Originally published at Prosaic Paradise. You can comment here or there.

Last weekend I was off on that quest for really interesting, whole-head-engaging, bite-down-and-taste-it new music. I went to ProgDay for the third year. As usual, I made sure I didn’t listen to any of the bands in advance and just let the organizers surprise me (with one exception). Armed with a cooler, a lawn chair, an umbrella, and a positive attitude, I settled in at Storybook Farm Saturday morning ready to be surprised.

Within a few minutes VonFrickle took the stage in all white suits, white headgear including creepy white masks. Did I mention it was over 90? Yeah, that can’t have been comfortable. I guess it’s a testament to their dedication to the work, which, by the way, produced a fabulous sound. It’s interesting because I often associate a band’s music with the show they put on and with the people I see playing that music, and that element was removed here, which is part of their point. Well, it worked. And I don’t typically care for all-instrumental sets.

I guess that means I was set up to dislike the next band, Holding Pattern. Still no vox and a sound I couldn’t quite connect with. They were terrific instrumentalists, but not my cup of tea. I liked it, but didn’t looove it. The drummer dropped in some solos that didn’t feel like part of the music, which while I appreciate skill, is kind of irritating. In the middle of this I did some front gate duty, which was nice because I got to meet a few people and not just keep to myself.

Then there was Abigail’s Ghost. Hailing from New Orleans, the band that everyone lumps in with Porcupine

Tree and Riverside and dismisses as “alterna-rock” was maybe facing a little prejudice in the prog crowd? If so it was only a little, I hope. Definitely more melodic, more moody, and yes maybe a little more mainstream, the songs and lyrics appeal to me as a former moody pretend-goth. (I don’t mean that to belittle their style or musicianship! Just to make a self-deprecating joke.) I already had their album but I can say that the set they played would have me buying it all over again. I enjoyed watching each member of the band work their magic in person, and thought they really seemed invested in the music, like they really loved playing it. I kind of didn’t get into Ain Soph, the Japanese canterbury-style group. Can’t like everything I guess. I tried to run back to the hotel in time to swim before the monsoon… but failed. I had sushi with my friend John and was too shy to go out by the pool later to mingle with the other proggers.

Sunday was kind of a blur, although one thing that was not blurry was the morning wake up call of Cheer-Accident. (Not to mention the show opening rainbow underpants jester hat stage handery.) Cheer-Accident just projected good fun and good musicianship and kept my attention riveted! This is one where I can’t put

into words exactly what drew me, it just felt right. It helps that later I chatted with some of the band members and they were all really fun to talk to. I mean, Jeff came from behind the merch table to give me my first tattoo-related hug!

Pinnacle was very good, although I think their music is the kind I need to let sink in. Of course they also closed their set out with a Peter Gabriel cover (Here Comes the Flood) so that sort of won me over at the last minute. Canvas Solaris was up next. Metal-math-rock-ey things happened. While not my bag, the instrumental prowess was obvious and made their set fascinating in a whole other way. After that, I was volunteering at the beer stand, and so couldn’t get the full brunt of either a) the rainstorm or b) Mirthrandir and their outstanding set. By far the best vocals of the weekend! I should have picked up one of their cds. To my tremendous regret, I had to leave before the last band went on, who I heard were a-maz-ing. I was hot and tired and had a cold and was meeting my friend Donald from college who I hadn’t seen in maybe 13 years so I don’t regret that at all! But it sounds like I missed something really special. Next year I vow to see the very end of ProgDay for the first time.

I anticipated ProgDay this year even more than last. I now knew I could trust this to be a musical experience that really got into my heart, from the kind and friendly audience to the amazing setting to the vast array of music brought together under the banner of “prog”.

ProgDay Dog

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Originally published at Prosaic Paradise. You can comment here or there.

