The stretch of vitality

I just had the privilege of seeing a small-room show by Erin McKeown and Janet Feder in Boulder at Immersive Studios. I’m a big fan of Erin. I hadn’t heard Janet before but from what I can gather she’s sort of a classical guitarist gone rogue and she’s great if you are into interesting noisy and dissonant but songful acoustic guitar instrumentals. Erin blends a good mix of early jazz, blues, folk, and rock with a solid voice and great songwriting chops. Her guitar sound is a really rich and slightly brash hollow body electric. I am mostly familiar with a live record of her’s called Lafayette, and on that record her guitar sound on “Blackbirds” is my absolute all time favorite.

So Janet played mostly instrumental on a “prepared” acoustic guitar. “Prepared” is the term used in conservatories for when pianists put stuff onto the strings and otherwise futz with it under the hood. Janet had some really cool effects with hooking small metal bands onto the strings as well as tying a loose guitar string around one of the strung strings and then dragging the loose string along the regular string. She played in a bunch of unusual tunings and her songs had lots of nice crunchy harmonies while still being tuneful and sonically very interesting. It was also cool to watch how relaxed her left hand was and how lightly she pressed the strings to the frets. Definitely an unexpected pleasure especially since I’m primarily listening to melodic pop bands these days. It reminded me of my days at Oberlin.

The space is a small 60-seat theater in a recording studio, so it was very intimate and the sound was terrific. This reminded me of when I got to hear Charlie Hunter upstairs at Mo Pitkins in NYC. The audience was quiet and attentive with the one exception of one very young girl who was there at the beginning for a few songs before her parents’ delusions about this being an appropriate place for a five-year-old finally wore off and they carried her out.

In other news I went code complete on a major release as well as a subsequent patch release this week so there’s a good ten months of work or so that is done and done. Now it’s on to the next big project full steam ahead as always. Got some fun plans for the weekend as well. I was glad to be back to climbing and exercising this week as well after lounging around eating Oreos on vacation last week. Chris Wall turned it up on notch on his Group Fitness 2 class on Tuesday and made us do 12 sets of each exercise instead of the usual 9. I’m still a bit sore in the thighs and shoulders from that. I also did some lead climbing on Wednesday and tried out my new rope. Just need to wait for my backordered carabiners and I’ll be fully equiped for outdoor sport climbing.

Last Friday night I went to the Ogden Theatre in Denver for an Imogen Heap show with Erica, a new friend. Imogen was singing in full force and it was a really great show with a nice long set list. Her band sounded really good as well, particularly the drummer. She did an improvised song for a local charity, and audience-participation renditions of Just For Now and Hide and Seek. We got soaked in thick rain going back to the car, but it was overall really fun.

I went straight from the show to Bill and Leslie’s house. I showed up at 1am, rested a few hours, and then we left for the airport at 3:30am. We just had a lovely week on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina for our family reunion. This is our third year in a row. It’s lots of golf and tennis plus some swimming both in the ocean and in the pool and a bit of bicycling as well. There was lots of good food this year, which is featured prominently in the photos. It was a very fun age for Will. He can’t really say much of anything yet but he is happy and fun. He knows High Five and is good at walking around, carrying tennis raquets, and hiding in cabinets.

My sleep patterns were pretty disrupted so I spent two dawns out on the beach watching heat lightning and sunrise. The weather overall was pretty oppressively hot. We got a bit of a break this afternoon with some clouds and a cool breeze, but most of the week it was low to mid nineties, sunny, and humid. Of course we watched a lot of World Cup matches as well, all slunked in along a big wrap around couch and alternating not paying attention, with most people browsing the web on their laptops, with intense vocalization at the interesting parts of the match.

Photos from the trip are here.

I also bought a bunch of new toys! I got a set of my own climbing gear (a rope and some quickdraws) finally. I had been watching prices and got the REI outlt deal of the day – a 60 meter rope for less than $90 (normally they are in the $225 ballpark). Then, after about 12 years of using Linux on PCs as my primary operating system, I bought a MacBook Pro. However, this is mostly triggered by the fact that the EigenD software that accompanies the (hopefully) awesome Eigenharp Tau only runs on Mac OS X. So now shipping to me is an Eigenharp, an electronic instrument designed for live performance, which I have been lusting over for many months since they were first announced, and a tricked out MacBook Pro loaded with RAM and a 256 GB solid state disk drive. I’m hoping the conversion to Mac will be mostly smooth, and I think it probably will, but I’ll miss the awesomeness of the Debian package format and associated tools infrastructure and a bunch of other things. I’ll probably write a post about that on My Professional Blog in a few weeks.

