Pacific Northwest: Miscellaneous

While we drove all the way up to Washington primarily for concerts, we did manage to do some other stuff too.

In between the second and third shows, we took a side trip to Idaho. Because...when the heck else would we ever be in Idaho? Granted, we didn't get very far inside the border, but we visited a really cute lake/resort type town (who knew they had them in Idaho??), went to lunch, took pictures for proof, and then left. Idaho, off the list. No, we did not have a single potato at lunch. But the people were very nice.

On the way back from Idaho, we stopped in Spokane, because we wanted to go on the ride! Spokane has some pretty awesome waterfalls running right through their downtown area, and they've figured out how to profit off of them - the Spokane Falls Skyride. It's basically the same as the skyrides you see at amusement parks, when you want to get from one end of the park to the other. So you get a really nice view of the waterfalls, up and close and personal like.

Spokane also happened to be having a fair when we rolled into town. Who doesn't love a fair? Or fair food?? I was all excited to have funnel cake, or crepes, or whatever, when two girls walked by with strawberries, dipped in chocolate, on a stick. It was AMAZING. It took us a really long time to find the booth - named the "Shishkashack" for their "Shishkaberries." You can get them dipped in chocolate, chocolate with sprinkles, nuts, oreos. Whatever, I'm just hoping they get another cart and come live in Berkeley outside my apartment. They were amazing. Dan got dark chocolate with white chocolate swirls, named, I am not making this up, the "Halle Berry." I have a picture of it, but it's not as sexy as this picture of me with my oreo berries. hawt.

After the concerts were over (sad), we left Washington, only to have hundreds of miles to go before we actually got home. But as I mentioned before, we stop at every possible attraction, or scenic overlook.

Exhibit A: Scenic overlooking the Columbia River

Exhibit B: Multnomah Falls

These falls are the second highest year round waterfall in the US - 620 feet high. (I'm so glad I remember to get pamphlets so I can report these facts back later to you). The bridge (the historic Benson Bridge) was first built in 1914.

So yeah, Pacific Northwest, pretty awesome. Don't tell Dan, but I'm already planning our trip back next year.

Pacific Northwest Roadtrip: The main attraction

So, the big trees happened. About 13 hours of travelling happened. Onto day 2.

We spent the first night in Albany, Oregon I believe, which is a bit south of Portland. We hung a right at Portland and found ourselves in the Columbia River Gorge. Which is full of those "wow, this is really gorgeous" moments. The gorge system is basically what the Columbia River has formed over thousands of years, sort of like the Grand Canyon. It's 80 miles long, and is the boundary between Oregon and Washington. It's one of our new favorite places. There are a lot of sports to try (kiteboarding anyone?), cute towns to stop in, and there's lots and lots of wine. Random, I know, but there are wineries all over the place up there. Good times. We found a little town that we're already trying to find an excuse to get back to called Hood River, where I think I can lay around in a bed and breakfast and read while Dan does various active type things.

We highly, highly recommend Springhouse Cellars as they have some very unique tasty wines, at very reasonable prices. But they make our favorites list, even more so, for being very personable, incredibly small compared to our CA wineries, and beyond incredibly kind to us. They even ship to just about everywhere (sorry PA and MD folks reading this). We drove and drove and drove. We ended up driving directly to the first concert because it just took us longer than expected, and we didn't have an extra 2 hours to get to our hotel and back. (Yes, the closest hotels to the concert are about 45 minutes away). We had no idea what to really expect, especially when we parked the car and we didn't even know which direction to walk because we couldn't see anything that looked like a stage. It was weird, but we followed the crowd over along path, up a slope and then at the top of the hill, looked down on this:

That's the stage there in the middle, with the gorge and the river behind. This picture is taken from the top of the lawn, and you can't see where we sat at all because the lawn is so freakin steep. The whole setup is literally built into the side of a cliff and is beautiful and wonderful and my happy place.

