Indie show, Vienna Teng show, backpacking at Point Reyes, AQ40

Tuesday (one week ago): concert called the something creek music festival because some friends of Lindsay, R’s sister, were performing. angela and alan came, too. very informal, inside a bar, very cold, very few audience members, didn’t like anyone but casey dienel, who is awesome. think ben folds, but a girl and using lilting indie-type singing. i bet ryan and his sister and casey dienel would probably hate my half-ass description of her so just don’t tell them. anyway, she’s really good. ryan bought her CD. it’s good. my favorite song she performed was a new one about a prostitute named Sugar.

Thursday: Vienna Teng at the Shattuck Down Low. She did a bunch of new songs–blue blue caravan, a new song about a baby, a song about being alone (i can’t live without you (?) but i don’t know who you are), the “you wouldn’t think i’d be the kind to burn down the office” song, the dolly parton song, which I then sang all through backpacking. Jenny would be interested to know that before she did Soon Love Soon (for her encore), she talked about people waving their cell phones. I bet you totally started that whole thing, J. Nobody waved any cell phones, though, maybe cuz we felt like if we did we’d be dorky because she’d just talked about it or something. I sang harmony which Elanor did not approve of. Derek got a hug and Alex and I seethed with jealousy. We want to be Vienna Teng’s friends, too. Then the four of us who live in this apartment now went to Yummy Guide in Oakland Chinatown, which can be accurately described as “heaven on earth, at least when you feel like eating really delicious, really oily chinese snacky food and then feeling kind of funny in the tummy afterward.” I am totally going to make that a place I frequent. Hot dou hua!

Friday: Ryan and I left for Point Reyes kind of late, but it was ok, there were people at our campsite who got to Point Reyes even later than we did. Instead of starting from Bear Valley like we usually do, we drove up Limantour Road and used the Sky trailhead. Sky Camp was a pretty short ways away, but it rained on us during that stretch. Hooray for cheapass ponchos. My jacket got totally soaked. It continued to rain (a very light, misty rain; very tiny raindrops) as we set up my tent, but it stopped and the sun even came out (sort of) and we were able to watch the sunset over the ocean from our high vantage point. It was quite beautiful. There were lots of people–pretty much every campsite was filled. Ryan kept saying “Judy, do you hear that? It’s the animals. They’re coming for us. What if they get us?” all night. It was just the freakin’ wind on the freakin’ fly, dork.

Saturday: hiked down to Coast Camp. Saw a giant bird in a tree which was less giant than I thought, as the tree was closer to us than it appeared. Did not see the mommy and baby albino deer that two passing elderly hikers told us about. Spent some time at the beach, which really means “Judy curled up into a little ball and went to sleep for an indeterminate amount of time, as Ryan whined that he wanted to go hiking around and Judy remained completely unresponsive.” Our freezedried dinner pouch of cheesy broccoli mashed potatoes was far and away the best backpacking pouch we’ve ever had, bumping lasagnia down to a close second. But the freezedried milk + granola is gross. Oregon Chai mix is delicious. Rained on us during the night but we were safe and warm inside the tent. The water at Coast Camp tastes a little funny–not bad, not gross, just funny, because water isn’t supposed to taste like anything. I read most of a book of short stories written by someone at Iowa. They were depressing. There was more rain and less animal-tent noise this night.

Sunday: took a way that we were unfamiliar with, which turned out to be a rapid descent followed by 2 miles of steady uphill hiking through meadows filled with very tall, very wet grass. We got wetter on Sunday, a nice, sunny day with a nice breeze, than we did on Friday when it rained on us. We ate breakfasty food at a tiny diner in Fairfax after talking about that Thai restaurant we went to with George that one time we went whale-watching and then not really looking for it, and then organic ice cream.

Then I did AQ40 with Trinity. I think it was Trinity’s second time in AQ40 as a raiding team, but we’ve been 10-man farming the first mob over and over again (it’s a two-to-three minute fight) for brood of nozdormu rep, so most of us have a bug mount (or four). We killed the first boss, and downed the room of three linked optional bosses for the first time after a few hours of straight wiping, looked at Battleguard Sartura twice just to get an idea of what she’s like, did Onyxia, I got disconnected a bunch of times and they started it without me, and then they ended up almost wiping and 10manning phase 3. I probably deranked back down to 8 this week because I haven’t pvped. That sucks.

Monday: r and i got some one-day parking passes so angela, you can come visit whenever you want and park without having to move your car every two hours. we visited san mateo and ate at chevy’s where angela got carded but her license was elsewhere, which was sad. we played george’s new games.

Today: r started work. i need to get a job. i need to do something about the crack in my hydration pack that i have never used–rei should exchange/refund it, right? i want a hydration pack. i’m unsure of who to vote for in the primaries. i need to sign up for summer school. i need to pvp a lot. they’re changing the pvp rewards and i heard they’re adding a +healing mace to the gm weapon lineup.