Last weekend exceeded expectations; on Friday I met up with my potenetial (actual?) new bandmates from rock camp. I picked three up at the metro; for future reference, 3 folks + guitar + cello + driver is totally doable in the hatchback. The fourth joined us directly and we all played musical instruments… wait… I mean we swapped around and traded out and everyone took a turn on drums, bass, & guitar. Only two of us wanted to step up to the mic and we left the cello to its fine, fine owner. But for a first meeting we kind of cranked out a song we liked (lyrical inspiration: the Time Life Home Repair encyclopedia of the 70s) and lo, it was good. Of course, since this coming weekend is ProgDay, they will probably get together without me. But since there’s another Kim in the band, they’ve taken to calling me Ringo, and affectionate nicknames are a good sign, right?

Saturday was also spectacular. I got up early and had my first drum lesson in about 2 months - summer kind of got in the way - and I was so anxious about it. I needn’t have been, it was like no time had passed, and we worked on triplet fills, and played along with some Allman Brothers spontaneously. I felt more like my lack of confidence is the only barrier to achievement, not some kind of natural rhythmic disability.

Post-lesson I ran straight out to visit Fred and participate in session 6 of Faith, Faces, & Fingerprints. In thinking about it, the latter two titular nouns have not come into play nearly so much, which I should be creative about remedying next time. I got to do a biggish scene and our heroes saved the city and the bad guys rolled poorly which is really quite fine with me since the scale of jeopardy was high this session. This reminds me of a rock camp anecdote: I was explaining to some other volunteers at the after-party-thing that I could out-nerd them. My first bid was that I’d made and worn anime costumes at a convention. My second bid was something to do with mass market paperbacks by certain authors. My third bid, and the one which sealed my achievement of total geek outclassing, was my declaration that I play in a tabletop role playing game currently. Everyone bowed out at that point. When I leave the context of my gaming friends, I’m always surprised at how sheepish I feel about this point! Comic books are chic now - but role playing games, those are still the hallmark of High Dork. It’s interesting.

Having had a splendid lunch with the GM and Xie, I grabbed Jack and fairly flew out the door to the Atomic Music. See, they close at 6 on Saturdays! They shoo crowds of people out, it’s kind of insane. I wanted to look at kick pedals. They had some really beat up ones but nothing with a strap drive (most have a chain drive and I prefer strap for no reason I can explain - see the pic halfway down this page) and they don’t have new things, I guess, so we left. But all this musical fiddling had gotten under Jack’s skin, so by the next day, we would be dropping some cash.

But not before we attended Bad Movie Night! Which is where the may-gus comes in. I had been waiting for years for the release of the Dungeon Siege movie, and then somehow it went by me unnoticed (go fig). But I’m a huge Matthew Lillard fan and this movie looked awful in a way I knew I would appreciate so I *had* to see it. Fortunately I have good friends who are willing to endure this kind of thing alongside me. Oh, it was everything I had hoped for, and more. Leelee Sobieski wears the best outfit ever made for a woman in a fantasy world. Lillard tantrums up the whole show. And Ray Liotta is the best goodfella you can be in a movie based on a video game set in a place called Ehb. I don’t care what anyone says; knock back a few beers and find some people who like bad movies and you, too can have fun watching a Uwe Boll flick.

Sunday was a day for getting Jack a present. After being surrounded by all the musical business, he decided he’d had it with borrowing my guitar sporadically, and decided he wanted his own guitar. I was still on a pedal quest, so we decided to try Bill’s in Catonsville this time. Since I bought my first drum kit there, they seem to have scaled back - they are only in one of the buildings now, but they still have a great selection. I found a strap-drive double pedal… but it just didn’t feel right. I have a feeling I am going to have to get one new and that is not cheap. But that’s not why I’m telling you this story - Jack took his time and patiently played lots of guitars until he found just the right one. It’s a Paul Reed Smith, but it’s the low-end one that’s not made in Maryland. For my part I found a cheap Casio keyboard so that now I have a full band’s worth of junk in my house… this also would hypothetically make it easier for me to write songs, since I am ignorant on the guitar. But we might be remedying that - after we got home Sunday Jack & I spent most of the evening restringing guitars and then trying to learn stuff … and we’ve already practiced again this week. I have to say, I vastly prefer this mutual activity to say, watching Grey’s Anatomy or leveling up druids or what-not.