Just a quick update on what I’ve been up to. Finally got over to The Spot last Thursday to boulder on their newly-added wall. It’s a nice addition. Friday I lifted weights at BRC, which made me still a bit sore for climbing outdoors on Saturday. We went up Boulder Canyon with a fairly large group to Avalon. I got to cross the creek doing my first Tyrolean Traverse, which was mildly thrilling (?). We did a bunch of climbing and I think I climbed my favorite outdoor route so far.

After climbing I met up with Michale and her friend Cecilia who was in town. We wondered around the Pearl St mall a bit and eventually headed home for a nice meal with broiled salmon and some good veggies. Of course we played some Guitar Hero as well.

Sunday we had a big pancake breakfast and then had a lovely drive out to Golden to hit the Heritage Square Alpine Slide. It was pretty fun, you get a really nice view of the whole surrounding area from the ski lift that takes you to the top, and it’s just $7, so overall worthwhile if you’re passing through. Then we headed back to Boulder, grabbed some loaner bicycles and some eats, and then headed over to Scott Carpenter Park for the B360 Bike Ride. We had fun riding all around Boulder with a big crowd and lots of free yummies from vendors at the end.

Finally got back to the Level 2 Group Fitness class at BRC last night and then rested for an hour before my climbing partner arrived for another ninety plus minutes of climbing. Next up is a highly anticipated Imogen Heap concert on Friday in Denver, and then Saturday morning it’s off to Hilton Head for the Pizzi family reunion!

So I’m up late listening to Charles Mingus’s album Let My Children Hear Music, and it is just overtly beautiful. I listen to this music and immediately envision a puling, organic ballet. The music itself sounds like a living organism. It’s just tremendous.

OK, now that that bit of jazz nerdery is over, here’s a quick update. Over Christmas I had a nice visit with the parents. Since I was flying in to Philly, they made a day of it and went in early to shop for bar stools then see a movie. Then we went to a very fancy restaurant called James to celebrate Mom’s birthday. The decor was great and the food and beer were pretty good. It was nice to have some time with just me and the folks. The Christmas festivities were good. My young nephew Will was exhibiting extreme cuteness.

I came back to Colorado after just three days and immediately hit the slopes at Breckenridge with Erin. They must have opened up a few new trails that day since we got to make a few fresh tracks. Over all for early season it was a very good day and we ended up skiing a pretty full day – more than I was anticipating. Then that Tuesday I did the CHAOS blue moon hike with Mags. It was before the official full moon, but still a gorgeous night. Clear and still and not too cold. It was a nice short hike with a picturesque section under some overhanging trees. Everyone brought something blue to share.

Michale and I spent New Year’s Eve at the Phoenix Asylum Speakeasy roaring 20s party, which was a good time. Many folks had impressive costumes. Saturday I hiked Mesa trail with a big Pizzi/Abrams crew, which was a nice early morning outing still leaving a full day ahead. I got a dual membership at both Boulder Rock Club and The Spot for the next six months, so I’ll be ready to do some serious outdoor climbing this Spring. I did yoga classes and climbing at BRC Monday and Tuesday and will do some bouldering at The Spot tomorrow. Michale and I are also starting to book a trip to Belize in February, which I am very much looking forward to, especially considering we are in our second severe cold snap of the season. It’s six degrees outside right now.

I went out to California for work again. I flew out to San Jose on Sunday, arriving in the afternoon, and took the rental car up to San Francisco to meet Pat. Rebecca and Tanya were also there. I hadn’t seen Tanya since Burning Man 2008 so I was glad she was home. Pat and Tanya have been roommates several months now but had only very slowly been furnishing their apartment, so they wanted to go to Ikea and pick up a few things, so I offered to drive them their in the rental car. I had just driven past it on the way up. We mistakenly went to the one in Palo Alto, a good forty-five minute drive south of San Francisco, which I had just passed on my way up, so it felt a bit silly. In any case, we went in there and as expected I found it a bit uncomfortable and crowded with families with hordes of children literally running amok. We breezed through and picked up just a few things. They couldn’t find any window coverings they liked in their budget and the book shelf they were going to buy for Marcia was out of stock. So with three small coffee tables and four folding chairs in tow, we headed up 101 again, stopping at a Best Buy along the way for Pat and I each to get some headphones. This time we hit bad traffic getting into the city, so we were a bit late for the “family dinner” we had planned with Marcia, Rebecca, Rebekah, and another friend of theirs. We stopped to pick up some food and drinks then ate together on the new coffee tables. I gave Rebecca a ride to her new nomadic residence and then again made the long drive down 101 to my hotel in Sunnyvale.

