showy

Last night, I had a dream that I was taking photos of myself over and over again, in the manner of a friendless 15 year old who really totally needs a new MySpace profile photo, and then someone saw me, and I was so embarrassed, like maybe they will think I'm lame and self-absorbed for taking photos of myself? But guys, all the photos I was taking just weren't turning out!

Yeah, I don't know. In other news, I am going to finish my paper today. Or, um, finish a draft of it? I'm not going to pretend I won't hand it in like 20 minutes before the deadline, no matter how much work I do today. Still, I stayed home from The Best Volunteer Job in the World, and there's a Dear Astronaut show at the Borg Ward (the borg ward dot org, now that is a nice sounding domain name) tonight, so I had better get some work done today if I want to go to that show guilt-free tonight.

more more more

Click on photo for even more Dear Astronaut awesomeness. They finished recording, and the rough mixes sound amazing. You will be blown away.

look on the bright side

I was going to write this post about how terribly sad everything is and how I am so stressed out and OH MY GOD IT IS SO HARD BEING ME but fuck that. Hahaha, "but fuck." (I think I have made that joke before, woops.)

Instead, more Dear Astronaut photos. You know you want them.



I just uploaded two more, and there will be more later tonight, probably. Wooooooo everyone loves Dear Astronaut go buy some albums.

[Confidential to Jeb: Where can I link so that people can buy all your albums?]

rock stars

Dear Astronaut is working on a new album. I took pictures of them today. Click on the photo of Jeb to see the entire set on Flickr. There are a couple up now, and there'll be more over the next few days as I go through everything and find the ones that are worth looking at.

blurrrry

Dear Astronaut is going to be featured in some kind of article in the Journal-Sentinel on Thursday, and Jeb asked me if I wanted to choose a few photos to submit. This is probably my favorite, but it seems too blurry.



Of course, this one is blurry too, but I still kind of want to submit it. But really, I will look through everything and hope that there are at least one or two mostly-clear photos of the entire band in the hundreds of photos I've taken.

I haven't taken many photos lately, at Dear Astronaut shows (HAHAHA I typed Dear ASStronaut at first, woops!) or anywhere else. I'm not sure why, but I'm trying to get back in the habit.

I'm also trying to focus on being super productive for the next few weeks. There's a whole lot going on, and if I can just stay focused on work and being productive, I think I'll be less likely to be overwhelmed by it all. To that end, I am going to finish up on the computer and do some much-needed cleaning of my room. And then, maybe, just maybe, I will sew something. Exciting!

back from that unscheduled break

So. Okay. I am back.

I don't know why I left; I guess I was just busy. I went to Milwaukee for approximately two and a half days. I took Megabus there (three hours late), met with a professor, met with someone about an internship, and went to therapy. Then I had another hellish Megabus ride back to Minneapolis, which was only two and a half hours late. I hate Megabus.

I came back up here to house-sit for my parents. They were gone for 10 days; I got to hang out at their house and drive my mom's car and enjoy 10 days of constant rain. Oh, and I sort of played house with Nathan. Did I mention he's moving to Milwaukee in September? Since we'll be living together in two months, it seemed like it might be good to see if we could spend a week together and still like each other. Verdict--we can. September is going to be awesome.

I sewed a lot. I learned how to sew zippers--definitely not as hard as I thought it would be. I made a bunch of zippered coin purses, and I bought 52 zippers at the barn, so there will be many more to come. I haven't added anything to my Etsy shop in a month, but I'm working on a bunch of stuff this week so I'll have a nice backlog before I start regular updates again next week.

I haven't gotten much work done. Homework, I mean. Summer classes are weird; it's nice not having to go to class every week, but it's strange having to be self-disciplined. I'm not doing too badly, and it should be much easier to concentrate once I'm back in Milwaukee. I'm planning on spending mornings at my internship and afternoons at the library. And evenings in front of my sewing machine--awesome fun time!

Oh, and I'm working on a website. Let me rephrase--I am getting paid cash money to make a website for a very nice friend of a friend. Money money money! Once I get everything done and get paid in full, it will cover my June rent, plus a little extra for beer and candy. Or my security deposit at the new apartment, probably.

Other things have happened too. I still haven't written anything about New York. Nathan had a show; he has another one at the Triple Rock in a couple weeks. You should check out his band's Myspace and also go to their show, if you're in the Minneapolis area. I guarantee you will have an awesome time. Oh, and Dear Astronaut, my other favorite band, has a really big huge show this weekend at Mad Planet. You should really, really go; this is a huge deal for them.

As long as I'm telling you to do things, you should really check out Kinni Coffee next time you're in Northern Wisconsin. It's possibly my favorite coffee shop ever, and I have been to a lot of coffee shops in my time. They have great (fair-trade) coffee, and sometimes they have music, and they have gigantic tables which makes it an awesome place to do homework. Also, the owners are awesome, awesome people, totally the kind of people you should support with your coffee purchases.

Alright. That is probably enough for now. More soon, I think, and get ready--I'm thinking of moving my blog again. I want to design a WordPress theme from scratch and set up my blog on my own domain. I have no idea when I'll have time to do that, but hopefully that will happen this summer. After I finish redesigning dearastronaut.com! Jeb, I have not forgotten about you, for serious.

everyone loves a show

There was so much good music at Riverwest Commons last night.



Charlie played first. He is awesome.



Then Dear Astronaut played. They are also awesome. This was the first time I've heard their new songs, and they are just fucking amazing. Go to their MySpace and listen.

