chaneen, posts by tag: concerts - LiveJournal

Got back a while ago from a pre-birthday brunch with mmeguilotn, natacup82, and riadsala, in which there was delicious french toast, bacon that was actually crispy (I know, right?!), and mimosas, so I finally got to use (two thirds of) my bottle of champagne I've had hanging around for the past few years.  Still tasty!  Now to figure out if there's anything I can make with it, or if I should just drink the rest.

My actual birthday plans are to get ready for work on Monday, which entails all of the laundry, and possibly hit up Borders at some point, and see if the couple of books I want are on sale for a good price.  Since probably everyone and their brother will be having the same idea, I'm expecting a mad house, but at least it will be an air conditioned mad house.  I know, how exciting, right?  Maybe I'll even go crazy and use my Coldstone coupon and get discounted ice cream!

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You have probably been hearing this from everyone you know who lives in the northeast US right now, but jesus fuck it is hot outside.  I ended up driving to my concert last night because I was just not willing to wait for the train in weather that felt like 100+ degrees outside, and then have to walk from the train station to the venue.  So, I had to pay for parking, but it wasn't that much more than a train ticket, and I could be air conditioned on the way there and back.  Good plan all around, I think.

And speaking of the concert, Alison Krauss & Union Station were wonderful!  Worth absolutely every penny I paid for the ticket.  Their opener, Jeremy Lister, was quite good, too.  Apparently, he and his brother, who played keyboards and sang backing vocals for him, were on The Sing-Off, the acapella choir competition show that was on NBC last year.  Here's a video of his group, Street Corner Symphony, singing Everybody Wants to Rule the World by Tears For Fears.  They are actually pretty fantastic, and I'm not a super big fan of acapella.

And then Alison Krauss & Union Station!  That is an incredibly talented bunch of musicians, right there.  They are all fantastic at their chosen instruments, and everyone got a chance to show off and be great.  Jerry Douglass, who is their Dobro player, and apparently widely considered to be one of the best around, was just incredible.  I'm a big fan of the Dobro to begin with, but he really blew me away.  And Ron Block, who plays banjo, was just ridiculous.  Also, Alison Krauss not only has a gorgeous voice, and can play the hell out of the fiddle, but she's also one of the most adorable human beings alive.

They played for about two hours, and their set was a really nice mix of old and new stuff, both Alison's solo stuff and Union Station stuff, and even something from the record Alison did with Robert Plant.  I'm super glad I listened to the new album before the show, though, since they played about half of it.  They had a drummer/percussionist and a keyboard player who came out and played occasionally, but mostly it was just the five of them.  And for their encore, they came out and played unplugged, crowded around one microphone.

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It was such a good time, you guys!  If you are at all a fan of Alison Krauss & Union Station, or just bluegrass in general, and you can afford it (it wasn't that expensive, but I was really happy to have a credit card when tickets went on sale, lol), this show cannot be missed.  Also, spending three hours in a really nice air conditioned theatre wasn't bad, either. :D

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I have all of the thoughts about this week's episode of Torchwood, most of which boil down to: Jane Espenson, never leave us!  I really enjoyed it, and I want to make an actual thinky post about it soon, but that will most likely require a re-watch, and it is way too hot to engage my brain in that way today.

So I think I will just go sit underneath an air conditioning vent in my underwear until it is cool enough to do laundry without heating up my entire apartment.  For those of you who are experiencing this heat wave right now, too, stay cool!

This week has been surprisingly awesome, and it's only Wednesday!  I generally don't get a chance to say that, so I'm going to hold on to this as hard as I can and hope nothing outside of the truly disgusting weather we're supposed to have for the rest of the week/weekend ruins it.

On Monday, natacup82, mmeguilotn, riadsala, quettaser, and I saw Ludo in West Chester.  They are always great, so it was awesome to see them again.  For the first time in a long while, I really wished I'd brought my camera with me, though, since I had a great view, and, at the end of their set, the band came out into the crowd and we all sat down while they played acoustic and we sang along to "Love Me Dead". &Ludo;

And on Friday, I'm going to see Alison Krauss & Union Station, who I've been a fan of for about fourteen years now, so this should be great.  I'm debating whether or not to take the train into Philly, since it's going to be gross out, and driving would ensure me not sweating to death while I wait for the train/walk to the venue.  On the other hand, the cost of parking.  So, we'll see.  Regardless, I'm super excited!

