This weekend I turn 30. That’s years, people. It feels...pretty much the same as 29 did. Plus it’ll be convenient shorthand for me to remember about how old our first kid is. My age minus 30, about. No specific festivities, but we do tend to spread celebration around, so I get a birthday in stages over the course of about a week, which is nice for me.
Thursday was sort of my ‘Birthday at Work (observed)’ day because Jess made me cupcakes the day before. Cupcakes are the way to go when there’s just two of you for the cake-based celebration. There’s no way for two people to eat an *entire* cake, and so you either have to stuff yourself with cake for days (tempting, but I’m trying to keep slim) or bring leftover cake to work, which is always nice, but cupcakes are pre-measured for your convenience, and very easy to distribute since we got our cupcake carrier. So I gave away cupcakes at work and got a lot of ‘happy birthdays’ for our trouble. I also ate several of them myself. Cupcakes are delicious.
Jess then organized a ‘Nerf fight’ for me. I’ve been buying and distributing Nerf guns around the office for a few years now, and there’s now enough of them that we can get a pretty good firefight going if we all show up at the same time. Jess ambushed me in my office and I retaliated with my ridiculous Nerf Machine Gun. Fun was had by all. Then my officemate got me a couple more nerf guns the next day. They’re clear! I’m hoping to get to home depot this weekend to buy some LEDs so I can make a *glowing Nerf gun*. I think home depot sells random electronic components. Where else would I go. Radio shack? Have you seen that place recently?
Friday, also ‘for my birthday’ but realistically just because the timing worked out, I got to see Rodrigo y Gabriella in concert. A blast! The wait was pretty rough, unfortunately. We got there at 7 and there was an opening act at 8:30, the concert proper didn’t start until 9:30, which is a lot of time to stand on your feet. My long-suffering wife decided to just go hang out in the back where she could sit, but I stayed up pretty close to the action for the whole concert. They were a blast to listen to. I’m not sure how they mic the guitars but every time they gave their instruments a smack it resounded through the subwoofers for a serious kick. They did a bunch of songs I’ve heard from their albums, though they tended to have neat variations in the performance. High energy and lots of fun, though I think I’ve burned Jessie out on concerts for a while. Between the close quarters, tired legs, big crowds, and smoke, tobacco and...otherwise, she was pretty worn out at the end of the night.
We got home before midnight and got to wake up early, though, to head out to the Velloway again, a paved loop in southern Austin that’s only open to bikers and skaters. Jess hung out and exercised with her derby girls while I rode around on my bike. 13 miles for me, 7 for Jess. Not bad for the start of the weekend. We stopped at a place called Moonies that we’d been meaning to try out. They’re up by us and they do a *great* hamburger and really good chicken burger, too. They may have displaced Hutts as my second favorite hamburger spot in Austin. They’re certainly closer to the house. I could walk if I want to.
Later, for my birthday again, heh, I’m going to head out to McCormick and Shmicks. I get fish on my birthday. Then we’re going to stop at Whole Foods and check out some of those pastries that always look so pretty in the display cases.
-N
Showing posts with label Concert. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Concert. Show all posts
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
So much to tell!
The best thing I did in preparation for post-committee meeting celebration was to plan to take a trip to Spokane to visit Nana and Papa. I just got back from a nearly 4 day hiatus with them (aahhh). Nana kept us just the right amount of busy. On Saturday, the whole family went to the the Community Quilters Meeting, and then enjoyed the Spokane Potter's Guild empty bowls fundraiser. For those unfamiliar, the potters make bowls, you pick one which gets filled with chili (and corn bread, and fry-bread, and anything else you stuff in it), and you get to eat the chili and keep the bowl. Brilliant! Nana also took me to the Community Theater performance of Steel Magnolias (*sniffle*), and to the library's brown bag book sale- because despite what Papa says, she does like to spoil me. The weather was beautiful, the grandparents are in good health and I got a lot of sleep- which is Papa's way of spoiling me. I may have gone overboard trying to explain the process of committee meetings, defense and matriculation to Papa- and I know I lost him when I started talking about my career plans (What are you going to use a PhD in Biology for in policy??). Maybe I'll address this in a future post- like when I've got it figured out. Speaking of future posts, I did get a couple more Papa stories- due out, well, soon.
But man, what a great weekend. And just in time- things that I found acutely irritating last week suddenly seem manageable, and I am ready to jump back on the wagon (or leap out from under it).
And getting back into life post-committee meeting, Matt and I went to see Rodrigo y Gabriela live at the Byham Theater tonight. For those who aren't already devoted fans- Rodrigo y Gabriela DON'T play flamenco music- they are from Mexico City for crying out lout- but I think you could be forgiven for saying their unique rock is highly reminiscent of it. In the second half of the show, cameras were added to the scroll so you could watch the UNBELIEVABLY FAST finger work and knuckle drumming. It was still a bit too fast to see, but I got a better appreciation for what my eyes could not resolve. Very talented pair, very energetic show.
But man, what a great weekend. And just in time- things that I found acutely irritating last week suddenly seem manageable, and I am ready to jump back on the wagon (or leap out from under it).
And getting back into life post-committee meeting, Matt and I went to see Rodrigo y Gabriela live at the Byham Theater tonight. For those who aren't already devoted fans- Rodrigo y Gabriela DON'T play flamenco music- they are from Mexico City for crying out lout- but I think you could be forgiven for saying their unique rock is highly reminiscent of it. In the second half of the show, cameras were added to the scroll so you could watch the UNBELIEVABLY FAST finger work and knuckle drumming. It was still a bit too fast to see, but I got a better appreciation for what my eyes could not resolve. Very talented pair, very energetic show.