Originally published at Prosaic Paradise. You can comment here or there.

Crikey - almost 2 weeks ago now I had just had a good 12 hour day at the first annual Girls Rock DC summer camp. My brain was a tiny pile of mush, and I was just an incidental volunteer. I have got to hand it to the women who put the whole program together - what a monumental undertaking. I feel like the work I put in last week doesn’t quite hold a candle, and I don’t mean that in a self-deprecating way, I mean that I worked pretty hard but everyone around me was keeping it together in a truly stunning manner and they had been for months and months before I even showed up. Heck, I didn’t even have kid interaction for the majority of my days, which to me is the most exhausting part.

Many people - my coworkers, other friends - sort of seem to default to smile and nod when I begin to wax rhapsodic about the experience of rock camp. I feel like when I attended the Ladies’ version myself, in Portland, more people could connect with what I was saying - you go, you rock. In this case, you wake up early on your vacation, you run around like a chicken … well you run around a lot, and in the end you are a roadie for someone else. The fact is, that all becomes worth it the first time you see the girl who hadn’t touched a guitar before this week reach up without prompting and bust out the chords to the song that she helped write.

It’s harder and harder for me to remember what it was like to be an awkward, totally unconfident and desperate-to-be-cool kid (although a few photos posted to Facebook from high school cohorts who’re enjoying an online reunion helps kick start the ol’ memory) unable to find a direction for creative energy. I don’t have that problem nowadays. But that’s the feeling you have to connect with to get the mission of camp. You also have to remember a number of other things - like being told that wanting to skateboard was inappropriate or being urged to pick up the acoustic and not the electric guitar by virtue of your gender. We’d all love to think that those things don’t still happen, but they do. I always tell people to just do me a favor and flip through the rock music magazines at your local borders, particularly the ones aimed at instrumentalists. If you’re a young girl, you’re probably still so unlikely to find someone of your gender as a role model that it’s almost a joke.

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Girls rock camp is in the WaPo and the Examiner! I cannot believe it's the last day.

I am at home. But really only temporarily; Last night I definitely dreamed about rock camp. I can only imagine what the main organizers are going through.

I was going to talk about some of the experience and about why I appear to have semi-randomly started up a new blog outside of LJ but I can't think. I used it up.

I am guessing there also is not going to be a whole mess of me reading LJ or email this week, so, um, patience?

Buh.

Oh, but I do feel extra-alive. Yeah. It's good.

edit: PLEASE COME SEE THE SHOWCASE! SATURDAY! 9:30 CLUB AT 11AM!

Originally published at Prosaic Paradise. You can comment here or there.

I’m in the midst of a real, true “day off”. That means I’m fiddling around with things around the house I typically neglect entirely like clearing out all the magazines from the bathroom reading depot from the past 2 years. Jack is doing something that involves every old hard drive we have in the house that I don’t even want to know about. The only thing I expect out of today (now that I paid all the bills) is some sushi.

Among these noodly things I am up to, I am finally admitting to myself that it may be the end of the road for my old backpack.

I got this puppy sometime in high school, I believe. Or maybe as I was getting ready to leave for college. Those that know can do the math; this is an old danged bag, as bags go. It’s carried every textbook, probably hundreds of pens, it’s been rifled by thieves and traveled to far-flung locales full of LARP costumes. In recent years, it’s mostly been the perfect overnight bag… so many new and exciting bags have come up to take its place as an everyday tool.

Oh, there’s the Crumpler bag, and several inevitable Timbuk2 bags, a new Sherpani for smaller backpack needs, and something else that comes along just about every month to make me consider carving more space for my extensive bag army.

