11 Months Down, 1 More To Go…

I am overly ecstatic today. My internet is finally fixed!!! Shortly after my last post, my roommate decided to change internet providers. According to my roommate, there was some problem with the router, then the replacement router crapped out too. Three routers later, we are online!

At the beginning of November, I won one the coolest concert tickets to date: Stone Temple Pilots!!! Here are a few pics:

My friend Chris and I saw Dave Matthews play an acoustic set to celebrate the opening of the first Microsoft retail store at a local mall. The place was packed and crazy, but well worth getting to see and hear Dave Matthews.

 

I said in my last post that I would post a book review, and I had every intent on keeping that promise. Now that my internet is working again, expect more book reviews! I’ve accepted a few books to review and I have a couple of reviews that way past over due that I need to post. 

October: A Little Late….

I finally have a little free time to write about the month of October… it’s only 2 weeks late :)

At the beginning of October my friend Chris and I checked out The Experience Music Project (EMP) in Seattle. It’s basically Paul Allen’s tribute to Jimi Hendrix and other music memorabilia. For as much hype as the EMP gets, I wasn’t that impressed. What did impress me, however, was the Science Fiction Museum, also located in the EMP. It’s a definite must for any SciFi fan.

I took a week off of work and ended up doing a lot of fun stuff.

On the first day of vacation I saw the silent black and white film “Underworld” at the Paramount theatre, complete with a live organist playing along with the movie.

On the second day of vacation I saw the play “The Lieutenant of Inishmore” at the ACT Theatre.

On the third thru sixth day of my vacation I went to a festival called the City Arts Fest, put on by City Arts Magazine, a local Seattle publication. They booked a handful of bands each night of the festival, which concert goers could either buy individual tickets to each show, or buy a wristband and get into any show they wanted to. My only complaint about the festival is that they scheduled many great concerts at the same time, and I had to choose which band I wanted to see the most. I ended up choosing:

• 1st Night – Gogol Bordelo and Forro in the Dark
• 2nd Night – Roky Erickson, the Maldives and Massy Fergusen
• 3rd Night – The Vaselines, Dum Dum Girls and Young Evils
• 4th Night – She & Him and Mike Coykendall & the Golden Shag

And on the 7th day of vacation I rested :)

To close up the month of October, I had the opportunity to go to a Seattle Sounders playoff game on Halloween. Unfortunately, the Sounders lost, but I had a lot of fun at the game anyways.

I’ve been asked a few times if I’m going to participate in NaNoWriMo this year, and sadly the answer is no. I really wanted to, but I hardly update my blog. I definitely don’t have time to write a 50,000 word novel in a month.

Oh, and speaking of never updating my blog… I’ve been considering what to do with my blog. I’ve thought about shutting it down and just commenting on the blogs that I follow. I really enjoy writing book reviews, but I never have the time to write them. I keep turning down books to review, not because I’m not reading, but because I feel bad that I don’t have time to provide the author and/or publisher with a timely review.

But…… I’ve decided that I want to keep my book reviewing blog alive! I’ve recently accepted a book to review and hope in the next week or so to post the two book reviews I’ve been meaning to do since summer. With fall here and winter quickly approaching, I hope to be spending the cold nights curled up with a cup of tea, a great indie book and my laptop.

Ah, September! What a fun month!!

September was crammed full of great events! I was so busy, I didn’t get a chance to write the book reviews I promised last month. Now that fall is here, I’m hoping to return to the regularly scheduled programming on this blog.

I started out the month by checking out the Seattle Art Museum (SAM) with my friend, Chris. SAM has free admission the first Thursday of every month. I really wanted to check out the Kurt Cobain exhibit before it ended. I was very disappointed. The exhibit was actually art inspired by Kurt Cobain instead of his own art and was mixed with the work of Andy Warhol. After walking thru the Cobain/Warhol exhibit, we checked out the rest of SAM. 

Labor Day Weekend was awesome because I won my coolest radio concert to date…. BUMBERSHOOT!!! For those of you not from Seattle, Bumbershoot is a 3 day music and arts festival. On top of winning 2 passes for the whole weekend, I also won private mini concerts for Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, Crash Kings and Courtney Love. We saw 29 bands over the weekend! I didn’t take very many pictures because I wasn’t close enough to the stages, but here’s a few from the private concerts.

Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros

 

Crash Kings

Courtney Love

The Space Needle on a beautiful day

The weekend after Bumbershoot, I won another radio contest, this time to see The Smashing Pumpkins (or as I like to refer to them as Billy Corgan and friends). It was a great concert, but I really wished they played more songs from the 90’s. You can check out Chris’ review here.

Just a few days after seeing The Smashing Pumpkins, Chris got to review The Gaslight Anthem and had an extra pass, so I got to tag along. You can check out his review here.

The night after The Gaslight Anthem, I got to see Brandon Sanderson at University Bookstore!!! He read from his newest book, “The Way of Kings”, answered questions from the crowd, then ended with a book signing. Sadly, I did not have anything signed.

I got to tag along for another concert Chris was reviewing, this time for Massy Ferguson, Cody Beebe & The Crooks and Curtains For You. Chris writes way better concert reviews then I do, so check out what he had to say here.

Last month I mentioned that I won tickets to Vampire Weekend, but the show was cancelled. It was rescheduled for a different venue. They put on a good show, but I really enjoyed the opening band, The Head And The Heart.

I attended my first Oktoberfest, where I sampled 5 beers and had a great time people watching. I really wish I took some pictures, but at the time, I didn’t think about it.

Just when you think I’d be sick of concerts (NEVER!), Chris won 2 contests back to back! The first show was for Matt & Kim. I’m not a huge fan of their music, but they put on a very high energy show. We got to meet them for a few minutes before the show and they are very cool. I just checked to see if the pictures were posted for the Meet and Greet with Matt & Kim and they were not.

The next night Chris won tickets to see Arcade Fire, which I really wanted to buy tickets for, but could not afford it. Their concert was amazing, probably one of the top 5 concerts I’ve ever seen.

I was interviewed by my blog-mentor, Shelley, from Layers of Thought on my NaNoWriMo experience last year. Check out the interview on her blog here. If you don’t know what NaNoWriMo is, Shelley does a great job explaining it. NaNoWriMo is a great way for any aspiring author to challenge themselves to write!

I think that about wraps it up for September. As you can see, I have very good excuses for not writing book reviews. I’ve considered writing concert reviews, but as I said earlier, I don’t think I’m very good at writing them. Now that Fall is here and the weather will be soon turning rainy, I anticipate my book review posts to increase.

What!? Summer is over already?

Ah, Summer. Why did you forget Seattle? Did we do something wrong?

It’s already September! I can’t believe how fast the last few months have flown by. This post is a little late because the last week has been crazy busy with fun stuff, but I’ll save those events for another post.

Early in August, a friend and I checked out a great local band called Cody Beebe and The Crooks at a local bar. Here’s some video I found on YouTube that was taken that night.

I also went to the CD release party for Brad’s newest album called Best Friends? If you’re a hardcore Pearl Jam fan, you’ll know that the guitarist for Pearl Jam, Stone Gossard, plays in Brad, along with Shawn Smith (vocals, keys), Regan Hagar (drums), Keith Lowe (bass) and Mike Berg (keys).  I couldn’t find any footage of the concert that night, but the venue was packed and the band’s performance was amazing. Below is a promo video for Best Friends?

I won yet another radio contest, this time to see Vampire Weekend. Before the actual concert, the radio station hosted a private performance of Vampire Weekend for the contest winners at the Gibson Showroom. The band played 3 songs acoustically, then signed autographs and posed for pictures afterwards. Unfortunately, the lead singer of Vampire Weekend had to cancel the concert later that evening because he had enflamed vocal cords. The concert has been rescheduled for mid-September. Below is footage the radio station filmed of Vampire Weekend performing a cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m Going Down”.

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted a book review. I have two reviews that I will post very soon (after I write them, of course!). The first one is called “Annexed” by Sharon Dogar and the second book is called “The Eleventh Hour Can’t Last Forever” by Alison Johnson. I hope to have both reviews up in the next week or two.

Thank God July is Over!!

I started this post a few days ago, but I keep getting sidetracked. It's about time I finish it! June was a very uneventful month. I can't say the same about July. I was very busy.

The month started out with car problems. My car kept dying on me, so I took it in to the mechanic. They informed me I was having some sort of electrical problems, which might me causing my car to die. So I got that fixed.

Since summer finally decided to show up in Seattle, I decided to spend a Saturday at the beach.

 

I used some vacation time and took a week off of work in the middle of the month. The Friday before my vacation started, I won Kings of Leon tickets from a local radio station. The concert was for the next day, so I started off my vacation driving 3 hours away to The Gorge, an amazing concert venue. The Features and Built to Spill were great opening acts for Kings of Leon.

