Oogly boogly oogaboo!

UPDATE: Pir8jokes.com, the world's premier resource for all jokes pirate, is now taking submissions. Fill'er up!

(If you're not interested in hearing an enormous story about my weekend you should just skip to the bottom.)

Thanks for the birthday wishes everybody! I had an incredibly fun weekend, the most fun I've had in the longest time. My birthday night Garbage concert was cancelled, doggonit, so Caireny and I were left to our own wits to find a suitable birthday activity. At the Cha-Cha we decided to head down to Ballard where Caireny would show me around, as she's had some experience there. The Robert-Smith-look-a-like we befriended assured me that Garbage wasn't meant to be, but something else was. Turns out he was very right.

My new favorite place is the Sunset Tavern in Ballard. We went in there, and what was happening? 'Guilty Pleasure' night - bands playing songs you secretly love. In my case, they were songs I love not-so-secretly. The first band we heard introduced themselves a little something like this...

Ladies and gentlemen, in the late 70s nd early 80s, there was a band that changed music as we would know it forever.

This band had drums... like THUNDER! (boom boom)
Keyboard... like a symphony! (bzzat-zaaat)
Guitar like an electric knife that cuts the air! (bweedle-dee-bweee-yee-yeee!)
Bass like the hammer of Thor himself! (twum twum)
...and Steve Perry.

Ladies and gentlemen... we are... JOURNEY!

And that's really the best birthday present I could ever hope for. To hear Anyway You Want It performed live. God it was great. That was their only song too, which I thought was pretty funny. Other bands covered Toto, Prince (an acoustic Little Red Corvette), and Bryan Adams. I think I went to school with the guy who did Bryan Adams - Nolie, was that you?

Saturday night I went to the Rickshaw - a dirty little Chinese food place form the 70s, but one of the best destinations for Karaoke I've ever been to. It was great! Nancy gave an amazing rendition of Killing Me Softly, James impressed us all with Dancing With Myself, and I started a dance party with the Tom Jones classic It's Not Unusual. So much fun! We were dancing around, dancing with strangers, Science and Ohio-Jason acted out Total Eclipse of the Heart as a very active duet. Total fun. Later that night several of us restricted our speech to only caveman words. Me talk like caveman. Me also see accountant coworker at bar. Me think weird, me think out of context.

Prior to that I went to a birthday party for my friend's one-year old Evee baby, and then to check out the Ballard Artwalk, featuring James! That is the third James I've interacted with this weekend. I even bought one of his smaller pieces (the one that says 'Mundane" under the Seattle photos area). Came with a free CD of his! I put it into CDDB, categorized under Easy Listening -> Lounge... hope that's ok.

My last fantastic event was today when I attempted to get into the sold-out Moisture Festival. I was riding Spokey down in Frelard and saw a piano on the side of the road! I pulled over, looked to see if anybody was around, and started playing it. It was really worn and old, and a bit out of tune, but it was still a working piano. Shortly afterwards a man appears from nowhere and says "I caughtcha! I caughtcha red handed!" Then he tried to sell me the piano. It's actually a decent deal - it doesn't look like much, but he'd sell it for as much as it takes to weld something (I'm thinking no more than $200-300) and then needs to be tuned, which he says can be done from a guy he knows for $100. If I had a place for a piano to go I'd take it. He was the forth James I've interacted with this weekend, hiding behind the moniker of 'Jim'.

The Ravioli Station is one helluva restaurant. They played Rocky Horror, Royksopp, and Duran Duran in the time I was eating there tonight. They have a heated bar!

Now that I'm 23 I'm finding much more inspiration to get back into school, for a chance of getting a degree before I'm 30. Andrea's going to help tutor me tomorrow in preparation of a placement math test I must take - maybe I can start the process before the end of the month! That'd be good for me.

I took a bunch of photos today, but unfortunately don't have a gallery for them to show you fine people. I do have a gallery, actually, but it's not quite up to spec for this site. Maybe soon. Here are a couple more photos:


Carwash statuary at its best.


The aforementioned piano. Spokey cameo.