The really sad thing is the way I’m losing it. Every single part of this bag has the same structural integrity it had when it was first gifted to me (I doubt I would have ever picked purple on my own. I am sure this was a mom or grandma purchase.) in nineteen-ninety whatever. It’s the lining. It’s gone… evil. I started noticing everything I put inside would come out covered with flakes of ick. Eventually I rubbed my two brain cells together and found out that the insides of this bag had a life-span, and it was over. I’ve tried vacuuming it out; rubbing at the insides with an old sock to flake it all off myself, but the gumminess won’t be budged unless I put clothes or books in there and carry the damn thing around. It just seems like other than this… the bag could go on and on.

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Since I finished re-reading Watchmen last night, I was wondering if I could get you all interested in some cheap internet punditry.

What are you worried the movie will get wrong? What is the most beloved aspect of it for you?

And in case it wasn't obvious, the thread will be for people who have read it and therefore be spoilers up one side and down the other. (I mean, unless everyone is too busy for armchair movie critiquing this morning.)

edit I ask this because my friends list has been peppered with posts that are, essentially "please don't screw this up".

I don't beg (too) often for people to come to things, but this time I really mean it! Come out and support the first class of Girls Rock Camp in DC! August 16th at the 9:30 club. I will be coaching one of these bands on to success so come out and cheer for them and give them encouragement!



OH YEAH I should post the direct link.

I had quite an emotional rollercoaster all the way through the weekend... fortunately I am pretty sure I can attribute at least some of it to the ol' feminine business. I couldn't figure out why I was so hateful and cranky towards the end of last week... well, now I know at least in part.

My 33rd birthday came and went, I had a little dinner with some friends - I wanted to include more of my wonderful, giving, terrific friends, but it wasn't going to work out. Things had to scale down this year due to stress. Tapas was lovely and I was grateful for getting to have a night off from studying and stressing. Thank you to everyone who sent me well wishes - they got me through an irrationally tough week.

Thursday night I ran around packing - you'd think for a 2 day trip this would be quite simple, but then you're not me. I was worked into quite the froth. It doesn't help that right now deadlines at work are looming, and my final exam hadn't been taken. (It has as of this morning, and I am pretty sure I did just fine.)

Friday after work we were free!! tzel allowed me to run the stereo and the weather was lovely and despite a touch of traffic, we made good time. There had been a request for Shoney's, as the nearest is out there by I-81. Fortunately for me they were having a seafood buffet. After that it was a short hop to the West Virginia line and the town of Berkeley Springs. The weekend was full of laziness, hot-tubbing, walks about town, reading, and more hot-tubbing. For a girls' weekend the topics ranged far and wide (not that I expect girls to only talk about shoes!), although I think the farthest and widest was a historical lesson on sharecropping... yeah, I still can't get over that. (And I don't think I talked about shoes more than one time.) Of course, I took a few pictures...



Of course you should probably check out the whole set with notations here.

Now I have THREE, count 'em, THREE weeks of no homework or studying. I hope to finish some or all of the ten books I'm in the middle of reading... I am so fricking relieved to be done with that online class. You'll hear more from me later as it's 1 week to rock camp and that means I'll be plugging the showcase.

more cat pictures

Name me at least one thing that everyone seems to really like that you just can't get into.

Name me at least TWO things that you enjoy which are not enjoyed or maybe not known by many other people with whom you fraternize.

I have started off the week on the wrong foot, what with waking up at 5am from a dream where I slept in til 3pm and missed all my meetings and got chewed out. It felt very real and I was in a mild panic for a few minutes... but fortunately was able to go back to sleep.

Last Thursday we assembled a ragtag crew for a crab leg night; Captain Jerry's is under new management (although we can't remember if it was last time we went) but the crab legs taste as sweet. Service there is always spotty but you can always get a table, so I am not complaining. eedge and her family just moved back north and I am glad we could do a little socializin'. I also found another cheap beer to add to my list of beloved cheap beers; bud light lime. It's definitely the kind of beer I can put a 6-pack of in anyone's fridge and expect it to still be there when I return.

meercat and I managed another tennis date on Friday, and this one was a doozy. We were out there for 1.5 hours, with a little break, but my wrist didn't hurt much afterwards and I maintained energy! Her intrepid coworker who can actually *play* tennis came out for a bit and hit the ball at us, doling out many compliments! I wonder, are any of you guys out there in internet-land also interested in playing tennis? I would like to play more, or there might be times when Jen can't go and it might be nice to still play! I am kind of doubting I could talk Jack into it.

