Cause I'm free...

There's not many things better to me than seeing a live show. Especially if John Mayer's playing. Last night was my 5th (or maybe even 6th?) show seeing John and each time there's always a different undertone to his show from everything to the set list to what kinds of solos he plays. This show I would label as "contemplative". Sure, he still had some playful banter with the crowd but there were several moments where he showed a more vulnerable side (well, as vulnerable as you can be with thousands of people). He played "Wheel", an introspective and melancholy song from his album Heavier Things, and in the middle he said that he normally doesn't do dedications...but that he would like to dedicate the meaning of the song to Randy Pausch, who passed away last week at 47 years old. [tangent begin] In case you haven't heard of him, Randy Pausch is the man who captivated many with his 'last lecture' that he gave while a professor at Carnegie Mellon and this lecture later became a world-wide phenomenom spread all over the Internet. The 'last lecture' about how to make the most of life was inspired by the fact that Pausch was terminally ill with cancer and he wanted to depart some of life's little wisdoms to his three young children before he died. [tangent end] Anyway, John said that Pausch's words were "stuck in his head and heart forever" and that he hoped when he got to be 47, he knew half as much about the world around him as Pausch did. It was definitely a 'softer side of John' moment.
Other unique parts of the show included a good amount of covers: Cream's quintessential blues rocker "Crossroads", snippets of The Talking Heads' "Burning Down the House", "Today" by Smashing Pumpkins, Duffy's "Mercy", and most notably, "Free Fallin" by Tom Petty. It's awesome how John puts his own spin on the song and yet is still able to stay true to the original version simultaneously. The night ended with one of my favorite JM songs, "Gravity" and I left on a concert high.
Here's to many more John Mayer shows to come!

We were noticing how John looks like a tanned chump in this poster

My fellow John Mayer fanatic, Aubrey

Had so much fun with these girls!

Balancing act

Over the last year, I've become more and more convicted by my materialism and continue to be amazed at just what a strong grip American consumerism has on me even though I try and fight it. So I have tried to make a conscious effort to discern whether I really need something before I buy it. But let's be honest, all I really physically NEED in this world is some food, a place to sleep, and a few items of clothing. So then the question really becomes "what degree of frivolity is this purchase?" Also, as many of you know, I will usually not buy anything on impulse. Most anything I buy must be carefully researched to make sure I'm getting the best price, etc. Well both my fight against materialism and lack of impulsiveness were challenged today as I was notified (by my fellow deal-watcher Dan Brown), that 30 G refurbished iPods were being offered on Woot.com for $130 for one day only. Now Dan knows (after we visited him and Krystle a few weekends ago) that I have a 6-gig iPod mini that I've definitely outgrown. My iPod still works fine but the poor lil' guy simply cannot hold any more music. Which, for a music fanatic like myself, is not an ideal situation. I hate having to pick and choose what albums I can put on it because it's so hard to know just when I'll feel like listening to that old Jars of Clay album or rocking out to that compilation of Queen songs I made years ago.

So when Dan brought this deal to my attention, it peaked my interest. I had told myself a few weeks ago that before the end of the year, I would purchase a new iPod, but I hadn't really done any research yet. And now I was presented with a 24 hour window in which to purchase this iPod for only $130. The 30-gig iPod can hold up to 8000 songs, but would this be enough or should I just wait and buy the newer 80-gig iPod classic for a hundred dollars more? But then again, a hundred dollars is hundred dollars and Dan promised me that both players were the same as far as durability goes.

After being a slacker at work and looking in multiple Apple forums and reading cNET reviews, I reluctantly pressed the "buy" button and purchased the 30-gig iPod. This reluctance is a natural reflex that happens when I spend more than $50 on something...I always second and triple guess my decision. But now that it's been a few hours, I am happy and looking forward to expanding my musical horizons beyond the 1500 songs I've been able to have on my current iPod. I still struggle with the question of whether I've just fallen into another trap of 'acquiring more stuff', but the decision to go with the older refurbished model instead of buying the flashier new version (because really, will I ever have 80 gigs of music?) makes me feel like I was able to loosen consumerism's grip just a little. And even though I don't physically need to have an mp3 player with all my music on it, I would say it really is an emotional need....music is one of my lifelines!

Down to earth

FINALLY saw "Wall-E" and it was quite a unique cinematic experience. It's hard to compare it to other Pixar faves like "Finding Nemo" or "Ratatouille" because it's just so.....different. How can a robot that only says one word the entire movie be such an endearing character? That's the magic of Pixar, they take anything and make it brilliant. I laughed, I teared up, I was in awe at the utter beauty of some particular scenes, and at the end of it all, as Peter Gabriel sings over the final credits (a great song to end the movie with) I was filled with a sense of hope, a hope inspired by such an overwhelming demonstration of human creativity. When a movie can cause THAT to happen, it's got to be something special.

brain food

Every morning, one of my former campus supervisors sends out a quote of the day and today's was:

If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness, and fears.
-Glenn Clark

Since I'm definitely in a traveling mood (56 days to Disneyworld and 123 days to Costa Rica!) this was a good metaphor for me to think about.

In other random news,I finished my first book of the summer last week, Three Junes. This was a great read largely because the story took place in several locations - Ireland, Greenwich Village, and Greece -- and so I felt like I was able to travel with the characters to these places. The main characters in this novel were richly developed and by the end, I felt like I had gotten a good insight into their lives, even if they were fictional. I would definitely recommend it.

I am currently doing a quick read of Roald Dahl's "The BFG" because it is one of my favorite children's books. I was reading on the bus yesterday and there was a family a few seats next to me. One of the little girls whispered (not so softly) to her mom: "Why is that woman reading a kid's book?" Her mom replied: "Because a good story isn't meant for just kids!" Amen.

