KROQ's not even close to acoustic Christmas

I am not much of a concert goer. The last concert I went to was New Year's Eve a few years back when the manfriend won tickets to a Gnarls Barkley/Flaming Lips show at USC's Galen Center, which is the fairly small arena where they have basketball games and the like.

But this year I was in the mood to see some live music. And I was able to score a couple tickets to KROQ's Almost Acoustic Christmas.

The popular Los Angeles radio station puts on a couple shows that benefit Para los Ninos, a children's charity.

The venue, the Gibson, is fairly small with just over 6,000 seats. Ticket sales are tightly regulated by the station and Ticketmaster to try to keep brokers from getting a bunch and then selling them at huge markups.

So when they went on sale Thursday evening, I was not holding my breath that I would get any.

It was a pleasant surprise when I was able to get two, albeit for not-so-great seats. But the venue was small and the acoustics were good.

The other fun thing was that Kim, my friend from work, also got a ticket. Since she bought one seat, she was able to get a spot in a lower section and closer to the stage.

We made a plan for her to meet at my house and then she, MF and I would go up to Universal City (about 30 miles from my place) together.

We got there, parked and then found the Gibson. It is next to Universal Studios and the retail/restaurant complex known as Universal Citywalk. Since we had some time, we stopped at a restaurant and had a couple drinks before going to the show.

Once we had a happy little buzz going, we wandered back to the theater and checked out the scene outside. There was a large stage where KROQ DJs were interviewing some of the musicians. There also were people passing out beads, glow sticks and a heavily tattooed elf handing out candy canes.

Really. I just have no words for
this picture. The elf, the giant, the tattoos...

Would you like some candy, big boy?

This is MF, all 6'9" of him, with the candy cane elf. The poor elf. His initial reaction to seeing me, 6' tall, and MF was to jump back a bit in shock. But he was a good sport about having his picture taken with someone twice his height.

We also stopped to get shirts and more refreshments. By this point we had missed the opening act, Vampire Weekend. I don't think any of us were that bummed since none of us had really heard of the band before. Though I may check them out online later to see what I missed.

The first band we saw was Snow Patrol. Normally I can take or leave this when I hear it on the radio. But they did sound better live than I would have imagined.

Of course, the situation for taking photos was not ideal. But I gave it a go.

Up next was Scott Weiland. We watched for a couple songs then Kim and I, via text, decided to take a break.

Franz Ferdinand came out next. I have always liked them because they are upbeat and catchy. I had never entertained the idea of seeing them live though. But they were good. The crowd had been fairly tame up to that point, but they got more people on their feet. This set was one of the highlights for me.

KROQ pretty much always throws in an unbilled performance. The surprise guest for our show: Kanye West. It seemed like an odd fit to me (and not usually what I listen to), but he had the crowd bouncing.

Paramore, the only group with any estrogen, came on after Kanye.

Yeah, they were not my favorite. They have a couple songs on the radio that are OK, but not at all my favorite. We listened to a couple songs, but this was another good time for a break.

Another band about which I am ambivalent is Death Cab for Cutie. I mean, other than thinking they have a fairly dumb band name, I don't pay too much attention to the music when it comes on the radio. I don't change the station, but I don't sing along either.

Seems they had a decent following at this show though, several people were up, dancing along to the music. I liked the guy's green beanie.

The camera pretty much did what it wanted in the conditions of constantly moving musicians, erratic lighting and me being far away from the action.

Here is one of my nice blur shots. What is it? Who knows.

Finally, it was time for the Killers. Kim was very excited about the chance to see this band. With good reason. They came out with a song from their new album, but then gave a really good mix of stuff from their older discs. And the crowd was really into it.

I had seen them years ago on SNL and I was not sure about how they would be live, based on that. They were great live. They sounded really good. This and Franz Ferdinand were the highlights for me.

The last band up was The Cure, a band that was very popular way back in my high school days in the late 80's. I was wondering if they would make me feel young again or old.

They made me feel kind of old.

Don't get me wrong, they sounded great. Robert Smith can still deliver, which he did with the lovely "Pictures of You" right up front. But the vibe was much more mellow.

And we all were fading. So we decided to leave before the end of the show. Kim told me earlier today that she heard they played for two hours. There was no way I was going to make it two hours and then drive home.

So yeah, maybe I am old.

But all in all, it was a great evening. We got back to my place and I capped my night with a bourbon and dropped into a lovely deep sleep at about 1 a.m.