Saturday my big plans were to see the batman movie and maybe level up one or another of my WoW characters. Done and done: ( batman stuff behind cut ) After the flick I dragged Jack through the LLBean and the rest of the mall. Didn't buy much since the birthday is coming up and you never know. We polished off the evening with Sushi King and then herded our slowpoke mains to level 69. We may have level 70s before they raise the stupid cap again!

Harvest Moon DS makes me feel like a moron, by the way. Tiny children can play this game, and I'm still wondering if my turnips will ever grow and where I can get more seeds. And then I read online that you have to like, raise the entire town's friendship factors? This game is too open-ended for me. But, see, I promised Jack I would stop playing Jewel Quest because he thinks it is rotting my brain.

drivingblind re-kick-started his tabletop game, from which we have had a 3 month break, in medias res. It never ceases to amaze me the wit and wisdom of rob_donoghue who, frankly, is the brains of any operation. Do you have an operation? Does it need brains? Talk to that man. We cracked wise a bunch, but by the end of the session Things Got Serious. We will have to wait a month to find out what happens! I proved that no matter what kind of game mechanic you give me, I will fail to understand it in some critical way. This week it was XP spending.

When I got home I forced myself to hunker down and finish off the last of my rote crap work for my class. Now it's just the final exam & rewriting my paper. The prof hasn't given me her comments so that last part will be a challenge. Grr.

As a reward for that (I did not deserve a reward for that, it is just what I needed to do!) I bought myself a new domain name, which I may or may not turn into an independent blog, inspired by my good friend Genie. I also may have screwed up by getting the username on LJ when I probably should have just renamed this one. I am a little hesitant to let go of snidegrrl, is all. I did fix it so that snidegrrl.com and .org forward here, at least.

Who here has been to the Lebanese Taverna?

If you have, have you had their garlic sauce?

If you have had their garlic sauce, do you have any idea how they make it?

Because I need to mainline it into my face.

I finished the rough draft of my paper in time last night! I turned it in at about 5 of midnight. I do work better with deadlines, yes I do.

I haven't had much inspiration/time to take fancy photos (I didn't want to take them at Girls Rock training because I thought the organizers might think I was some weirdo) but I took a few for the 4th. And of course the obligatory cat photo.



I am pretty fond of that cat photo. Now I'm off to get my hair done.

Well I just made sure I was paid up for fall semester; A&P II is go. Although I kind of wish I was taking this:

( BIO 2500 Description )

Yeah! Registering for classes is always way more fun to think about than actually doing the final papers for them, which is what has me down right now. I sort of remembered the assignment as being a 5 pager, but I was wrong. It's a 10 pager. The rough draft is due tomorrow, and it will be very rough. I also just read the final exam study notes, and that'll be rough as well. I'll be spending some time during our girly weekend in Berkeley Springs studying.

I am in a similar boat at work with writing; I have a big document to finish and mostly some thoughts in note form. In the next few days I'll have to transform both of these. I should be transforming the work one right now.

Thursday night was softball (we lost x2). Friday night I played tennis with meercat at the lit courts. Saturday was about studying and going to see pictsy at the Palace of Wonders. Sunday was about visiting traceracer & jwiv & the n00b (I say affectionately!) and trying to write this paper. The entire weekend was about insomnia; every night I would be exhausted, lay down to go to sleep, and nothing would happen. For hours. Even after melatonin. Last night I drank Sleepytime Extra tea with valerian and actually counted sheep... backwards from 1000. The last one I remember counting was 919, so it kind of worked!