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In other, non music-related news, I GOT A JOB!!!!  ASLDFKJAS;DLFAKJ;SFLAJSDF!!!!!  I've been unemployed since 2009, so my level of excitement would be better expressed by font size=a bajillion sparkly blinking text, but capslock, keymashing, and an unnecessary amount of exclamation points will have to do. :D

I start next Monday, so I'll know more about exactly what I'll be doing then, but it seems like pretty straightforward mix of customer service and office-y things, so it should be fine.  No sales, thank god, and a zero (or at least very low) percent chance of people calling me up just to yell at me about the price of whatever.  It's a temp job, with the possibility to go permanent (the agency said this place has given a bunch of people they placed there permanent jobs), which is pretty great, since if I hate it, it won't be forever, and if I like it, I may get to stay on.

I'm so excited to have something to fill my time with again, you have no idea.  And money is always nice, lol.  But mostly, I'm glad to not have to deal with the stress of not having a job and worrying about bills as much as I have been.  I'm already feeling a lot more positive than I have been in ages.  Who knows if this will last, but for now it's really nice.

This is also pretty much the best birthday present I could have hoped for this year (my birthday's on Sunday), aside from getting to go to Comic Con, which is always my birthday weekend, and I never get to go.  Maybe next year...

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And on that note, I guess I have to brave the still ridiculous temps outside in a few, since I really need milk.  Why can't it just magically appear in my fridge when I want cereal, I ask you?  Or why don't I have someone to go to the grocery for me, so I don't have to?  A question for the ages.

Later, y'all! :D

I remember why I hate pre-sales so much.  Sometimes they are smooth as can be with no issues whatsoever, but then other times they end up like this morning's MCR pre-sale.  Wherein both LiveNation and Ticketmaster were down for about 40 minutes, and it took what felt like a billion repetitions of refresh-reselect tickets-reenter promo code-type in captcha before I managed to get my tickets for both dates.  On the plus side, everyone else was freaking out about it on twitter, so I knew it wasn't just me, but I really didn't need to go through that obnoxiousness.

I would have also preferred doing it without sneezing violently multiple times every couple of minutes, and having tissues crammed in my nose to stop it from dripping.  I really hate allergies, you guys.  But I get to see MCR next May with some fantastic people, so at least there's that!

I think I will take some Benedryl, go back to bed, and try to sleep off this crud before it develops into a migraine.  Later, y'all!

Just saw Burn the Floor and am about to have ridiculous chocolate deliciousness at Max Brenner for dessert. Today is an excellent day!

Burn the Floor was seriously fantastic. It is so refreshing to see people being awesome at dance, rather than sucking (I'm looking at you SYTYCD), and it was great to see some of my favorites (Jeanette! Pasha and Anya!). Also, they had vocalists to perform the stuff they danced to, and one of them was Vonzelle Solomon, aka the person who should have won AI Season 4 instead of Carrie Underwood. So that was an awesome surprise!

Ooh, I think our dessert is coming out, so I'd better wrap this up. Chocolate fondue, FTW!

I'm sitting in a Cosi in New York, just having gotten here on a surprisingly drama-free bus ride from home. I'm in NYC to see the Empires show tonight with sparklyfabulous and wordsaremyfaith. Yeah, I know there's going to be a show in Philly on Friday, but I planned this right before I found out about that show, and my parents and I actually have tickets to a play tomorrow, so I can just stay overnight and have them give me a ride home. Otherwise, I would definitely be skipping this, since I would have had to drive in, and I am kind of done driving until Friday, what with our crazy Ludo shenanigans last weekend, and the ~8 hours of driving that entailed. Next time, I take the train, seriously. That way I don't almost fall asleep driving, and have to take a 25 minute nap at the turnpike rest stop.

