City of Newcastle Summer Event Preview & Schedule
Newcastle’s summer season kicks off this coming Wednesday, so if you’re in town, be sure to come on down & join us! Bad Habit will be playing an electrifying list of classic rock & roll against the backdrop of our gorgeous 20 acre Lake Boren Park.
[ Click Here for Google Directions ]
Here’s a look at just one of our 2007 Concert performers, The Popoffs (returning this year!)
Event Schedule 2008
6/25 Concerts in the Park #1: Bad Habit
7/4 4th of July Celebration, Live Band: HiWatt
7/9 Concerts in the Park #2: deja’ groove
7/16 Concerts in the Park #3: the PopOffs
7/23 Concerts in the Park #4: Nathan Chance and North Coast
7/30 Concerts in the Park #5: Southern Cross
8/1 Moonlight Movie #1: Over the Hedge
8/6 Concerts in the Park #6: Free Rain
8/8 Moonlight Movie #2: Monsters, Inc.
8/13 Concerts in the Park #7: Union Jack
8/15 Moonlight Movie #3: Ratatouille
8/20 Concerts in the Park #8: Timeless Soul
9/6 Newcastle Days
9/7 Newcastle Days
9/20 Science Day
10/11 Arbor Day
UPDATE: Several attentive readers have emailed to ask, “uh, isn’t Arbor Day in April?” Which is exactly what I asked when it was added to my to-do-list this year. National Arbor Day is the last Friday in April. But because tree-planting seasons vary, States and Cities can observe it whenever they want. And in Washington that’s the fall. (Surely one of the most backwardest things I’ve learned since moving here, but hey, I don’t garden. Because that’s what landscapers are for.)
For My Mom, Whom I Love
Yesterday, Garfield turned 30.
Just a few of the things I love and remember as a kid of the 80s include jellies, neon clothes, rubix cubes, mousse…watching Steven Tyler gyrate down a pole of scarves 5 seconds before my dad turned it off and announced Mtv was banned in our house because ‘you’ll see a lot of things that don’t make any sense’.
But Garfield trumped them all. I remember reading the small, bound, comic strip books walking home from the school bus stop without looking up – using the sidewalk as a guide from meandering into traffic. My room was decorated now and again with his posters. I liked Garfield, but I realize now that as an eight+ year old, I didn’t really GET him.
But mom? She did. She LOVES Garfield. Mom can still quote him at the drop of a hat, and I’m pretty sure she’s got at least a few of all those postcards, coffee cups, and t-shirts we gave her throughout the years. The car window cling was by far my favorite. Garfield replaced her yellow “Cocker Spaniel on Board” right after the day she was driving me home from a hair perm, and two teenage girls pulled up beside us to ask if I was the dog.
I think I just figured out what I’m gettng her for Christmas this year…
Ginormous Ice Cream Cone
Flying out to Texas last month, we got a rare glimpse of Ranier. Adding to my belief that big scary mountains with a high potential for explosions are better appreciated from afar FAR away, it almost ate my cousin this month. He and some friends decided to climb it, just barely ahead of/during a massive snow storm. Bryce got his butt down the mountain mere days before this other group had to be rescued, and called his mom – who had not heard from him in four days.
I haven’t officially looked this up or anything, but I’m pretty sure it’s written somewhere that when you climb deadly evil demon snow mountains, YOU CALL YOUR MOTHER EVERY FIVE MINUTES UNTIL YOU’RE OFF IT. Otherwise she gets to kill you.
That Crash? Was My Computer.
And that Pop? Was my brain. I don’t even remember what it was I was reading 10 minutes ago that mentioned Time Magazine’s ‘50 Best Websites 2008‘ was published today, perking my interest just enough that I thought I’d meander on over there long enough to see whether Dooce was listed.
DUDE. I have FIVE browsers open right now. (I need one just to find my way out of the madness long enough to write this post.) The list is amazing. Not only is almost every single site on their list totally interesting/useful/freaking cuh-hoool, each one leads to three to six others.
Like Hulu and ModernFeed. FREE TV AND MOVIES. ALLL OF THEM. WHENEVER. And I don’t have to go to umpteen different sites to find any of it. And look! Burn Notice AND Battlestar, RIGHT THERE ON THE FRONT PAGE!!! I think Trav is going to die. He just got me a Shadow, and baby, it ROCKS the mobile web.
Here are a few other gems:
- GasBuddy – this one is kindof a ‘DUH’. seeing Albuquerque listed as one of today’s 10 lowest price cities, though – I wasn’t expecting that. Also? Historical trends and lotso tools & factoids that may actually come in useful. AND YOU CAN WIN FREE GAS.
- NexTag - totally awesome comparison shopping! I know, it sounds boring. BUT! Look! Real-life example: I can totally research real-time prices on my Nikon 40x fantasy umpteen times a day! Who knows what will happen? Dah da Daaaaahhhhh!
