tekchic

I hope everyone had a safe and happy new year’s eve celebration! Chuck and I went to Ninetta’s Passion Bistro for a six-course gourmet dinner with everything from escargot to foie gras to truffles. We were the youngest ones there, but we didn’t care. It was a nice, quiet New Year’s Eve party with no drunken insanity that the average club would have.

For Christmas I got Guitar Hero III – Legends of Rock for Nintendo Wii. LOVE it! We’ve both finished it on Easy and are now playing it through on Medium. Maybe one day I’ll be really good and finish it on Hard or Expert, haha. I also got tickets to see “Annie”, the Broadway musical. It was at Gammage Theater last Saturday night and I loved it! Annie was the first musical I’d ever seen, 1.2 epochs ago when I was eight years old.

Chuck’s epic loot for Christmas this year was a Nintendo DS with Flash Focus and Brain Age 2. Now since we both have DS’s, it should be pretty fun using the wi-fi enabled gaming features.

So… here are my New Years Resolutions:

• Read less so I can write more
• Study my Japanese more
• Finally finish unpacking our house
• Play a little less WoW
• Fill my Moleskine journal so I can start on my new one — I try to go through one a year and I was nowhere close to filling my 2007 Moleskine last year. So now I have to write double-time to catch up.
• Work on my dog site more (when it’s respectably developed with more content I’ll share the link)
• Take, print out, and post more pictures from our adventures
• BLOG MORE! (I promise!)

I love New Year’s Resolutions — just not the “tone up and exercise more” ones. Those just go without saying.

This is how I feel today. Think I’m getting a little jaded.

http://www.makemylogobiggercream.com/

Fun with sarcasm

Was absolutely spectacular. It was great to finally see them performing live after having been a fan for so many years. They did a lot of songs from his newer albums, which was great. I was really glad to see that they still maintained their “jam band” feel and had a lot of superb instrumentals with lots of solos from the violinist, sax player, trumpet player, keyboardist, and drummer.

Concert tee prices have gone up (of course) with the cheapest shirt priced at $30. I had to have one though, the only other DMB concert shirt I have is when I had friends going to a DMB concert in Dallas (I couldn’t go) and I gave them money to pick me up a concert tee.

It was an outdoor venue, but we had reserved seats just outside the covered area, which I think was probably nicer — I’m not sure how the sound would bounce off the tin roof that covers the main pavilion. We were pretty far from the stage, however, they had HUGE screens on either side of the stage and the cameraman did a wonderful job of getting closeups of the band, Dave Matthews, and everything else going on. There was also a set of three or four LCD’s behind the band, which I’d love to know what kind of technology they were — they would phase from seemingly opaque and crisp color images to semi-transparent, where you could see ropes of lights, and illumated globes behind. Great stage lighting and design!

Overall we had a perfect time. The opening band was Stephen Marley, who was Bob Marley’s son. Great reggae band! Sitting there under the stars, a full moon out, and reggae music just added to the excited yet festive atmosphere. Stephen Marley’s band played about a 45 minute set, then there was about a 25 minute break while they moved their gear off the stage in prep for DMB. Dave Matthews Band came out to screaming, roaring crowds, and they performed for at LEAST two and a half hours. Definitely worth the money — DMB sounds better live than on their albums, I was hoping for that and got it.

I’m so excited, we’re going to see Dave Matthews Band tomorrow at the Cricket Pavilion! This is one of the big reasons for moving to a real live city — concerts. No more second rate 80’s glam bands that play the Tulsa State Fairgrounds

I’ve been a DMB fan for at least 11 years, and I’ve never had the opportunity to see them live in concert. I’ve been eyeballing my calendar for a month and a half now, so finally it’s tomorrow. Bummer part is that I can’t take pics, and I don’t want to risk smuggling in my super-skinny camera and get kicked out, so I’ll have to take mental pics.

Definitely gotta get a concert tee!

I’ve finally gotten around to getting my photos organized and into some semblance of online visibility. So here it is and hopefully more to come as I keep organizing photos

tekchic’s Web Albums

The Vegas trip was a blast, despite the fact that Chuck and I both got pretty bad food poisoning that Sunday night. Monday (Labor Day) was just pure misery, as we had to check out of our hotel and then embark on the five and a half hour journey back to Phoenix. NOT fun. We both got pretty dehydrated, but I think I was back on “real food” by Wednesday, thankfully.

“The Producers” was fantastic — Tony Danza was the star, and I hadn’t realized until I saw the playbill that he also starred in the Broadway production of “The Producers”! I have a funny and embarrassing story about something that happened to me during “The Producers”, but that’s going to have to wait for another day when I have time to write it up.

To celebrate both our birthdays, it’s off to Vegas this Friday through Sunday to have a fun weekend! We’ve got great seats to see The Producers at the Paris hotel theater on Saturday night, and I know a visit to Todai’s is in order as well. Todai’s is an all you can eat seafood restaurant with a table of fresh raw oysters, crab legs, lobster tail, sushi, the works! I have to see if I can break my prior oyster eating record from last November (our last Vegas trip) where I ate 18 of them. I should at least shoot for 19 this time.

