Monday, August 28, 2006

Leaving

I'm leaving in a couple of hours :( it's all very sad.

--
Coffee is thicker than water...

http://avatarofcunning.blogspot.com

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Saturday, August 26, 2006

End of summer?

Already? I say that's not fair, not had the time to do half of the things I was going to.

But we are going to see the Foo Fighters do an acoustic gig tonight, so that's good :)

Still jealous of my sister though, who will be at Leeds festival now (although half the lineup was at Lollapalooza - which doesn't get any easier to type with repetition - so I'm sure I'll survive).

I'm actually quite excited to be coming home. Much as I love being here with Rob (which is very much) 51 weeks away is a long time and there's been changes at home that I'm sure will feel very strange. My great-grandad won't be around any more, and I'll miss the conversation of "You'll set something on fire with that hair, you will!" to which my response was "Well, at least you can see it. It's a public service for you, this hair is!"

Also there will be a new dog at my nan's house to get to know. I've missed dogs this year. The cat that my Russian hosts had just wasn't the same.

And of course I have all my friends to see and catch up with. People have graduated, people have also travelled this year, people have got jobs and are out in the real world... lots has changed and I'm out of date! Although not as much as I would have been had Facebook not taken over everyone's life... it's good for some things!

Anyway, got to get on with stuff - I'm doing the washing so I can pack (I hate packing dirty stuff, it just makes everything that wasn't dirty need a wash). And of course, go to see the Foos!

Saturday, August 19, 2006

Oh. My. God.

I'm so excited about this you cannot understand.

Hogfather

Except now I need to find someone with Sky One... volunteers?

--
Coffee is thicker than water...

http://avatarofcunning.blogspot.com

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Thursday, August 17, 2006

I haven't forgotten about this blog thing, but the last couple of weeks have been insanely busy. And I only have 11 days left here, which is complete bull.

I intend to write up my own version of events, but meanwhile, here's Rob's memories of Lollapalooza weekend...

"

Lollapalooza

So Lolla this past weekend eh? Wow...

This will be just a mini update... I'll try to do more tonight before I collapse but.... well I've promised similar things before :)
http://lollapalooza.com/schedule/ftaf.aspx?sid=LOLLA181406

Friday:
Stupid work kept me from getting there until 5:30 but I did make it in time for Iron & Wine which was good.
The rest of the evening was basically just wandering & sitting & drinking Bud ( ... )
We caught some of The Raconteurs, Violent Femmes, VHS or BETA and Death Cab for Cutie
Oh yeah we also went to the Blackalicious after show at the House of Blues.... Omega Watts and 1773 were lots of fun, and Lyrics Born was fricking amazing, but unfortunately Blackalicious was pretty much a disappointment.

Saturday:
Another start to the day a bit later than we wanted but by 2:30 we were back in the think of things (after stopping for some sushi for lunch/breakfast.... MMMMMmmmm)
Saturday was by far the highlight day starting with Coheed and Cambria (pretty fun), then Wolfmother (not bad.. but not great), we caught a couple of songs from Calexico before Sonic Youth, then the big surprise of the weekend, The Dresden Dolls, wow! are they ever a lot of fun!!!! I want a "coin operated boy" too! Flaming Lips were damn good too, but we stayed back so we had a good spot for Thievery Corporation. Who rocked. Then rounded out the day with some mad dancing to Manu Chao. We met up with some friends down from Canada for the festival and offered them a place to crash (they slept in their van on friday night)... However I was the only one who actually slept...

Sunday:
everyone else stayed up drinking until about 6:30 (after waking me up and dragging me out to watch the sunrise.. bastards...) So I was of course the only one ready to go at a decent time. Sara was feeling pretty off tho... so while the rest of the posse headed out at about 2, we stuck around home & she slept while I watched TV (X games & Cartoons! woot!) and read computer magazines... we finally managed to haul ourselves up and out in time to catch a cab down to the park just in time for the final few chords of Broken Social Scene before the big guns came out... apparently something like 70,000 people where there for the Red Hot Chilli Peppers... Wow that was a hell of a show. Then home again for a last ditch attempt to get rested for this morning...

and despite my best efforts (aka decent amount of sleep both nights) I still feel rough this morning.... this "working stiff/cubicle monkey" life while hanging out with people on vacation really sucks...
"

So there you have it :)

All the photos are here. If you click on the "More info" link at the side of each photo (underneath where it tells you the number of the photo and the folder name) it will tell you the file name, which has the name of the band etc in it. I'm trying to work out how to get it to show the file name as a caption, but I've only just got this picasaweb thing so I'm still learning...

Thursday, August 03, 2006

So now I have the site meter in two places. I'll sort it out later (the one at the bottom of the page has to go, silly place to put it!)

