Pilcrow

My friend Alison is hand-making her own line of jewelry using sustainable materials and practices, and she's using Kickstarter to incorporate and expand her business, Alt Jewelry, to wholesale customers. She does great work, she's worthy of your support, and she has a little over 42 hours left to make her modest goal of $5,300. Do me a favor, do her a favor, do yourself a favor (hello, Christmas/holiday/birthday gifts), check out her Kickstarter and give her some support.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bluishorange/alt-jewelry-handmade-sustainable-pretty

Hi LiveJournal! Sorry I missed a couple days—oh, hey, the rich text formatting toolbar looks different! And you apparently finally got rid of that annoying default non-breaking space! Nice!*

Okay I don't intend to write a whole post addressing LiveJournal. Anyhow, yes, I missed a couple days due to both planned and unplanned fun events. Tuesday I had plans to go with my friend Farida to a "Seattle Skeptics" meetup, which Farida had wanted to check out as she's been looking for some kind of social group based around talking about science. Unfortunately, when the meeting finally got started, it turned out that the first half-hour was devoted more to "let's point and laugh in mockery at those silly stupid people, mostly for holding religious beliefs" than to any kind of interesting discussion. This was done using webcomics, most of which were themselves poorly done or poorly presented, playing a couple clips of Stephen Colbert's show—which admittedly was good, but as Farida said, she could watch TV at home by herself—and playing a segment of the TV show "Beyond Belief", which was pretending to be investigative journalism but couldn't avoid sensationalism in talking about a splinter Baptist church that includes actively expelling demons as part of its services and beliefs. The church's practices were a bit disturbing, and the open laughter and scorn our audience showed didn't seem appropriate to me. We didn't stay for the second half, which featured a guest speaker and might have been more like what we'd expected; they'd already lost us before then.

Fortunately the evening wasn't a loss, as we went to the new restaurant Skillet for dinner, and discovered it's a pretty cool place with pretty good food. Then Farida went home, while I stopped in at a bar called Captain Blacks to meet up with my friend Tilly, who'd surprised me with a text earlier asking if I wanted to meet up and hang out there for a while. So that was unexpected and fun. 

Then yesterday, after seeing Jon Spencer Blues Explosion do an in-studio set at KEXP, I decided that yes, I really should catch their show that night at Neumos. And so I ended up not having time to make a post yesterday, either.

I would have posted a photo from the show, but unfortunately my iPhone camera's no longer working correctly. Apparently some dust or moisture has somehow gotten trapped inside the case  between the lens and its protective cover, or else the cover itself has simply become too scratched for the camera software to ignore anymore, so now all the photos come out very hazy and darker than they should be, with any bright areas or light sources having an added glow effect as though seen through fog. I'll be borrowing my friend Gina's digital camera so I should still be able to post photos of the last two Concerts at the Mural to KEXP's Facebook page, as I did the first week. And new iPhones are due to be released soon, though conflicting rumors say it could be as soon as the first week of September or as late as the first week of October. I'm hoping for sooner rather than later, of course. My iPhone battery's pretty worn down by now, and I'm finally bumping into the limitations of being stuck with the outdated OS that became obsolete something like 18 months ago. I'm happy that at least the camera's problem only developed now, just before the new models are due out, and not months ago.

I've been busy today working on editing a paper. It turned out to be a nice day weather-wise, and I would've liked to have left the house, but besides the paper I was also doing laundry as usual for Sunday. I probably should have put that off for a while just to have had the short walk over to Caffe Ladro. But then, it didn't really get nice until later in the afternoon, at which point I was already halfway through the laundry and started on the paper, and I didn't want to interrupt any of that. 

I also haven't been out for a bike ride in over a week; I'm not getting out for rides as much as I wanted. That's partly because during the week I tend to head out for the afternoon to do work, and although it stays light out well into the evening, by the time I'm getting home I'm thinking it's time to make dinner. One thing I need to do is figure out how to use the carrier rack I had installed on my bike; I need bungie cords or something to strap down my backpack with my computer in it. Then I could ride the bike out somewhere to work. I could just wear the backpack but it's kind of heavy with the laptop and whatnot in it, and that would make me even sweatier by the time I got somewhere to work.

And you know, I'm really sick of the way Safari hangs all the time when I'm running Parallels as well. I presume my combination of RAM and graphics card just isn't quite enough to handle things, but really Safari does seem kind of bloated and slower than it ought to be. I persist in using it because I like it otherwise and I like that my bookmarks are synched between my two Macs and my iPhone through my MobileMe account—that feature better not be going away with iCloud—but it does irritate me a lot.