But I am definitely excited for the show tonight. It's been over a year since the last time I've seen their ridiculous faces! Plus, there's supposed to be new music, so there's no way I'm missing that. And it is always nice to see fangirls. Anyone else who is going to be at the show tonight, should definitely come say 'hi'.

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I will probably post my Wincon recap this weekend, not that it's going to be very detailed or anything. I have just spent the time since I got back either sleeping, or seeing Ludo with Team Philly, so there hasn't been a lot of time for working on entries.

I will tell you all that, in case you don't already know, Wincon is going to be multi-fandom next year! Since Supernatural is theoretically ending next year, and we want to have more excuses to come and hang out with each other in the future, all fandoms are going to be welcome. Wincon is always a super-fun time, so I encourage you guys who have never gone, or who have gone in the past, to consider coming next year. If you join wincon (the new con comm), you can get all the details that are posted so far, and info about what next year is going to be like.

Plus, it's going to be in Chicago, which is always a great time (or theoretically it is; I've only seen the airport, hotels, and concert venues, so I have no personal experience). At any rate, you should all come, especially all of you who are in bandom and Trek reboot fandoms! October 15th-17th, 2010. :D? :D?

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Despite their brand new news post to the contrary, TXTLJ is not working with Verizon yet. Or at least, I can't post any entries from my phone, since the two I sent over the last week didn't show up on my LJ. They were basically "OMG, Broken Bride live!!!" and "hey, on a bus to NYC to see empires" but still. When you say something is fixed, it should actually be fixed. I guess I'll have to file a support request in the next couple of days, or something, if it doesn't work by the weekend. I would like the features I paid for, LJ!

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And, I'm out of things to say! I guess I will tool around on the internet for a little while longer, and then venture outside for some more walking around before it is time to meet up with sparklyfabulous. I plan to try and finally go to The Cloisters tomorrow, since I don't think there was really enough time today, so I have pretty much nothing to do this afternoon. At least it's gorgeous outside and not freezing! :D

Later, y'all!

My MSG weekend started on Saturday evening when I met up with jukeboxromeo and crossouttheeyes at the hotel. They (along with other parts of Team Philly) had decided to be crazy and go to the Virginia Beach show on Friday, so they drove up from there. I drove from home since, a) I am not that crazy to spend that many hours in a car, and b) my parents and I had tickets to see Avenue Q at the Scranton Cultural Center, and no way was I missing that. It was amazing, as usual, despite the weirdness of them casting a guy to play Gary Coleman.

Anyway, I met up with them, and we ate some delicious pizza, after finally finding a local place that had a menu online. Seriously, Newark restaurants, this is not a difficult concept to understand. At least, unlike in Chicago, they had no problem delivering to the hotel, so we were able to be lazy for the rest of the night. Eventually we were joined by immelmanturn, who had flown in for the show.

At some point, since I'd somehow gotten Meet and Greet, even though I haven't been in OCK that long, we decided we were definitely going to write a note to Pete thanking him for making us a shirt(!), and telling him how happy we were for him. It was a very involved process, complete with a rough draft. Here's what we ended up with, complete with the envelope we put it in:

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We all hung out in the hall while Asher Roth proceeded to tell the audience how much he loves college. And probably some other things, but none of us were really interested in hearing his set (AAR D:), so we just talked until it was over. Then, into the venue for Fall Out Boy!

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After the show ended, we managed to get through the sea of people leaving the venue. The exit was seriously sketchy, with tons of people crowding this tiny stairwell. Thankfully there was no fire, because we'd all be dead.

Once we got outside, we walked around what felt like the entire venue to the place where we were meeting ICHers. We ended up collecting a really nice sized group of people, and eventually got over to the diner, where we ate, talked, and gave introductions, complete with our favorite parts of Patrick (or Joe, Andy, or Pete, but mostly Patrick). I had an amazing time, and my end of the table was pretty damn awesome. Of course, we took the opportunity to troll crossouttheeyes with ketchup, as you do. :D

I think the entire night can be summed up as follows: Pete wrote us a note! Mark Hoppus shaved Pete's head on stage! We heart all Fall Out Boys! Blink-182 is ridiculous! And ICH meetups are amazing! ♥♥♥ to all of you who were there.