Next, I will finally be reading a book my dear friend Kate has recommended to me for YEARS: Peace Like a River by Leif Enger. I'm gladly taking any other recommendations as well!

Things that go boom

Last weekend we took a little vacay to Southern California for the 4th of July holiday and it was a combo of friends, family, and fireworks. Here's the re-cap of our weekend o'fun.

To fuel up for the drive down Interstate 5, we stopped at Nugget to get gloriously delicious sandwiches that only Nugget can make. I am salivating just thinking about it. My signature sandwich is not the healthiest, because it consists mainly of lots of meat and cheese, but oh how I love it. I get focaccia bread with a basil ailoli spread, brushed with a little olive oil, piled with prosciutto, genoa salami, smoked gouda and fontina cheese. Since the sandwich is so freakin huge, I ate half for lunch and had the other half for dinner...scrumptious!

First stop was staying at my Aunt Becky and Uncle Chuck's place in Huntington Beach. David had been driving 8 hours, and I had been sitting restlessly in the car for 8 hours, so we were both quite tired upon arriving around 10:30 pm. However, somehow we got into a lengthy discussion with my Aunt about the state's decision to legalize same-sex marriage (she is against, we are for) and this caused us to stay up until a little after midnight. But I'm glad we chose to have this conversation instead of pushing it under the rug to avoid being uncomfortable. I'm hoping she can think about some of the points we brought up, mainly how the real issue isn't about how the state defines marriage but rather how we as Christians treat the homosexual community---with judgment or with love?

The next morning Becky takes us to Cappy's Dinner off of PCH in Newport Beach for brunch and then since she's a hair stylist, she takes us to a special store that sells expensive hair products at their wholesale price...and you have to be a licensed stylist in order to get in. I ended up buying Paul Mitchell's tea tree lavender mint shampoo...it smells awesome and I think will help repair my hair from all the flat-ironing I do! Becky even convinced David to buy a new jar of hair gel...after opening up several bottles and enthusiastically trying them all on his hair! Needless to say, David was just a tad annoyed at all the hair product put in his hair and was eager to take a shower afterwards.

We left Huntington and met up with one of my favorite couples: the Rickmans! I know that whenever we spend time with them, there will be lots of laughs. Our first night with them, we went to their favorite Thai place for dinner and had the amazing coconut milk and sticky rice dessert....mmmmm. We chose to rent "Vantage Point" and I have to say I was disappointed---definitely a '24' wannabe but didn't quite hit the mark. The next day, we joined Mark in his 4th of July ritual of watching the annual ESPN Hot Dog Eating contest. It is absurd how serious this competition is, it truly is given the same treatment on ESPN as any other major sports event! The first round resulted in a tie, so there was a 5 dog "eat off"---first one to swallow 5 hot dogs AND buns was proclaimed the champion. Just watching this whole thing made me want to vomit, but it was strangely entertaining as well.

We then went to Golden Spoon for a mid-day frozen yogurt run and decided to mull around Whole Foods. As you can tell, our outings all revolve around food. We ended up buying some awesome blue cheese (a Spanish variety) and a Tillamook sharp white cheddar...along with a fresh baguette and some wine to have before we went to go see an Anaheim Angels game later that evening. Since Mark works for Wells Fargo and Wells Fargo is a sponsor of the Angels, he was able to use his corporate connections to get us good seats for the game AND for the fireworks show afterwards! So we went to the stadium and had a very yuppie-ish tailgate session with our wine and cheese, and then went up to the Knothole, an exclusive club-level restaurant for special Angels guests only (which thanks to Mark, included us!). I'm not a huge fan of baseball, but it was good to catch up with Ashley and discuss our future life plans (or what, at this point, we think are our future plans). During the 8th inning, we went down to join the rest of the Wells Fargoians in order to get our special wristbands needed to be on the field for the fireworks show. That's right, we got to watch the fireworks on the field beside the players and their families...pretty awesome. We came back to their place

The next morning we met up again with my Aunt Becky and Uncle Chuck for breakfast before heading down to Sandy Eggo to see the Browns! Krystle and Dan just bought a condo in SD and I looked forward to seeing the Brown Bungalow. We were greeted by their new kitten, Pixel, and were given the official tour (I loved how Krystle had made a proud display of her Starbucks city mugs in their kitchen). Then we had Dan take us to his office at DivX, a tech company that he works for in La Jolla. Normally, taking someone to your office would be boring but Dan's work setup is awesome and designed with a younger workforce in mind---it's all one huge office space with lots of work stations and lounge spaces with flat screen TVs and Playstations. I laughed when I saw open bottles of alcohol on people's desks.....a little different than the university environment I work in. We came back to their place and changed to go to Chelsea's wedding ceremony. Chelsea is one of the girls who was on the 2004 Italy mission trip with me and through that experience, became a dear friend. I was happy we were going to be in SD the same day as her wedding, and I was also happy to be able to see Nicole (the other girl who was on our team) and catch up with her briefly. We didn't stay for the reception because we didn't want to neglect our already short time with the Browns but I was SO happy I could see her in her wedding dress, beaming with joy as she came down the aisle.
That night, we went to Cafe Coyote in Old Town and enjoyed the margaritas and carnitas....Mexican food always hits the spot. Then we took a little drive around Coronado Island and ended the night by playing some MarioKart on the Wii....I failed miserably. The next day our vacation came to an end and we made the long 10 hour trek back up to NorCal. However, NPR saved the day...we listened to several of their podcasts and were able to not go insane on the long drive (my podcast recommendations: "This American Life" and "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me!").

Overall, a very enjoyable and jam-packed 4 day weekend...if only the drive to see our SoCal friends wasn't so long, otherwise, we would do it more often!