The week of work was both disappointing and exciting. We did a bunch of planning and realized we would fall quite short of the mark for our next release, and a formal procedure was started to notify interested parties that we would be dropping features from the release, so there was some stress and frustration associated with that. However, almost instantly after the announcement, the team started making huge strides of progress, so that got me excited that maybe A) we could still deliver the main functionality we were shooting for but B) people might not be constantly panicking about it.

Bernie and I took a very nice run at Rancho San Antonio park Tuesday morning. We saw some wild turkeys and enjoyed running on the curvy, hilly dirt trails. I met up with Ed one night to do some rock climbing. I gave him a crash course in belaying and he took the test. Administration of the test took longer than it should have so I figured he was probably not quite passing it, but apparently he was good enough to be permitted to belay me that night after some additional instruction from the gym staff, but not convincing enough to get the permanent “OK to Belay” card. We did some fun climbs though.

I was set to come back Friday night but a bit of snowy weather in Denver caused United to cancel my flight and reschedule me for Saturday morning. I ended up booking a rather weird and appealing hotel called the Domain Hotel on El Camino Real in Sunnyvale for that final night since my original hotel was full. It was dirt cheap – $50 – so I expected it to be basically a Super 8 type setup, but I was surprised to find it fully remodeled in a modern high-tech but weird decor and nicely appointed with sleep number beds, a fancy office chair, and actual wired ethernet. I’m not particularly skilled at describing the weirdness of the hotel, but let’s just say it was weird and odd and I liked it. However, I had worked from 6:30 am to 11:30 pm that day, scarfed down a turkey sandwich at the Denny’s next door, and had to gas up the car, return it, and get on an early flight so I went immediately to sleep.

Back in October when I went to hear the Kronos Quartet Cynthia and I got Boba Tea. I have a fascination with Boba Tea, and some of Cynthia’s friends that we met at the auditorium asked why I liked it so much, and I wasn’t sure, but I said something like “I don’t know. It’s just yummy and Japanese and weird”. And that made me realize that Boba Tea is just strange and random enough to be weird and delightful and I think these days I am quite delighted by things that are pleasantly weird.

Michale picked me up in Denver and came with me that evening to the Imogen Heap concert at the Fox Theater in Boulder. It was an odd show at 7pm because apparently they had double booked the theater so they gave Imogen an early show and had a second show afterward. It was fun to see Immi in person and enjoy her fetching stage presence. As with most of her live performances though, it was fairly lackluster. Her opening act had technical difficulties that prevented him from doing anything at all. And sadly the new Ellipse album is just not stellar. It’s certainly got some good tracks, but nothing more. Just some good tracks.

Sunday evening I had a meal with Jennifer in Denver and then took a swing dancing class at The Mercury Cafe. The band they had was called Impromptu Musique and they were “gypsy jazz” and quite good, especially the trumpet player.

This past week I had two fun climbing sessions Wednesday and Thursday with Stephanie and Safia, respectively. I’ve been working a lot and not doing much else, although it was good to do a little yoga now that I was back home. Last night I went with Michale and her friends Tollie and Zack to an America Indian Fry Bread Taco place and then to the Bindery | Space theater to see a very funny black comedy called “Big Love”. It was really quite great. It was a modernization of an ancient greek play and there was some great acting, singing, riding around on roller skates, and a constant swing between the macbre and serious grandious and the silly and humorous and humble. I go to very few plays, so it has been quite a while since I have enjoyed one this much. I also really like being very close to performers, and the theater had seating on three sides of a square stage at floor level, so it was very up close.

I’m composing this post on a flight to Newark. I’ll be in the NJ area until December 1. Tonight Marc is getting me at the airport and we’ll have Thanksgiving The Prequel with the band crew. I haven’t seen most of my old bandmates and their families in two years since last year I got a cold in transit and had to cancel the visit while I was contagious, so I am very much looking forward to it. Tomorrow it’s up to Mom’s for a big Italian Pronzo meal which I am also very much anticipating.

Oh man. Holy crap. This thing looks awesome.

