Got them super on-sale at REI at the beginning of last summer. I’d have paid full price for them though; they’re super comforatble, washable, and the bottoms look as good as the day they were purchased even though I wear them all the time!
Another list…
…this time of musical acts (I wouldn’t say I’d call all of them bands…) I’ve seen live:
Amy Grant
Destiny’s Child (back when there were 4)
Audio Adrenaline x2
Dave Matthews Band x3
Relient K x2
Superchick
Switchfoot x2
Ludo
House of Heroes
The Urge
Hazard To Ya Booty
IndiaArie
The Calling
Lifehouse
Jimmy Eat World
Jessica Andrews
…again, I’m sure there are more that I’ll think of and add later, but that’s the list in my head right now!
Stoopid Verizon…
Since we went to see “A Prairie Home Companion” for Brooke’s birthday, we went to see Dave Matthews Band for mine. The concert was held at Verizon Wireless Amphitheater, and for the first time, we dropped the big bucks to actually sit in seats (as opposed to standing on the lawn).
The set included the following:
“Pantala Naga Pampa/Rapunzel”
“Shake Me Like a Monkey”
“Funny the Way It Is”
“Typical Situation”
“Anyone Seen the Bridge”
“Too Much/Lie in Our Graves”
“Seven”
“Corn Bread”
“Best of What’s Around”
“Crush”
“Why I Am”
“Dreaming Tree”
“Grey Street”
“Dive In”
“Shotgun/Squirm”
“Time Bomb”
Encore
“(#40)”
“You and Me”
“All Along the Watchtower/Stairway to Heaven”
The music was spectacular, as always, with a very good mix of some oldies and some stuff off their newest album, “Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux” king. There were a few of my favorites missing, but that’s to be expected any time they have a new album out. It was certainly better than when we saw them back in 2005 (I think?) right after “Stand Up” was released, as they played almost everything from that album and very little of their old stuff.
So yeah, the music went on for a little over 2.5 hrs, so we got our money’s worth!
…BUT…then we tried leaving. We sat in that parking lot for over an hour without moving…and we weren’t even in our parking spot anymore, as we had moved out into one of the driving lanes. No cars were moving. I still don’t know why this was. Finally, one of the park workers rode by on a golf cart and directed us to another exit. This time, we made it out of the parking lot, but were directed south on Earth City Expressway, away from I-70 (where we needed to go). By the time we had turned around toward I-70, they had opened up that intersection so people could then head north on Earth City Expressway, but all the lights were backed up such that we had to wait through about 4 light cycles at each light (and there were two).
Long story short, we left our apartment around 6:45 pm Wednesday night. The concert started a little after 8:15 (DMB, that is…there was an opening band). We were out of the amphitheater by around 10:45. We didn’t get home until 1:00 am.
The concert was great, but I’m seriously considering never returning to that venue…
Guess where we’ll be tonight???
“I do write about death a lot. I don’t like to over use that whole
‘seize the day’ thing, but I think, you know, the fact that we’re
going to die is a pretty good reason to stop complaining.”
— Dave Matthews; CBS Sunday Morning, 5/31/09
In honor of Pushing Daisies’ last episode…
…that I just watched (and was a little disappointed by, but it’s not the show’s fault…stupid writers’ strike), a list of TV shows I have seen every episode of:
Pushing Daisies
Lost
Six Feet Under
Dead Like Me
Joan of Arcadia
Sex and the City
Love Monkey
Veronica Mars
House
Numbers
Monk
Psych
Criminal Minds
Jon & Kate Plus 8
Little People, Big World
Gilmore Girls
…the sad thing is that I’m sure there are more…but it’s really not all that sad, because I’m not ashamed that I like to watch TV…I read too!
Too cute for her own good…
…and please excuse the window crud…I swear it’s on the outside!
Belated/Be-earlied Birthday
We went up to Troy, MO yesterday to have dinner with Brooke’s parents, Mark and Diana. We had a lovely dinner, of course (I’ve had a craving for Chinese food for a few weeks now, and it was satisfied last night, believe you me!), but part of the reason they came down from Hannibal was to give us our respective birthday presents. Brooke’s B-day is May 27th and mine is June 20th, so we kinda split the middle and they came down. Anyway, the gifts are pictured above. I’m not sure if the foot cream stuff is supposed to be mine or not, but I think I’ll get more use out of the new camera lens… 😉
Our camera came with an 18 – 55 mm vibration reduction (VR) lens, which is just fine for most wide-angle shots, but we knew we’d need to pick up a zoom lens eventually, especially if we were to go on vacation. Well, thankfully, Mark and Diana got us a 55 – 200 mm VR zoom lens to compliment our wide-angle lens, so I think we’re all set, so far as camera stuff goes! I’d still like to get an external flash at some point, but the one on the camera works just fine for most purposes.
Thanks for the present, Mom and Dad! 🙂
Not bad…
…for an on-call Saturday!
I started with about $20 of these:
And ended up with all of this:
My kitchen looked like this (which isn’t as bad as it normally is, but still not as clean as Andy would prefer):
So, I did all of these:
Amidst all of this, I also made about 150 phone calls to fill open shifts that came up at the last minute, prepped a chicken for Andy to grill, made 10 cups of broth from that chicken, made the rest of dinner, and killed some zombies. Whew…I’ll sleep well tonight!
Pretty…
…and it will be mine soon! Thanks woot!!
A Three Hour Tour…
Brooke and I went on a float trip over the last few days… Sunday to Tuesday seemed like the best time to do it, as we’d be avoiding all the crowds, and it wouldn’t be in the dead center of the week, which would just disrupt all kinds of other things. We went down to Jacks Fork River, near Eminence, MO for a 24 mi, 2-night trip.
The weather was absolutely perfect. The high was supposed to be in the upper-80s or lower-90s, but it never felt like it really got above 85 F while we were along the river. The sun was out the whole time, it never rained, there was a distinct lack of humidity, and there were no mosquitoes (although, there were plenty of other flies and gnats…not as big a deal, though). I’ve posted some pictures up on Picasa if you want to check them out.
We got started Sunday afternoon and floated for a few hours, then spent most of the day floating on Monday (around 9:00 am to 4:00 pm). On Tuesday morning, it only took us 45 min or so to get to our final destination, indicating that we’d gone 23 of the 24 miles by the end of Monday…which pretty much rocked. It got us back to St. Louis in plenty of time for Brooke to grab a shower and relax before heading off to teach her ACT Prep class.
As you’ll see in the photos, we had quite a bit of fun taking pictures with the new camera. (Note: we were quite careful with it…taking it along in a water-proof container and only taking it out on shore…never whilst in the boat) We got to toy with the shutter and aperture settings, which are things I’d never really experimented with. The ability to take as many pictures as you want on an 8 GB card makes it easy to toy around and see what you can make happen. We took, like, 50 pictures of the fire on Monday night while messing around with those settings (I’ve only posted a few of those, though).
Anyway, it was an excellent trip and we’ll probably need to do it again! Likely not this year, but who knows…