So that's all she wrote (thank god, right, that was a beast. Congrats, and thanks, if you got through it all.).

Finally, my review! This took approximately forever, especially since I had stuff to upload to youtube, and that always takes forever. But I got it done before my next set of shows, so yay!

I set off for Troy around 2ish, and my trip was basically plagued with delays. I stopped in Port Jervis to get gas, which was super cheap, but took forever. I wasn't aware that Port Jervis is in New Jersey. I guess it's the one mile of NJ between PA and New York or something, since the "Welcome to New York" sign was visible on the way to the gas station. I guess this does explain why they pump the gas for you. I don't care about pumping my own gas, but I would really like it if they didn't make me wait five or six minutes after the tank is full to come back and finish up. Plus, I decided to get Dairy Queen after that, and it took about a half an hour. And when I got back on the highway, there had been some kind of accident or something because traffic was backed up for a while. On the plus side, it looked like it was only a semi that broke down in the right lane, and I was very close to the end of it, so I didn't have to wait too long.

Then, when I decided to get food, I got off at an exit where the traffic was being directed by cops. And then got turned around getting back on the highway. :\ So, traffic and food-related delays set me back about an hour. Not that it mattered in the long run, except that I had to park about nine thousand miles away and walk across the athletic field (this is apparently a college campus) to get to the venue. The way the security directed me took me past the buses, so I knew I would have to go another way after the show. It ended up taking me twenty minutes to walk back to the car after, and after four+ hours in the pit, that really sucked.

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After "Saturday", I fought my way through the crowd to the merch booth. Hoodies are expensive, yo. I decided to buy a couple of t-shirts (the clan mixtape one, and the FOB one with the sheep and the wolf), and eventually made it to the bathroom and outside. Then the twenty minute trek to the car (literally since it was 20 minutes between the text I sent before I left and the one I sent when I got to the car), and finally home!

It was a fantastic show, and I'm thrilled I'll get to see them two more times, yay! Now to get some sleep so I am not a zombie this weekend!

Hello again, LJ! I've been back from NOLA for a week or so, and finally had some stuff to post about. The trip was fun, if tiring (too much walking, ugh). I took a few pictures, so I will work on getting them off my memory card and onto flickr soon. Maybe I will also backdate a writeup post, or talk a little bit about what we did, or something. I am going to be at Mom's store tomorrow and Saturday with almost nothing to do, so that might actually happen! For now, random topics!

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Last Friday, my parents and I went to the Humane Society and brought home a new kitten! She is currently sitting near me as I type this, being very fascinated with the whole computer thing. It looks like she wants to eat my cursor, or maybe just type for herself. I have been having a beast of a time trying to get pictures, since it is pretty dark in this room (we always keep new cats upstairs in our bathroom/exercise room for a while before we integrate them with our other cats), and black cats don't photograph very well with a flash. If you're interested, I posted a picture here (if you follow me on twitter, you saw this one already). Once we decide on a name, I'll probably spam you guys with more.

She is super-precious, though. Teeny tiny and adorable! ♥

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For those of you who care about this sort of thing, I am chaneen on Dreamwidth. I won the openID lottery a couple of days ago, and snagged my name, as I always like to do. Friend me (or whatever the heck you want to call it!) if you want, or don't. I plan to stay right here unless everyone else moves, but since Dreamwidth has really easy (and nifty!) import tool, I am using it to backup my LJ. LJ archive hasn't been working for me at all recently, so I feel better knowing everything's backed up.

I find all this brouhaha over Dreamwidth vs LJ to be kind of a waste of time, especially right now considering the site's still in closed beta. I don't see how people can really have an opinion on which one is better when we haven't even had a chance to compare them both at full functionality. I highly doubt this is going to be the thing that takes fandom off of LJ, but if it does, I am willing to provide invite codes for whoever wants one. And that's pretty much all I have to say on that subject! :D

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In much more exciting news, this weekend begins my week of craziness, concert wise, with Fall Out Boy (♥ ♥ ♥) in Troy, NY and Philly, and then Bamboozle (NO DOUBT asklfajfalsdf!). I am so excited for "Tiffany Blews" live, you have no idea! I will actually attempt to upload any photos/videos I may take in a reasonable amount of time (or at all, lol), this time.