Getting the boot

A while back I wrote about the trouble I have finding boots in my size.
It's really a pain sometimes wearing a size 12.

But good things came from that post.

About a week after I wrote it, my ex-husband called. He was at the Nordstrom Rack in Broomfield, Colo., with his girlfriend and they were looking at about six pair of boots in my size.
Did he want me to buy them and send them to me?

Um, yeah!

So he did. And I got them a couple days ago.
Going through the box was like Christmas morning.

I ended up keeping three pair of boots of the five pair of boots and one pair of shoes he sent me.
What I don't keep I will take back to a Nordstrom Rack here.
So, what did I keep?

This pair of brown Franco Sarto boots. They have no zipper, they slip on and fit super tight against the calf. The style is very simple and classic, with a nice stitching detail.
They were $45. Awesome.



I also kept another pair of brown boots. These are by Giovanni Z, a brand I had never heard of before. But they are cute. A little more casual and funky with all the buckles on them.
They were originally $99, but were on sale for half that price. Excellent!
Now I have two pair of brown boots.
I was only going to keep one, but at those prices, I am keeping them both. Maybe they will last longer if they are not pulling sole brown-boot duty.

The last pair I am keeping is a black pair. They are a slightly shorter boot, but still work great with pants, jeans and skirts that hit below the knee.

These are a Nordstrom house brand, BP.

They were $65.

They fit so well and I love the heel. Yes, that is a 4-inch heel.

But they are really pretty comfortable. Plus a lot of my sandals and pumps are that high, so I am fine walking in them.

I actually wore them yesterday even though it was about 90 degrees outside. I just paired them with a light-weight skirt and a sleeveless top.

Again, the buckle detail is fun. And they are well-made, so I should have these for several years with the right maintenance.

Good thing I have a great shoe-repair guy!

There was another pair of black and another pair of brown that I did not keep because they did not fit right.

There also was this pair of shoe-bootie type things by Franco Sarto

These are not really my style, but they looked like they would be cute with pants.

So I tried them.

But they are too pointy. Pointy does not work for me, so back they will go.

And the ex also offered to keep an eye out for more boots and shoes when he goes back to the Rack. Turns out his girlfriend has trouble finding shoes, too, since she wears a 10-11.

I took him up and that offer.

Hmmm... red boots could be fun!

So, huge thanks to him, and to his girlfriend who helped him pick out the boots he sent.
Seriously, how cool are they?

Rocking out

I just have to post quickly about how much fun I had last night playing a video game with friends.
The video game? "Rock Band."
I really thought I would just sort of sit back and watch everyone else play.
But I ended up taking a turn on all the "instruments" (guitar, bass and drums) and even singing a few times.
My best vocal performance was "I Think I'm Paranoid" by Garbage.
And I think the drums were my best instrument.
Plus the company was great and the mojitos (my own blend) were the perfect combination of tangy and sweet.
It's been ages since I had a girls night. I really needed it.
We stayed in, ate the snacks I brought, forgot to order pizza because we were having so much fun, ate more of the snacks I brought, drank mojitos and rocked out.
I mean, as much as one can rock out on fake drums and guitars.
I'm not much of a video gamer. But this was a great way to blow off steam.
Sorry. No photos or videos were allowed of this event.

A little blog housecleaning

I have been meaning to do a little work on the stuff over there on the left for a while.
I had blogs in the blog roll that had not been updated in quite a while.
So I removed them.
If your blog was in there and you update it, let me know. I want to read it. And I will put you back in there.

But for now, I want to keep things more current.

The other thing I added was a feed from Twitter.com.
I am not sure how long I will maintain that. But for now it is something I want to learn more about, so there it is.

Some of the new blogs on the blog roll:

Blog it Like You Mean it - Angela in Idaho, whom I have never met but found on the blogosphere. We seem to share a similar sensibility and if I am ever in Boise, I want to meet her.

Girl of Words - Jacque Jo, formerly of West Virginia, now in the Washington, D.C., area. Same type of thing as with Angela.

If I Were Allowed to Speak - Rachel Shell of Washington state. She is a fabulous photographer who inspires me to take better photos.

Louisiana Lowdown - Beth in Baton Rouge. I started reading Beth's blog here and there about a year ago on a friend's recommendation. I read it more regularly since we had a chance to meet in April at the copy editors' conference in Denver.