Closer up of the stage itself. The seats below are where we sat - two nights off to the right, one night almost dead center. Right now, you can see through the stage setup to all the scenery behind, but there were screens there once the band started.

For the next two days (days 3 and 4), we spent the night in a lovely little hotel out in the middle of nowhere (Moses Lake, WA) listening to trucks drive by on the interstate, and eating all the food we brought with us and then going to the concerts at night. It did not at all resemble real life.

We got pretty lucky in that the people sitting around us were cool. For me, if you have a jackass guy next to you or a drunk chick who can't stand up, it takes away from the whole experience you know? Actually, we spent a couple of nights near the same people, as they had also requested their tickets through the fan club, so that was nice. The first night we had one woman almost throwing up, but her boyfriend wisely decided that they should leave before any actual incident. The second night we were sitting next to a father and son who had driven in from Seattle, and they seemed very low key and calm, so we were excited to have more normal folks to sit next to. And....then the band came out and the son lost his shit. Seriously. You can hear him on some of the video we took that night, it was intense.

The other thing that is awesome about concerts here is if you drive, parking really isn't an issue, and neither is the wait after the concert to get out of the lot. Thousands of people camp at these shows. Because it's a multi-night event, and it's so far away from civilization, there are campsites much closer to the venue than hotels. And wow do people camp. You can see the tent cities from the lawn, and they are huge. Originally, I got Dan interested in going by telling him we could camp...and then I read stories of all the drunk people, and stuff getting stolen, and no showers, and no shade and...then we went to a hotel. Once he saw the tent city, especially in the rain on the second night, I don't think he felt like he was missing out.

So yeah, the Gorge. 3 nights. Favorite.

This shot is from the second show, it is not zoomed in at all.

And here we are, also on the second night, grinning like loons.

Next time will include highlights of our outings: Spokane, a short jaunt into Idaho, Multnomah Falls and strawberries on a stick.

Pacific Northwest Roadtrip: The build up

This story actually starts in April of this year, when Dave Matthews Band released their tour dates for this summer and fall. As many of you know, I'm a pretty devoted (read: crazy) fan, and go to at least one show a year. Since we've moved out here, Dan and I have seen them play in Mountain View (where Google lives, about 45 minutes away) and then last year, they played a weekend series of shows right on campus, which was amazing. This year, when the tour dates came out, they weren't playing in either of those places. Um, what? They had one tentative date for a TBA location in San Francisco, but the details were sketchy. Not having tickets to a show for this year made me itchy.

As they do every summer, they were planning on playing a three night weekend series at The Gorge Amphitheater in central Washington. I've always wanted to see them at the Gorge - it's an amazing venue. It's outdoors, built right into a hillside that overlooks the Columbia River. I've seen lots of pictures, and heard a lot of recordings from here, because DMB releases a lot of their live music. You probably know where this story is headed - yes, I requested tickets for all three nights at the Gorge. When I found out that I got tickets for all three nights, I was beyond excited. As in, this is something I can check off my "life to do" list excited.

Now I just had to figure out how the hell to get us up there, and where we would stay. The actual concert venue is not in a town but is closest to George, Washington (seriously!) I recommend you Google Map it to see how much it is in the middle of nowhere. Two hours away from Seattle, 90 minutes away from Spokane. 45 minutes from the closest hotels, oh my. I originally sold Dan on the idea of going at all with the idea of camping - because the band plays 3 nights in a row, camping near the concert venue is offered, and I think somewhere between 8 and 10 thousand people actually go and camp. Dan was all about the entire experience - but after I read some boards about no showers at the campsites, stupid drunk people at all hours, things getting stolen, we changed our minds. Also, we own no camping gear to speak of.

So we drove. From Berkeley to central Washington. I reasoned that if we flew, we'd just have to rent a car anyway, so why double the expense, plus plane fare over Labor Day weekend was kind of ridiculous. However, it was far. Google maps told me about 16 hours up, and 14 hours back (different routes), about 900 miles. Luckily, we had the time to split up the drive over two days each way. But yeah, still really far...