We’re staying at the Sahara hotel this time, and the last Vegas trip we only got to see half the strip, so this time we’ll get to check out Stratosphere and some of the other sights (and coasters) that we missed.

Just got back on Saturday from a trade show in Richmond, VA. My first venture to the East Coast. It was a pretty quick trip, Wed – Sat, and all in all, rather boring. The highlight of my trip was dining at “Old Original Bookbinders” in downtown Richmond. A classy, five-star seafood restaurant that definitely did not disappoint.

At the first bite of my pan seared scallops, I was lucky to keep the drool inside of my mouth and avoid an embarrassing incident. The scallops, each the size of a large silver dollar and at least an inch high, were melt in your mouth incredible. They were seared on both sides, leaving a slight crunchy texture to the outside while maintaining the juiciest, buttery tenderness inside. The sauce was almost like a balsamic vinaigrette that had a sugary flavor, so when you had a bite of scallop, the scallop flavor mixed with the sweetness of the sauce blended to create a fantastic taste!

Other than the great seafood, Richmond, VA had an incredible storm one of the nights I was there. The thunderstorm kicked in around 7:30pm and continued throughout most of the night. I turned off the lamps in the hotel room to look outside and the lightning was so frequent that it was like a pulsating strobe light. It was such a strong storm that it knocked out power to 58,000 homes, not to mention killing the DirecTV in the hotel room.

I was glad to be home Saturday evening, back to my swimming pool, the “dry heat”, and my wonderful husband. We went out for sushi on the way back from the airport and then hung out and watched Food Network before falling asleep.

Our living room furniture will finally be complete this Friday! We ordered a La-Z-Boy leather reclining sofa, two La-Z-Boy rocker reclining chairs, a gorgeous area rug for the tile floors and a coffee table where the surface can rise to act as a laptop desk for our recliners. Nice!

Here’s a pic of the recliners that we bought — same color, same model.

Of course, furniture delivery rarely happens without a saga of sorts, so here’s ours: The Mexican delivery guys show up speaking barely discernible English and haltingly ask me to sign / verify delivery of the items — the coffee table is missing that we ordered. So I let them deliver the chairs and the sofa.

Chair #1 comes in perfect. Chair #2, for some reason, they don’t carry in the same way they carried in Chair #1. Chair #2 they decide to shove through the front door and get it stuck on the way in. Way to go, Senor Brilliant. I’m here cringing because it’s butter-soft leather and they’re essentially playing “stuff the chair through the small opening” with a rather expensive recliner.

They manage to figure out to turn the thing and then they make it in the door. I should have been alerted to the fact that they were hanging out for a few minutes around that second chair once they got it inside, but I figured they were doing a setup on it (adjusting the chair rocker, etc).

Sofa manages to come in nicely without any “stuff it through the door” procedure. They shove the manifest paperwork at me and have me sign since it’s all there (except the coffee table) and head for the hills. I walk in to see what the deal was with Chair #2 and of course, big @$$ scratch on the left and right side of the chair where they scraped the leather shoving it through the door. Oh joy.

After quite a few phone calls to La-Z-Boy, most of which went unreturned, it took a threat to return EVERYTHING for them to finally agree to replacing Chair #2 and locating the coffee table which seemed to have suddenly vanished from their stocked warehouse. Soooooooo, to make a saga short, said Chair #2 and missing coffee table will finally be arriving Friday. I’ll be watching them like a hawk this time

We had a dust storm roll in yesterday evening, and it was a HUGE one! Dust was as high as 3300 feet in the air, according to the weather helicopters that were filming it.

Here’s a link to the article and the raw video footage of the storm: http://www.nbc6.net/news/13694664/detail.html

The dust storms often signal the coming monsoon season — in fact, we even had a great thunderstorm last night following Dust Bowl 2007. Chuck’s car wasn’t parked in the garage, and is definitely going to need a bath

This time of year around AZ, this would be pretty sweet:

Sure, you could blow a cool million on a bed you’d never sleep on, but why not grab one that actually provides some relief (and won’t run you $5k a month… forever) after a hard day in the blazing sun? Enter Kuchofuku, who certainly has the right idea with its air conditioned sleeper and clothing line. The makeshift bed, which only weighs 5.3-pounds, utilizes dual fans to pull air in and circulate it through the cushion beneath you. Of course, it’d be a modern tragedy to have to rise and leave such a pleasant scenario, but you can solve that dilemma as well care of the air conditioned shirt. The button-up garb touts an integrated fan that is purportedly powered via USB, which means that your armpits can now remain fresh regardless of how infrequent the AC kicks on at the office. A cooler night’s sleep is but $399 away, while the new threads (seen after the jump) will run you a staggering $159 apiece.

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I got to swim for about 10 minutes last night around 9:30pm. I floated on my back and gazed up at the almost-full moon and the stars, and the palm tree in my backyard. My own slice of heaven. And this time of year at 9:30pm, it was still over 103 degrees. Craaaaazy!