February 27, 2006

Rogue Wave Concert

Filed under: Culture — mmrobins @ 11:44 pm

Gabe bought me a ticket to go see a group that he’s been raving about the last few months, Rogue Wave. I had only heard a couple of their songs streaming out of his laptop speakers and wasn’t impressed, but figured I’d go anyway.

The concert was Sunday night at the Showbox, a venue that I’m not too fond of for it’s layout. There’s too many bar areas where people often just talk loudly and don’t listen to the music. I’d be fine with that except when a band tries to do anything quiet and intimate, it usually fails. That and the fact that they never seem to start a show on time. And by on time I mean within an hour of what they say on the ticket. The show was said to start at 7PM and the warmup, warmup band didn’t even start until around 8:30. And it was awful.

Finally Rogue Wave came on around 9:30 and it was a great show. They’re much better live than on their album, which after having seen them live I gave a second chance and liked. I was impressed that the drummer and lead guitarist frequently switched roles.

The headliner was Nada Surf, a band whose claim to fame as far as I know was the one hit wonder “Popular” back in the 90′s. I bought their CD back then and hated it. I’d heard they’d gotten better. I suppose they have, but I’m still not impressed. They weren’t even on until close to 11, and when they came on I was just tired of standing around waiting. I’m not going to wait around four hours for someone who I barely care about, so we left after 4 or 5 songs.

  • Reading: John Adams by David McCullough

Friends and Family Visiting

February 26th, 2006
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February 26, 2006

Brazilian Carnaval

Filed under: General — mmrobins @ 2:54 am

On Waleska’s recommendation Jacob, Kim, Matt from Oregon, Travis and my mom all decided to go to a Brazilian Carnaval. It was at the Mountaineers Club. The main attraction was live music and dancing. There was kind of a dance lesson, but it felt more like an aerobics workout to me. It was fun to get everyone out dancing though. I was especially glad to see my mom moving around after her hip surgery. She did a lot of walking and dancing this weekend. I think most of the people there were Brazilian, because I heard a lot of what I assume to be Portuguese being spoken. We’d dance, then sit and drink a little, then dance some more, taking in the people dancing on stage and a few costumes. Lots of fun.

We were all getting a little tired and things were winding down a little after midnight anyway, so we wanted to find a bar to go to. I’ve been wanting to go to Earls on the Ave since it moved to see what it was like, and boy is it disappointing. It’s totally lost that Earl’s feeling it once had. It’s where the All American used to be and it seems to have the same crowd. Michelle is still mixing drinks, but Travis’s drink wasn’t that impressive. The Earl’s I once knew and enjoyed, and counted on to get me drunk off two long islands, is gone.

February 25, 2006

Awesome the Band

Filed under: General — mmrobins @ 11:44 pm

Travis came up from Portland for the weekend and was going to see a group called Awesome. What can I say, the name is awesome. Unfortunately, their show wasn’t. Travis and his friend Joe who have liked the band in the past, also were very disappointed in the show. It was a very free form sort of performance, kind of like free jazz, but not improvised and not jazz. It was in a church, which was cool, but it made absolutely no sense to me and wasn’t all that fun to listen to. There were parts that made me very sleepy and caused me to lay down on the bench and shut my eyes, but then there were parts that were loud and dissonant. There were lots of instruments including a banjo, castanets, a flute I think and typewriters. Interesting. There was also a spoken word part in the middle that involved lots of repetition of phrases that made absolutely no sense to me. Not even interesting.

Based on what Travis and Joe said, I won’t write Awesome off forever, but I’m not all that excited to go see them again. Except for the name. It’s awesome.

Thao and Tai’s Engagement Party

February 23rd, 2006
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Hanging with Dan

February 11th, 2006
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February 7, 2006

Night Skiing Snoqualmie with Danny

Filed under: General — mmrobins @ 8:12 pm

My old friend Danny has moved to Seattle now that he’s graduated and got a job at Boeing, so I finally saw him to go skiing. Boeing had a special deal where it was only $12 to night ski at Snoqualmie. We thought there was a special deal on rentals too, so we didn’t bring our skis. Turned out to be full price so we rented snowboards to try something new. We had each only snowboarded a few times, so weren’t very good. Danny’s dad Mike skied while we boarded, and none of us had been on the slopes for a long time. The first few minutes we thought were going to be miserable the whole night since we could hardly move without falling. We finally started to catch on though, and by the end of the night we were able to make it all the way down the hill without falling. We even went over a few jumps, once or twice without falling.

I didn’t realize how late Snoqualmie stays open. We started around 4 and they’re open until 10. That’s almost as much skiing time as you’d get with a day pass. The runs are nothing amazing, but with a drive as easy as I90 and the discounted tickets, it was a helluva deal.

Game Night

February 5th, 2006
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February 2, 2006

Skiing Crystal

Filed under: General — mmrobins @ 8:00 pm

I took a day off to go skiing with April at Crystal Mountain. The beginning of the day was amazing for snow. The top of the mountain had been closed the day before for high winds so all the powder was untouched. Unforunately, the high winds continued and they closed the top of the mountain again around noon, so we were forced back to the lower runs. They were icy and the snow was choppy since it had been warm enough to melt a few days before and then froze again. The wind was ferocious too. I didn’t have anything to guard my lower face and had to skip the last few runs with April since my face felt chapped.

This was the first time I had been back up in about three years, and I forgot how much fun it was. I’ll be skiing more this season hopefully.