joestump.net

I’m a huge fan of Seattle and, with great dismay, I announce I’m leaving this fair city for San Francisco tomorrow morning. The LandRover is packed and the trip has been planned.

The route will take us through Oregon to Eureka, CA on our leg. We’ll be taking our sweet time down HWY 1 along the California coast all the way to San Francisco from there. It should be a great trip along one of the most fabled roads in the country.

I’m not especially happy to be leaving the Pacific Northwest, but what do you do when the big leagues call you up? I’ll miss the mountains, living downtown in a place I renovated myself, my friends and the city I’ve grown to love so dearly.

Thanks for everything Seattle!

I think anyone who knows me would say, without a doubt, I’ve changed drastically over the last two years since moving to Seattle. I haven’t changed as a person per se, but I have definitely changed my lifestyle. Here’s a small list of things that my old friends from Michigan simply can’t comprehend.

1. I’ve participated in multiple 5k’s and triathlons.
2. I own a TV, but don’t have cable. I rarely watch TV and consume 90% of my media online.
3. I rarely drive. This last summer I was quite proud of the fact that I didn’t drive my vehicle for 3.5 weeks.
4. I don’t eat fast food for the most part.

Now reverse that list and that’s how I lived in the Midwest. The two there that my friends from Michigan are simply astounded about are not driving and not watching TV. This got me thinking as to how much of an impact my move to Seattle has had on the planet. So I took a quiz that calculates my ecological footprint to compare my two lifestyles. I’m happy to report that I’ve saved an entire planet by moving to Seattle! Well, not really, but my ecological footprint went from a score of 23 (5.2 planets to sustain my existence) to 18 (4 planets to sustain my existence).

So, this isn’t really something to cheer about, but it’s definitely an improvement. To top things off I really like the new me. I like training for triathlons, I like being ignorant of pop media and I especially like not having to drive everywhere.

Change is good.

Rebecca and I have been on a music binge lately. In order, by date, we’ve seen Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Kasabian, OK Go! and The Decemberists. In order, by best show, we’ve seen OK Go!, Kasabian, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and The Decemberists.

OK Go! is probably one of the best bands I’ve seen live. They rocked the house, sounded crisp and clear, had good crowd interaction and mixed things up with a short acoustic set. If they’re coming to a city near you anytime soon I’d highly recommend purchasing a few tickets. As a teaser here’s a clip I recorded during their encore.

Kasabian put on a great show as well, but they won’t be back in the states anytime soon. CYHSY put on a decent show, but nothing to get excited about, which is disappointing considering they’re one of my favorite bands and they absolutely rocked the house at Sasquatch.

This brings us to The Decemberists. Jesus, what a horrific show this was. Absolutely no crowd interaction and the band looked like a dead fish on stage. The show would have been great if I had closed my eyes, but that’s just like listening to the CD. Lame.

Continuing our music binge, Kay and I went to Neumo’s on Capitol Hill to see Seu Jorge and Jehro. You might know Seu Jorge from The Life Aquatic Studio Sessions. Both bands could be described best as tropical/reggae. Overall a darn good show, though I couldn’t understand a damn word that Seu Jorge sang.

Last night Kay and I went to The Crocodile Cafe to take in a show. We saw Missy Higgins and Ian McFeron. Overall, I give the show a good grade. Though I always give good grades to shows where I can hear what the singer is singing and the music doesn’t totally sound like ass.

First up was Ian McFeron, who played last year at Bumbershoot. He sounded a little bluesy and a little honkey tonk, but was fun to watch. I always enjoy someone on an acoustic guitar on stage who looks like they’re really enjoying putting on a show. His fiddle player, on the other hand, looked awkward and uncomfortable. She had this smile on her face that said, “I have no fucking clue what I’m doing here. I thought learning to play the violin would land me a rich husband.”

After a brief intermission Missy Higgins came on. You could tell because all of the lesbian’s wallet chains were clanking with excitement. Seriously, the minute this girl started playing the piano every short haired Emo girl in the place let out a sigh. Her Wikipedia entry says her music has been described as “bland and underproduced” and I couldn’t agree more. She sounded fine, but she never really achieved full jamfest, which disappointed me a bit because it almost felt like she was holding back. Never the less, she did end up belting out a few good songs.

As a side note, I drank some Flat Tire beer that that tasted like it had been laced with farts. Seriously, I don’t remember Flat Tire tasting that bad. Luckily, they had New Castle so I was able to clear my palate (as a side note to my side note, I had to Google the correct spelling of palate/pallete/pallet).

This last Friday I ran my first 5k with a time around 27:40 0:27:29.0 (I can’t seem to find my official time anywhere online I placed 272^nd out of a field of 345 or 66^th out of 75 for my division). Not too shabby considering I hadn’t ran 3.2 miles in forever and that I rode my bike a bit over 4 miles to get to the race, which wasn’t my wisest decision as of late.

At any rate, the run felt great and we had a great time at Norm’s after the race. Maybe by the end of the summer I’ll do something crazy like a half marathon or a sprint triathlon.

So Ian and I are walking from my place to Honey Hole to get some grub tonight when we see two guys walking in front of us. Both are pretty large rough looking banger type dudes. Both are wearing sweat pants and have their hats on backwards. One is wearing four sizes too small leopard print slippers.

I notice that both of them are checking out cars parked on the street and commenting about the cars to each other. At this point one of them walks up to an older Ford Taurus and kicks the tires and says to the other one, “This one looks like it’d be easy to take.” I think to myself, “There going to steal this fucking car!” Ian and I look at each other and start laughing because these two retards literally kicked the cars tires before contemplating stealing it in broad daylight.