canada oh canada, i s'il vous plait

(aren't we hot?)

i could go on for years, maybe centuries, about reasons why i think colorado's so great, but i'll save you your entire lifetime and hone in on just one reason: red rocks amphitheater.

ah red rocks, you're the home to many a great memories - the most recent being mr. peter gabriel. "peter gabriel?" you say. "isn't he someone your parents listened to when you were just a wee tot?" yup he sure is - and that's why my dad was sad we didn't invite him to the concert.

i actually remember one day after school in probably the 2nd or 3rd grade and my best friend (until she left the friendship bracelet i made her at the park months later ON PURPOSE) was sad for some reason and i went over to her house and sang her "don't give up, you still have friends" that's how much of an influence the ol' cassette player pounding through our house was on me, mom and dad. be proud (p.s. how great is this music video??)



anyway, yes we went to the peter gabriel concert at red rocks. and yes, it was raining like we were standing  in our shower. with clothes on. and no rain jacket (in my case). so, i decided to throw on the old ratty bath robe that just so happened to be in our car, because doesn't everyone keep bath robes in their cars in case of emergency?

the second best part of the concert was when the rain clouds broke and opened up to reveal a perfectly amazing full moon right over us. while that was cool in and of itself, the very best part of the concert was the guy sitting in front of us watching when the moon came out and crying, literally crying through great big (likely drugged-up) sobs, "are you kidding me?!?" while hugging (clobbering) his concert-mates and whoever else was in a five mile radius of him. it just further confirms my theory that any event is only as good as the people watching.

the boy immediately called his friend - a true peter gabriel fan - after the concert and told him to run, don't walk, to the next show wherever it might be. little did we know it would be in toronto, canada a few days later...and that said friend would call back five minutes later with four tickets asking us to go with them.

so, we did what any reasonable and sensible people would do and canceled everything we had going on to leave our daughter with our nanny and fly to canada.

i was excited because i had never been to canada, although i for some reason told every person i met the first year in college that i was born there. i'm not quite sure why, but it was fun and only backfired once. you do stuff like that in college. or at least i did...

embarrassingly, the only thing i really knew about canada came from 11th grade geography when we were assigned to write a "travel journal" after "traveling to" (aka, researching) a foreign country. there's no way i should have even passed because i'm pretty sure canada cannot under any circumstance be considered "foreign," but that's beside the point.

the point is, i still shouldn't have passed because the only "research" i did was listening to this song over and over again. i'm once again pointing my fingers at you, mom and dad - thanks for teaching me early that song lyrics are an appropriate way to communicate in the world.



i'm not kidding. my travel journey consisted of me talking about how i drank milk from a bag and watched lemmings falling into the ocean. i got an A

peter gabriel was almost as good in canada, except there were no crazy sobbing men peeing their pants about the full moon. but, our flight attendant's name was cake, so that has to count for something.

should i take this as a sign?

so i had this dream last night where i was playing in this new-age orchestra. (by the way, i wasn't playing the flute. i was playing a piccolo that looked like a tape measure... what would you expect from a new-age orchestra??) anyway, we were practicing with this animal trainer who was dancing panthers and tigers around the stage in sync with our music. the trainer was coaxing the cats with a tennis ball, that he accidentally bounced outside the door (because we practiced with the door open, duh).

the cats ran out the door to follow it and we all looked out the window to see that every other new-age orchestra practicing their animal routine on our same street made the same mistake. this whole herd of wild animals started booking it down the street, people jumping every direction out of harm's way, mother's yanking their children up into their arms to protect them....

and what was i doing? why pulling out my camera phone and trying to find the best angle to take a picture, of course! the whole time thinking "this'll make a great blog post!"

the good news is, at least i wasn't dreaming about ddr...

