photo credit: Johanna B-K (age 4) |
On Friday night, I didn't really have plans. I kinda had this buzz about me going into 11.11.11, but by the afternoon my bubble was burst and I realized I was hoping and waiting for something that wasn't gonna happen. I considered just staying in and watching Lifetime movies and eating bon bons, but decided I would head out to Pussy Galore at the Whistle Stop. Figuring a walk would feel good, I set out from Kensington and walked the 2 or so miles to the South Park and was so happy I did. It rained part of the way, but it felt nice and fresh and a good way to clear my head. I got to hang out with Robin Roth as she deejayed from the booth and I got to see Echo Revolution. I see Lee and Tim at plenty of shows, but it had been ages since I've seen them play and I was really blown away by how great their set was. Seriously keep an eye out for these guys in 2012. I saw plenty of friends that made for a really nice night at a spot I don't frequent nearly as often as I should.
Misspent Warhead Premise played, too, but the poor guys had some major technical difficulties midset when the whole PA dropped out, so I'll have to catch their brit-pop sound another time. I stayed till close with Robin kindly dropping me off with a friend and we stayed up playing our favorite music from the 90s and drinking wine. It felt like high school and I liked it.
Saturday was an average lazy day, I went to Ponce's which is always awesome, and later that night got picked up by The Heavy Guilt duo for the show at the Casbah, where they were playing the Atari Lounge. With a solid lineup of Dead Feather Moon, Black Hondo, The Get Down Automatic, and the Guilt Duo in the Atari Lounge, it was another reminder of the solid talent in this city and I had a blast. It's not very often I'm at a show just to take it all in sans camera, so I let myself just enjoy the night, to catch up with friends, to do shots with Sean.
On Sunday afternoon I went to Rosie O'Grady's for brunch and part of the Bears game which was, um, interesting, went home and got a good afternoon nap in. By evening, Jeff and I stopped into URBN for Green Flash night for the last night of San Diego Beer Week. My bestie Kristian was working and I had the 11% 9th Anniversary IIIPA which was incredible. From URBN, we went to West Coast Tavern for their beer dinner. Apparently they've had several beer and wine paired dinners before, but this was Chef Eli's first and it was phenomenal. Everything was cooked perfectly and I think he did a great job of pairing the foods, especially since he admitted he doesn't even drink beer! We had made a late reservation for the dinner so we sat on the edge of the dining room, but I got to talking to the table next to us. They were brothers, Nick lives here and his brother was visiting from Colorado for the weekend. Super nice guys and I hope to bump into Nick one of these days at West Coast Tavern's Bourbon and BBQ Wednesdays. Kudos to Chef Eli for another amazing dinner experience.
Chef Eli plating the Panna Cotta |
From West Coast Tavern, Jeff went on to Sunset Tavern, but I went back to URBN to try and catch a friend who might also have some work for me down the line, but he'd already taken off. Instead I hung out with Kristian and Spencer until K was ready to go and we walked back to Sunset Temple for Real Estate.
It was my first time at Sunset Temple and because I'd been doing other things, my first time using my Four Day Weekend passes. Next time I'll make sure they don't go to waste, but I had other things going on. Real Estate was good but mostly I was just enjoying seeing friends...Pyles and Keith and Jason and Gareth and Randall and hanging with Kristian who doesn't get out much because of his two jobs and new baby Ziggy keeping his hands full. I know people ridiculously love the band, but a friend of mine matched my sentiments: "It sounds like one continuous song that I really would've liked when I was 15."
Four Day Weekend ended around 12:15 and Jeff and I raced down to Til Two Club because I insisted on trying to catch The Spits. Though it looked like a band was loading out when we got there, The Spits were still soundchecking, so I made my way up front and caught the whole set while crouched under the PA. You can see my photos in my Foursquare Gallery on SoundDiego, but here are a few.
It was a crazy awesome frenetic set and I have to say it's been a while since I was on the edge of a mosh pit, getting beer poured all over me, throwing elbows, and generally taking a beating. I loved every second of it. I also shot video, but The Spits kept saying it was their last song for about 8 songs, so my video is too long to upload. If I can figure out how to splice it in two, I'll upload it, but here's the party jam everyone always waits for.
