WHOCARESWGD

After leaving right after a half-day of work on Thursday, it's been a pretty low-key but entertaining Christmas family vacation. As soon as I got here I immediately started eating: catered Souplantation-style dinner Thursday night, homemade brunch and turkey dinner all day Friday, and leftovers in about an hour. Its really my favorite par since now that I'm older I don't receive a ton of presents like I used to. Now that the holiday madness is pretty much over, my plans are to pay off my hefty credit card bill, fix my PS3 (or possibly buy a new one, not sure yet :/) and build a new computer which will take its spot as the main entertainment source. I also want new Levis, but I'll shelf that for now.

Darick and I are getting up early tomorrow morning to head back to Santee, so see you when we return. I'll leave you with a pic of Kizzy's grumpy husband Spike:

As anyone would be thankful for, my long week of vacation finally came to an end. My finals were stress-free, I got 99% of my shopping done and still had time to record a new song with DK. I realized I feel somewhat disconnected without getting up every morning, so I neglected the blog for a while and haven't read much news. And even though I would like this to be my transition back into the swing of things, I have the two following Thursday and Fridays off for Christmas and New Year. Hooray.

As for this week, everybody's gifts are ready to go for our own Christmas exchange. Justyn's birthday is tonight, so everyone should be happy before the Kowalski's drive away to Tucson on Wednesday.

Today starts my official week off of work, which I desperately needed during summer when I scheduled it. I was tempted to postpone it since I have so much time coming up for Christmas and New Year anyway, but I also purposefully scheduled it during finals week. And now I'm glad I have the time to study, because so far that's all I've done today and there's still plenty more to do. In fact I'm at State right now and should be here for another 3 hours at least. I'm having fun though without the added work load from my job.

For the rest of the week, I plan on mostly studying for my huge stats final Saturday morning at 8:00. I also have to finish Christmas shopping, re-vamp my resume and get it up on the net. I hope to have an internship by the time January is over. Of course, no vacation should go without some fun too, so if anyone wants to plan some late-night hangouts, studying or not, I'm all for it.

And of course, the weekend was great too. The Chargers are now America's team, and the Holiday Hootenanny came through and was worth all 38 bucks. Although a lot of the sounds didn't translate well for anybody in that arena, Phoenix was really the most fun and lively band, but I would give it to Spoon for being the tightest and best sounding overall. White Rabbits was a nice new surprise, since we hadn't really heard much of them before the show but they played well live. Of course Vampire Weekend was a crowd pleaser, and the coolest part was hearing a lot of new songs that will probably end up on their next album. Manchester Orchestra I never want to see again, they were shit and I stand by that. Overall though, a great show and we'll see if they can top it next year.

Pre-Festivities


White Rabbits


Manchester Orchestra


Phoenix


Vampire Weekend


Intermission Shot (Everyone except Spoon)


Spoon

Just so you know, the podcasts are going pretty well and we already have three completed. We all agreed to take a little break since everyone is busy with finals, but we will resume after the holiday season madness is over. In fact, since we're waiting for our logo from Tiffany anyway, I'm going to hold off on hosting them until it is completed.

In other news, I and the other show goers are way excited for the FM 94.9 Holiday Hootenanny on Saturday. I've been listening to Manchester Orchestra and White Rabbits the last few weeks, who are pretty good, but I can't wait to see the more familiar (and better) Spoon, Vampire Weekend and Phoenix. Free BBQ before the show, and I'm sure we'll visit Porter's Pub while we're pre-gaming.

Also, I've gotten a good deal of my Christmas shopping done already and I hope to have it totally finished before the last day of Chanukah (the 19th). I have the entire week of the 14th off so I'm going to be busy with that, my two finals, and other fun I hope comes up.