Coming up: The California redwoods, Columbia River gorge, and many concert photos

November, one day at a time

Well, it's already the second weekend of November, and I haven't told you all thank you so much for my birthday wishes yet, which is not cool of me. So, THANK YOU! I feel very loved and appreciated. Thanks for the cards, Facebook notes, phone calls, flowers, emails, etc. You are all awesome. A lot of people have asked what we did for my birthday. So... November 1... Hooray for birthdays! We woke up actually later than planned - we had wanted to go to brunch at my favorite place, and by the time we got down there (in the pouring rain) and realized how long the wait would be, Dan realized that I would be late for my birthday present, which was a 90 minute massage! So, we ate birthday lunch at Baja Fresh (fancy, I know) and then headed to the spa...in the pouring rain. Dan had booked a deep tissue massage for me, because of the class I had taken that week, which was great but it was intense. When I left, Dan wasn't back yet, but the ladies at the spa were sure to tell me that my husband would be back soon to pick me up. A little weird. That night we set out for a night out in SF because we had tickets to a Matt Nathanson concert at the Warfield, which is this incredibly historic venue in downtown SF (the locals call it the Tenderloin district. Could there be a more unappealing name for a location?) Anyway, we went to one of our favorite local places for dinner (Burmese!) and then headed across the bay, still in the pouring rain. Luckily, we got to the Warfield in plenty of time, and the concert was GREAT. If you've never heard of him, you should check him out. He's in the Jason Mraz/John Mayer sort of vein. Anyway, he put on a great show, and is a really funny guy, so the in between song bits were good times. November 2... Another day, another concert. We saw Jason Mraz at the Greek Theater (on campus venue, where I went to see Dave Matthews) - it was a weekend full of skinny white guys playing guitars really. The concert strangely started at 3pm, which was especially weird on the same day as Daylight Savings. Anyhow, he's also great live. He was a little too happy, the world is made of sunshine and unicorns, every little thing is gonna be alright for this sarcastic heart though. BUT, I really appreciated that live, he really sounds like he does on his album, which is important to me. November 3... Good things! My staff had broken into my office over the weekend and decorated - all week I was tripping over the balloons that were all over the floor. They were all really proud of themselves, coming by to make sure that I liked it. Also, I left the office early, because I had to get home to watch Monday Night Football. (Early, because that crap starts at 5 pm here. Which is ridiculous). Anyway, I know Redskins fans know the outcome of the game, but I just wanted to reiterate that the Steelers were victorious. And I was happy about it. November 4... So, I'm not sure if I really need to state the fact that the candidate I voted for won the presidential race, or the fact that he won in quite an impressive fashion, or the fact that I am SO HAPPY ABOUT IT. Yeah, I didn't think so. Election day was interesting here - I was still at work at like, 4 pm, when they started announcing that some of the East Coast states were either going red or blue. The polls had barely closed in California before they called the whole election - it was crazy. Students basically rushed out of the buildings and had a celebration in the courtyard, complete with cheering, chanting "Yes we can" and all out screaming. Luckily, they left the unit, but only to join the cheering MOB that took over all of downtown Berkeley and the whole campus. It was pretty intense apparently. There are pictures all over CNN and Facebook. Also - VIRGINIA? OHIO? I am SO proud!!! I couldn't believe it. What a time to be a proud Northern Virginia Democrat. I didn't do any of the rejoicing and running about, which I'm now regretting. I wish I had taken the time to celebrate, because all of my exhiliration was basically completely sucked out when I clicked over on cnn.com to check on the ballot measures and saw that it was likely that Prop 8 was going to pass in California. In case you've been living under a rock, Prop 8 is the measure that banned gay marriage in California. It ended up actually passing 52% to 46%. I was and still am shocked and completely appalled. I didn't realize how much I was emotionally invested in the measure until it passed...and now, I just don't even know what to say. Of course though, I am thrilled to have contributed to the historic moment of Obama getting elected. November 5... Moping still about Prop 8. November 6... Tech beat Maryland on Thursday night. Fear the turtle my ass. November 7... I actually missed the Prop 8 march in San Francisco on Friday night, because I had to teach my class. But, on the up side, class went really well, and I think a lot of them are really starting to make some progress, which is of course what's really important. November 8... Wow, a lot of good football today. Most of the games didn't end up the way I would have liked, but good games. Penn State, loser. LSU (who I was rooting for after the PSU loss), loser. Cal, loser - which is fine, because they couldn't catch a pass to save their lives. And wow, penalties much? In other news, I'm on my second to last book for the year - I'm actually reading the Diary of Anne Frank for the first time ever, and having some trouble getting into it. I find myself forgetting while I'm reading that she was a real person, in this REAL situation. Crazy. Any suggestions for the 50th book? Also, my grandparents (mom's parents) just celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary on Friday. I have a hard time wrapping my brain around the concept of sixty years. Six decades! They are pretty awesome. I updated you all on the status of my grandmother actually, and I wanted to say thanks for the warm thoughts - she will be going into surgery to remove a tumor, but she is in very high spirits, her doctors are positive and the prognosis is good. So, we will keep hoping for things to go well! Saw my first Christmas themed commercial yesterday. Ugh. The rain has started here almost every day, which means winter is actually here. Between that and the sun going down so GD early, I'm kind of depressed about the weather and out of doors. I hope everyone is staying warm! **Update: So, I was reading through my old posts today and realized that I'm a total hypocrite. When it was March, and Daylight Savings Time went the other way, I was all "Woo Daylight Savings! Extra daylight is the best thing ever!" and now...where's the loyalty? *shakes head sadly*

