September 2007 Archives

So, in between moving and seeing The Frames, I drove up to Portland for an extended Labor Day weekend (I took two days off of work), for Chris Leech's wedding:

Chris and his new bride Andrea, cutting their wedding cake

Despite Chris' worries, the wedding went off without a hitch. The weather was fantastic in Portland all weekend, and Chris and Andrea chose a beautiful outdoor venue for the ceremony. I learned a bit about East Coast vs. West Coast weddings - the former being a whole lot more relaxed. Case in point: the ceremony itself only lasted around 14 minutes (one of Chris' uncles timed it -- apparently the Leech family record is 12 minutes), and Chris supplied an eclectic mix of music - including Neutral Milk Hotel, 16 Horsepower, The Postal Service, and more.

All in all, I had a great time. I actually got to spend quite a bit of time with Chris - which is unusual for a wedding weekend. In addition, I also spent a bunch of time reconnecting with Steve, Justin, and Sarah (and Lucy, Justin and Sarah's 11 month old).

And now I'm off to yet another wedding, this time in Chicago. I should already be gone, but thunderstorms in Chicago have delayed my flight. After this weekend, however, I think I get some time to just relax and not do anything. I'm looking forward to it.

Since my picture workflow is still messed up, I'm just going to post some bonus wedding pictures after the break.

-Andy.

So, it all started when I discovered the movie "Once" a few months ago, via Apple's movie trailers site. I was really intrigued by the music, so I dragged the resident movie critic out to see it. We both really liked the flick, and the music really stuck in my head. My rule is that if I hear a song one time, and I still remember it 24 hours later -- I had better buy the album.

So, I bought the "Once" soundtrack on iTunes, and have been listening to it constantly ever since. I had a dim awareness that this movie grew out of a band called The Frames, but didn't really do anything about it. On Saturday, while hanging out in my hotel in Portland (which I still need to write about), I discovered someone sharing their iTunes library on the hotel WiFi. Even more interesting, they had some Frames songs.

I listened to what I could, and made a mental note to check out The Frames the next time I was in a good record store.

A few days later, it's Tuesday the 4th and I'm back in the office, and getting caught up on my RSS feeds. I noticed that there were some photos of the Bumpershoot festival up in Seattle, that apparently happened while I was in Portland. Looking through the photos, I saw that The Frames played that weekend.

"Huh", I thought. "If they were up in Seattle, I wonder when they're coming to the Bay Area?"

The answer: the very next day, Wednesday the 5th. And of course, its completely sold out.

So, a lot of frantic Craigslist work later, and I was able to secure a ticket, and go to the show:

The Frames, live at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco, CA

The show was completely amazing, and well worth the effort on my part to go. I've been to a lot of concerts, but there are only a chosen few that stand out in my memory. Seeing Far back in '98 at Peabody's in Cleveland is one of them, and the first time that I saw Tool is another. Now I can add The Frames to that list - the show was just that good.

Not only are these guys all talented musicians, but they really look like they're having fun, and enjoying what they're doing. To give an example, there was two times during the night where the front man, Glen Hansard brought the crowd in, and made them an instrument in the song. The first was during the song "The Blood". He basically sang a few bars one time, and just had us all repeat it on cue. It worked out really, really well. It's pretty amazing how loud a whole group of people can be, and how well they can all sound, when you figure that the the vast majority of them don't have any musical training (I know I don't).

Musically, this band is amazing (I bought three of their albums on my way out - and have been listening to them all day), and live, they just have tremendous presence. I can't say enough good things about The Frames right now, and I can't wait until I get an opportunity to see them again.

More pictures (from my iPhone, forgot the "good" camera) after the break.

-Andy.

So, the last couple of weeks have been fairly insane, and I still have a little bit to go before I can rest. Two weekends ago, Kevin and I moved into a new place. We rented a house in West Sunnyvale, but since we lived in our old place for over 2 years, we were fairly well established there. To make things worse, I knew that I wasn't going to have much time to unpack - because the next two weekends I was going to be out of town. So, I made a few changes with my normal procedure to try and cope.

Firstly, I hired movers. This turned out to be a really fantastic idea - after Kevin and I got everything ready (which was a lot of work), they were able to load their truck around 38 minutes. The new place has a lot of stairs, so unloading took a bit longer at around 45 minutes - but still, that is pretty fast to have the bulk of our junk moved. Here is a shot of them dealing with the best/worst thing that I ever bought, my now-obselete 27" TV:

The movers using a rolling cart with the TV - brilliant!

Secondly, I didn't bother to clean the old place before we moved out. The rental company sent us a pretty detailed bill, which included all of the cleaning costs and such. I figured that the amount of effort that it would take to clean wasn't worth the money, so we just focused on moving out. This definitely gave me back a few extra hours of time to work on getting setup at the new place, at an additional expense, of course.

Anyways, the move went pretty well. Here's a picture of part of the new place:

The kitchen in our new rental property

I'm not fully moved in yet, because the moving has happened in the midst of a period of busy travel (which hopefully I'll blog about later).

-Andy.