 

The Bite of Seattle was also happening the same weekend as the concert, so I went to that Friday night and Sunday. We saw a few great local bands and ate yummy food from local restaurants.

While on vacation, I spent one day wandering around Pike Place Market (one of my favorite places) and the Seattle Waterfront with a friend. Later that night we checked out a local band playing at a bar, but before, we took a quick walk to check out a famous Seattle landmark, The Fremont Troll. For those of you not from Seattle, The Fremont Troll lives under a bridge just north of downtown Seattle. Yes, the troll is holding a real, full size VW Bug.

At the end of my vacation I drove to my hometown to spend the weekend with friends. We spent a lot of time at the river and my shoulders got really sunburned.

My first day back to work after my vacation, my car wouldn't start in the morning so I got a ride to work from a co-worker. After work I called roadside assistant to get a jump. They guy who showed up jumped my car and told me to drive around for a half hour to charge the battery. About 15 minutes into my drive, my car started to act up and wouldn't accelerate. I coasted into a parking lot. I called roadside assistant again, and he jumped my car, but it wouldn't shift into drive. I had to leave my car in the parking lot over night. The next day I had to have my car towed. My fuse panel was melted and the wires to the alternator were burned. The dealership had to order parts, so I was without my car for a few days.

With the exception of the car problems, July was a great month! Hopefully I'm done with car problems for a while!

I Blinked and May Disappeared....

Wow! May flew by! I didn't do anything really exciting, but it seemed like I was busy all the time. Work is busy as always and I seem to find something to tie up my time after work. I haven't forgotten on book reviews. I plan on posting a book review very soon.

Here are 2 noteworthy activities I've done lately-

At the beginning of May I won tickets to see 2 Door Cinema Club. Here's a few pics:

Opening Band - Leadspeak

Opening Band - The Emergency

2 Door Cinema Club

I tried a new hobby this weekend. It's called Geocaching. Basically it's a treasure hunt, but you use GPS to locate the "cache". People hide the caches all over the world and post the GPS coordinates to the Geocaching website for other adventure seekers to find. If you have an iPhone, there's a spiffy app you can download that almost makes the hunting idiot-proof. I say almost because, well, you'll see.

This Saturday was finally sunny in the greater Seattle area. I called up a friend to invite him to go Geocaching with me. After explaining what it was, he was game. We picked a park and I used my fancy Geocaching app on my iPhone to locate caches in the area. While there were a few caches in the area, there weren't any parking spots. Apparently everyone was out enjoying the sun. So we decided to try a larger park. We found a parking spot and I located a geocache within 300 feet of the parking spot. After walking around for a while trying to find a trail into the woods, which is where the app is indicating the cache is, we find we're getting farther and farther away from the hidden cache. So we back-tracked and headed in a new direction. After walking for awhile we found another trail, but it looked overgrown. We ignored it and continued on our way. Still not any closer to the cache, we head back to the car to drive to a different part of the park. We got out of the car near a petting zoo and started walking toward the cache, hoping to find a trail. A petting zoo employee noticed us wandering around aimlessly looking at my phone and asked us if we were looking for a trail. She told us to go back to where we were originally, because there was no entrance to the trails from the petting zoo. We told her what we were looking for and she told us that the rangers may have removed the cache because tons of people were walking around with GPS devises and the hider of the cache didn't have permission to leave a cache at the park. Great, now we just wasted all afternoon looking for a cache that may or may not be hidden.

As we were leaving, we passed the trail we ignored earlier. I mentioned we should try it and see if the cache was removed or not. So we park again and explore the trail. We soon find out the the trail is muddy and is slighly washed out in one spot. We carefully make our way around the washed out spot and continue on our way. A short while later, the trail gets very steep and is very muddy. I can't go on because I'm just wearing flip flops (unless I want to slide down the trail on my butt), so I recommend turning around and attemping to find another cache somewhere else. He wants to continue on, so he heads up the trail with my phone, leaving me by myself in the middle of the woods. Without my phone. He's gone 15 minutes. And he didn't locate the cache.

The trip wasn't a total fail. It was fun to go hiking on a beautiful day and it was good to learn how to use the Geocaching app. Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures because I was so focused on finding the cache. Now that I know what to expect, I'll take more pictures and share my experiences on my blog.