Slacker no more!

I've decided that I have to break out of my blah-bloggy-ness and get back to writing more frequently. Things have been happening. I'm keeping busy. I have amazing supportive friends and family and the engine keeps a-rollin'.

And a rollin' it is...Jimmy and I celebrated our Eighteenth wedding anniversary today. Holy crap. It doesn't seem that long and it freaks me out a little that we could actually have a kid graduating from high school this spring. ALTHOUGH...I guess that would have meant that we would've had a shot-gun wedding, cuz at the very least, I wouldda have had to have been preggers, if not already a mom by the time we got married that amazing day in 1991.

In my previous posts about our anniversary, I shared pics from that fantastic day. But not now. Because I decided to share a photo from today. And I'll be damned if I'm gonna do a side by side comparison of how we look now compared to how we looked then. Pahleeze. Of course, you could always click here or here and check out those old photos and compare what 18 years of marriage does to a couple. Oh, I suppose being 40 vs. 22 might make a teeny tiny itty bitty difference, too. But shhhhh, don't say anything out loud, my ego can't handle it.So tonight Jimmy and I went out to dinner at Maggiano's with the family. Yes, we are quite content that we spent our anniversary celebration not alone at a romantic restaurant, but with our beloved family enjoying the celebrations with us. Besides, we needed them there to help us eat all that food. Have you ever eaten at Maggiano's? Good gravy, I seriously have never seen so much food delivered to a table before. Ya order family style with 2 appetizers, 2 salads, 2 pastas, 2 meat entrees and 2 desserts. Not enough? They'll bring refills at no extra charge. I can't believe I didn't take any photos of all the food, but I did take a photo of the additional dessert they gave us complimentary since it was our anniversary.mmm...delicious. You get to take home all the leftovers, too. Bonus meal tomorrow!

So, what else have I been doing...besides eating all of Manhattan. Oh wait, where am I? The Bay Area, that's right. Manhattan just sounded cooler. Not that the Bay Area isn't cool, cuz in fact, I personally (don't be hatin' anyone on the east coast), I think the Bay Area is cooler than Manhattan. I'm just a west coast gal I guess. Just my personal opinion, me who has never ever lived in any another state. So what the heck do i know? Besides, I love Manhattan so very, very much, I'd just rather live here. Tangent. Nevermind.

Thursday night, Jimmy and I went into the city (aka San Francisco) to watch a Technical Visual Arts Performance set to Music at the Luggage Store Gallery on Market Street. They don't sell luggage.

"The Luggage Store programs are dedicated to broadening social and aesthetic networks, encouraging the flow of images and ideas between different cultural and economic communities."

Anyone have stereotypical notions about San Francisco hole-in-the-wall performing art houses?
Anyone? Anyone? This place just might fit your bill. Who wants to come with us next time??

It was awesome but I have to admit, completely and totally over my pea-brain. Because, seriously? there were parts of it that were so very technically involved but all I saw were colors and music.

There were 2 performances, the 1st by Big City Orchestra and the first 20ish minutes, the audience listened to what they call "experimental noise pop" in a very black room. Then they take down a black curtain and reveal a rotating...i donno how to describe it...Jimmy likened it to the turning spiral circle thing from the Twilight Zone.Yea. With, literally, seizure causing strob lights flashing every 1/10000th of a second. For real, I thought I was gonna have a seizure. And for real, I thought that they were doing some mind controlling experiment and after it was all done, we'd all go home and go about our lives then unexpectedly we'd hear the song "Relax" by Frankie Goes to Hollywood and then we'll have to kill the Prime Minister of Malaysia. It could happen.

Anyhoo...as interesting as that was, we didn't go to see them. We had Intent. The 2nd performance was by Tim Thompson. He's a software engineer and artist and one of Jimmy's friends. The stuff he does was a lot less scary and way more interesting and best of all, it didn't make my head want to explode. But it was so technically involved that while I enjoyed the sound and I thought the lights were cool, I just wasn't able to understand the objective of the performance.

Maybe since my entire musical ability revolves around the XBOX360 Rock Band game, my musical prowess isn't really evolved either. (you think?)

Here's a vid from his site:

and his quote accompanying the video:

"A live solo performance using the latest incarnation of my custom software. Both music and visuals are generated in realtime from the notes I play on a MIDI keyboard and controller. My software processes and loops the notes, sending MIDI notes to soft synths to make the sound, and sending OSC to graphics software to make the visuals. The MIDI parts were written using KeyKit, and the visual parts use Python and Freeframe plugins."

Of course, Jimmy totally got it.

Regardless, it was a blast.

Just stay away from us if you're the Prime Minister of Malaysia*.
_