Slight change of plans today but all for the better. (inside joke). I got to most of the Developer Day which was cool. There is a tech startup incubator company called TechStars in downtown Boulder that I wasn’t aware of. It is encouraging to know that it is there, though. I also got to meet Bruce Eckel, the author of the first ever book on computer programming I used (his Thinking In Java was the text for my now-infamous CS 150 class). We have a lot in common: java, python, colorado (with the implicit skiing, hiking, mountain biking), and Burning Man, so it was fun to meet him and chat briefly at the happy hour after his talk. I also went to the Google Boulder office where they were hosting a Python Unconference. As I said in my facebook status update “The fucking Google Boulder office has a fucking rock climbing wall in the fucking lobby”.

I hate emoticons. I can’t believe I used two in this post.

This was a very good weekend with a pretty good balance of activities. Friday was a fairly terrible day at work;I was consumed entirely by sideways firefighting and explaining to management that we won’t be ready to ship in two months. After that I went into Boulder to meet up with a friend for my curious obsession: bubble tea. Thankfully I arrived a few minutes early and could just catch my breath and unwind from work and try to let some of the frustrations go. It worked well enough that I could enjoy the evening but wasn’t really gone yet. We walked with our Bubble Teas over to Mackey to hear the Kronos Quartet play a concert of contemporary music. I really enjoyed all the pieces. They also did their signature piece: George Crumb’s Black Angels, which I also enjoyed hearing live. I rounded out the night with some buffalo wings, which I had a strange craving for.

Saturday during the day I exercised with yoga, weights, and swimming. I set another personal best: 65 laps, which is about two miles. It took me about an hour and a half or so which is about four different lifeguard shifts, apparently. Then I went to a party with Erin thrown for a bunch of her friends/family celebrating three concurrent pregnancies in their core group. Afterward we went to hear Galactic at the Fox Theater, which was a pretty good show and enthusiastically received by the Boulder crowd. The covered a Balkan Beat Box tune, which is unbelievably hip, and their drummer is the amazing Stanton Moore.

Today it’s mostly working from home on a Sunday, but I’m making some good progress which has been long awaited. Lots more good stuff in store for October.

I have it! Imogen Heap’s new album is out and I own a physical copy. However, I’m exercising delayed gratification and won’t listen to it until I’m on a nice long stretch of highway on the drive out to Burning Man on Sunday. Speaking of which, I bought a funny BMX dirt bike for the burn that is probably going to be a lot of fun to ride around on and do wheelies. It has pegs!

In more serious cycling news, tonight I biked Betasso Pass with Erin. That thing is pretty much God’s gift to the intermediate mountain bike rider. Really fun. It’s a short loop, so we did it twice.

Wow. Super fun weekend. Friday Erin and I met up with Elise’s crew at Lazy Dog for the tail end of Happy Hour. Then we grabbed some quick but tasty Tibet dumplings and scooted into the theater just in time for Public Enemies. Sadly it was crowded so we ended up forced to take the only pair of seats left in the front row. I thought the movie was a bit blah and too long. Hard to comment otherwise since we were mostly craning our necks to look at pores – the cinematography featured a lot of extreme close-ups of faces.

Saturday morning I met up with two folks from CHAOS and we drove up to Estes Park and climbed the Jurassic Park area. It is really, really gorgeous up there right now. Beautiful black water of the mountain lake, lush green pines, alien rock formations. My partners were wondering if the drive was worthwhile for me since I had to be back in Boulder just after lunch to make it to the music festival, but I was really pleased just to spend a bit of time there. I did get three climbs in and we were in the shade for two of them, which was nice.

Then I drove back home for a quick shower and meal before driving out to the Mile High Music Festival. I wasn’t sure I was gung ho about an all day affair, but it actually turned out to be really great. The vibe in the crowd was a lot of fun. It was really hot, and the headliners were hard core bands Tool and Widespread Panic, so it was lots of heavily tattooed and pierced girls in bikini tops and cut off denim booty shorts. The festival had a waterworks thing that was spraying the crowd with water, which was nice. I stopped and kicked a hacky sack for a while with a group. We were joined by a girl in a white bikini top, tons of big tattoos on her back, booty shorts just barely staying up, and converse. Her friend was in a long black dress which she hoisted up a bit to expose her converse sneakers when it was her time to hack. Their guy companion could hack impressively without spilling his completely full beer.

