It rained last night and knocked the power out. Maybe if I try real hard I can pretend I'm up in the Northwest - Portland even. Oh wait - palm trees? dry riverbed? Damn, still in Bakersfield.
Being able to come home for lunch is great - having to go back for the afternoon sucks. More so when you know you'll be sitting in a meeting for most of it.
Ok, those of you who know me have to admit I've been very good in the complaint department lately. Meaning - there's been a lack of them. Yet, today I've not had the best of days, but for the most part I've dealt with that - even with my two week old computer at work cratering yesterday and them spending half of the day getting me back up and running. Oh, but this? This I had to share. I come home to find the A/C running. Understandable, it's starting to get warm out in the day (88°) and Sara is on days off. I'm fine with A/C. I prefer to be in a room where the glue of the soles of my shoes doesn't melt. Okay, maybe just set it at 75°, 72° is a little lower than I would go this early in the season So where's the rub? What possible bitch could I have? SHE'S ON THE COUCH WITH A BLANKET! WTF? Can someone explain it to me?
By rough count I'd need 26 days of vacation to fit in all the traveling I want to do this year and somehow I've got to manage it with 9. Okay, 10 if you count that optional holiday. Between a little creative scheduling of my Fridays off and some days without pay I'll be bouncing around the Americas (North and South) this year.
This weekend was the Kern River Festival - which will mean nothing to you unless you paddle or know someone who does. Knew a couple people who were going to be racing in the citizen's even on Sunday so headed up in the morning to watch the slalom events. A couple of friends were racing along with many others from KRA. Shot a couple rolls of film and Kathy handled the filming with the old camcorder my parents had given me. Besides the subtle shaking and lack of sound (although I can still hear the roar of the river in my head, the post race interviews just aren't the same...) it came out surprisingly well. Seth and his girlfriend also came up and did a little BBQing. Only have two complaints about the day. One - I missed one foot with sunscreen and now have the Official First Sunburn of 2002. Two - my ass is sore from sitting on river rocks all day. Yea, go ahead and laugh. I am.
Just got in from watching the final FLICs of the 20th season with Kathy. I'm going to have to find someone else that will go to those with me seeing that soon she'll be gone for the rest of the year. But I digress (is there anyway you can use the word digress and not sound pompous?), I hit up Starbucks (the scourge of real coffeehouses) for a nice beverage and the place was fulled with the teenagers. Overly caffeinated teenagers. I must be getting old...
Ever have a morning that when the alarm goes off you start to think about what it is you need to do to get ready? So when the alarms went off this morning (yes, I have two of them) I started doing that. I convince myself that I can't get up yet because Sara is in the bathroom. This is something that happens from time to time, but what makes it odd this time, is that Sara is in Paris. France.
I remember being in history with Mr. Denton and we had the old school pull down maps on the top of the chalkboard. So there would be all the states of the US of A. With a yardstick in hand Mr. Denton would approach Montana and show how far it was from Eureka to Ekalaka (that would be NW corner to SE corner for you non-natives). Then he would show the same distance from DC and how far you could go. But then I moved to California and began to understand urban sprawl. While back home we talk distance in miles, here you talk time. How far to LA? I first said it was 90 miles away, and now the answer is "about an hour and a half."
I've been doing some massive downloading the last couple of days. Completely legal stuff. Okay, mostly legal. Such an amazing thing that even though I wasn't there, I can download SHNs of an entire nights lineup at a concert in Philly. Dispatch played a benefit show with The Lost Trailers and Virginia Coalition which by a firends account - it was amazing. Also scrounged up some Counting Crows - covers and live stuff. Not that I'm in the need for anything new to listen to. I've still got a massive stack of cds that I'm working my way through...at work.
Did I say New Zealand for Thanksgiving this year? I meant South America. Yea, change in plans seeing that Kathy is fleeing the country in an attempt to travel around the world - North to South this time. Actually, she got another 6 month leave of absence approved so she's off on another journey. The plan is to join her for a week around Thanksgiving to do Galapagos or Chile/Patagonia/Argentenia/some place down there.
Occasionally there will be some musical guest on Dave, Leno, SNL, etc. that I'll be interested in catching. Recently there's been a rash of John Mayer and Jack Johnson all over and I'll usually throw in a VCR tape to catch it but that doesn't always stop me from staying up to watch it. And then it happens. I fall asleep right before the musical guest comes on and wake up right after they are done. It happened again while trying to catch Jimmy Eat World on SNL - out cold when they played The Middle although it showed up in my dream. Thanks to the internet things are different though. Through Kazaa or websites you can download the performance and watch it in 2x2 pixelated glory.
Went out to Flics again tonight - the season is winding down. Met up with some friends from work (who were headed for the hockey game) for drinks before hand. Luckily Kathy warned me ahead of time that having too much alcohol would make it difficult to read the subtitles of the French (Canadian?) film we were going to be seeing. Damn, and I was hoping to get blitzed.
So then I come home after the movie tired. Must be getting old or something, because I can't handle the extreme swings in sleep schedules as I once could. I can do it once in a while - a trip down to LA to see a show on a weeknight and then attempt to work the next day. Anyway, time to curl up with Harry Potter - I drug my feet to start reading those books, but I swear...literary crack. Thinking I need to delve a bit deeper with my next book choice though. Thinking Kerouac's On The Road.
My mom rocks. Know why? Because she sends me packages that include Mentos (the freshmaker), biscotti, beef jerky, unlabled video tape that I have to assume has a movie on it, mail (including my REI dividend) and a QuickChop.
The local paper's music columnist wrote something a couple of weeks ago about elitism of musical connoisseurs. Music Snobs.
