I just returned from a quick week­end road trip to Santa Fe to meet up with my par­ents. One of the towns we drove through was the leg­endary town of Roswell, New Mex­ico. For those of you who don’t know, Roswell is the town near the mys­te­ri­ous “Area 51″ Mil­i­tary base where an Alien space­craft sup­pos­edly crashed in 1947. The whole town has made an indus­try of being Alien Cen­tral, and has become quite a tourist attrac­tion. Any­way, the whole town is full of Alien themed stuff, start­ing with the Wal-Mart. If you can’t see it, look to either side of the front sign:

And right next to their “Now hir­ing” sign:

It’s a lit­tle tricky to tell from this pic­ture, but this is the town McDon­alds, and the play­ground is actu­ally a fly­ing saucer:

Are you hun­gry? Why not check out the Cover up cafe? It’s out of this world!

And after a nice din­ner, why not a cup of expresso? Just hit the Not of This World coffeeshop:

Inter­ested in some new music stuff? Check out this place:

It’s not just the big stuff, it’s every­thing! This is the Roswell UFO museum (which I didn’t get a chance to go to) but the really cool part is the street light in front. It wasn’t just this one. It was every sin­gle street light in town!

To top it off, this is what all the Coke vend­ing machines in Roswell looked like:

Over­all, I thought it was a neat lit­tle town. And believe it or not, on the route we took from Austin to Santa Fe, Roswell was the only town where we saw a Star­bucks. Isn’t that hard to believe? Nowa­days it seems like Star­bucks are on every cor­ner. In Austin, there’s a place down­town with three Star­bucks within two blocks. I thought maybe we had missed some, but from the research I did I really don’t think there was one. Hard to believe! I’m gen­er­ally some­what of a cof­fee addict, but I can live with­out Star­bucks. The prob­lem comes dur­ing a road trip when you need cof­fee. You have to be care­ful trust­ing the gas sta­tion cof­fees. Star­bucks isn’t my favorite, but it’s decent, and it’s not Gas Sta­tion sludge.

After dri­ving through Roswell twice, I came away think­ing I’d like to go spend a after­noon there. I’d really like to check out the UFO cen­ter, have lunch at the Cover up, and then sit and have a cup of cof­fee at Out of This World. Out of This World does have live music, so maybe I could make it a busi­ness trip.

It seems like the sum­mer has flown by. I’ve been teach­ing a lot, and not gig­ging a ton. I’m cur­rently liv­ing a bach­e­lor life, being that the LMGF left for Puerto Rico on Wednes­day. My plans for my sin­gle man week include the following:

1) watch­ing every Mets game.
2) Set­ting up Pro Tools 7.4
3) Play­ing with my new M-Box 2 and M-Audio axiom 25.
4) Learn­ing how to use EZdrum­mer.
5) Rid­ing my bike a few times.
6) See­ing the X files movie.
7) Order­ing a pizza. Maybe even pep­per­oni rolls.
Teach­ing as many lessons as pos­si­ble.
9) Write at least two more blog posts.

I know. I’m a rock star. I’m head­ing to PR on Thurs­day for two weeks, and then once I get back I’ll have a week or two before school starts. It’s been a good sum­mer, it just seems like it’s fly­ing by. Any­way, things are good, just busy. But there will be two more posts in the next 3 days.

Unless EZdrum­mer is really, really cool.