Weekend recap

Well, Dan kind of wrote an entry about our weekend. We all went ahead and had a social life, which was a new and exciting feeling. Saturday, REM was playing on campus in the Greek Theater, which is effectively a big ampitheater. One of the RD apartments is as close as you can get to the theater without actually being inside the theater grounds, so all the RDs get to "go" to all the concerts that come to campus, without having to pay. So, REM was there Saturday night and they're great live. I, personally, really enjoy Michael Stipe, not because he's a little out there, but because he's a little out there and puts it out there anyway. I admire that. Anyway, they played "Losing my Religion," "What's the Frequency Kenneth," "This One Goes Out to the One I Love," and "Man on the Moon." They played a lot of other songs, but those are the four I know. I was pretty happy about it. Today, we had tickets to see Audra McDonald sing - we had no idea who she was before this year, but she's the actress who plays Naomi on Private Practice. We had no idea she was also a classically trained opera singer. Today, however, she didn't sing any opera but sang a lot of contemporary songs, from musicals and other stuff. She has a lovely voice and is funny funny funny. She apparently released her fourth album (not opera) recently, just as a random infobit. After her show, I went with some of the other RDs to go see the Sex and the City movie. Now, I'm not overly attached to the show but I was curious enough to see what happened. I left afterwards pretty much the same way I went in. Not excited or riled up about it, but happy I knew how everything ended and that was it. I did enjoy the scene with the flowers in the middle of the street. I could also be pretty non-affected because I've never liked Big. Not ever. So anyway. That's my confession. But the movie did make me miss all of you back in DC. This week starts a new two week stint of Dine About Town in San Francisco...cheap meals and all. So, of course, Dan and I will be going out to enjoy it. Hopefully I'll be getting to it on the other blog, which I still have some old posts to write anyway. In the interest of full disclosure, Dan and I were inspired by Laura's profession of love for the West Wing have started watching the series over again. We're almost done with Season 1 and it's STILL an amazing show, even the fourth or fifth time around. I really owe Kevin a drink or two for introducing me to it. In case you didn't read the discussion board today, please go to YouTube and watch the NumaNuma video. That is all.