I don't have plans for the holiday tomorrow. I'd really like to be hanging out with friends and having fun, but I never asked anyone ahead of time what their plans were, and no one got in touch with me to see what I was up to, either. On the other hand, I'm probably still going to have work to do, and I certainly have a bunch of other projects to tend to, so maybe it's better that I have some time to do things.

Speaking of doing things, time to get back to editing that paper.

Last week I was having a conversation with a friend about the music I was listening to twenty years ago. As I recall, my favorite artists at the time were still Heart, the Police, Steely Dan, and Joe Jackson, with They Might Be Giants a relatively new favorite. I now feel compelled to dig into my box of audio cassettes to see if I can figure out what else I had back then… The Sundays' first album Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic was definitely still a favorite; oh, Pink Floyd of course!; Supertramp; Yes; I have a mixtape I made of some B-52s stuff on one side and TMBG on the other; and I think I'd gotten into the Sugarcubes by that point… I know I was listening to WFNX, WBCN, and Rock-101 (WGIR-FM), which is to say a mix of alternative, modern mainstream, and classic rock. The key bands for me at that point were probably Joe Jackson and They Might Be Giants, with the Police, Pink Floyd, and to some extent Heart still really important as well.

In any case, thinking about that older music reminded me of a mixtape I made for another friend in 1997. I believe it was the first mixtape I made for which all of the music came from CDs I owned, rather than copying from tape to tape. As a result, not only do I still have a copy of the mix on cassette—I always liked to keep a copy of the mixes I made—but also I was able to recreate the mix in a playlist in iTunes. I've only listened to the playlist once or twice since I recreated it a couple years ago, as I have so much new stuff to listen to. But that means when I do listen to it, I'm overwhelmed by the thrill of hearing that particular music again in that particular sequence, the memory of that time. As a result of that conversation last week, I played that mix again, and as I posted on Facebook, it's glorious.

The mix is called "Mark of the Blue Man", and it was made after taking a friend from work to see Blue Man Group in Boston. It was my third time attending the show, and as luck had it, I was chosen for one of the audience participation sequences, which involved one of the Blue Men rubbing some of his blue bodypaint on my cheek—hence the name of the mix. The opening track, "B'Boom" by King Crimson, was meant to evoke the drumming done throughout the show—Blue Man Group's album Audio didn't come out until 1999—and the final track, "Last Train to Trancentral" by the KLF, was also used as the climax of their show. In between, I included lots of songs I loved at the time by many of my then-current favorite artists. Notably, although I did include a song each by Joe Jackson and TMBG, I otherwise used nothing that I'd been listening to back in 1991, and most of the music (including the TMBG song I used) hadn't even been released then.

The first side is mostly on the goth-shoegaze-dreampop continuum, while the second side is basically pop-rock. I'll include the source album name in parentheses.

Side A

1. "B'Boom", King Crimson (THRAK)
2. "Stupid Song", Mistle Thrush (Super Refraction)
3. "Iceblink Luck", Cocteau Twins (Heaven or Las Vegas)
4. "Hundreds & Thousands", An April March (Lessons in Vengeance)
5. "Graffiti", Throwing Muses (The Real Ramona)
6. "It's All Like Today", Mistle Thrush (Super Refraction)
7. "Goldmund", The Sonora Pine (The Sonora Pine)
8. "Tomorrow's Tears", Cranes (Wings of Joy)
9. "Jack in the Box", Elysian Fields (Bleed Your Cedar)
10. "Discopolis", The Dambuilders (Against the Stars)
11. "Flowereyed", Mistle Thrush (Silt)

Side B

1. "Mission Drive", The Wonderstuff (Never Loved Elvis)
2. "King of Spain", Moxy Früvous (Bargainville)
3. "Battle of Who Could Care Less", Ben Folds Five (Whatever and Ever Amen)
4. "Colin's Heroes", The Dambuilders (Encendedor)
5. "Super-connected", Belly (King)
6. "Carnival", The Cardigans (Life)
7. "Sleeping in the Flowers", They Might Be Giants (John Henry)
8. "Hello City", Barenaked Ladies (Gordon)
9. "I'm Your No. 1 Fan", The Beautiful South (0898)
10. "Steppin' Out", Joe Jackson (Night & Day)
11. "Vertigogo", Combustible Edison (Four Rooms soundtrack)
12. "Last Train to Trancentral", The KLF (The White Room)

I still believe this is one of the best mixes I've ever made. I got the flow just the way I wanted it, and I still love all these songs.