I was asked, since it's my birthday coming up, to post my amazon wish list. I can do that, but in case you prefer homemade goods, I also have an Etsy favorites list. The amazon lists actually have priorities set... heh. I guess for the future I should put a button in my user info.

CDs:


DVDs:


Other Stuff:


Rare, Out of Print:

I got some skyr at whole foods today. I was trying to figure out what it was (if that's not the most not revealing "about" page...) but so far the only thing that I can think of is this...

( calling 1985... )

About halfway home from work, I noticed a little orange 2mm spider hanging from my steering wheel. I watched it here and there all the way home while it industriously tried to build a web in the top quadrant of the steering wheel, back and forth, up and down. It moved fast while spinning and took its time joining cross threads. I wished I could have told it to just hold on a minute and save it. I dropped it off outside tzel's house when I dropped her off.

I took advantage of the 3-day weekend as a time to take a trip south and visit my hometown. I was inspired by the fact that an old friend from high school who is now living in CA would be back home for a family reunion so it was great timing. Jack, being a sweetheart, came along.( the whole weekend stem to stern... )

I have a regular big non-flat 27" redundant TV. It was on loan for about 6 years and it's back. It works. Free to a good home! Anyone want? If not, do you know of a good organization to donate it to?

This week has been thus far marked by gremlins in my works. From the email misery to leaving the door to my car open all night to having mysterious grease stains on my clean shirt to having a beloved toy disappear from my desk... I am not liking it.

Remember when I was in shock that it was last monday? Well wash, rinse, repeat. We're halfway through 2008 and I feel like I'm still not finished contemplating the impact of 2007.

tzel and I went to the Ram's Head Live last week to see Pat Benatar. Beforehand, however, we had dinner at Mex next door. On a weekend, I probably wouldn't want to set foot in the place, but early on a Tuesday it was lovely inside. We had excellent service and apart from their unfortunate problem of being out of avocados, the food was good. It was not blowing us away - the cheese dip needed more spice for instance - but worth it, as it was on the cheap side for dinner. The show itself was good - her voice was clear and beautiful. Her band rocked. The crowd was mostly women our age and up, although the wonderful guys standing behind us who were clearly big Pat fans were great; since I couldn't see real well I just enjoyed the big gay dance party.

I never talk about work here because I largely can't talk about specifics and sometimes generalities. I do kind of mostly paddle along right now with a great deal of fear because my main support person is completely consumed in another project. I am on my own and very confused most of the time. It's not my favorite but fortunately my boss continues to be great.

Finally went to see the Sex & the City movie with my classmates from A&P. I take it back, my one classmate and Jack, because everyone else bailed. Mostly I realized that for a half-hour show I can take and leave what I like and hate, but for a two hour movie, it just left me angry for myriad reasons. But hey, Chris Noth on the big screen, that's a plus.

The next few weeks of my summer class-taking will consist of mainly project stuff. The group project (groan) & the paper. My plan of attack is to take the book (for the paper) which I just finished reading and make a bunch of notes of things I could possibly talk about and then like dough, allow it to rise through insertion of extra words. For the group project - that will require more research. I sent my group a list of tasks last night. I am desperately hoping they respond by Wednesday. I just want this done and over with at this point.

For a totally unplanned weekend, I did a mess of stuff: lunch at Abol with omphaloskepsis and tzel, after which we scoured the Crafty Bastards fair for things that were not twee, irreverent t-shirts and adorable stuffed monsters. (I bought handmade soap. I have enough for three years now.) And then took a timeout af the Piratz Tavern, where we got crumby service and no ice. The vegetarian platter at Abol was really good though. I could do that every weekend! I wish I knew how to count the points though.

After I dropped my ladyfriends off, I chilled at home long enough to cool off and then headed to the 9:30 to catch chiba's band The Hypersonic Secret. They were pretty darn good.

Got home and pretty much was in for the rest of the weekend trying to read chapters in the text & playing diablo ii, after the great news from blizzard inspired us. Hey, with the latest patch you don't have to keep the CD in. LAN party anyone?