Who else is seeing FOB in Troy? I know approximately a bajillion people will be at the Philly show, but what about Sunday's show? Will I see any of you there?

And does anyone want to go to the Philly show? I have an extra ticket that I haven't managed to get rid of yet.

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After next week, I have nothing exciting planned until May 28-31, when it is BookExpo time again! It is in NYC again this year (which is probably why we get to go again), so we are going to a couple of plays while we're there as well. Hopefully it will be a good time, and less tiring than last time, since we're actually staying in Manhattan, instead of New Jersey (getting up at 6:00 to catch the train, for the lose). Anyone in NYC want to have lunch/dinner/brunch while we're there? :D? :D!

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Well, that is about all I can think to post about right now. I am going to try and keep my "posting every few days" promise this time, and so will hopefully be back to ramble on about totally unconnected topics later! For now, I bid you goodnight!

So, it's been approximately forever since my last post (excluding phone posts, since I am seemingly incapable of driving any long distance without making one). I have been wanting to post for a while, but I, once again, got in the habit of not posting, so I never have the mental energy to compose anything of substance. Not that this is going to have much substance anyway. :)

If you listened to my phone post a couple of weeks ago (I'm always curious if people listen to phone posts. I love them: hearing what people sound like, etc. is always interesting to me), you know that I recently lost my job. I'm pretty bummed out/pissed off over it, but I kind of hated the job, so it could certainly be worse. I was being overworked (7.5 hours of overtime every week--great for my wallet, bad for my everything else), and my supervisor and some of the other higher-ups in the office all treated me like crap. But I had insurance! It was wonderful for that, if nothing else. And thanks to President Obama (♥) I can get COBRA at a reduced rate for the next nine months. So I will still have insurance while I look for a new job! \o/ Plus, I have some money saved up, so it could be worse. The big downside is that I was planning on moving out of my parents' house (finally) in May or June, and now I don't know if I can afford to do that. :( But I am hopeful.

So, there's my paragraph about work. You may see many more paragraphs in the future, depending on how the grievance I'm filing with the company goes. I basically feel like they did a really shitty job of training us and then made a snap judgment about the couple of us who were not making their crazy sales goals immediately and looked for ways for us to fail so they could fire us. A couple of others in my training class are in similar situations, so we'll see what happens. Ideally, I'd like them to offer me the job again, so I can tell them to go fuck themselves. But, we'll see. :)

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I actually started this post about a week ago and saved it in my Semagic drafts, then basically forgot about it. So, I know there were some other things I was going to mention, but I can't figure out what they are.

Oh, since I have unlimited free time right now while I look for a new job, I decided to be crazy and impulsive, and I am going to New Orleans next week with shay_renoylds! I'm really looking forward to it--a break from the family and being here, plus getting to hang out with Shay in a place I really like, what's not to love? I even found direct flights, so no overlays/possible missed connections! I do have to leave at the butt crack of dawn on Monday, but at least I get there pretty early. I'm flying out of Philly, since next Friday I have tickets to see Neko Case near there (can't wait! ♥). I plan to basically fly back and get my car from the long term parking (surprisingly super cheap) and drive to the concert. Thankfully this is a seated show, so I don't have to worry about GA crowds.

I'm going to be borrowing my dad's netbook while I'm there, so I will try to post every so often so I actually have a record of what I did. I will certainly be twittering, but I promise no loud twitter update posts, since I know people hate those. Probably no photos until afterward, since the computer doesn't have photoshop, and I always like to at least resize my pictures before I upload them. Maybe I'll even post the pictures I took in NOLA in 2006 (if I can find them, LOL).

I'm also going to attempt to pack for a five day trip with no checked baggage. Considering I suck at packing light, this is going to be quite the challenge. We'll see what happens.

