Summer Catch-Up Post

So the blog has taken a back seat to the convenience of twitter and facebook for most of the summer. Here's a highlight reel of what I've been up to since getting back home after NodeConf over Independence Day weekend.

Gora Gora Orkestar had a pretty busy gig calendar in July/Aug/Sept. The band is sounding pretty good these days. We played Orthodox Food Fest again, The Meadowlark, and the Underground Music Showcase. The UMS gig had all the warning signs of a crap gig. It was a late Sunday night gig closing out the festival. The band before us had only a handful of people in the audience, and the general scene on the street was fairly quiet. However, we decided to play a few songs on the sidewalk to try to drum up some interest and it worked! We quickly built up a solid crowd and then brought them into the venue, packed the place, and had them dancing arm in arm in no time. We also played a Biergarten gig and the Taste of Colorado in Denver. Our vocalist Kate was sick for that gig though, so it was a bit tough, but the crowd seemed to like it well enough anyway.

Most of my energy in September was focused on the Fractal Tribe production of Lucid, our circus theater piece that had six shows in the Boulder International Fringe Festival. This was a really fun project. I did some silent acting and a tiny bit of acroyoga. We performed at The Dairy Center for the Arts performance space, which is a much nicer venue than The Boulder Circus Center where we had the initial run back in April. It was fun doing those, the show was stronger this time around, we always had solid audiences, and there were no significant technical or performance issues. We ended up winning an encore performance on Sunday to bring it up to 7 total shows.

Also in September both Shannon's parents and my parents came out for separate visits. So we got to meet each other's parents. My parents were out for my birthday and we had a fun family party. Earlier in the day during my birthday Piper and I gathered some friends to play in the creek by Scott Carpenter Park, get froyo, then play arcades at Press Play Bar.

Also in August I was doing some more work on SparkRelief, trying to get a major overhaul I've had in progress since the winter finally deployed to production. During one of our work sessions a cup of tea was spilled directly across my macbook's keyboard. It resulted in unrepairable damage with several keys broken. After a lengthy diagnostic process I decided to just get an external bluetooth keyboard for it and give it to my friend Clarice so her daughters could use it. I got a new macbook pro 15", which is very nice although it would have been great if my 2010 model lasted long enough for the next generation of Intel Broadway chips to come out.

This weekend I was in Philadelphia for my cousin Andrew's wedding. It was the fanciest wedding I have been to yet. It was great to see all the family and celebrate. After the wedding I took the train up to Poughkeepsie to visit with Chris and Liz in their new house. On Monday Chris and I hiked Mount Beacon then Liz joined us for dinner crepes and a special excursion to The Matchbox Cafe for artisan cookies, which we brought home and ate in the back yard on the cedar swing bench with a fire going in the fire pit. Yesterday we did a group hike all around Mohonk, lunch at the fancy buffet, and then a rock scramble. Then we checked out the gardens, got afternoon tea and cookies, and sat on the rocking chairs on the enormous porch. That setting is so fantastic.

Today it was all travel. Chris dropped me at the Metro North station in Poughkeepsie and it was Metro North to Grand Central, MTA to Penn Station, NJ Transit to Trenton, and Septa to the Philadelphia airport. I'm on the plane now and I've been in transit for 11 hours so far with probably 4 to go.

Speaking of transit, Shannon and I are embarking on a long trip to Southeast Asia one week from today! I'm pretty excited. We've been trying to do enough planning, research, and booking, but there's still a lot to do before we leave for Thailand next week. We've been training bouldering at The Spot pretty consistently the past 6 weeks or so, and we're planning to do a bunch of climbing in Thailand at Ton Sai, which is a worldwide destination for rock climbers. Expect more posts detailing the trip.

In other news my roommate of nearly two years moved out at the beginning of October. I'm probably going to have another friend Ian stay at my place while we're traveling and rent out some rooms via AirBnb. Not sure what the plan is for when I get back and have been thinking about possibly renting the whole place out and getting an apartment in Boulder.