I had wanted to continue my archive concert summaries today, rolling June and July together, but I've been busy today editing a paper and now I don't have enough time left to get that done. So the rest of the 2010 concert reviews/summaries will probably be pushed into next week, with the new year's weekend upon me. 

Instead, I'll write a bit about my Christmas vacation. Despite going into it with a cold, I ended up having a very enjoyable trip home. My flights there and back were miraculously smooth and trouble-free, which was really nice. And my cold cleared up within the first couple days, so I never felt really miserable. I did not get to spend as much time in Boston as I wanted to, but I did have a nice brunch at a restaurant in a part of Boston I've never really spent time in before, so that was good, and I did get to make my obligatory pilgrimage to Pizzeria Regina, which was satisfying as always. I also didn't get to see as many friends as I wanted to, though I didn't even try contacting some of them just because I knew the holidays are such a busy time for everyone, and because I had a cold at first; however, I did get to have that brunch with my new KEXP friend Sarah "from Boston", and despite the weather's efforts to thwart me, I did get to hang out with two of my oldest and closest friends, Scott and Doug. I enjoyed visiting my parents, hanging out with my younger brother and seeing his new place, and seeing my older sister and other relatives on Christmas (well, the day after, actually) as well as talking to my younger sister and her partner via Skype.

I finally tried my hand at running a game of "Dungeon World", based on Vincent Baker's Apocalypse World, and although I could see right away where I need more practice at running it, I felt it went very well for my first time and I enjoyed it a lot. I also finally finished reading Apocalypse World, which gave me some ideas on further customizing parts of it for "Dungeon World", and made me more eager to get back to finishing the character class I've been working on as well as preparing an adventure to run for people here in Seattle.

On the topic of spending time in Boston: people occasionally ask me if I ever miss New England, and I usually say no, although I do still love it, I'm very happy here in Seattle and don't intend to leave. However, for some reason on this trip, I found myself feeling a bit homesick for Boston while I was there visiting it. I know it so well, and yet at the same time there are parts of it like the South End that I've rarely visited or spent any time in, so I'd still love to spend time exploring it as well as simply hanging out in the parts that are familiar to me. And I have to say, Boston has so much character and beauty that Seattle rarely if ever comes close to, not just because it's so much older but also because it developed over time with distinctive styles. Too much of Seattle strikes me as bland and modern and similar, and Seattle could really conform to its terrain a lot more, with the resulting interestingly-shaped buildings and neighborhoods, instead of having the grid mercilessly imposed on top of everything. I could probably rant at further length on this topic, but I'm just about out of time for now. In any case, though I do miss Boston and do feel Seattle has some shortcomings in comparison, I'm still happy to be back here and to call Seattle home.

I had a fairly busy week. I think I did fairly well, overall, with getting work done. I knew I had a lot to do, and I did a decent job of getting started each day, getting out of the house and going to do work. I didn't always find focus right away, and had to stay up later than I wanted a couple times in order to make sure I was getting work done, so I also was short on sleep this week. But I did put in a bunch of hours, so that's good. 

Last Saturday I went to Brandon's housewarming/Hanukah party. I also went to Gina's birthday gathering on Monday evening and trivia as usual on Tuesday evening. I haven't mentioned that in the last few months of trivia at the BalMar, I had more or less joined one of the regular teams, "Tactical Nuclear Penguin," as a regular member; once the BalMar trivia night was canceled, they moved on to Paddy Coyne's, and I started going there with them too. So now I've got a regular trivia night again, this time weekly instead of bi-weekly. That's been fun.

I also had to make sure to follow up on some accident-related insurance business, as I ended up complaining about yesterday. And I did follow through on getting a website set up for the condo association, although now that it's up I have to get some content up. 

Probably because I've been feeling so busy, I've had a do-nothing day today. I had been invited to hang out with a bunch of people this evening and watch the UFC (fighting tournament), but I just didn't feel like going: I didn't want to ask someone for a ride, I didn't want to go out in the heavy rainy weather, I didn't want to sit and watch fights half-interested, and I didn't want to be a drag. Instead, I stayed in, made a good dinner, and had a mellow evening. I feel good about spending some time by myself and not worrying about doing things or being places, but I feel bad about passing up the invitation, as it was an unusual invitation and I appreciated being asked, and I hated to disappoint the friend who'd invited me. I did make a point of calling to say I wasn't coming and to apologize for it, because it's even worse when people never respond and never show. It's weird that I feel content with my evening while at the same time still feel lame for not taking the invitation.

