Nothing but Song

Feeling :  listless  Listening :  Trippin Me Up - Kylie Minogue  Reading :  Nothing

I have a lot to get out. I had a busy last week or so.

I’m going to paraphrase myself from my MySpace blog: Saturday night, after work, I went with my co-worker R to see UB40 at the House of Blues, and saw my cousin there! rofl.

Cameras were verboten. Ugh. I always bring a camera to my gigs, as you know, unless it expressly says not to on the ticket, which it did. I was able to snap some pics with my camera phone. They’re kinda crappy, but they’ll have to do. I put them in my new photography portfolio

I got a set list too!! Ahh. R & I stayed behind to see if we could get a drumstick, guitar pick, whatever, and I made out with a set list (complete with what key they were in). I called my dad during “Red Red Wine” - one of his fave UB40 songs - but he said he couldn’t hear it.

It was amazing. I can’t stop listening to my UB40 songs now. I was dancing, swaying, singing along with every other song. I’m not too familiar with the lyrics, but all I know is that I love the music I did know. I’m so glad I went. I was almost gonna flake, like I so often do, but I had no reason to. It was kinda me and R’s last hurrah together as co-workers too.

Plus I’d never been on the inside of the House of Blues. I’d spent half a year walking past it on the way to work otherwise. That’s a crap reason to attend a gig, but I like venues. After living in Modesto, which had no decent venues when I was growing up, I love how many venues I’ve been to in Vegas so far: Star Nursery Field, Theater Under the Stars, Empire Ballroom, the Pearl, and now House of Blues.

Note that most of those venues were to see my boys, haha.

All I know is, I pretty much died when I heard their cover of “Can’t Help Falling in Love.”

It kills me. It really does.

Monday was my last day at my tea store. *le sigh* End of era, man, let me tell you what. We were on the clock for 9 hours (minus an hour lunch), packing everything up. I took some pics, which I’ve uploaded as well. It’s called “Goodbye True Tea” under the Captured Moments category.

It just felt so… surreal, walking in there for the last time, packing, and cleaning. I managed to snag myself some goodies on 75% off, such as my 4 contemporary style tea cups, my clay Beehouse cup (whose twin I gave as a gift to R), my tea service set, and my electric water kettle. I bought a tea for one (pot and cup) awhile ago at full price, but it was super cheap anyways. I gave my dad my Karigane Kukicha and Jasmine Pearls, since he likes green tea. But his only experience has been with teabags, so I have to teach him how to brew tea properly.

I got my schedule at my new job after lunch that day too, and it looks like I finally got an almost set shift. Closings and mids. Yay! No more waking up at the buttcrack of dawn (and buttcrack of dawn to me is not the same to a normal person, rofl) to stand around and not do anything. That was my biggest complaint - and I loved my store. Sometimes you would go hours without anyone stopping in to look or anything. So you’d have to find stuff to do. It wasn’t so bad when I first started; there was always something that had to be done, customers to educate, etc.

But towards the end, it was inevitable that they were gonna shut us down.

*weeps*

My first day of school was Tuesday. Was late for my first class - Writing About Literature - by almost half an hour, because I underestimated the amount of morning traffic on the 215. So I’ll have to start waking up a half hour earlier to leave my house an hour before class starts so I can at least get to class 15 minutes early. Ugh. But that’s what I get for signing up for that particular class, I suppose.

I decided to try something a little different this year. Most of the classes I’m taking are for my major, which is English. As such, most of the books they are assigning for us to read can be checked out at the library. So instead of buying the books from the bookstore (who will buy them back much too cheap) or Amazon (which I usually do, but I have to wait forever for them to come in), I’ll just keep renewing them through the website. I don’t even have to renew them in person!

So for the better part of my first day back, I was tracking down my books for my library branch and putting holds on them. I went in, renewed my library card, and got about half of them today. The others are being delivered from other branches. I now only need 2 books that are proper textbooks, which I purchased for hella cheap on Amazon today, for my Literature of the American West and History of Popular Culture classes.

I’m trying to save as much money as I can, and this is the best way. I dunno why I never did it before. I’m not worried about marking up my texts, because I think it’s sacrilegious to write in books.

I’m also taking The Bible as Literature class, but that only meets once a week. I’m looking forward to that, reading the Bible in an academic sense, and not a religious one. I hope I can get the books for it soon. I double-checked to make sure I had put requests on them, and I did, but there is no update on ‘em. It would say “IN TRANSIT” if it was being transferred. So hopefully, my branch can track them down for me.

The Pipettes are coming! The Pipettes are coming!

Finally we can announce the release of our North American full-length debut We Are The Pipettes, out October 2nd on Cherrytree / Interscope!

Producer Greg Wells came on board to mix the whole album and record two new tracks exclusive to this release – ‘Dance and Boogie,’ and ‘Baby, Just Be Yourself.’ which you can exclusively hear on the MySpace page now!

Not only that but we will be coming back to North America for a whole month of dates in October!

The full tour dates are:

October 2007

2nd - Chicago, IL - Park West
3rd - Detroit, MI - Magic Stick
4th - Cleveland, OH - Beachland Tavern
5th - Toronto, ON - Opera House
6th - Montreal, QC - Petit Campus
8th - New York, NY - The Fillmore @ Irving Plaza
9th - Boston, MA - Paradise Rock Club
10th - Washington, DC - 9.30 Club (early show)
11th - Philadelphia, PA - First Unitarian Church
13th - Pittsburgh, PA - TBC
15th - Nashville, TN - Exit/In
16th - Atlanta, GA - Vinyl
17th - Birmingham, AL - WorkPlay Theater
18th - New Orleans, LA - The Parish @ House of Blues
19th - Austin, TX - The Parish
20th - San Antonio, TX - TBC
21st - Dallas, TX - Cambridge Room @ House of Blues
23rd - Denver, CO - Bluebird Theatre
25th - Los Angeles, CA - Avalon
29th - San Francisco, CA - Bimbo’s 365 Club
31st - Portland, OR - Wonder Ballroom

November 2007

1st - Seattle, WA - Crocodile Cafe
2nd - Vancouver, BC - TBC

Details of where to order tickets will follow shortly…

Of course they wouldn’t come to Vegas. They’d fit in just fine though, rofl. Maybe when they take over the world, they’ll swing by. I’d love to see them live.

Today, I got the oil changed for my car with my mom. Before, she was always the one who got the oil changed, but I went with her so I would know what to do. It was relatively easy. She woke me up at 8AM to get it done, when we didn’t really need to rush. Took us all of half an hour. I went straight back to bed, and fell in and out of sleep until almost 2pm. I’ve been feeling really run down. I dunno if it’s all the things I’ve done in the past week catching up with me, or that thing that comes once a month (ugh), but I just didn’t feel good at all today.

THE ACADEMY IS… in less than a month. Yay!!

?: “Anything new going on with you?“