In Other News…

So this past weekend, I drove an hour and a half by myself to a town I’d never been to before (HUGE deal for me) in order to FINALLY get to see my favorite artist during college perform live!

Mary Prankster has been on hiatus for 12 whole years. So when I saw the announcement that she was doing “Pranksgiving 2017”, a pair of back-to-back of reunion shows, I HAD TO GO. Thankfully, the shows were near-ish to where I live and one of them was in a small town, Vienna VA. (The other one was in Baltimore and I HATE driving in Baltimore! Yea for small towns!)

The drive down was nerve-wracking, but the show itself more than made up for it! The two opening acts, Rodney Henry & Val Yumm were great. I’d never heard either of their music before, so I was very happy that I enjoyed all of it.

Miss Val Yumm

Then Mary came on…and thank goodness my friends & I were standing right in front of the stage because the extremely exuberant crowd did NOT seem to have the same issues with personal space that I do. 😉 It was a blast though: singing at the top of our lungs, bopping in time, sharing jokes, and helping Mary remember her chords (lol).

Mary Prankster

Mary even came out after the show to sign posters and sat down right in front of me! She was extremely nice and was wonderful with chatting with all of her fans. She seemed astonished that we were all still so excited to see her show, considering the length of time since the last one (and extremely grateful that we were all willing to stand for the whole thing 😉 ).

We met Mary! 😀

It was a wonderful show and I’m glad I was able to finally experience Mary Prankster in real life.

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Any of you ever heard of Mary Prankster? Ever go to a show? Tell me about it! 🙂

Here’s the link to her website if you want to know more: http://www.maryprankster.com/

Eclipse 2017 – The Wrath of Ra

So, if you live in the US, you obviously know there was an insanely awesome eclipse on Monday. Our area had around 90% coverage, so not a total eclipse, but still pretty good!

We were a LITTLE panicked about a week earlier, because we got one of those dreaded emails from Amazon letting us know that the glasses we had purchased might not actually be safe to use (thanks for the advanced notice, sigh). But my boss persevered and found us replacements just in time. 🙂

Knowing that this was my first ever eclipse (and since I’m the science geek of the office), my super-amazing boss also let me spend almost two hours outside so that I could experience as much of it as possible! It was completely mind blowing and something that truly gives you a appreciation for the forces in our universe. I’m ecstatic that I can finally check that one off the bucket list.

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Let me hear YOUR eclipse stories! Do you live near the path of totality? Were you able to watch any of it? Did you see any animals doing weird things? Did you get sunburn (like me, lol)?

 

One Check Mark for the Bucket List!

Ok, this is NOT going to be a book post (obviously). But I finally got to live a childhood dream and, hey, I wanna brag about it. 😉

This past weekend, my friend Melisa and I got to finally see New Kids on the Block in concert!!! It was AMAZING. Even people who don’t like their music would have to admit they put on a heck of a show.

Say “Hi”, Melisa!

Even the sideliners were awesome! The starting bands were…wait for it…Boyz II Men & Paula Abdul! Each group did about half an hour, mostly featuring their classics.

Boyz II Men did a great set with everything from ‘In The Still Of The Night’ to ‘End Of The Road’. They even handed out roses during ‘I’ll Make Love To You’! Paula danced for half an hour straight; I don’t know how she does it! She also did a nice homage to Gene Kelly. 🙂

The New Kids themselves did a full hour and a half! They started out with a bunch of new songs, which I will admit I mostly didn’t know. 😉 They were jammin’ though! The boys were all over the place: on the back stage, the front stage, lining the audience…Donnie even crowd surfed!

Towards the end, they did a wonderful timeline montage of older songs (they even did a quick change to look the part!). Joey pulled out ‘Please Don’t Go Girl’ and Jordan gave us ‘I’ll Be Lovin’ You Forever’, both in their signature falsettos. The boys all sang a cute little Christmas song and Jonathan even sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to one lucky audience member. 🙂

Ah, the denim romper; how I haven’t missed thee. 😉

My friend and I had REALLY good seats, but we still couldn’t resist rushing the stage when the boys came down to the secondary stage to sing ‘Summertime’ (even though it DID end up putting us in the line of fire for a couple of overly-enthusiastic fans who almost got in a fistfight over who got to stand closest to Jordan! Eep!).

