godream

Copley Square concerts could very easily become a new habit. Saw half of Maia Sharp's set (really good) and all of Mike Doughty's (fantastic) yesterday... the concerts are nestled in this grassy area, a little crowded but not too bad -- I was close enough to the stage to watch guitar fingerings (with the side effect that my left ear will never be the same), and it was an absolutely beautiful day, and really nice on the whole.

Then off to hear Speakeasy at the Middle East -- as usual the sound setup there made me a little sad; the upstairs room is not a huge space and I imagine there's only so much you can do (and the sound tech was definitely walking around the room and listening and balancing actively the whole time) but it seems like the solution they use every time (the only solution, probably) is to up the volume on everything until it can compete with the drums, which imho ends up just being way too much for the room and hurts the band's sound. Last time I saw Speakeasy there one of the things that set them above the just-okay bands was their use of varying dynamics; they didn't seem to do that quite so much this time, but were still good, especially the second half of their set.

Shakespeare on the Common on Wednesday was pretty good too -- I was sort of disappointed that they reserved a whole lot of space in front of the stage for sponsors of the performance, most of which wasn't even filled up, so we couldn't get all that close to the stage. :/ But they did a good job -- ( I'm cutting half a sentence here because it's hilarious and if you plan to see this I don't want to ruin the surprise ) -- and it must be tough logistically to figure out how to stage a performance like that on a limited budget, outside, in such a way that it can be repeated nightly for three weeks. I thought it was pulled off well.

I really should be working.

News from my life: On Her Majesty's Secret Service is the strangest Bond flick *ever*. I still haven't dragged myself through the last couple hundred pages of Quicksilver. (But I'm going to win my battle against that book, I really am.) I made banana bread. I need to make cheesecake because I bought six slabs of cream cheese for that specific purpose. I got addicted to Battlestar Galactica (Fridays at ten, definitely worth your time.)

Concerts possibly in my future: Speakeasy at the Middle East on Thursday July 21st, Speechwriters LLC at the Paradise on Monday July 25th, Carbon Leaf at Copley Square on Thursday August 11th. Whee! All fantastic bands and you should come too. That last one's even free.

Meanwhile, ( one of my favorite time-wasting guilty pleasures. )

Okay, so the sky fell and we laughed and then swam home and for a moment there it really worked.

I think I suck at being emo. Oooh, but I know what can totally give me that authentic edge. ( Read more... )

There, now you *know* I'm deep.

I haven't posted for quite a while; this is because very little has happened -- besides me discovering that this whole 9-5 working as a code monkey thing is tiring, time-consuming, hard work. *sigh* Boy, am I going to hate the real world.

( A question and some whining. )

Also -- beat_the_beaver and I took an exciting trip to the Cambridge River Festival several weekends ago. (Okay, so maybe something has happened besides 9-5ing.) I loved it... a chaos of bright colors and music and people selling overpriced things that are pretty to browse through.

One of the three music tents was sponsored by the Middle East club; it was at this one that we saw (I kid you not) Harry and the Potters perform. We were tragically unimpressed; it looked like two guys and canned midi-quality sound, although a look at their website makes it appear that if we'd hung around past the first song we might have seen actual instruments emerge, which would have been much better. In any event, we were both amused by their intro, at least: "Hi, I'm Harry Potter." "And I'm Harry Potter." "And we're Harry and the Potters." "Our first song is about The Man, and how The Man can't keep rock down. In this case, The Man is Voldemort..." (begin Voldemort Can't Stop The Rock).

Later, we were sitting and watching a few kayaks go down the river (while listening to a Spanish punk rock bank which I liked a lot) when this car comes puttering under the bridge. Under the bridge, not across the bridge -- evidently the couple driving this sucker had somehow modified it to be a boat. It was really fantastic -- you couldn't see any modifications from where we were, they might as well have been driving on land except maybe for the fact that they were steering backwards (Gina pointed out that they'd probably rigged the wheel to the rudder). It was an older car, with that sort of classic look to it, though neither of us were car buffs enough to be able to identify it (we thought you'd like it, liz_factorial) but it was extremely cool.

Work goes well; I'm now on one of these "normal" sleep schedules which is rather odd after the whole school year of being decidedly collegey. Have acquired air conditioner because I'm a wimp who can't deal with Massachusetts summers even though this will be what, the nineteenth, twentieth time trying? Everyone who I laughed at when it was cold out and I liked it is now laughing at me, and by "everyone" I mean beat_the_beaver. At least summer is only three months long, and winter is at least five, so I win in the long run. Mua ha ha.

Gina and I have been making our way through James Bond movies, with the goal of watching them all this summer. We finished The Spy Who Loved Me tonight, which I rather liked although I was terribly disappointed by their decision of which toothy character to kill off at the end.

Reading the damnation_alley community has reminded me that Roger Zelazny is gone ten years today. I have a beat-up/well-loved Zelazny paperback on my desk that'll be superseding the library books for tonight right after I hit "update" on this in a few seconds.

Mmm, vacation. I'm getting perilously close to accustomed to 11+ hours of sleep nightly, and also dangerously fascinated with Puzzle Pirates. There's no way this is ending well.

I went and visited LS, my old high school, on Thursday -- my first time back there since I finished working there last summer. The new building looks so much less sterile and dead with people in it and posters tacked up to the walls and the mural reproductions up... it's really nice. Just like the old building, the favorite senior hang-out spot is of course in the very last place that faculty would want it to be. It was the last day for seniors, so there was a stereo blaring and various decorations strewn about the area, and I felt a little guilty that I had no idea who most of this year's seniors are. Said hi to a bunch of people and many teachers -- and hey, is big hair on guys suddenly "in"? 'Cause there were at least two gentlemen I didn't recognize for a moment simply because of the things on their heads -- discovered that this year's Battlebots team had actually won three matches with one of the bots, and surprisingly everything all together didn't really kick off nearly as much of an "awwwwwww I miss this place" reflex as I'd expected.

liz_factorial and luminea will be very proud to learn that while clothes-shopping with my stepmom yesterday, I acquired several brightly-colored items of clothing. Which leaves the question of if I'll ever actually feel gutsy enough to wear them. Hopefully... it'd be awfully wasteful otherwise. Also comfy $3 jeans and various summery things.

I'm headed back to school on Monday or Tuesday, I think -- hopefully Monday night -- though I guess I'll probably be back briefly on Thursday evening for LS graduation. I'll try to make Rivers graduation as well, although I'd have to figure out transportation and since it appears to be at 2:00 there's a substantial chance I may not be able to make it.

In other news, my baby brother is still the cutest kid on earth. He is, though, obsessed with racing at the moment ("Race you to the car!" and so forth) which, I learned today, isn't a fabulous thing in grocery stores.

Everyone's starting to leave.

I just realized how much I'm going to miss people over the summer.

I really hate it when that happens.

Operation Embarrassing Birthday Cake is a roaring success. Heh.

... but no pictures, because my little sister reads this sometimes.

Went swimming at the Z-center pool with beat_the_beaver this evening... was reminded that I used to be good at that, and that 9-year-old Alison could swim circles around 19-year-old Alison more or less indefinitely, whereas 19-year-old Alison was more or less done after 45 minutes of back-and-forth. But I'm now tired (at 12:20! yikes!) but satified and convinced that I need to do that more often. And also find my goggles.

Sheesh, reading that last paragraph makes me feel really old. Any moment now I'll start breaking out the "back in MY day" stories... ;)