If you are actually attacked by a bear...

I've been daydreaming a lot lately about hiking the Appalachian Trail. Haven't worked out any firm plans yet, and probably won't for a long time, but for some reason I am totally fascinated by blogs about and information on planning a thru-hike of the AT.

I've spent an obscene amount of time looking at gear. An extraordinary amount of time reading about dehydrating food. More attention than I knew I had to discussions on how to pee with your pack on. And hours and hours and hours reading every portion of www.appalachiantrail.org, where I found the following piece of information:

"If you are actually attacked by a bear, you should fight for all you are worth with anything at hand – rocks, sticks, fists." (see the section about "wildlife")

I wonder how I would do at punching a bear.

Just went for a walk

Because even though it's 82F outside at 9:30pm, and even though my apartment has central ac, I could not spend one more minute inside.

In the 20 minutes I spent walking around my neighborhood, I saw teenagers playing basketball, two girls walking, a couple of guys playing guitar, a little boy catching lightning bugs in his backyard, and an old woman talking on the phone about a medical procedure that involved "gettin' a tube in there to drain it."

And this is why summer is my favorite season. =)

Lord help me, I'm a Phan

If you make it to the end of this monster post, there are pictures as a reward. Or, if you just want to skip ahead to the pictures I won't be offended.

When I was 16, I threw myself a birthday party and told all my friends if they wanted to get me a gift, I would love a copy of their favorite cd. This turned out to be one of the best ideas I've ever had. I don't remember all of what I got, but one standout was Phish's Rift. Now I have to say I didn't love it then. But gosh darn, I tried to love it. Most of my friends at that point were Phish fans, and I think almost all of them went to at least one concert while we were in high school. They never asked me if I wanted to go. I don't know if this was because I tended to not be allowed to go to stuff like that, and so they assumed it would just make me sad to be invited and then have to say no, or if they were just awful people. (I know it's the former, but I've always been a little insecure about being left out of stuff!)

So anyway, when I got that copy of Rift, I listened to it as hard as I have ever listened to anything. I wanted so desperately to "get" whatever my friends found in Phish, so I could be as gung-ho and avid a "Phan" as the rest of them. And then maybe they'd talk to me when they were making their concert plans too. But try as I might, I just couldn't totally get into it.

Twelve years later, I've got it.

My boyfriend is probably the biggest Phish fan I'll ever have the privilege of meeting. When the reunion was announced, and summer tour dates set, he had counted me in before I even understood what was happening. And this, to me, was a huge compliment. We went to two shows this summer and about two songs into the second show, I knew I'd never be the same again.

The first show was at Starlake, near Pittsburgh, on June 18th. I had fun for sure (photo evidence below) but I only heard one song that I recognized at all, "Free" which I only sort of knew from hearing it randomly at a friend's house. I loved the crowd, I loved the energy, but I didn't totally love the band yet. Yet.

Over the course of July, my wonderful boyfriend redoubled his efforts in mentoring me towards Phandom. He let me borrow his copy of Rift (that original copy that I had got lost somewhere in the 15+ times I've moved in the last 10 years) and then Hoist and then Billy Breathes. (This all combined with the fact that anytime we were in his car he'd play live shows from the summer tour.) Hearing the album version of "Free" on Billy Breathes and then immediately getting hooked by "Character Zero" and "Taste" and then realizing that I had real preferences for different songs and albums ("Character Zero" is still my favorite song, Billy Breathes is my favorite album, with Rift a solid second and "Silent in the Morning" makes me love it a little more everytime I hear it), all of it started to really grow on me.

And it was just in time to get me really, really excited for the show at Merriweather Post Pavilion outside of DC. I can't really explain what it was or why it clicked, but even though they only played two songs that I knew ("Taste" and "Time Turns Elastic"), I finally reached the point where I felt like I really connected with the music. It was great! And I know that the more Phish I listen to, the more gems I'm going to find.

Carrie Brownstein had a similar, if truncated, journey this summer too.

This is at the Starlake show. Look! I'm pumped! But I think you can kind of tell in my eyes that I'm not as pumped as I could be.

Tailgating at Merriweather. Our friend Lisa randomly had a baby picture in her bag with her. We stuck it up in my trunk and told people that it was a kid that we lost two shows ago. We got some funny looks. Shockingly, the omnipresent police force didn't question us about it. (Also, look at my hippie top! Patchwork corduroy?? I must be into Phish!)