Nerdy Words - Another Beth. This is Beth in Florida. She is another copy editor. We first met at the conference in Miami in 2007 and then again in Denver in April. She's a red-haired spitfire with a knack for grammar.

Palos Verdes Daily Photo - I found this site quite by accident. But it was a happy accident. I like to see someone else's take on things and places that are so familiar to me.

Psycho Solo Diver - Psycho, for short. He dives. A lot. Mostly around the South Bay. And he makes some wicked Korean ribs on a charcoal grill in a parking lot.

Watch Yer Language - Craig Lancaster, an editor and blogger at the Billings Gazette in Montana. I have to make sure I keep on my toes here now or he just might call me on it.

Round Robin Photo Challenge - This is something I started a while back, posting entries on another blog. They give you an assignment twice a month and you go take some pictures. Then you post them on your blog and they link to you. It's a fun way to see how different people see the world around them. I got out of the habit of this for a couple months. But I am planning to get back in starting with this weekend's topic.

And finally...

Letting Crazy Take a Spin - What started out as a super-secret blog that became not-so-secret somehow. I have stopped blogging there in an effort to consolidate things a bit. It was too much trying to keep three blogs.
And I have deleted some of the posts that were there. I mean, hey, my mom reads this blog!
But there is still some stuff there, including previous entries to the Round Robin challenges.

So, that is all for now. Just a light fall cleaning.

Lots of divers, no actual diving

Not for me anyway.

Sunday was supposed to be another dive day at Vet's Park in Redondo Beach.

Manfriend and I got to the parking lot by 8:30.
We checked the surf and, since it looked no worse than the week before, decided to gear up and head down.

I am definitely getting faster with getting my gear together and getting into the wetsuit, etc.

Once we were both ready to go, we headed down the stairs to the sand.

Yep. It looked less surfy than the week before. The waves were crashing at waist high instead of head and shoulder high. There was a fair amount of surf, but since it was shallower, I felt fine with it.

The plan was to get out past where the surf was breaking, get the fins on and swim out.

I made it out and got one fin on while I was in a place where I could still touch bottom.
I was about to put the other fin on when MF, who had just passed the surf zone, raised his hands.

In one hand he had his fins. In the other hand, he had his camera... Oh wait...
No he didn't.

Crap.

Crap, crap, crap.

Somehow in wading through the waist high waves, the camera had slipped from his hand and was nowhere to be seen.

The water-tight housing is clear, but with a lot of red all over it. And it is supposed to float.

We figured it would pop up.
It did not.

I took off the fin and we waded back to shore.

Scanning the shore and surfline we saw no sign of the camera.
In order to look for it, we dumped our BCs, tanks, weights and fins in the sand.
Back in the water with masks and snorkels, we tried to find the camera.

No luck.

All I saw was sand swirling around. Visability was bad, even in waist-high water.

Surf was still breaking, churning things up pretty good.

No camera.
And I was getting dizzy from looking through the mask at swirling sand.
We swam out a little further, past the surfline.
Still nothing.

Back on the sand we walked up and down the shore a little bit.
Still nothing.

Finally, MF decided that it was just gone.
Which totally sucked.

As he said, it's not that it was all that expensive of a camera. But the camera combined with the housing combined with the memory card, well that added up.

Not to mention the pictures on the card that he had not downloaded yet.
Bummer.

So, with that, and with the waves now picking up and me not feeling good anymore about making a dive, meant that we were done.

We rinsed off as best we could. Setting the gear in the sand meant that it was extra sandy and would require thorough soaking and cleaning later.

Back in the parking lot we got cleaned up and changed and packed everything back in the car.

Then we decided to go back to the shore to give one last look for the camera.

We saw nothing near where we had gone in the water.
Turning to the north, we saw a few divers coming out.

These people were hard-core. They had three tanks on their backs and one guy had another tank at his side. I wondered where they had been with all that air.

Then, just as I was ready to turn back toward the stairs, one of the divers held up a camera.

It took a second to register. It was MF's camera.

Wow.

MF asked the guy, "Hey, where did you find that camera?"
The diver, who we later learned was named Jeff, said he had found it out well past the surf zone bobbing in the water.

Amazing. They came in a bit north of where we had gone in.

Lucky day for MF.
All the little crevices of the housing were pretty well crusted with sand. But the camera inside was intact and dry. Excellent.

After this little bit of good fortune, we headed back to the car and then to Old Marineland site (Long Point) to meet up with another group of divers who were barbecuing in honor of a couple of birthdays.