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Now, I've got to get started on my miles long to do list. So many things to do before next Monday, it's totally ridiculous! Later, y'all!

November is over! Where did all that time go, seriously? I actually managed to post every day, which kind of surprises me. I have been so out of it after work every day this month that I never really got around to making any of the posts I wanted to make. Maybe next month. This week coming up is our last week of training, so hopefully I won't be so tired from information overload. I'll just be in a bad mood due to annoying customers, lol.

This weekend was pretty awesome, all things considered. I feel like I got a lot of sleep, but I'm still tired. I'm all ready for tomorrow, so I am going to get to bed at a reasonable time. It's funny, all I did today was go to the movies, and yet I'm still exhausted. We saw Quantum of Solace, which was good. My only comments (non-spoilery, of course) are that I thought Casino Royale was better. And after all that hoopla over who was or wasn't doing the theme, it ended up kind of sucking, IMO. I did enjoy the movie, but I felt like there were two or three too many chase scenes and not enough real plot. It felt like a really long epilogue to Casino Royale, and is almost definitely supposed to bridge that film with the next one. I guess it might stand on its own, but not as easily as most James Bond movies. Criticisms aside, it was a fun movie and I'm glad I saw it.

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Cobras yesterday were pretty awesome. I met up with Team Philly in the surprisingly well-organized meet and greet line. The actual meet and greet was once again an unorganized exercise of "see how long the teenies can monopolize Gabe, who is entirely too nice for his own good and shouldn't be talking with his throat problems anyway." Whoever was in charge thought it was a good idea to bring everyone into a room (in groups, which I was hoping meant the entire affair would be organized; shows what I know) and then leave us alone. Then they brought in the band through a tiny and cramped entrance. Needless to say, they were swarmed. The majority of the meet and greet took place in about a quarter of the room, while the other 3/4 was totally empty. Great organizational skills there. The entire thing was worth it though, to see the band's reactions to natacup82's bootleg copy of Twilight. Gabe tried to steal it, and we ended up having a conversation with Ryland about good vampire movies (he says Nightwatch is the best since Bram Stoker's Dracula). If I'd remembered at the time I would have argued heavily for Shadow of the Vampire, but he's definitely not wrong about Nightwatch.

At any rate, the show was also good. I brought my camera, but took absolutely no pictures. It stayed in my bag the entire time, in fact. Sing it Loud continues to be too earnest to live. They are also now following me on Twitter, which is kind of disturbing. Hit the Lights continues to be made almost entirely of fail, lolarious Midtown covers included. I don't know what to think about Forever the Sickest Kids. On one hand, their music is pretty catchy, but on the other hand, the lead singer was wearing a Twilight shirt, and he told the crowd that the band is currently reading the book out loud to each other, alternating chapters between people. So, yeah.

Cobras were awesome as usual. It's obvious that Gabe's vocal problems are getting to him, though. Thankfully the tour is now over, so he can go back home and rest his voice. The likelihood that he'll actually do that is pretty much slim to none, but I hope he has just a little bit of common sense. Although I kind of doubt that, since he did make an appearance pretty early in the evening at the bar, where he was accosted by annoying teenies, and somebody's mom. Shouldn't moms know better? At any rate, even with Gabe's voice being almost shot, they still put on a great show. I'm glad I was able to go.

After the show, we made the mistake of trying to grab a slice of pizza at the place attached to the venue before we all headed home. mmeguilotn and I literally waited 15 minutes for plain pizza, since apparently the band also ordered pizzas, so everything they were making was going up to them. So much for the theory of "oh, plain will be easier". She ended up getting something else since it would take less time, but I was getting my plain pizza if I had to go back there and make it myself. It was delicious, but nothing is worth that much of a wait when it should take five minutes tops.

All in all, despite the venue generally being made of fail with regards to the over 21 section (we did get a barricade, though), it was a good time. Would definitely do again. &Team Philly;

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I was going to do one of those memes that's going around, but it's getting late and I want to actually attempt sleep at a reasonable hour. So, maybe tomorrow. I'm going to try and keep up with this whole posting more than once a month thing. We'll see how it goes.