[EDIT: did it, fiddled around with html and everything, I feel so technical :) ]

It's so hot...

...even the birds are panting.

I didn't know they did that, but they definitely do. Rob and I tend to sit in one of the Art Institute's gardens for lunch, along with the sparrows (who are now so used to us that they're getting cheeky, especially the one with no tail who will come very very close so she can eat the bread in peace because none of the others are brave enough). There are a whole gang of this year's youngsters, along with their long-suffering dad who is still pestered to feed them, so at first we thought they just had their mouths open to make dad feed them, but no - on closer inspection their little chests were heaving in the same way that dogs' chests do when they're panting. Poor little things (also very cute, in a funny sort of way. I've become quite attached to them).

Just to let you know how hot, it was 94F at 9pm on Monday as we were coming home from seeing Camera Obscura, and it was noticeably cooler than earlier in the day. Eek.

I really hope it's cooler this weekend, because it's Lollapalooza weekend. Festivals in the sun are undoubtedly better than festivals in the rain, but festivals with heatstroke are probably quite unpleasant. Fingers crossed.

Anyways, here are some more photos. It wouldn't let me post any more yesterday for some reason known only unto itself - the little "upload photo" window kept coming up blank, which is really not useful.
The first three are of one of the Art Institute's gardens. One day there was a woman in there with a statue (above) that she would put somewhere and take photos from the other side of the garden, much to the confusion (and delight) of tourists who often posed with it for photos of their own.



This one is of me in the condo. Rob was playing with the camera and the "Pick a colour" function (which has some other name but I don't remember what). It's quite fun isn't it?


Then we have the black and white thing, which is also good.

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Photo-ness

Decided it was time for photos of Chicago, so here are some. The above and below photos are of Michigan avenue on Independence Day, when it was closed due to the fireworks. Look at all the people trying to go home!


The skyline from out by the Planetarium


Mum in a nice Italian restaurant just off the swanky Rush St

My hair glows!

Look! This was taken the day it was done (or the day after, not sure) with a UV light. Fun, eh?
It's Special Effects Atomic Pink and Fishbowl.
These were taken in the daylight a couple of days later. The Fishbowl is already fading there, and now (about a week later) it's gone completely. My hair hates blue, which is unfortunate because I rather like it. Ah well, such is life.

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

It's been a while again

But I don't really have time. Essays have finally become a priority (almost) so time is being spent researching those and doing all the other stuff that's become a norm, like meeting Rob for lunch (which takes 2 hours by the time I've got there and back) etc etc etc.

Went to see Cirque du Soleil's "Corteo" show on Saturday. It was amazing! Those people are crazy bendy, and strong, and just generally frightening. The premise of the show is that it's a clown's funeral which his ghost (I suppose) is presiding over, and the Cirque comes out to pay their respects in the ways they know best. So we had "kids" on trampoline beds, including one guy who kept bouncing on his back and then running up the headboard and coming to a dead stop balanced on the top of it (how is that even possible?). There were people behaving like cartwheels, in the middle of big metal rings - they looked like pennies spinning, but under more control. There were acrobats on chandeliers, acrobats on podium-type things throwing smaller acrobats to each other, acrobats on tightropes at 45 degree angles, acrobats on tethers that he kept holding in his mouth while she (not as small as the ones that were being thrown around) clung to him in improbable ways... a human marionette, a tiny (Russian) woman who was suspended beneath balloons (like a cartoon, but true), a crystal glass orchestra with the ringmaster whistling (better than it sounds), a man that ran up and down a ladder (not fixed to anything of course) and then did a handstand at the top of it, a scene with two people having an acrobatics fight over a see-saw (reminded me of "West Side Story" but more aerial)... All kinds of stuff. It was spectacular, which I think is the point, and made me feel entirely inadequate, but never mind.

There's a lot of shows in Chicago in the summer! I hadn't realised before because we've been based out in Naperville (which is a pain to get to) or have been up in Canada for the majority of the time I've been around. This Thursday we're going to see Muse, then on Friday Camera Obscura. Talvin Singh is playing at some point, Blackalicious (who I only know from the ridiculous song "Alphabet Aerobics", in which he uses as many words beginning with one letter as he can in two or three lines before moving on to the next), Tricky, a Foo Fighters acoustic gig... I'm sure there were some others but I don't think we have tickets for them yet. Oh and Lollapalooza adds about another hundred bands to that (obviously we won't see them all, but still). All in all, a fun summer!


That's about it for now, I'm sure I was going to write more but I just don't remember what. Ooh apart from the fact that my hair glows under UV light, which is very cool. I'll post a pic as soon as I find my camera cable, which I've mislaid – very upsetting. It'll turn up though.



--
Coffee is thicker than water...

http://avatarofcunning.blogspot.com

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