All work and Play

I avoid talking shop here because, frankly, I don't think it's really interesting news to share. But I realize nobody will know what I'm up to day-to-day unless I actually talk about it. I've been working with a nice marketing agency as their senior account executive. Your guess is as good as mine as to what that actually means! Thus far it means managing non-traditional marketing agendas for Jamba Juice, Nike, YouTube, Google, Peet's Coffee, and a couple others snuck in there as well. I went to Jamba's headquarters the other day... if you haven't heard of Jamba Juice, they make fresh fruit smoothies. Anyway, they have the workings of a store basically setup in their lobby and I got to make my own smoothie. At this point, I should emphasize my deep love of slushies and smoothies, so this was extremely exciting to me! Considering I was there for a really important business meeting, you can imagine the internal struggle not to jump up and down like a little kid in a candy store... scratch that... fruit smoothie store. I made a delicious mix of fresh Pomegranate Juice, Peaches, Mangos, Strawberries, and Blueberries... Yummmmm In actual fun, we went to see R.E.M. in concert last night. And by "went to see" I mean we went to our friend's apartment right next to the concert, could hear everything, and could actually see the stage. If only all concerts came equipped with leather couches and chocolate covered strawberries! Tonight we head to the opera. Happy June people.

Living on a college campus has it's perks

So, when students ask for my advice (and sometimes when they don't) about what they should do while they're in college, I step onto my soapbox and tell them that they should take advantage of the performances, exhibits, lectures etc. that come to college campuses. Because in real life, these things do not pop up in your backyard for ridiculously discounted prices. However, I also unashamedly take advantage of these things as well, like last night when I went to see Angelique Kidjo in concert, for less than $20. She is a singer from West Africa, who has been professionally singing since she was 20 years old. She just released her third (I think) album, and she is touring to promote it. As per her usual, it's full of collaborations with other, usually Western, artists. This album feature Joss Stone, Josh Groban and some others I can't remember. Anyway, I first heard her when she did a duet with Dave Matthews (just the person, not the whole band) on her first album and the song "Iwoya." (Your cue to go download it on iTunes) and I really really like her voice. Granted, she sings in a variety of languages, so not always going to get a sense of what she's saying, but the music is pretty great. Anyway, the concert was great - she has some energy, lots of dancing and singing, putting Britney Spears to shame. The whole stage was just her, her five musicians and their instruments. No sets, no decoration. It was lovely. She talked a lot about her beliefs about religion and wars and politics and things. This being Berkeley, people ate it up. People were dancing in the aisles, and this one woman, I'm convinced was having the best night of her life with the enthusiasm she was "dancing" with. I'm not actually sure dancing is the right word, but I think it's what she was trying to do. Maybe the more accurate term is flailing, a la Elaine on Seinfeld. Good times. In not such good times, have you seen this on You Tube? Sally Kern is an ass: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFxk7glmMbo Ellen's response on her show: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBmCA4z8Yzc

kalsvnoa9wur9p!!!

Um, so Dave Matthews just announced their summer tour (by "just" I mean last week, I just found out about it tonight) and they're coming to my CAMPUS for not one, not two, but THREE nights in September. Um, osjkdnfp[onojs#@#9! Excitement abound. Of course, however, one of those nights is on Jean's wedding. So clearly, three nights will not be happening for KK. However, the other two are fair game. ZOMG I'm psyched. I was supposed to write something meaningful and such, but A)I think my cheese snootiness in my last post was a leetle much and also B)I'm completely consumed by the concert excitement. Maybe will try again later.

Missy Higgins. Again.

Last week we celebrated for no good reason at all and had a relaxing date night. We had a simply outrageous meal at Nopa, which will be covered in a minute by minute account of our every delicious bite on our foodie blog. But for this non-foodie blog, I'll just say it was simple food prepared outrageously well. The real excitement of our night was to come from hearing Missy Higgins play yet another small SF venue. Thankfully, this time we already had our tickets and weren't the last to squeak in like last time. We managed to quarantine off precisely 4 feet of wall space so we each had room for one shoulder to rest on. Some not-half-bad California boy sang some sultry songs, and I wish we could share his name with you. However, he didn’t think to mention it once he was on stage, and Missy’s website describes him as “local artist TBA.” It occurs to me that we haven't really talked about any other musical tastes on here, except for maybe Dave; but we really do listen to things besides Aussies and Virginians. I digress.


