I'm still listening to the WTMD countdown of the top albums. I was really surprised to see that Bjork's album Debut was several hundred albums ahead of Post. I have both of them, but I definitely prefer Post. In fact, I don't really remember the songs off of Debut, other than the really awesome last song where she is in the bathroom of some bar. Wait! There's the other one that is called Foghorns or something like that. What a good memory I have, right? Well, I haven't listened to the album since the beginning of college. Maybe tomorrow I will dig them out.

Happy Valentine's Day! This morning has been a fairly busy one. There were various problems with the computer, so I didn't get done with a lot of the stuff I needed to get done. Specifically, I am applying for a conference this summer. The application must be post-marked February 15 at the latest. I have to finish up my essays before tomorrow so I can mail it. The question that has me stuck is "What inspires you?" Argh! What a hard question to answer cohesively! Any suggestions on what to say?

I don't have any Valentine's Day plans for tonight. Trip and I will exchange our presents and on Saturday he's going to cook me a fabulous dinner. And we'll drink a bottle of champagne! And that's how I'll celebrate Valentine's Day -- on the 16th!

Well! The manager of WTMD visited and commented on my blog! Crazy!

The countdown of the top 897 albums continue, but I haven't had any other urges to pull out old music. Although hearing Hootie and the Blowfish (Cracked Rearview Mirror) and Toad the Wet Sprocket made me nostalgic for the mid '90s!

We had IKEA cinnamon buns for breakfast -- I have been craving them all week long, so we got them last night. I reheated them in the toaster oven and they were super tasty! Not quite as good and gooey as if you get them in the store, but I love their cinnamon buns! SOOOO TASTY and cinnamon-y.

Also, speaking of cinnamon buns, you should try the Ben and Jerry's Cinnamon Bun ice cream. Yum, yum! It's delicious caramel ice cream with a tasty cinnamon swirl and cinnamon bun dough. The dough part sounds gross, but it's just like cookie dough pieces, only cinnamon-y and delicious.

The local college radio station (WTMD) in Towson is doing a countdown of the top 897 albums of all time. It's definitely not the best idea, in my option, and the countdown has been kind of uneven. But last night they were playing Bjork's Post, which landed somewhere in the low 600s. I loved that album. I remember listening to it on repeat while I wrote bad fanfiction for Remember WENN. It was my inspiration! "It's Oh So Quite" just really did it for me -- the big band sound, the shouting, the quietness of it! What a fabulous song.

Now I just have to dig it out of my CD collection -- which is nicely reorganized in a tower! -- and give the whole album another listen.

My back is all painful and crispy today. I spent the day outside (11 hours!) on Saturday in the heat at the Virgin Festival at Pimlico. The Beastie Boys were AWESOME!!!!! And also deserving of many, many exclamation points. Totally the highlight of the day. I also saw Amy Winehouse, who was a total surprise in her kind of non-energy, Fountains of Wayne, fun but somehow I expected more, Incubus, good but I'm not a huge fan so I went to the bathroom and got food while they were playing, Ben Harper, excellent in a jam fashion, The Police, but only from a distance...but Sting had a lovely voice!, TV on the Radio, who I wish I had seen more of but I had to stay and watch the Beastie Boys finish their set, Modest Mouse, which was entertaining, and The Fratellis, who were okay but young. This year wasn't quite as much fun as last year, but to be honest, the Beastie Boys made it really worthwhile. They played some of their new instrumental stuff (fun live!) and lots of old stuff, including my favorites off of Hello Nasty (Body Moving and Intergalactic) and to end it all, Sabotage, one of my favorite songs! I also resisted the urge to buy a shirt -- and managed to not spend a ton of money. The most was spent on water and Gatorade.

The rest of the weekend was fairly low key. Trip and I went to the mall where I finally found a sundress for the summer! It was a little more than I wanted to pay, but I have been searching for this dress since MAY! That's practically three months of searching! Plus I got a really pretty grass green cardigan at Nordstrom Rack to match it -- and I'll totally wear the cardigan all the time.

I've got another 5K coming up next Sunday. My friend Angela and I are doing the 5K out at Boordy's vineyard. It should be interesting -- apparently it's a cross-country-ish race, which means hills and grass. I'm a little worried -- I've been running, but not perhaps cross-country prep. I do hills, but I hope the hills we have to run aren't terrible. I'm sure we'll finish, but it'll probably be a little bit slower than our usual time! Oh well, it'll be fun. And I think it'll be the last 5K I do for a while, maybe until Thanksgiving.

This morning I heard the one song that I could probably do pretty well at karoke on the radio. It's a catchy song, I know all of the lyrics but one little part, and best of all, it's not too high or too low. Nice mid-range song. And it's a popular karoke song -- at least in the UK.