Click on the photos for even more photos of people playing music. Seriously, I went crazy and took over a hundred pictures. Almost all of them turned out decent, which I think is impressive because whiskey & coke was $3, and I definitely had a few before I started taking pictures. And after, but that's another story.

four fruits

dear astronaut best band ever

Phase one of the new site. Jeb and I are working on it together. He worked out the design; I'm trying desperately to remember CSS so I can make a site out of his design.



Strange face beads that I'm selling on Etsy. They're listed as a lot of 10, but I found some more recently, so I can sell them in larger amounts as well.

more more more

Have you heard of virb.com? It's like MySpace for adults.

Guess what? It has a way better music player than MySpace, and if you go here, you can listen to Dear Astronaut's entire Dark Forest ep and also probably other albums that don't thank me in the liner notes.

Let's all listen to Dear Astronaut!

just because

rock
Originally uploaded by marinatina

Guess who's going on tour?

Jeb posted 'The Dark Forest' on their MySpace page, so even if you can't go to a show, you should go listen to that song because it is awesome and will blow your mind with the awesomeness. Especially if you've known Jeb for at least twenty years and used to go over to his house and like play in this huge sandpit (?) and you had to walk through a field and under a barbed wire fence to get to the sandpit and once you cut your back on the barbed wire and now you and your cousin are adults or something and your cousin is like playing rock songs and stuff and they're actually good and wtf, right?

coffee coffee milwaukee!!!

Holy shit, you guys!

Okay, I don't know where to go from there. I'm in Milwaukee, at a non-Starbucks cafe with free wireless, which is not nearly as exciting as where Kira and Max are, but I'm totally okay with that. For reals!

Going to see Propagandhi tonight. I bought tickets before I'd actually heard any of their songs, but I figured Jeb and his friends are going, and I'm all about tagging along with my cousin and his friends, as they are far cooler than me. Plus I figure Jeb has reliably awesome taste in music, so this Propagandhi thing would be awesome. Guess what? It is! They have a song called "And we thought nation-states were a bad idea," so really, how could I not like them? Plus I don't listen to nearly enough loud fast music lately.

Oh! I went to a Dear Astronaut practice last night, and let me tell you, they are fixing to take over the world. You'd best go buy some of their musics RIGHT NOW before it sells out and you'll miss your chance to buy their early work, and then how are you gonna be like "oh, I liked them before they got megafamous"? I recommend The Dark Forest and that's only 60% because I'm thanked in the liner notes (famous by association!!!).

So I'm on my second coffee of the day, and now that I think about it I haven't really eaten anything today, woops!

listen to this RIGHT NOW

You guys, this is just genius. Listen to "Theme" NOW. Do it.


Also, you've listened to "War Song" right? Right?

!!!

Exciting news! The best band in the universe (Dear Astronaut, duh) has a song up at Living with War Today. It's called "War Song," and it is more awesome than you could ever imagine. Go check it out! Listen at least a million times! Go! Go now!!!

back from the homeland

I feel like I've used that as a title before.

So very much happened while I was in Wisconsin; I don't even know where to start. I'm running on about two hours of sleep, and I don't get off work for another million hours, so I'll keep this short and erratic.

My sister got into a pretty bad car accident the night I got back. She's okay, thankfully, aside from a broken ankle and some painful gross awesome bruises (one of em looked like jesus for a day or so). We ended up spending a lot of time together and didn't fight once, which was cool albeit weird as the sisterly bonding was the result of a scary awful thing. Tracey is amazing, which I can say because she doesn't know this blog shit exists.

I saw a million awesome bands on New Year's Eve in Milwaukee and had a generally awesome time, aside from two hours sort of in the middle that were just really terrible. Entirely unrelated to the bands though. No details will be forthcoming as it's honestly not that interesting, I swear, but I probably maybe will get around to talking about how I can't write anything in here lately because everything that happens is something that seems inappropriate for public consumption. That may or may not make sense (two hours of sleep, and not even bed-sleep or couch-sleep, two hours of plane-sleep) but probably I'll write more about that later because it's related to my Awesome Totally Non-Cliched New Year's Eve Epiphany (2007).

Dear Astronaut! Guys, my cousin Jeb is an awesome human being and an awesome musician in this way that constantly freaks me out. In the best possible way! Jeb and Scott and Frank put on an amazing show, as did the rest of the bands that I loved and yet am too tired to remember all the names but definitely you should somehow check them out anyway.

Yeah, Milwaukee was really super awesome. I could see myself living there, I think.

TIRED TIRED TIRED COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE

What else? I took a bunch of pictures of Dear Astronaut, and Jeb posted them on the MySpace, and people complimented them and stuff, even people who didn't know me, and I did a little happy dance. Go look at their MySpace and check out the photos and see how very completely awesome I am. Also, you could check out my Flickr page, as I posted the entire set there. I'm in the process of weeding out the crap ones so you can only see the very best. They're in the "New Year's Eve in Milwaukee" set.

While I'm linking to things, my other cousin Jason is in the hilarious awesome band From New York City. I missed their first concert by one day (it would've been so perfect too, if I'd gotten home from new york city in time to see their show) which I will regret forever. Jason and his friends managed to create this completely spot-on satire (I'm like 51% sure that's the words that I mean to say) of douchebag New York hipsters, plus they can actually play their instruments good and stuff. Check them out!

I really love my family a lot.

Soon (Probably) : more about Christmas, more about Milwaukee, more about my Awesome Totally Non-Cliched New Year's Eve Epiphany (2007), more about everything and anything

This wasn't short at all!