business yesterday.) They've both been keeping busy - Leslie's had a lot of writing jobs come her way, and Ted's working on applying to business school. I think the world could use a few more MBAs like Ted.

I ribbed him about his "weeklong" hiatus and told him that people missed him. He told me he'd heard from a number of people over the past six weeks and was grateful for the kind words. He said it's awfully nice to know that people he's never met have thought about him.

He did read about being listed as an extremist by Steven den Beste, which amused him. He sent a note to SDB asking why he said that and got a somewhat wishy-washy reply saying that he didn't really mean it that way.

I prodded Ted a little about whether he would start blogging again. Just a little - after all, Ted's right when he says that for most of us, the rewards of blogging are emotional, and if it's not making you feel good you should be doing something else. He may and he may not. I don't know.

All in all, it was good company and great music. Between seeing Eric Bogle at the Duck on Thursday and the Austin Lounge Lizards at the Duck tonight, I'll have had quite a bit of both this week.