"Why Does It Always Rain on Me?" by Travis has got to be an awesome karoke song. The cherry on the hypothetical karoke performance would be that my college roommates Jenny and Kelly and I have an interpretative dance that goes along with it.

A song is nothing without interpretative dance! Nothing!!

I won tickets!

I just got notified of a voice mail this morning telling me that I had won tickets to see Muse in Philadelphia! I entered the concert at the Travis concert and didn't expect to win. But I did!

The radio guy is sending me the tickets -- even after voicing his concern that if I wasn't going to use the tickets, he could give them to someone else. As if! I will totally sell them if I can't go because any money I make off of them will be pure profit! Mwahahaha!

I'm not even sure who Muse is -- other than some indie band -- but their opening act is the Cold War Kids!! And I love them. So I might convince Trip to go just to see the Cold War Kids and then leave so we can get home at a decent hour.

Sorry I've been a total slacker lately on the blog front.

However, there's lots of exciting news today!

Last night I saw TRAVIS in Philadelphia! It was an AWESOME concert -- they played a lot of their new stuff, but songs from all the old albums too. We were super close to the stage and I got to watch and laugh at Dougie, their bassist. He cracked me up, the way he was tapping his extremely skinny leg to the music and just kind of grinning. Trip and I went last night and got there around 8:40 pm. The show was supposed to start at 8 pm, so we thought that the opening act hadn't gone on yet...meaning that it was going to be a late night with the drive back to Baltimore still ahead. But Travis went on instead! I didn't really realize it until midway through their intro. We got up and started walking towards the front and this guy came up from behind us and put his arms around me and Trip. I thought it was a random guy, but then I noticed the bassist (he's the most recognizable, being taller and blonde) coming up. Then Trip realized that Fran Healy had put his arms around us! Squee!! I've been touched by Travis! The show was great -- they played for about an hour and fifteen minutes and then did an accoustic/non-accoustic encore, which included "Flowers in the Window," "20" (not my favorite, it's a hidden track on the US version of The Man Who), and "Why Does It Always Rain on Me?" I did the interpretive dance that Jenny, Kelly, and I made up back in 2000 when we saw them open for Oasis. It was a GREAT night. And I bought a T-shirt (of course!) -- from their new music video "Selfish Jean" that says "Music. Art. Jaffa Cakes." on the front and "Travis" on the back. Wee! And I'm not tired today, despite getting home at 1 am! Life's good.




The past few weeks have been super busy though. We met with our pastor on Tuesday for some wedding ceremony planning. I will also be involved with Confirmation again next year, and it looks like Trip will be too, to some extent. But it's really neat to start thinking about the whole service. It's the part that will probably stick with us the longest -- the whole vows and everything.

And there was the trip to New York City! It was really good, after a bit of a rough start. We got into Brooklyn and parked and were totally ready to get going on Friday, but had trouble with directions. Mainly, finding either the Brooklyn Bridge or Grimaldi's Pizza (which is near the base of the Brooklyn Bridge). We finally managed to find the pizza place, had a small cheese pizza to go, and enjoyed it at the base of the bridge. Tasty pizza, although I'm not a huge fan of the Brooklyn style pizza. It really hit the spot though! We walked across the bridge and meandered through SoHo, Greenwich Village, a smidge of Chinatown, the East Village, and a little of Tribecca. It was a hot day, so we took a couple breaks in Washington Square Park and Union Square Park before meeting Amy and Ana (and yes, we got lost going to dinner) for dinner at a Greek restaurant in Brooklyn.

Saturday we got tickets to see the matinee of 110 in the Shade, a super awesome musical! We had excellent seats, eight rows back. It was a really good old-fashioned musical with some awesome actors -- Audra McDonald as the lead and the guy who played the bartender on Northern Exposure. (Don't remember his real name or his character's name!) The musical made me laugh and cry and I would totally recommend it -- but the show closes at the end of the month, so hurry up! Also, to give away some of the fun at the end, it rains for real! In the theater!

After seeing the show, Amy, Trip, and I wandered around Central Park for a bit before heading back to Brooklyn to the Brooklyn Museum to catch a tiny bit of live music and some the exhibits. It was fun -- and I wish we'd been able to see more music! Then we headed back to Manhattan to see Ana's show (she's folk-rock-singer/songerwriter person) at The Living Room. We got some Middle Eastern food before the show -- I tried farafell, tasty but a little crunchy! Ana's show was fun and we got home kind of late.

