Last week, Erika finished up her last class on her way to her doctorate. Now it's just a ton of research and a dissertation before she becomes a professor. To celebrate, we went to the Schaeffer Eye Center Crawfish Boil in downtown Birmingham. The Crawfish Boil is a two-day festival with plenty of crawfish heads to pinch and suck. This year the concert lineup was reminiscent of the concerts I'd seen in college (almost 10 years ago). On Friday night, we saw Gin Blossoms, Cowboy Mouth, Sister Hazel, and Blues Traveler. Saturday's lineup was Jason Mraz, Presidents of the United States of America, Better than Ezra, P.O.D. and Live.

The main reason to go Friday was Cowboy Mouth. As we have discussed over the past week, I have probably seen them ten times since 1997. If you've never seen them in concert, you are missing probably the greatest concert experience EVER! Don't expect to walk away from a Cowboy Mouth show without dripping with sweat and losing your voice. Admittedly it wasn't their best set they have ever played, but it was a good time regardless. Blues Traveler was a bore. They played 5-10 minute versions of every song and it all sounded the same. After standing around for 30 minutes, we snuck out to beat the traffic and get ready for the next day.

Even being robbed of sleep and energy after Friday, I was still ready for a high-energy afternoon and evening on Saturday. Jason Mraz played an acoustical show which put a lot of people to sleep, but I enjoyed it even if it was low-key. Presidents put on a great show as did Better than Ezra. During P.O.D., we went to grab some food and rest. It would have been nice to see them perform, but I don't know if could have made it through the rest of the show. Who knew being 31 was so tiring? I'm not a big Live fan, but their set was quite enjoyable even in the rain. It took a week, but I think I have sufficiently recovered.