Monday, August 18, 2008
Nine inch Bear Claw Nails
This weekend, Jess and I took a trip out to Houston, TX to see Nine Inch Nails (NIN) in concert. We left on Saturday afternoon after Jess had an evaluation for Roller Derby. They do a couple of those and everyone who makes it to the end of the training season and passes gets brought into the league. Woot.
Right after the eval, we hopped into the car and drove to Houston. It's a 3 hour drive, and we stopped on the way to have some dinner and then again to check into our el-cheap-o hotel. The concert was going to be late, and we didn't want to be driving home until 3 in the morning.
We had floor tickets, which meant we got to get down in the middle of the stadium with a whole bunch of others. We also got really close to the front, which was nice. Lucky for us, NIN has been around long enough that the mean age of the concert-going-crowd had gotten out of high school, and that meant that, all in all, it was a pretty civilized concert. I got bumped a couple of times due to proximity, but for the most part people just stood around and listened to/watched one heck of a good performance. There was some amazing stagecraft, including huge interactive light screens. My favorite part was when the drummer came out and started touching a bunch of squares on the back display. It turned out it was actually a massive, interactive drum machine, and he built up the drum loops for one of the last songs. It was a pretty long concert, lots of great songs, and a really good vibe. Jess, of course, was totally enamored by Trent (lead singer, composer, and all-around musical guy.) I gotta admit, the man looks good in a black t-shirt.
After the concert, we went back to the hotel and slept. We got up in the morning but, since we were in Houston anyway, we decided to try and check out the Zoo. It was a bit of a trail to find the darn place, but perseverance paid off and we tracked it down. I'm really glad we did, it was pretty spectacular. Most of the animals were awake and being interesting, so we got to see a lot of neat animals. My favorites included the primate exhibit, which held a bunch of small primates with bat-like faces. Cute, but I can just imagine people 1000 years ago assuming they were demons.
Other highlights: a family of giraffes. I only came up to their legs. The african elephants were awake, and the mommy and the baby were rolling around in mud to keep cool. Then they got their daily bath. They had been trained to lift up a leg on command so that the zookeepers could get all over with the hose. There was one small-cat exhibit with a wildcat about twice the size of a house cat that woke up while we were watching. He was very cat-like, he even did the 'wake-up-and-stretch-out-with-clawing' thing that our cats do, except that when he did it, he dug some pretty impressive furrows in a log. There was a petting zoo with some goats that were so fat they were nearly spherical. We got to see a nautilus, too, a crazy, deep-water crustacean that propels itself with a jet of water and always swims backwards. There was a family of orangutan in one of the displays, too. The mom and dad were busy being lazy, but the kid was playing around with a empty, plastic, tidy-cat bucket of litter. He would jump up on it and then fall off, or crawl around inside. It was all very entertaining until dad got annoyed and started coming after Jr. Mom rushed to his defense. Crazy but amazing.
After that, we had some diner, drove home, and wrote this. Coming around, full circle.
-N
Right after the eval, we hopped into the car and drove to Houston. It's a 3 hour drive, and we stopped on the way to have some dinner and then again to check into our el-cheap-o hotel. The concert was going to be late, and we didn't want to be driving home until 3 in the morning.
We had floor tickets, which meant we got to get down in the middle of the stadium with a whole bunch of others. We also got really close to the front, which was nice. Lucky for us, NIN has been around long enough that the mean age of the concert-going-crowd had gotten out of high school, and that meant that, all in all, it was a pretty civilized concert. I got bumped a couple of times due to proximity, but for the most part people just stood around and listened to/watched one heck of a good performance. There was some amazing stagecraft, including huge interactive light screens. My favorite part was when the drummer came out and started touching a bunch of squares on the back display. It turned out it was actually a massive, interactive drum machine, and he built up the drum loops for one of the last songs. It was a pretty long concert, lots of great songs, and a really good vibe. Jess, of course, was totally enamored by Trent (lead singer, composer, and all-around musical guy.) I gotta admit, the man looks good in a black t-shirt.
After the concert, we went back to the hotel and slept. We got up in the morning but, since we were in Houston anyway, we decided to try and check out the Zoo. It was a bit of a trail to find the darn place, but perseverance paid off and we tracked it down. I'm really glad we did, it was pretty spectacular. Most of the animals were awake and being interesting, so we got to see a lot of neat animals. My favorites included the primate exhibit, which held a bunch of small primates with bat-like faces. Cute, but I can just imagine people 1000 years ago assuming they were demons.
Other highlights: a family of giraffes. I only came up to their legs. The african elephants were awake, and the mommy and the baby were rolling around in mud to keep cool. Then they got their daily bath. They had been trained to lift up a leg on command so that the zookeepers could get all over with the hose. There was one small-cat exhibit with a wildcat about twice the size of a house cat that woke up while we were watching. He was very cat-like, he even did the 'wake-up-and-stretch-out-with-clawing' thing that our cats do, except that when he did it, he dug some pretty impressive furrows in a log. There was a petting zoo with some goats that were so fat they were nearly spherical. We got to see a nautilus, too, a crazy, deep-water crustacean that propels itself with a jet of water and always swims backwards. There was a family of orangutan in one of the displays, too. The mom and dad were busy being lazy, but the kid was playing around with a empty, plastic, tidy-cat bucket of litter. He would jump up on it and then fall off, or crawl around inside. It was all very entertaining until dad got annoyed and started coming after Jr. Mom rushed to his defense. Crazy but amazing.
After that, we had some diner, drove home, and wrote this. Coming around, full circle.
-N
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