Sometime in the second set, Aaron managed to finagle us this amazing spot right in the front of the lawn. The screen that you see in the upper left was huge and cast this cool funky glow all around us. I've learned that the best thing for me to do at concerts with Aaron is to hold his hand, stay alert, and keep as close as possible when we're moving. If I do that successfully, a great view is my reward. He's a master at getting up close.

Check me out!

I have finally made it into relative currentness with the interwebs here. Along the techno-phile/phobe continuum, I'm a mid to late adopter usually. Stuff has to be around for a while and enough of my friends have to have started using something before I start using it. I might get an iPhone or a Blackberry eventually, but 75% percent of the people I see/talk to regularly will have to get one first.

For example, it took me a while to get on myspace, and then it was mostly because all my friends started having conversations there and when we hung out in person I didn't get the jokes. And then there was the migration from myspace to facebook, and I was a little late on that bandwagon too. I was relatively early amongst my friends to gmail (I got it when you still had to be invited!) and that helped with using blogger. But I was so late with rss feeds (I just started using Google Reader and I LOVE it, can't believe I didn't do it sooner) and my current cell phone doesn't even have a camera.

But now look what I've figured out! I'm using Twitter with my phone and I even set it up to update my facebook status as well as this cute little box here on the blog!!! It's awesome! So now I can tweet from the middle of the Shark Week party. With just a text message! I can't upload a picture via cell phone, but I can change my online status in three different sites with just a text! So even if I don't blog for a long time, there's still something being updated here. And it's so simple.

So while I have to admit that this is definitely not cutting edge or early adopting in any way, it's still fairly early for me to be doing this. I'm proud of myself. =)

Shark Week!

It's Shark Week! So in honor, I made shark attack cupcakes! I got the idea after seeing a friend's version that she made from Hello, Cupcake! I'm sad to say I was cheap and didn't buy the book, which may be why my sharks are pretty messy.

My favorite part is the life preserver with a bite taken out of it. I don't know if that was in the book, but my friend did that and I thought it was hilarious.


These were taken with my boyfriend's camera which is much better than my camera. You're welcome.


The snack that bites back!


Woman versus shark!


*Chomp* I win.

Sometimes it hits me

You've been in a cave lately if you haven't seen this:



Cute right? I found it sweet. I didn't quite love it the way it seems a lot of people did, but hey, I just might have some lingering bias. (Sidenote: I HATED "Enchanted" and came closer than I ever have to walking out of the theater. Hated it. And I'm pretty sure I still would now.) But I genuinely enjoyed watching this little video, even though once was definitely enough for me.

Well a friend just posted this to FB:



I'm sorry, it's just too great. Obviously the group in the second video really knows what they're doing, that's some seriously well-choreographed and well-executed moves. The judge is my favorite. Well, maybe when she throws the bouquet is my favorite. Or maybe the court officers are my favorite. Oh hell the whole video just made me smile. And it's all meant in good fun.

I don't root for divorce. It sucks. It SUCKS. And it sucks even if you don't have kids. Or a house. But I have to say, I cringe a little every time I see the fairy tale, "we're so blissfully (blindly?) happy," marriage stuff. (Or a lot if it's a whole movie's worth of crap like "Enchanted" *vomit*) So it was really refreshing to see a parody of the "Forever" wedding entrance video. Cause I said "forever" once and later wound up in front of a judge saying "not anymore." Who says there can't be humor in that?

Amazon Rank: Behold the power of the internet

I think stuff like this is really cool.

Amazon Rank

As if I needed another reason to love Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, they've done this in honor of the Amazon debacle involving stripping sales ranks from books with "questionable content." Here's a couple of updates on Amazon's response.

SBTB was actually how I first found out about Flight of the Conchords and I have enjoyed many a laugh since then. About a year and a half ago, a co-worker pointed out the Smart Bitches blog to me and on the day that I clicked over to their site they had fatefully posted the "Business Time" video. I laughed so hard I disrupted work for an entire morning. Though I am not a romance reader per se, I really enjoy how much they enjoy the genre. And the cover snark is hilarious and awesome.

In honor of SBTB and the genius of the Amazon Rank Google bomb, and how much I like Flight of the Conchords, and my previous history of posting lots of YouTube videos on my blog, I leave you with this oldie but goodie:



That's why they're called business socks.