Jonathan Coulton Concert 12/12/06

For my birthday, Pat sent me with some friends out to Boston to see Jonathan Coulton in concert... twice! He was doing a small mini-concert in the basement of Pandemonium Books, and then a larger concert at Johnny D's (a restaurant/night club).

Robert was kind enough to drive us, as he'd just gotten his new car. It was nice to be able to just enjoy the scenery and company for the 2 hour drive to Boston, rather than have to worry about traffic.

It was really interesting going on a trip with people who actually knew the area, since Pat and I are totally unfamiliar with it.





Mike rode up front to give "directions" to Robert. This was, we discovered later, not necessarily the wisest idea, as Mike hadn't navigated around Boston in quite some time, and apparently the roads had been moved around quite a bit since his heyday.

Smile, Mike! :)






Lisa and I rode in the back seat, which was cool, because I /never/ get to ride in the back. I'm always either driving or navigating.
Lisa is a sweetheart. She's bold and outspoken and I adore her to bits. She's Mike's significant other, and mom to not only only her own kids, but to many of the strays who end up hanging out or even living with her and Mike at their place in Chicopee.








The first concert was held at Pandemonium Books, a book and game store in Cambridge (which is kind of a suburb of Boston, kind of in the same fashion that Tacoma is a suburb of Seattle.)
The mini-concert was short and small, but fun. And since Pandemonium stocks my books, it was neat to go in and talk with the owner about game stuff as well.




Jonathan sings.

I realized that, unlike a rock show, taking pictures of an acoustic guitar player singing gets a bit tedious at times. No matter how interesting the music, photos pretty much all look like some guy standing there with his mouth open and a guitar in his hands. So, while I took hundreds (literally) pictures of the two concerts, I'll only be posting a few.








Jonathan's compatriots for the event were Paul and Storm. They were his opening act at Johnny D's, but also came out to do a number or two with him at Pandemonium.







Storm, Jonathan and Paul sing Code Monkey.








Jonathan sings some more.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with his work, Jonathan is the creator of such fun songs as Code Monkey and re: your brains (aka All We Want To Do Is Eat Your Brains.)

Both were written as a part of "A Thing A Week," where Jonathan wrote... 52 songs... in the course of the year. You can listen to all of them for free (and buy his albums, when you fall in love with them like I did) here.




Jonathan proves that not only can he walk and play guitar at the same time, but that it's /fun/!












Me and Jonathan!

One down, 51 to go...

I can't believe it's already into January and we've had no snow to speak of this winter. It's funny that, after thirty*mumble* years in the Pacific Northwest where snow was a rarity at best, I've gotten so enamoured of the idea of snow = winter. It doesn't /feel/ like winter here without it.

I checked the forecast for the rest of the month. No snow scheduled out past the 10 day forecast, which is as far as they do "real" predictions. Beyond that, it's just the almanac forecast, with nothing more than highs and lows, but I noticed something interesting in contrasting the "real" with the "almanac".

The highs are.. reasonably close. We're running 10-12 degrees higher than the scheduled high, which is significant when that means the difference between "mid 30s" and "mid 40s" in the middle of January. However, where things get really wonky is the low temperatures.

Schedules lows via the almanac for the mid to late part of January? 11ish degrees.
Scheduled lows via the "real" forecast for the early to mid part of January? In the 30s. The mid 30s.

We're a good 20-25 degrees warmer at night here than it's "supposed" to be this time of year. And that's just...weird.

Pat and I are still sleeping with the window wide open at night and the fan going (albeit for noise/air circulation rather than coolness... it points at the wall, not at us.) But to be able to turn off the heat at night and open the window... in New England? In January? That's insane.

Anyway, I promised some pictures from Christmas, and they'll be coming soon. I'm still figuring out how to move the pictures around in the post, etc. (Any advice is sorely welcome.)

Family Blog

I realized I was juggling too many needs on my LiveJournal Account, using it for friends, work, family, etc. So I've created this blog just for family and close personal friends with whom I don't need to hide names or worry about posting pictures of the kids or personal information.

It'll be a way for me to share pictures of our family and daily news with those who care more about that than my work announcements and the like.

That being said, here are some pictures from my birthday dinner last month. Pat and Autumn took me out to a lovely Italian restaurant where they had pasta and I had gorgonzola encrusted steak. It was a lovely evening.
Autumn, being charming. I love her hair back like this, with the long tendrils. I wish I could convince her to wear it like this more often!
















Pat looking very serious (boy, that's unusual!)

and then pointing to... something... What can I say, the camera was new and I was still getting used to it.


Autumn and I. Doesn't she look sweet? Pay no attention to the spaghetti sauce on her shirt. That's why /I/ wore red to the Italian restaurant!


Apparently the picture on the wall may be what Pat was pointing at in the earlier photo. Autumn couldn't resist mugging for the camera here.


That's my girl! What a grin!