Sunday was a relaxing day -- we got dim sum for breakfast at this really fun place in Brooklyn with pink table clothes. Amy picked out stuff for us -- made sure that we just got either vegetable or seafood. Apparently going with meat can be a little sketchy. And after seeing the Asian guys we were sharing the table with get some tripe, I agreed with her! It was super tasty and really fun to see these women pushing around metal carts full of dumplings and other tasty snacks. My favorite was a sesame ball with sweet rice paste in the center. Trust me, it tasted better than it sounds. Afterwards, Amy showed us the view of Manhattan from the Sunset Park in Brooklyn. Then she got to work and we headed to the Met to get cultured. Trip and I only spent about an hour there, but we managed to see a really interesting exhibit of Frank Stella "Art into Architecture" and modern photographs from their collection. The photographs were my favorites -- they showed very ordinary things from life that the photographers had managed to find something interesting in and could get this across to me, the viewer. I wish I had the eye for detail that they did! Although it took longer than we thought it was going to, Trip and I went to the Magnolia Bakery in the Village to get some cupcakes. They were quite tasty, although I don't know if I would buy the red velvet cupcake again. Frosting is what I look for in a cake, and the red velvet frosting was a little lighter and fluffier than their ordinary buttercream, which was divine!

We finally got on the road back to Baltimore around 6:20 and I was home by 10 pm. But on Monday morning I was feeling totally overwhelmed and tired from all the activity. So I ended up taking a personal day and staying home. It was very relaxing -- a good change from the hustle and bustle of our vacation -- and I managed to get some things done (grocery shopping, cleaning).

Tonight looks like it should be fairly relaxing. We're going to check out an apartment in Towson, but that's it!

Hopefully the next update won't be so long, but I've just had so much exciting stuff happen recently!

This week has been busy, especially at night.

Trip and I got our pictures taken for our church directory last night. We're having them put in together, even though when the directory comes out in September, we won't be married yet. But it was fun. I found out that I really don't like pictures where people are staring off into the distance. It reminds of the poster from the 40-Year-Old Virgin where Steve Carrell is staring oddly off into space. It's just kind of creepy. But we get a free picture for ourselves -- how pretty!

We've also started to look at apartments. I think it'll be an interesting process, trying to decide where to live. There are just so many factors to consider -- if we live in the city, car insurance would go up, but the cost for my commute would probably go down. If we live in the county, we need to be near public transportation AND an easy way for Trip to get to work. Plus I really want to live somewhere with a washer and dryer in the unit and ideally we'd like a fitness center (this is if we go with an apartment complex). It's enough to drive me crazy!

I'm starting to get excited for my trip to Boston. It should be fun -- I'll have the conference on Thursday and Friday and will get to spend time with Jenny H. over the weekend! I've been to Boston before, but this time I'll be on my own for a bigger portion of time. So I'm working on familiarizing myself with where things are located in relation to my hotel. Fun stuff!

Also, TRAVIS put out a new album and they are touring! They're in the D.C. area in July, but tickets are $40 (a little pricey). Trip says they're in Philly a little earlier and tickets are only $27.50, but I wonder if the drive to Philly will be worth the extra $12.50 we'd save on tickets. I don't know... But yay! Travis!!!

Here's a fun goal for the month of June/July: I'm re-reading the Harry Potter series. I've already made it through the first one and started the second one. I should also watch the third movie, since I've never actually seen it. The books are quite entertaining!

It's been a busy day off. I met with a florist this morning. She was probably more unorganized that I expected (although that is a sign of creativity), but super enthusiastic about all my ideas and everything. And it was a short meeting!

We got our carpets cleaned this morning -- they're mostly dry now. And they look really nice! We might not lose all of our deposit due to the ugly carpets.

I went grocery shopping and got a soft pretzel at Target. It wasn't the best pretzel ever, but I really like getting them for lunch on my day off. Tasty!

I also made a loaf of brown soda bread. It just came out of the oven and looks quite tasty! I think it'll be good with jam and butter for breakfast. It's made of a 50-50 blend of whole wheat and regular flour. I found the recipe on Epicurious, which is my go-to site for fun new recipes. I found the most awesome salmon recipe there -- it's basically a salmon fillet with some mustard on it wrapped with a piece of bacon. Broil for 4-5 minutes on each side and enjoy! Super tasty, especially with sauteed spinach.

Next week should be a good week for work. I work Monday, Tuesday, off Wednesday, work Thursday, off Friday, and work Saturday. And then it's a two day weekend! Of course, I'm going to a wedding in Ocean City, NJ on Sunday, but it should be fun, even with the traveling.

Tuesday night we're going to see the John Butler Trio at Sonar. They're really quite good -- like the Dave Matthews Band of Australia. Only not so...DMB-ish. My impression is that John Butler is a really good musician -- he plays a bunch of different instruments and sings quite well.

Oh! Travis has a new CD out -- The Boy With No Name! It's quite good - a return to their old form. I really like their single Closer, and several of the other songs are quite good too. I hope that they tour in the US -- I'd really like to see them live again!

Mmmm. The bread is tasty! I hear that it's better after cooling, but I was hungry! Yum.