Look how close we got! 😀

All in all, it really was the concert of a lifetime. I had an amazing time and am ridiculously happy that I was able to attend. 🙂

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What are the best concerts that you’ve been to?

Hello again!

I just realized last night that it has been almost 2 months since my last post! I’ve been so caught up in work and various projects, that I completely forgot that I even had a blog. Oops! So here are a few updates to catch you all up on what I’ve been doing.

I have received 2 letters and 2 postcards so far from my penpal in Australia! Her name is Melanie and we seem to have a lot of interests in common. I’m really enjoying learning about Australia and how different (and similar) things are from where I live. It’s currently my turn to write, so I need to get my butt in gear! If you’ve ever been interested in having a pen pal, I highly recommend the International Geek Girl Pen Pals Club. They match you with geeky girls & guys that like the same sort of things as you and all geeky enjoyments are welcome! 🙂

My first letter from my penpal!

I also participated in a Paint Nite with some of my friends from work. It was a ton of fun! I haven’t had the chance to paint since high school and I had forgotten how much I enjoyed it. Everyone’s paintings came out so unique; it was really neat to see everyone’s interpretations of the sample painting. I will admit to throwing a small nod to my geology background into mine by turning one of my mountains into a tiny volcano. 😉

My crew and our paintings.

I’m coming along well with my Reading Challenge. I am on my 35th & 36th books for the challenge.

I’m currently reading Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell for my “500+ page book”. It’s pretty interesting so far. I saw that they started a mini-series on BBC America this past weekend and I’m curious how well the book is represented. I’ll have to watch it when they do a rerun after I’ve finished the book. I’m also reading Frankenstein for my “book you were supposed to read in school, but didn’t”. I was never actually assigned this book in school, but since I couldn’t remember a book I WAS assigned that I didn’t read, I picked a book that the AP English class got to read. I remember being so annoyed that they got to read Frankenstein while I was stuck with The Crucible, lol. It’s interesting so far too. I’m letting myself do the audio book for this one, since I have so much trouble reading Victorian Era books. I don’t know what it is about them that I find difficult, I’ve just never been able to get more than one chapter into any Victorian Era book that I’ve tried to read. ::shrugs::

Speaking of audio books, have you all heard about Librivox.org? They have tons of free public domain audio books. You can download them or listen directly from the website! Since they are all read by volunteers, some of the recordings aren’t as good as others, but I’ve already listened to The Secret Garden and A Study In Scarlet as well as Frankenstein and I have enjoyed every minute of it! 😀

Well, that’s all for me for now. I’ll try to get some Book Reviews up soon!

Welcome to Night Vale Live Tour

Last summer, I discovered a new (to me) podcast called “Welcome to Night Vale”…and I fell in love instantly. For those of you who’ve never heard of it, my all time favorite description is “It’s like Neil Gaiman and Stephen King started a Sim City and left it running on it’s own for a few years”. Seriously, it’s that awesome.

So imagine my excitement when I found out Night Vale was going to be doing a US tour this spring! And they were coming to DC, which is only a couple hours away from me! I managed to con one of my co-workers (who had never listened to it) into going with me as a Girls’ Night Out and we had a blast!

The Gals

I won’t give away the plot of the show, since they will be selling a recording of it after the tour is over and they asked us not to spoil it for our fellow fans, but it was really good! The entire cast was there: Cecil (of course), Carlos, John…you know…the farmer?, Tamika Flynn, Steve Carlsburg (yuck), even Joseph Fink showed up (briefly) as a new intern! 🙂 (Sorry about the horrendous pictures, btw. I finally figured out why everyone takes really bad pictures at concerts. 😦 )

Dessa (aka The Weather)

Carlos & Cecil (with Disparition on hand to set the mood)

“Why? Why did you do it?”

The Cast

If you enjoy the podcast and cannot make it to the tour, I would definitely recommend downloading the recording once it is out. Everyone in the cast did an amazing job, the weather was one of the finest I’ve heard on the show (I need to get Dessa’s CD!), and the story line was really good (creepy and hilarious, as all the best episodes are). And if you ARE going to the show…would you snag me the code for the book preview? They ran out of postcards by the time I made it through the line at the merchandise desk. I figure it can’t hurt to ask, right? 😉

And now, I wish you all…

“Goodnight, Night Vale, Goodnight.”