She’s Young and With It

On Saturday evening, we saw Joanna Newsom play Ys with two members of her band and the Austin Symphony Orchestra in the auditorium of a church, which is the location of most Austin Symphony Orchestra shows.

I suppose that I should confess here that I am not a Ys fan. We did not buy the CD after sampling a few tunes. Maybe I lack the attention span necessary for 10+ minute long songs. Even though I was not big on Ys, I wanted to see her play with the orchestra. And I am glad that I did. At first the whole thing was quite mesmerizing. She played the first two songs with the orchestra, the third song by herself, and then finished the last two songs with the orchestra. By about the fourth song, Clint and I both apparently started to lose interest. Our interest came back soon enough…

She was wearing a cute little low-cut backless number and every time she bent over to get water, she had to hold her top so as not to flash the audience. Her high heels also had something gold and shiny on them that kept flashing in the lights. I found a few photos on Flickr.

After playing Ys, there was a brief intermission and then she and her two person band came back to play some old and new tunes. For me, this was the best portion of the show! Again, I am the short attention span lady so short songs work better for me. The comedic portion of the show came when she strolled out with a bottle of liquor. Everyone giggled. After the first song, her tour manager ran out, grabbed the bottle of liquor, whispered in Ms. Newsom’s ear and then ran off stage. The audience was informed, “Apparently, I’m breaking a law.” Her bandmate chimed in to say that in her defense, there were no glasses backstage. After the second song, Ms. Newsom stated that she was parched and hoped that someone would bring her a glass of opaque water. Lots of giggles. Lots of giggles.

She ended the show with ”Sadie” and said that it was the absolute last song that she could play because that was the last song that she knew how to play.

Last night we went to see The Darjeeling Limited. It was full of good music and nice visuals as one would expect it to be. A very nice weekend! For Halloween, we will be seeing Master Pancake Theater do Halloween. Fun times. Fun times.

First and foremost:

I have decided to temporarily close up Young and With It Industries. This will probably be a permanent closure, but for now we will just say it is on hold.

If you read this regularly, you know that the last year has been very stressful for a number of reasons. We bought a house, we took in a total of four stray dogs (three of which still live with us), some argumentative and jerky neighbors moved in behind us, I planted bamboo which was controversial and contributed to the demise of a friendship, Clint switched jobs and it turned out to be a very bad decision, and… is there more? Probably, but that is a mighty fine list on its own.

Anyway, while lying awake stressing out the other night, I was trying to come to terms with some of my stress. The one item I kept coming back to was the idea of closing the biz. The business did not have tons of orders or anything, but along with all of my other daily stressors, I was finding it difficult to fit the business in without feeling overwhelmed or, sadly, resentful. Resentment is a very bad thing. Rather than continue in this manner, I need to put the business part of my life on hold for now.

Sometimes I just want to vegetate in the evenings and on weekends. Instead, I would find myself feeling guilty because I was not printing cards or getting an order ready for a shop. I work a full-time day job and I kind of just want to go back to having my evenings and weekends freely available without the stress of another job.

With that out of the way… I want to report that the weather is absolutely lovely this week. We are having a brief spell of perfect fall weather! Wind, sun and crisp, cool mornings. Yay!

I have been listening to a lot of Donovan in the car this week. I am very happy that we were able to see him play live in a church during SXSW.

That is all for now… I think.

I signed two dogs up for dog training today. Callie and… Sherman. The training begins in December. Sherman definitely needs the training and for just a few bucks more, Callie can have some formal training too.

What does this all mean? I am not sure.

When I called to sign them up for training, I asked a few questions because we had a really bad dog training experience with Neko. One of my questions was something like, “Does the trainer ever make the humans in the class act like dogs?” The gal on the phone asked, “You mean, like wear a leash?” I responded sheepishly, “No, the trainer we used before would make us do things like talk in a dog voice to another person.” She said, “Um, no, that sounds like an interesting approach though.”

Yes. Interesting.

Sherman came back to live with us last night.

I made vanilla cheesecake crunch top cupcakes on Sunday.

I slept, for just a couple of hours, in my contacts and clothes last night. I was too busy stressing out about dogs and too many kids playing basketball behind my fence to sleep like a normal person.

Sad face.

2007 can suck it.

I have so very much to tell you.

I have several thoughts on the city’s approval to move the animal shelter. I was a proponent of the move so I am pleased with the decision. Thoughts to come…

Roscoe P. Sherman has gone to a new home. Roscoe P. fit into his new home in every way, except that he was terrified of the stairs. We had some marathon dog training sessions this weekend. Neko even made a new friend… with a child! This is pretty much amazing on its own.

My car broke down at Whole Foods.

We arrived home Saturday night to the largest alley party that we have seen yet. There were at least two moonwalks set up (one at my favorite place of all – Super Alley Fun House) and different music coming from at least three houses (including, of course, Super Alley Fun House). After a long day of trying to get Roscoe P. Sherman to go down stairs, the last thing we wanted to do was listen to a mixture of rap, tejano and contemporary 80s soft rock music. Our dogs had been stuck inside all day, but there was no way we could let them out with all that chaos. They would have barked like lunatics. We left and took the dogs to the park. I called The Police on the way to the park.

Did I mention that these were children’s parties? We walked down the street to look because the loudest music was the rap and tejano music blaring from two different carports about halfway down the street. There were tons of children and streamers and balloons.

After the park, we picked up a pizza and arrived home around 10:15. The damn music was still blaring, so freaking loud that we could hear the thump inside our house, over the tv. Super Alley Fun House had shut down already and deflated the moonwalk by the time we got back. It is possible, I suppose, that since their house was the address I knew, The Police came and shut them down but left the others down the street going. This would be weird because the other carport alley parties were much, much louder than Super Alley Fun House. Maybe The Police never came. Anyway, we walked down the street and peeked into the alley. There were people booty dancing in the freaking carport!

We called The Police again. This time the parties shut down.

I have a few thoughts on this:
a) If this had been going on during the day, I would have been annoyed but I probably would have ignored it. We were not home all day, so it may have been going since early afternoon.
b) They could have turned the music down when it got dark.
c) The alley is a public road. It is just not cool to park a whole bunch of cars up and down the alley. Not to mention, the folks on the other side of the alley seem unable to comprehend that the grassy area behind the fences on our street belong to the homeowners. It is just not nice to park your car on someone else’s property. Plus, when I got up on Sunday, a giant truck was totally blocking the alley. Cars would not have been able to drive through, which means that they likely would have driven on the grassy area behind someone’s fence.
d) To sum it up, I am just fed up with the whole lack of respect for others that come from a large number of the folks who live in the houses that back to the alley behind our house. If the moonwalk and party do not fit into your yard, maybe you should not have a moonwalk? Just a thought.

Franklin Baboosh, Esq. has to spend the day at the vet today. He lost some weight. Please keep your fingers crossed for him. We are very concerned.