The Cat Empire

I shot my first concert with an official photo pass last night. I brought Macy, one of my oldest friends, along to be my wingman. Every girl needs a wingman when out in bars or at concerts. And a good wingman knows when to intervene and when to stand by and observe quietly. Macy did pretty good, although once or twice she was completely lost in her mad dancing in the crowd. But I'll cut her some slack because she's got a 2 month old baby and an 18 month old toddler. She needed some mad dancing in her life.

So, the band, The Cat Empire. Very nice. Six guys from Australia, the sound is kind of a jazz-ska-rock thing and they did some jamming as well. I have a soft spot for jam bands. And really, any band with a trumpet player is alright in my book. These cats were energetic and tight together. The music was great. I went in to it having only heard a few sound bits from the web. I went to the show only because I was given a photo pass and put on their guest list, so I didn't have to pay for the tickets. A free concert is always a good thing, nothing to lose. But I think I'll buy their album because I really enjoyed it and it's something different and it's time for me to have something different. Their music is completely danceable and in fact it is very difficult not to dance. But taking pictures and dancing don't go well together, so I didn't dance much.

I did take a lot of pictures, once I got the photo pass that is. It wasn't at the box office as it should have been so I had to find someone with the band to sort it out. Dan, with the band (Tour manager?) was more than helpful and got it all fixed for me. Turns out people ask you weird things when you have any sort of access pass. In summation, no, I can't get you backstage or on stage or in the singer's pants. I'm just taking some pictures for them, sorry. Having the permission to run amuck at a concert with a huge bag of camera junk and the freedom to take pictures was great. I climbed up on stage over on the sides and shot from there. The security guard, who used to be a formidable hurdle for me at concerts, got me a chair so I could climb up on the stage easier. All because I had a little green pass. I liked that a lot. I want to do it some more.

I've got another pass to shoot at Rocco DeLuca and The Burden in August. I only get to shoot the first three songs at that one, but that's better than nothing. In the end, if all I get out of this is admission to concerts for free, that would be just fine. I love concerts and I really enjoy taking pictures of musicians doing their thing because it can be so beautiful to watch. But wouldn't it be cool if some of the pictures were published?

Rodeo and sunscreen

We went to a rodeo Saturday night. It was okay until the calf roping event began. The kids did not like that at all, in fact Hayden was downright offended and said the cowboys were stupid and why is tying a calf up a sport in the first place? I didn't have a good answer for that.

We've been using lots of sunscreen lately and prior to the summer really kicking in I bought a bunch of this spray suncreen. The label claims it goes on in an even mist and hooray you don't need to rub it in! I thought, hey this will be great. It will be really fast to get it on everyone and I can get my own back. Yeah, this stuff sucks. The spray is really wide so it goes everywhere, you really have to do it outside. So since the spray is so wide you waste a bunch of it if you are applying it to small 4 year old boys. And the coverage, not so even. That's apparent by the weird spots of horrible sunburn I got last weekend. So, I end up spraying it into my hands and rubbing it on. Brilliant.

Actions and brushes

I used some of the actions for RAW conversions on this. And then added some brushes that I got from Designfruit.

Camp

My kid is at camp this week. She is having a blast I'm sure, but we miss her. She is the fourth one from the left.

Food spending, revisited.

Well, we've done so much better at not eating out in the last week! I'm impressed with my constraint. No Starbucks or Bruster's! Kevin and I did go to a music festival type of concert on Saturday and spent quite a bit of money. I mean, seriously, $10 for a 24oz beer? What the fuck is that? $6 for a salty pretzel and $8 for a small personal cheese pizza. Good Lord! But what can you do? I mean, the beer, you must have that right?

Anyway, other than that, not a whole lot of eating out. Well, wait a minute, I did drop a large sum of money at Macaroni Grill last Friday when I took the preschool teachers and directors from the boys' school out as a gift from us. Those teachers, they like the wine and really who can blame them?

I joined a group of people at work for a weight loss contest. I joined because they needed one more person for our department and I am highly competitive. Yeah, I don't need to lose much weight but I could certainly spare 10 or 15 pounds! So, I've eating really well (aside from that pizza and beer at the concert) and I ran (well, mostly) 2 miles last night. I'm in this for the big prize!