The thing I truly love about Missy Higgins is that live and in person, she sounds exactly as amazing as she does on her album. I can’t imagine they tweak her voice one bit to sound any better. Also, she’s hilarious and enjoys joking with the crowd. And from our best observational guess is that she’s actually rather shy, yet she’s up their belting her tunes with unequivocal passion. So, maybe that’s actually 3 things I love about Missy Higgins. During our show, she also denounced Target bras, which for some reason I still find hilarious. Kristin and I decided, if her whole band weren’t naive men, maybe someone would have gotten the bright idea to tighten her strap for her. Speaking of her band, her backup guitarist is the awesomest awkward man you’ve ever seen. He dances to his own tune, regardless of the beat the band is on, and has this real goofy smile to go with untamable hair. He was good wholesome entertainment! Back to Missy, her voice is amazing and is one of the most soothing things I can think of right now besides the best of back massages. I know Kristin listens to her at work when she needs some distressing too. AND you can listen to her whole album on her website www.missyhiggins.com! You caught me, now that makes it 5 things I love about Missy Higgins. Yes, I’m listening to her write now.

Here’s some photographic evidence we were actually there. (taken from our entrenched 4 feet of wall space)

What involves Sex questions, the theater, football and a sweet concert? Last week.

I never got to update about a fun program that I did last week. Each of my RAs (I supervise 12 of them) have to do various programs throughout the semester - one that builds community (primarily social), one that is educational/academic, and one that either relates to service or leadership. Juan, one of my RAs, decided that for his educational/academic program, he was going to do one related to sexual health. So, for a week, he left slips of paper and boxes out in each building lobby for people to submit anonymous questions, which would be answered in a seminar type fashion the following week. So, he got an OB/GYN nurse practitioner from the school health center to come in and...me. Yeah, my name was on the flyers people, I'm kind of a big deal. The program was really well attended and we answered maybe 50-60 questions? And programs like this not only reaffirm my enjoyment of talking to students about sexual health, but also reinforce my belief that students, in general, do not have nearly enough education about ANYTHING related to sex, sexuality, sexual health, etc. Need examples? Here's a list of questions (I am not making these up) that people wrote down to have answered:

"So...where do you put it in?"
"What/where is the clitoris?"
"What happens if a guy takes the morning after pill?"
"Do vaginas make noise?"
"Does sex always hurt?"
"I can't have an orgasm. What should I do?"
**If you would like any of these questions answered, maybe email me seperately.**

So, that started last week off on a really good note. I love doing programs like that. In the beginning, even saying the word vagina makes people turn bright red and giggle, but by the end, students are asking questions and gettnig involved and ah, the magic of learning.

Since then, we've been really busy taking advantage of lots of events living near a big city and everything. Last Thursday, we went to see the touring production of Sweeney Todd with a group of staff and students. This production is really minimalist and really awesome. 10 people put on the entire show. The ENTIRE show. As in, there is no orchestra. The actors sing, act and play all of the accompanying music for the show. Every person is on stage the entirety of the performance and wow, it makes me tired to even think about. Sweeney Todd in general is a morbid, but fascinating show, but this production of it was really powerful and very very good. Besides the really amazing acting and performance of everyone in the show, the other highlight was after the show after all the ovations and curtain calls and bowing and everything, the woman in front of us stood up and mentioned to her date, "I totally thought there was an orchestra! It took me a long time to realize that what they were doing on stage was the ACTUAL music we heard!" Yeah wow. Sadly, we have no pictures to memorialize this event, which is doubly sad because it was held at a different theater than Avenue Q, and the theater is small and beautiful. Hopefully, we will be seeing more shows there and we will take pictures next time.