I only caught the tail end of Galactic, which I wanted to hear and sounded good, but it was just so much driving and I wanted to eat a big lunch at home so I wouldn’t need to buy much expensive food at the festival, so I missed most of it. I did hear some of Greyboy All Stars, who had two great songs and the rest so-so, G Love and Special Sauce, and Incubus. However, the surprise hit was Indie Arie. I have her “video”/queen song that I really like and it’s her big hit, but the show was great. After a terrible and delayed sound check, they finally got rolling and she spoke for about five solid minutes (of a 45 minute set) because she was upset and needed to get through it in order to put on a good show. She grew up in Colorado and went to school in Denver, so it was a home town crowd, but apparently she doesn’t gig much in the area. Anyway, her family was there to see her but she said her brother had gone out to the parking lot to get his cell phone charger and been arrested for scalping tickets, so her mother was at the police booth trying to get him discharged so they could make the show. She was pretty upset. So she wanted to sing a brand new song she wrote yesterday called “Life Is Good”. The musical director and keyboardist knew it, but the rest of the band didn’t. So the two of them quickly taught the gist of the song to the band and backup singers and then they immediately performed it. Pretty gutsy for a huge festival show! Anyway, that song was good and the audience joined in and then she did her big hit song as she was now feeling better. The crowd really liked the show and the authenticity of her performance. It was a nice and unexpected treat.

Then I moseyed over to the big stage to claim some ground for the Tool show. I haven’t seen them live and I had heard they put on a great show, and they didn’t disappoint. Of course I was pretty darned far back, but at least I didn’t need earplugs, although it was still super loud. The visuals were great and of course the crowd was totally into it. By now it was dark and the heat had given way to a perfect temperature. They played basically a “greatest hits” type set list, which was cool. Maynard James Keenan also had a funny comment after the first song. “Tonight’s performance is brought to you by the cool, refreshing taste of …” then a long pause. Is he doing an endorsement? Man I thought Tool was way above that stuff. “… boobies. …. Say what you will. Everybody likes boobies”.

Today I went and again biked Sourdough Trail, but this time with just Erin. It was again very challenging but fun. We went just a bit farther than last time. The plan was to go until the point at which I had turned back last week, but focusing on the trail I rode right past it without noticing, and only on the way back was I like, oh, here’s last week’s turnaround spot. We probably did an extra mile or so. Then we grabbed some yummy Snarf’s sandwiches back in Boulder and sat on the grass behind Boulder High and enjoyed them after pedaling up those monster hills all morning.

This afternoon I finally got a much needed nap. I have acclimated to another Colorado lifestyle aspect: I now get up earlier on weekends (6:30) then I do during the week, and I generally play longer days than I work (I was out “playing” from 8am to 11pm on Saturday). Anyway, the new mountain bike and the bike rack are working out great. I’m also loving the Rogue car. I’ve made great use of the extra space for bikes, furniture, people, tubes for Boulder Creek, shopping until the cart is full at Target, etc. Overall I’m really pleased with it.

More photos are here.

Tuesday morning I climbed my personal best: a 5.11-. w00t!

Thursday night I bought my fancy 3-figure mountain bike (as distinguished from my 2-figure mountain bike that was stolen last month). It’s still pretty much the cheapest thing stores in Boulder will sell, but at least it has hydraulic disc brakes and a shock lock-out. I also got real mountain biking shoes with clips and everything. Hopefully all this gear doesn’t backfire on me tomorrow when I ride with some CHAOS folks on a trail that will probably be way too hard for me.

So after I got the bike Thursday night and tested it out a bit I quickly grabbed a pre-show burrito at Illegal Pete’s. We saw some petty thief clutching what was presumably a purse being chased on foot by a policeman, who we cheered on even though it was clear with his bulky uniform and equipment belt he wasn’t going to be catching up with the nimble thief. However, he was barking coordinates into his radio so hopefully teamwork and technology prevailed. Then I went to Boulder Theater and heard the band Albino. It was a dual CD release party with The Motet. Albino is a great ten-piece afrobeat group from the bay area. This band played a very memorable concert at Burning Man last year on Wednesday in the saddle amphitheater that was right behind the Freedom Community camp. They will always have a special place in my heart for that. The Boulder crowd was of course way into it, so it was a good show. They played “Thriller” as an MJ tribute which was really fun. The horn section even did the zombie dance. At intermission the horn section joined up with the local Batteria Allegria and jammed while walking around amongst the crowd, which was a nice touch. Sadly I forgot my earplugs and even though I tried one gas station in the final minutes before curtain, I didn’t have enough time to buy some, so I had to leave shortly after The Motet’s set began because it was just too loud.

Today I began the process of meeting my new neighbors. I met three so far and hopefully tomorrow more of them will be home when I go ringing doorbells. It’s looking to be a good weekend overall.