So that was my weekend. I got home super late on Sunday, got up relatively early to fulfill some writing assignments, and then let my body recover from all of the weekend's abuse. I've kinda decided that Mondays are my day off otherwise I go a little crazy always having to be ON. Which almost brings me back to my panic attack.
After the Joshua James show, I came home and started working. I had a bunch of stuff to do for NBC and a bunch of new shows to add to the Casbah calendar and facebook page, and then before I knew it, I was checking email, watching Real Housewives of BH, Million Dollar Listing, The Walking Dead, The Talking Dead, uploading videos, watching LiveStream coverage of Occupy Wall Street, reading Facebook updates, reading the news, I even tried to write a newsletter for my site but got frustrated with all the formatting. I also have to send one out for the Casbah which is a relatively new and extremely time consuming endeavor, so I worked on that for a bit before giving up on that, too. Before I knew it, it was morning and since I'd made plans to get breakfast with Jesse, I just stayed up figuring I would go to sleep after he left.
That didn't happen.
What did happen was my sister called and asked if I wanted to go to the zoo. Not one to turn down time with my nieces, they picked me up and we walked the zoo for a couple hours. Johanna runs hot and cold with me, but ever since we had the hotel at the Hard Rock for my birthday, she suddenly likes me again, which is great. I gave her my spare Sony Cybershot at the Zoo and we had fun shooting photos. The top two are mine; the bottom two are hers of the same moments.
After the zoo, Johanna didn't want me to go home, and I figured I better take advantage of the moments when she likes me, so we went to PB Rec Center for her sports class. They were doing t-ball and I quickly became supercoach before I caught myself and backed off. I played a lot of sports through college and taught tennis, so I have the instinct, but to be honest, Johanna didn't need much help. She was kicking ass on that tee. We also realized she's batting lefty.
After sports we grabbed dinner at Bahia Don Bravo in Bird Rock then went to my sister's house where exhaustion was finally starting to set in. We played puzzles and read books and it was finally time to get home. I was in bed by 8pm.
Therapy time. I woke up from a bad dream around 1am and stared at my clocks as I tried to stop thinking about the things that have been stressing me out. (1.) My landlord called. Even though it was just to let me know about a maintenance guy on premises today, I've been trying not to think about her and my housing situation. (2.) The newsletters. I'm new at them and just wish I could get quicker at the formatting because they're a total pain in the ass. Mainly this matters because (3.) I have a holiday show at The Irenic on December 2. It's a new venue and I need to have realistic expectations but I really want it to succeed for a multitude of reasons, not limited to doing future events there, satisfying my artists, and providing a family friendly event for the community. It feels like my reputation is on the line. In the aforementioned bad dream, everything that could go wrong at the show did go wrong. BUY TICKETS SO I CAN SLEEP AT NIGHT?! (4.) Money. Everyone stresses about money, I know, especially in this economy, but when you freelance like I do, one check not arriving on time can really ruin you. And by this whole entry I know it sounds like I'm leading a lush life, but over the course of the past week, I spent $20. I am lucky for the incredible generosity of friends who buy me drinks or dinner or put me on guestlists or drive my ass all over town, but it doesn't pay bills. This time I made it work at the final hour, but thinking ahead to the possibility of moving, and then trying to make things a reality in 2012, like NAMM and SXSW...well, no wonder I woke back up every hour after falling back asleep. (5) My last stressor is such a lame ass girl thing, but you know when you really have something you want to tell someone and you go over in your head everything you want to say and how you're going to say it and then you get the opportunity and you just realize you can't say any of it and then your insides constrict and you can't breathe because you can't believe what an idiot you were to either want to say those things in the first place or because you chickened out, but either way you blew it and now you just have to stew on the heap of feelings left to you and you alone? Yeah, well that happened, too.
The great thing is now I've vented and I can breathe because it's all deconstructed which makes a plan of attack all the easier. I'm gonna go on Facebook now and flood the Casbah's page with a grip of new shows that are all going on sale Friday. Then I'm going to get those goddamn newsletters out. Then I'm going to make some coffee, update my listings, go to the Casbah for our meeting, then hopefully spend the afternoon at the America's Cup, then dinner at Hodad's, then sing along to Good Old War at Anthology before heading to the Capricorn Studios party at The Griffin. At least that's the plan. If you made it this far in this post, give yourself a gold star. Thanks for the free therapy.
I'm good now. photo by Johanna B-K (age 4) |
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