- Nymbler - this one’s for when I feel sick & twisted and really want to torture myself, but hey, that’s just me. For everyone else its a perky and happy baby naming website. It generates interesting alternatives based on your ideas with historical, ethnic and popularity info. huh. looky there. Using my name, a few Adamses and one Maas, I get an entirely white-bread list, except for ‘Percival’ and ‘Guy’, one is my favorite knight, and the other is my Dad. WEIRD.
- Urban Dictionary & Internet Slang Dictionary – Awesome! Just as soon as I qualify for ‘old’, I can APPEAR to keep ahead of the curve using these gems on my blog! a&f abft omg w/eva im l4m3rz.
- Someecards - someofyouwillbegettingthesefromme. soon.
- websoduku - in combination with my top 2 above, nothing at my house will ever get done again.
- Colorlovers & PixelGirlPresents - obligatory design bling!
- WikiSky & WikiTravel - Just click ‘em. Once. I dare you.
- Omiru - style that doesn’t stress you out. it’s for reals. as in Real People, not Vogue.
- searchme - MacGoogle? ooooh! McWebDreamy! yeah. i’m stretching. but the search is cool!
- Aaaand there’s more. But I am out of time. So go here & see the entire Time’s glitterificness yourself!
Excuse Me Whilst I Get off My A$$
Today is the first day I’ve felt even remotely functional since June 6th, a day that will forever live in infamy (if only in my head, har har) as the day Quasimonose died a very bloody death. And a day in which, yet again, I gave yet another spectacular demonstration of unrealistic expectations mere moments before surgery, when responding to Dr. Rooney’s ‘do you have any questions’ wrap-up with these gems:
- So I’ll be up & running for work on Monday, right?
- How soon can I go back to the gym? (AS THOUGH I HAD BEEN THERE IN THE LAST 30 DAYS. WAY TO PLAY IT, SISTAH.)
To be fair, I was working from the breezy, easy, ‘I do this allll the time, you’ll be fine,” picture painted by Dr. Rooney and the surgical staff. Not that they withheld any detail of information, mind you, but I’m a pretty easy sell.
Three and half hours after surgery, I was sleeping without my oxygen levels tanking to 80 when they finally released me. I’ll tell ya, 80 felt just fiiiine to me. It felt exactly the way I breathe when I sleep, which is all I wanted to do, but no. Apparently 80 is B.A.D. and they just had to keep waking me to say so. And to puff in this stupid plastic thing that I kept trying to suck.
Vaguely aware of the tone in my (assumed student) nurse’s voice, I got the impression they were verging on the idea of keeping me overnight, which concerned me greatly because not only did I have no clue how much that would cost, I was damn sure it was 100% more than I cared to spend. And also? It might mean I’d miss the mid-season finale of Battlestar Gallactica. GOD FORFEND.
The highlights of post-op recovery and BSG notwithstanding, my memory of last weekend is pretty much nill. Kleenex, Sprite, sleeping in a chair, living in my pjs and surgical socks while Trav doted on my every need is about it…oh yeah. Except for the nine hours on Sunday when I lost track of when exactly I’d taken my last dose, so I didn’t take any, and then proceeded to try to catch up and then threw up my entire head at 4:30am, and 5am, and 6:30AM because of that whole ‘you have to eat something with Vicodin’ that I totally didn’t read.
My tongue shrivelled into something resembling a 20-year sundried tomato every night and somehow I unintentionally avoided my own reflection for a week, until one afternoon when we drove down to Black Diamond to take Trav’s bike to the shop. I’d jumped at the chance to get out of the house, thinking how much better I felt, how maybe we could stop and eat somewhere because look! I have real clothes on and everything! Then I swung down the sunvisor mirror to put on some lipstick. Which I immediately realized was pointless. And that I was’t going ANYWHERE, not even into the bike shop, because I was the Evil Dead. And would be for some time.
I was coherent enough to work from home most of last week, thankfully able to filter any drug-induced stupidity from all my emails but one. And although I made it to the office on Wednesday and Friday, none of my days last week were remotely as productive as I wanted.
I feel pretty lame for not having left a note on the ‘door’ so to speak – a few pitiful status updates on Twitter and Facebook were all I could muster. There are a multitude of posts I’ve been pining to finish and hope to publish in the week ahead. But as I attack the mountain of tasks at work that must come first, here are a few glittery things that caught my attention last week I think are worth sharing:
- Classics in Lego – ‘Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare’, ‘Lunch Atop a Skyscraper’ and more famous photos recreated in Legos. Absolutely fabulous.
- Daily Candy – I admit it. I love this mostly for the arwork. But the fashion & travel finds are delish, too. (other Daily Candy locations: London, Chicago, New York, Dallas.)
- Little Capers - For all my friends with kids. Super cute Super capes, that I suppose are supposed to help avert those pesky lttle subjects such as ‘powers’ and ‘fighting’ and ‘conflict’. Not sure RecycleMan, the Non-Violent Puppy Petter automatically comes to mind when one’s tying two ends of a towel across your neck and you’re climing the roof with a Safeway bag, but what do I know?