these are the things that make the world go round

when meghan and i were talking about toys we wanted and never had as little kids, the grape escape came immediately to mind. remember that game? you create little playdoh grapes and move them through the “jam factory” where they have to avoid getting smashed or dashed or anything like that. i think it was on the market for about 2 months before someone realized that this game might encourage kids to try chopping each other in half or using oversized rolling pins (aka bulldozers) to squish their friends.

anyway, thank my lucky stars for ebay, i found it! it came all nice and ready-for-violence yesterday. it’s the best game i’ve ever owned. well maybe it’s a tossup - mall madness is a close second (technically that wasn’t my game though.) in other board game news, we decided the other day that if meghan shaved her head and grew a beard, she’d look like richard on guess who! i just now got to thinking – how fun would it be to set up a game of guess who with real people? like a family reunion or company guess who or something…

(p.s. look how sad all the emo kids look in the background of this picture)

we went to the death cab for cutie concert at red rocks where we decided that we’re getting too old for such shenanigans. next time we’re taking “butt donuts” (as meghan called them) to sit on. concert was awesome, people watching was even better. i’m not that far removed from high school, but i feel so out of it on the styles and the groups. like, for example, could somebody please explain to me the definition of emo?? and how is it different than punk or goth or indie?? all i know is i think that jojo on horton hears a who (fabulous movie) is emo. meghan just bought a sweatshirt that reminds me of jojo every time she wears it. and i tell her everytime she wears it even though she's never seen the movie. maybe i have a crush on jojo. don't judge me

the boy saw this van today. i’m so jealous i wasn’t there.

ding ding dong ding

300 tubas. what better way to bring in christmas? i was impressed with how silently they played silent night. they probably only had 5 tubas playing silent night and all the other ones were just pretending. joke’s on us. thanks for risking your ears and windows, denver, by letting 300 tubas congregate in a confined area to play us christmas carols. it just wouldn’t have been the same if it was oboes.

to top it all off, mr zachman was a guest conductor! mr zachman was our music teacher in junior high. he was cross-eyed. i have nothing against cross-eyeds, but it does make it rather hard to follow instructions when your conductor points at you with his baton but looks right at your neighbor. also, he was huge on lecturing on how to take good care of your instrument – keeping it clean and tightening the screws when needed and such. that’s why it was funny when he got really upset in class one time and threw his clarinet against the wall. shattered to pieces. way to take care of your instrument mr. zachman. oh…you weren’t talking to me?

christmas rocks!

so if you’ve never taken the opportunity (or even worse – you’ve never even thought about taking the opportunity…shame on you) to see the transiberian orchestra in all their concert glory, you haven’t truly experienced all that christmas music has to offer. also, it’s a great blast to the 80’s, and who doesn’t want that to be part of their holiday festivities?? i’m having a hard time limiting my highlights of the show. let’s just say there were lots of lasers and fire and strobe lights and probably about a thousand band members and a narrator telling a really cheesy christmas story. and a couple of singers with good gravely voices. and everyone had really long hair. and the girls all had blue eyeshadow like barbie and the rockers. and there were a handful of guitar duels and a piano duel and those triangle shaped guitars. and it started snowing inside the pepsi center.

i’m serious – it had every ingredient necessary to make a perfect flashback rock concert. it was awesome. plus, all their music is so fun – what better way to get in the christmas spirit than with a jam session of oh come all ye faithful? i think the absolute highlight for us was the main violinist, anna phoebe, though. she was incredible. she had this custom made bright pink electric violin that she would just wail on – she must have gone through at least a dozen bows. aside from that, i’ve never seen someone with so much energy. 3 hours of running back and forth, doing backbends, running up into the crowd…wow…i’m in love.

meghan and i also learned some things about each other we hadn’t realized before during this concert. another christmas miracle. we both have the exact same pitched “wooo!!” like after a song is over and you’re resisting the urge to throw the beast, so you scream “whoo!!” instead? yeah – identical. and we’d start and stop at the exact same time too. it would’ve been funny to put some poor unassuming person in between us – surround-sound whoo-ing!