Ah, the fickle ears of a music fan. I admit that I am one. A music snob. Just my genres of choice may be a bit shifted from yours. My question is, what happens when you hear your most recent "best kept secret" on the radio for the first time? And I'm not talking about college radio where the djs can get away with playing "The Toothbrush Song" by The Smurfs. Radio. Mainstream Alternative. AAA. I know I've mentioned John Mayer before, and I'm not surprised that he is damn near everywhere now - because he is radio friendly. To most "music snobs" that conjures up distaste. Is it just because you are no longer one of the few in the know? You've got Saves the Day and Dashboard Confessional showing up in the MTV rotation as emo is the flavor of the week.
I heard Jack Johnson on the radio for the first time in Bakersfield tonight. Surprised? Slightly. My roommate called on the way back from a job to tell me to turn on the radio, but I've had an idea that it was coming since he's been popping up on some television shows like Leno and Late World with Zach. Still, this is a guy that I saw perform on a beach in Ventura for free and while I would have liked to see him months later at one of two sold out shows at the House of Blues, did I go? Nope, stayed home. Even the fact that Glen Phillips was opening wasn't enough to get me down there. It's because I prefer to go see concerts where the music is raw and intimate. No recycled banter, no photocopied setlists. So, no. I won't be driving down to the House of Blues to see John Mayer's sold out shows, even if Sir Elton John says the kid is good. I already knew that.
I'll still drive the distance to see a band like Jump, Little Children who've put in the time and effort and could be on the verge of seeing it pay off. They were on CNN Headline News Hoop Mania last week even. Again, I can say that I listened to them way back when. And I'll clearly state for the record that I had to search to find Matchbox Twenty's first album - in fact, all I could find was a promo album and now I wouldn't be surprised to hear a muzak version of Push in the grocery store right after Guster's Barrel of a Gun. Guess that means I lose a couple of indie cred points eh? Well, at least I can still lay claims to Matt Nathanson, Dispatch, and Howie Day for a little bit longer - except Howie was just signed to Epic... Jason Mraz?
Yea, so I lost everything I'd just written. Damn you Blogger. Basically I was commenting on that in June, i will have lived in Bakersfield for three years. See, when I was at the concert on Friday, I ran into Deb from college who I've not seen in 3 years - she just happened to be down visiting a friend and ended up at the Fox. Then, besides the group of people I knew were going from work, there was Mary and the Cambpell's from kayaking, and other random familiar faces. Today at work I was stopped in the stairwell by someone saying "Saw you on Friday at the concert." What? Evidently I walked right by them (which made me feel a bit bad...but I tend to go into a daze from the rush and confusion of so many people around). I can't even buy toilet paper at Target or get my mail without running into someone from work anymore. Guess it speaks to that I've become somewhat established here in Bakersfield.
This isn't the first realization of this. While back in Montana for Christmas, while it will always be 'home' to me, I just feel that my life is here now. Or my lives. I often feel seperated by what I do for work, and what I do for myself. The 7 to 5 that keeps the money rolling in has me sitting in front of a computer working numbers and data. It's in the off hours that I scour the 'net for new music, read books, and work on 'projects.' I'm hoping to start painting again, but I seem to be using the "but I live in an apartment" as an excuse lately. I've got all these ideas in my head, just need to act on them.
Anyway, that's what's been rolling around in my head for the past couple of days.
Yea, so it's been a while since I've felt like sitting in front of the computer to type anything up. Some of what you missed out on:
An engaging tale of how Mapquest got me pseudo-lost in Los Angeles but at the same time saved my ears from the horrendous vocal stylings of Sylvania - I only caught a song and a half. However I wasn't late enough to miss the second opener which was nearly as bad. Although I had hopes for the guy - wearing his casually ripped jeans and looking like every other college kid - but no such luck. Jump, Little Children more than made it worth the drive down on a Wednesday night. Evidently they are listed in Maxim as one of the best unknown band. Yea, I could have told you that back in - shit, when I interned in Texas?...'98. Some other highlights of the week would be getting a promotion at work and scoring a phone interview this coming Thursday for the cancer camp in Montana. Was a bit of a strange week with everyone being on Spring Break. Yet another reminder of the lack of vacation. Okay, doesn't help that I'm trying to save it for something later this year...we'll see how it all works out.
The Weekend
Went to the Natalie Merchant concert on Friday at the Fox. It really is a good venue - although that could be partially because we were sitting in the fourth row. Much much closer then the usual spot for Flics. Eh, with Kathy planning on taking off again for world travels, I'm going to have to find someone else to go with me. Probably can scratch Seth off the list seeing as he's a bit wary of his past experience that included drinks at the Padre. Not that he stayed in there more than 5 minutes in all. That's just him though.
Tried to hit up the beaches on Saturday - but despite the highly accurate reading of the weather by Bret in DC, the clouds never did burn off. Spent most of the day either roaming LA or sleeping in the back of Kathy's car. I've never really had car narcolepsy but with her Camry. Maybe it's fumes leaking in from the trunk... Actually, I blame it on the fact that after I got home from the concert on Friday night I got a call on my cell from Brent asking why we had ditched everyone and that I needed to come back downtown. So what's a girl to do, but change back out of her pjs and head to the Padre. Had a good time - ended up at a bar that was very reminiscent to one in uptown Butte, America called Guthrie's Alley Cat. Not quite the M&M though (see below)
Continuing on the failure theme - although I was so graciously invited to the massive church service at the Convention Center, instead opted for an impromptu road trip to see the blooming poppies down by Lancaster. Instead, we found the Antelope Valley Poppyless Field Reserve.
Oh, wait...there was that one poppy plant.
And we got to see the windmills and a train wreck up close and personal thanks to my detour.