This coming week will be busy too. I've still got a little work to finish up on Monday, and am anticipating at least a little more coming in. I also have a bunch of other tasks I still need to tend to; I'm trying hard to make sure I devote at least a few hours every weekday to work in some form. Tomorrow I'm going to the Saccos for dinner to celebrate Tony's and Gabriel's birthdays, and the holidays in general. Monday's a condo board meeting, Tuesday is trivia again. Wednesday I have another check-up with the orthopedic doctor, so I find out how my knee's doing. Friday night Kinski are playing at the Sunset, but I'm thinking about skipping that show after all, because it's in Ballard and the buses don't run late enough for me to see the whole show and get back home easily. Then Saturday I have to pack for my Christmas trip home, stop by the reception for Tony Dowler's art show at Cortona Cafe, and then get to the airport for my overnight flight. 

A friend of mine wrote recently about needing to regularly spend some time alone in order to stay balanced, or else she gets irritable. She was even initially concerned that adopting a dog would leave her feeling like she never had any time alone; fortunately she adapted to the dog's presence, but still needs time away from other people.

I'm more at the opposite end of the spectrum. I've been living alone since moving out to Seattle eight years ago, and even before that, when I was living with roommates or still at my parents', I usually felt like I spent a lot of time by myself—if not too much, certainly more than I wanted to. When i first got my cat, I was worried that I might use her as a substitute for finding more human company. Instead, I think she helps keep me sane by giving me some kind of company, while still leaving me with a longing to spend more time with other people.

I try to go out to coffee shops regularly to do my work, or just browse the Internet, just to combat the feeling of being cooped up by myself all the time. Generally that helps, especially since I'm a regular at a few spots and get some recognition from and conversation with the baristas, but sometimes it just accentuates my feelings of loneliness. I might have a brief encounter with a casual friend, which is nice and good, but then feel morose when they go off on their business and I'm left still wanting to spend more time hanging out. 

As I mentioned back in July, I've been going out dancing somewhat regularly the past several months in part as an opportunity to meet new people and make new friends, and at the least to be out among other people instead of sitting around at home by myself. Yesterday I was at Bauhaus Coffee for several hours to do some work, and while there I fell into that morose feeling of loneliness. Tonight at Chop Suey is TRUST, a regular monthly dance event featuring KEXP DJ Kid Hops and Sun Tzu Sound as the resident DJs, with Decibel Festival sponsoring/hosting this month's event. I decided that I should probably go, because it'd be better to be there than sitting around at home by myself yet again. (Also, I haven't been out dancing since July.) While out for dinner earlier with the Dowlers, I mentioned this plan, and Farida asked me whether I'm extroverted. I answered that I'm not, I just like to go dancing; if I were extroverted, I'd also be talking to others often and making new friends more easily. Still, just being there helps me not feel so lonely, or at least ignore it for a while, and as I said back in July, I am at least meeting some people and perhaps slowly making some more friends. So with that, I'm heading out to go dance.

I've been in New Hampshire all week for Christmas. I've taken a bunch of photos - fewer than I should've, but I still got some good shots - and will upload them when I get back home, but for now I've emailed this one to my Flickr account so I could post it.

The trip out here was a bit troublesome. For whatever reason, I didn't get any sleep the night before I left - as usual, I didn't start packing until late in the evening, but then once I did get to bed with about 3 hours available to sleep, I never fell asleep. Still, I didn't feel stressed out, and when the shuttle bus to the airport pulled up outside just as I was walking down the stairs, I thought that was a sign that the trip was going to go smoothly. However, because of crappy weather in NYC, all flights headed to JFK were delayed, and my flight actually docked at the gate and started letting people out about 20 minutes before my connection to Boston was scheduled to leave. That might not have been too bad as the connecting gate was just down the hallway, less than five minutes' walk, but I arrived at that gate only to be told it was too late, the plane was closed and leaving. They transferred me to another flight leaving in a couple hours, but from LaGuardia rather than JFK. My luggage hadn't made it onto my scheduled connection, which would have been okay, except that it also didn't make it off the first flight in time before I had to catch a cab over to LaGuardia. As a result, I had to spend all the next day, Christmas Eve, wearing the same clothes I'd worn the day before while traveling. Fortunately my family has no Christmas Eve traditions and I could just lounge about the house; even more fortunately, the delivery service got my luggage back to me just after midnight that night, so I had fresh clean clothes for Christmas after all.