Saturday, aka football "what the hell is going on" day, was really interesting. As you may know from reading previous posts, we have season tickets to the Cal home games, and Saturday was homecoming, and Cal was playing Oregon State. Honestly, before the game started, Dan and I were not stressed out about rushing to the game, we didn't foresee any riveting football, honestly. We actually ended up staying home to watch the LSU/Kentucky game until the bitter end, which was an amazing game. I was sad LSU lost, but excited because Cal would have totally have become the #1 team in the country, and that's pretty awesome. So, we got the stadium actually only a couple of minutes before halftime and the crowd was pumped because they had announced LSU's loss. Too bad Cal was LOSING. To Oregon friggin State. They were losing at the half, they were losing going into the fourth quarter and honestly, with 6 minutes left in the game, Cal was down by 10 and I was asking Dan to look up Pizza Hut's phone number to have them deliver by the time we got home (no, we couldn't leave early...I have a thing about it). So, I had kind of already accepted the loss. And then, Cal scored a touchdown. Hope returns. Crowd is beyond excited. With 51 seconds left, they are marching down the field to field goal range to tie the game and send it to overtime. With 6 seconds left, our freshman quarterback called a running play, didn't get the ball out of bounds and the clock ran out. YEAH. Oregon State rejoices. Cal fans are dumbfounded. The girl behind us cries. Seriously, the picture below was taken about 2-3 minutes after the game ended. Notice all the fans still in their seats looking a little lost.



While I share in the sadness of the loss, I maintain my position that Cal, ranked #2 in the country going into the game, should not have had to rally to tie the game with 2 minutes left. They lost the game long before the clock ran out before they could kick a field goal. So, I am simply trying to remember that hey, Tech is still doing well, Penn State put a hurt on Wisconsin and hey, Dan and I still have tickets for the Cal/USC game. Good times.

Sunday and Monday=nothing exciting.

Last night, Dan and I went to go see Missy Higgins in concert in SF. She was introduced to us senior year in college and is a folk singer with an amazing voice, who is actually from Australia. She's released two albums, but you can hear everything for free on her website http://www.missyhiggins.com/. So, we found out VERY recently that she was on tour and would be in SF last night at a bar/lounge called Cafe du Nord and also that presale tickets were sold out. Awesome. They told us that they would be selling some tickets at the door as well. So, last night I made Dan leave all sorts of early to get to the bar so that we could get tickets. Too bad when we got there we joined what felt like a huge line. We then found out that they only had 40 additional tickets available. But, we waited, and being the Debbie Downer that I am, I started making alternate plans in my head. So, as the line moved we got to the front to check IDs.

Bouncer: Did you already buy tickets?
KK/Dan: No
Bouncer: The two girls in front of you might have gotten the last two...we're counting now, hang on one second.
KK/Dan: *exchange horrified look*
Bouncer #2: I have one ticket left.
Bouncer #1: They're together.
Bouncer #2: Alright, you can both go.
Bouncer #2 to Bouncer #1: No more non-presales.

Um yeah. THAT WAS AWESOME. I kind of wanted to do a little dance down the street past all the rest of the people in line. But instead, we went in, hung out and ordered dinner, and had a couple drinks, and got a table with a sweet view of the stage and Missy came on and she sang for a solid 90 minutes. She's just an amazing talent and sounded exactly the same live as she does on her CDs, which is reassuring you know? What has been recorded is actually her voice. Anyway, she just belted out song after song after song. Not any messing around, just performing. I really appreciated it, it's been a while since I've been to a concert in a small venue and it was nice to find a great new place to go for live music. Also, the place was really amazing - it was a speakeasy in the 1920s and has a really dark but classy look to it. The bar itself is all wooden and carved beautifully, they have a lot of small tables and big plush chairs, and the walls and ceilings are covered in crushed red velvet. So, yeah. Enjoyable.









And now, Dan's parents are visiting which is exciting. Tomorrow, Dan and his mom and dad are going to go to Sausalito (I have to work..wah wahhhhhh) so I'm sure there are more posts to come.