Poets in the Park Recap, Concerts in Capitol Hill, and Outages

Concerts, Poets in the Park Recaps, and Tech Troubles

Here are some pics from our Poets in the Park adventures – which was great except for a tiny bit of wind and I had a bit of an asthma attack in the middle of my reading, and didn’t have my inhaler with me – I muscled through, but I can’t have been at my best. It was great to see so many friends from all over – some driving all the way from Kingston and Tacoma – and to hear so many great poets. There was even a mini-bookfair hosted by Poets in the park! I got to introduce my little brother and his wife to a lot of my friends, which was great, and my brother hadn’t heard me read since my first degree in college – so, about twenty years! Crazy! They seemed to really enjoy the readings, especially Elizabeth Austen and Kelli Agodon. (Below: the girls from Two Sylvias, me and my little brother and his wife, Kelli A and e, and my little brother and I checking out the bookfair!)

The OK Go concert was in a tiny venue – Neumos in Capitol Hill is I think the smallest venue I’ve been to for a concert, even for acts like Aimee Mann down in California, where she performs in smaller venues– and they had a teensy bit of technical trouble. I was worried about fitting in with the hipsters there, but I have to remind myself Seattle has a very low bar! (Life Lesson: stop worrying so much. Go have fun!) Anyway, the band seemed to have some trouble with their instruments, but they did sing a couple of their popular songs (I have to say that I like their older alternative-power-rock stuff better than their newer psychedelic funk stuff) as well as a duet from Les Mis, and the confetti cannons continued to function perfectly, as witnessed below. It reminded me of when Glenn and I used to go on dates when we were first dating (cough, Lisa Leob and Third Eye Blind Concerts, if that gives you any time frame reference) and also reminded me to get out into the “real world” and have fun more often. Seattle is a great music town, and has great acts in all the time – you just have to get out and go through the inconveniences (traffic, crowds, two-hour wait times, etc).

Speaking of going out into the “real world” – today I’ve had my phone, internet and cable out all day – darn lousy Comcast/Xfinity Service – a strangely helpless feeling, one I never got when I had a landline phone. And of course today I planned to send poems out and be actually productive (given the rest of the week was a wash for that sort of thing.) I’m actually thinking of going back to landline phone service, because the cable goes out frequently and has poor connection quality. (As a former telecom worker, I probably notice these problems more, and sound quality especially annoys me!) Plus, they’re better in emergency situations, when the cable would definitely go out and cell phone signals would be jammed. I was forced to be out of touch with the world for a little bit today, which felt more frustrating than relaxing (I guess I’m not one of those people that is all – oh, I’m going on a tech holiday, no phones or television, it so great!) The only thing it is good for is staunching the flow of bad news in the media, which has been pretty bad lately. So, I’ve caught up on some reading, done some chores around the house…and am so ready to have my cable/internet/phone working again! I’m posting this from Woodinville’s Barnes and Nobles, for God’s sake! What is this, 1992? #firstworldproblemsIknow

Anyway, I’m looking forward to a quieter week, catching up on and writing time, just getting out into the summer wilderness and having some fun after last week’s relentless bashing. Maybe even sending out some more CV’s and freelance queries…The first week of August I’ll start my shots of Xolair, which should help control some of my autoimmune problems, crossing fingers that there are no complications or side effects and lots of helpfulness from that! So I’m feeling optimistic, ready to crush some stuff, etc…for now, anyway!