Besides the nuisance of delayed luggage, the trip has been pretty good so far. Christmas was nice, I got to recharge my spirits with the annual boisterous LaRose family Christmas gathering. Yesterday (Thursday) was the all-important gathering of my original core circle of friends, the first time in twelve years all four of us were together again. It was just like old times: despite making plans to meet earlier in the afternoon, we didn't get together before 6 pm when we met at Bob's Pizza for dinner, we didn't start getting down to business with our role-playing game (AGON this time) until 9:30 pm, and we didn't finish up and leave Scott's house until after 4 am. It was a lot of fun, and although I wish we had (a lot) more time to spend together, I'm glad we had this opportunity to reconnect.

Today (Friday) my parents and I went to the Christmas Revels at Sanders Theater in Cambridge MA. That was the first time I've actually walked across Harvard Yard (as in the university) and also the first time I've been in Sanders Theater, which is really nice (unfortunately I didn't get any photos inside except for the lobby area). The Revels were fun, and I might look into going next year to the Puget Sound production.

I'm really tired though, from being up so late the night before and then only getting about 5 hours sleep this morning. So I'm off to bed after this. Tomorrow morning is a small family brunch to mark my birthday (which is December 31), and then I'm going back down to Boston to another friend's birthday party. Then I fly home Sunday. This flight's through Dallas, hopefully I won't be delayed and lose my luggage again - though at least this time if that happens I'll be home, where I have more clothes to wear.

No, this isn't about Buffy the Vampire Slayer despite the title. Instead, rather than making further edits or comments to the previous entry, I figured I'd just make a new one. As I compared the latter part of that entry to one of my concert reviews, it's perhaps fitting that it's got a similar problem to the band I just reviewed, Emilia - it's trying to make the right moves but it lacks real passion.

Besides the fact that I happened to have limited time when I wrote that, the thing was that I'd just met in person this woman whom I'd admired for years and wanted to be able to call my friend, and so I didn't want to be a gushing fanboy. Also, I knew Alison had checked out my journal at least since our meeting as she left a comment on the latest concert review, so it seemed better to be restrained - blathering excitedly might seem weird (see also: gushing fanboy, scorn of). That of course was stupid, particularly as I was clearly ignoring the wise words of Sarah Vowell that I'd just quoted: "Being a nerd, which is to say going too far and caring too much about a subject, is the best way to make friends I know." Duh! Jay (parkbenchzine) commented,

"lovely afternoon" Come on... lovely afternoons sounds like an afternoon spent with you grandmother, having a tea party. did it Kick ASS?! was it awesome..?!? the paragraph lacks things like, where you went for lunch, was it good. I agree weak ending. we want more hard core emotion.

and he's right too.

So! Alison does indeed kick much ass, and takes names as well, and the afternoon was pretty awesome. I'll go into some more detail and link to some specific photos she took. To start, we made basic plans to meet for lunch and see how things would go from there. I knew that she would find Fremont interesting; I also knew that she had her dog Maude with her, and that Norm's Eatery in Fremont is dog-friendly (not to mention pretty good), so I suggested we meet at my place and walk over to Norm's. As it happened, she left Maude to stay with Ariel (who hosted Alison and Maude during their Seattle visit) for the afternoon, so I did not get to meet Maude, but Alison and I still went to Norm's.

In some ways it really was like meeting an old friend for the first time. We slipped easily into conversation as soon as she arrived and kept it up all afternoon without any awkwardness, which was very reassuring, and cool. After all, having read her blog for years, I have the feeling of knowing her well, but I know it's not the same as knowing her in person. Plus, I don't believe she's been reading my journal (you know, I never did ask, but I'm not in her set of links so it seems a reasonable belief), so she only knows me from my participation in her blog comments and the odd email or two. So on my part at least things could've been awkward, but her immediate openness put me at ease. Also, we share conversational traits of jumping off on tangents and quick asides, so it was easy for me to keep up with her and also made me comfortable. And Alison explained later, when I brought it up, that she's long since become used to talking with strangers who know a lot about her from her blog.