Some shrimp with a simple season and then grilled and
the pork tenderloin that I marinated all night before this. Yum!

My contribution, a cous cous salad and a couple of these pork tenderloins to throw on the grill.
Oh yeah, and beer and the fixing for some tasty screwdrivers.

Korean ribs and shrimp, in progress. There were two grills working
and plate after plate of meat: shrimp, beef, chicken, pork, sausages... Protein overload!

The feast also included Korean-style beef short ribs, kimchee, rice, hot links and shrimp.

It was a nice day to hang out, but after a couple hours it was getting warm and we had another party to go to.

More on that one later.

Right now, I have to get back to my household chores.

Pseudo camping

This past weekend (yeah, I know, almost a whole week ago by now!) a bunch of people went camping.


It was my mom's 60th birthday weekend and we had asked her what she wanted to do. Party? Mini-cruise? Weekend in the mountains?
She chose the weekend in the mountains. It was casual and fun and made it possible for more people to go.


It ended up being Mom, me, manfriend, my sister and her hubby plus their son, my aunt from Texas, my aunt and two cousins from here and my mom's best friend from childhood plus her manfriend.
All in all, a fairly big group.


We stayed at a place in the mountains near Santa Barbara called Rancho Oso.
Now really, this was not camping. Not like camping when I was a kid.
No one was sleeping in tents.


My sister and her husband have a trailer. It's not huge, but it comfy. They hosted my mom and my Texas aunt.
My mom's friend and her manfriend have a huge trailer that they used.
Manfriend and I rented what the campground calls a garden cottage. We stayed in that two nights. One of the nights my local aunt and her two kids stayed there with us.


So this garden cottage? It was a mini mobile home. Really not a trailer at all in the sense that this thing was not going on the road any time soon.


We sat, we talked, we swam, we did a little hike, we tasted a little wine.
Mostly it was just a nice relaxing weekend.


On the way home Sunday manfriend and I stopped at the Chumash Casino nearby.
I started with $40 at a $5 minimum blackjack table. In about 20 minutes I walked away with a $100 chip. Not bad.


We drove back to the L.A. area, stopping along the coast a couple times to take a look at the water.

On the way there manfriend and I stopped at a winery called Alma Rosa. It was very pretty. A rustic but lovely little building. I would put the setting toward the top of the list of my favorite wineries in that area.

It was the first time I had been there and I will go back next time.

Plus the wine was good. That picture above? My purchases.

After this we stopped at Firestone Walker Brewery in Buellton to get a beer and a snack.

This tractor near the entrance intrigued me. Machinery can be so pretty.



The beer sampler was pretty, too. Love that Double Barrel.



Here is the view driving up to our garden cottage thing. We had the one in the middle.







The living room...






kitchen...


dining room...

There also was a little hallway with two bunks and a bedroom area with a queen size bed. Plus a full bathroom. It was tight, but at least my tall manfriend could stand up in most parts of it. The doorways were a little short though.

This was the view from our back deck.

One afternoon we did a little hike to a nearby waterfall. The turn off onto the smaller trail from the horse trail featured the sign below. Plus a little protest by an equine visitor.

On Saturday night we feasted on a variety of grilled meats (pork tenderloin, chicken, brats), potato salad, corn, grilled squash, bread and salad. It was sooooooo good.

The main Saturday activity was wine tasting. We hit three wineries. I bought wine at two of them.

Ready to serve at Rideau Vineyards.

I bought a case of a wine called Fleur Blanche here. It is a lovely, crisp and light white. Not sweet, but still fruity.

Rideau had a beautiful, lush garden. This was just a snippet of it.

Next we went to Gainey Vineyards. We decided to take their guided tour.

They have a nice guest vineyard where they explain the various trellising techniques.

I was surprised that after all the winery tours I have done over the years, I learned new stuff here. I would recommend this tour.

Inside the tank room at Gainey. It was nice and chilly in there after coming in from the heat of the vineyard.

The cask room.

Those plugs in the barrels? They are called the bung. They go in the bung hole.

Seriously.

I liked this room. The light was low and the bottles glowed. The guide said there were about 12,000 bottles in here. All of them were Chardonnay.

Sunday on the way home we took in the view of the dam at Lake Cachuma.

We also stopped along the coast off Highway 101.

And finally, after lunch in Summerland, we headed home.

By early Sunday evening when we got home I was pretty exhausted. But in that good way. That way where you knew you had a good time.