In Fremont, I made sure we walked by most of the landmarks - Lenin, the rocket, the signpost at the center of the universe - and of course we went to see the troll, which she said was "the best thing ever". When I said we were going to see the troll, she cried, "the troll! yay!", making me think she'd heard of it already, but no, she simply understood the awesomeness of there being a troll to go see. Then we went over to Gasworks Park, which she commented was the kind of place where she used to trespass. We stopped at the sundial, but after I read the instructions we decided not to try it.

After that, we headed back to my place to get a car and go downtown - Alison knew of Pike Place Market and the Seattle Public Library and had intended to visit those that day. On the way back to my place, I posed in a frame outside Adobe; I meant to be gesturing in the direction of the businesses that were open, but I'm not sure that's clear (plus one of my gestures is out of the frame; I don't make a good portrait!). We decided I should drive because I knew how to get where we were going. Alison said she'd already seen some good views of Seattle, but Kerry Park was on the way downtown so I decided to stop there; as it happened another friend of hers brought her there later that evening, but it's a good view to see both day and night, so I think that's fortuitous.

Alison had the proper distaste for visiting the original Starbucks, but as it's right there outside Pike Place Market, we stopped for a moment anyhow. We also went by the fish-throwing fishmongers, but as it was a slow day with a small crowd they weren't throwing and we weren't waiting around for them to throw.

I took us by the Seattle Art Museum on the way to the library so she could see the Hammering Man sculpture. Its hammering arm had been removed, and Alison dubbed it "Buster," declaring "I'm a monster!", which she had to explain were Arrested Development references, sadly lost on me. But earlier when we were heading to Norm's I had some reason to quote Eddie Izzard's Dress to Kill (like I need a reason), and I know that better than her, so that's okay. (Eddie-style "is that right?" shifty eyes) (Hmm, it occurs to me now that I should've given her my copy. Maybe I should mail it to her...)

At the library, we paused outside while she called another friend to make evening plans. When she finished, I pointed out two things: one, it was spring, as evidenced by the buds on the tree; and two, we were visible overhead, reflected in the building's windows. Alison thought the library was wicked cool and remarked, as she captioned this photo of the main lobby, "If I lived in Seattle, I'd come here every day." I do live in Seattle, and I now do freelance work on a laptop, yet I still haven't gone there to spend some time working; how lame am I? We took the elevator up to the top (public) floor, and cautiously looked down to the lobby far below, letting Alison's camera do the serious looking. I remarked, "It's not so much that I'm afraid of heights as I'm leery of drops," which she thought was funny and apt.

Oddly, although we're both music fans, we didn't really talk about music until the ride back to my place - there were just so many other things. It did come up a bit when she first arrived, because her iPod had mysteriously stopped working and she'd been listening to some commercial pop station. I mentioned that she should tune in KEXP; she repeated "KEXP" thoughtfully, and then exclaimed, "KEXP!!! That's here?!?" with great delight. So that was an early sign that we were on the same wavelength. (I didn't think of that pun at the time, but I'm not afraid to use it now. Hah!)

Anyhow, on the ride back she talked about not seeing bands in Austin as often as she'd like, because they mainly come for South by Southwest (which I noted she, an old hand at that conference, simply calls "South by") and Austin City Limits, neither of which are ideal opportunities due to crowds and expense (and summertime heat in the case of ACL). I mentioned a few of the national acts I've seen, such as Annuals, B.R.M.C., and Goldfrapp, and a few of my favorite local acts like Kinski and Beehive. I also talked about how I've made a point of seeing at least one show a month, and how I learned to enjoy going to shows on my own back in Boston, when I was attending every Mistle Thrush show not just because I loved them but also because it was the only opportunity to hear their new, unreleased music. It's too bad I didn't have the chance to take her to see one of my local favorite bands, or even just check out some of the cool clubs - although she did visit Chop Suey with Ariel, and I mentioned the High Dive was a good club when we walked by.

Okay, that is quite a long account of our afternoon, now. It's still heavier on what we did rather than how the afternoon was, but I hope the fact that the account's so lengthy for just a few hours will convey how much I enjoyed it. Before meeting her in person, I already believed she was awesome and very cool, but hanging out with her really let me understand her wonderfulness. Like myself, she's prone to writing in her blog more about her troubles and unhappiness than about her good times, but then I firmly believe that's a major point of keeping an online journal in the first place. I wasn't expecting her to be dour and sullen, but still I was surprised by how full of smiles she was, how she was quick to laugh and full of infectious enthusiasm for new sights and experiences. That was one of the best afternoons I've had in a while; I'm really happy I had the chance to meet Alison and glad she was willing to meet and spend time with me.