{"id":1006,"date":"2009-03-01T23:07:13","date_gmt":"2009-03-02T04:07:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jayandcarissa.com\/carissa\/blog\/?p=1006"},"modified":"2009-03-01T23:07:13","modified_gmt":"2009-03-02T04:07:13","slug":"a-note-from-a-friend-and-a-two-concert-weekend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thisishappystuff.com\/?p=1006","title":{"rendered":"a note from a friend and a two concert weekend"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" title=\"leah letter\" src=\"http:\/\/lh3.ggpht.com\/_ETB_wSU3fUw\/SasIssvlQ9I\/AAAAAAAAKjc\/YnzTHmWRN-Q\/s800\/IMGP7110.JPG\" alt=\"\" width=\"443\" height=\"295\" \/><\/p>\n<p>yesterday, as i was recovering from a possible migraine (nausea, headache, bleh) mr. happy stuff brought in the mail and told me that i&#8217;d gotten a letter.\u00c2\u00a0 i opened it and it was a note from a small friend of mine in minnesota.\u00c2\u00a0 apparently, according to her mom&#8217;s accompanying note, she had gotten some new stickers and decided she wanted to write me a letter.\u00c2\u00a0 in her own handwriting, she says, &#8220;my cousin calder gave me a book called &#8216;meet the cheetahs.'&#8221;\u00c2\u00a0 she loooooooooves cheetahs and i&#8217;m a librarian, so this is very important information for her to share with me.\u00c2\u00a0 :)\u00c2\u00a0 it made me smile and was the perfect antidote to my rotten headache.\u00c2\u00a0 what a lovely letter!<\/p>\n<p>now for the concerts:<\/p>\n<div>we attended two very different musical concerts this weekend.\u00c2\u00a0 the first one featured <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jonathancoulton.com\/\">jonathan coulton<\/a>* and the opening band was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.paulandstorm.com\/\">paul and storm<\/a>**.\u00c2\u00a0 both were very silly bands (reminiscent of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tmbg.com\/index1.html\">tmbg<\/a>, early <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bnlmusic.com\/\">barenaked ladies<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fruvous.com\/\">moxy fruvous<\/a>) and it was a hilarious show.\u00c2\u00a0 probably the most surreal part of the concert for me was the audience.\u00c2\u00a0 composed almost entirely of computer geeks (my own dear husband included) and people dressed in &#8230; very interesting clothing&#8230; i think the most bizarre part was that neither one of us recognized anyone in the audience (a rarity in this town and at that venue), and yet we didn&#8217;t feel particularly out of place there.\u00c2\u00a0 i mean, i actually got most of the musical references and jokes&#8211;even the obscure ones were usually about bands that i actually knew pretty well.\u00c2\u00a0 hmmm&#8230;.. they may have to go on the list of &#8220;concerts we have to go see if they&#8217;re ever in town.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>the second concert was the next night and was at our church.\u00c2\u00a0 it was a choir concert by the college choir of our alma mater.\u00c2\u00a0 having sung in that choir for years, it was interesting to be on the other side of the equation&#8211;listening to the group, not being intimately familiar with the music that they were doing, not being in the midst of the group and breathing all of the music day in, day out.\u00c2\u00a0 it was a lovely concert with some very nice musical moments (although our church is apparently not particularly acoustically friendly), but i wished that i was in the group and singing with them.\u00c2\u00a0 actually, i think my favorite song was the &#8220;thank you&#8221; song that they sang to those of us who&#8217;d organized their dinner.\u00c2\u00a0 singing a &#8220;thank you&#8221; song is a college tradition, but the song changes from year to year, so this was a song i wasn&#8217;t familiar with, but i loved it and now i kind of wish i had the music for it&#8230;. that could probably be arranged.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>this weekend i also enjoyed tea and a wonderful, encouraging conversation with a friend who was traveling with the choir, and a visit from another long-lost college friend who came into town to interview for a possible job.\u00c2\u00a0 it was very fun to catch up with people i haven&#8217;t spoken with in ages and realize that we can just pick up the conversation, wherever we are in life, and it&#8217;s as though no time has passed at all.<\/div>\n<p>*my favorite songs were probably the ikea song and millionaire girlfriend&#8211;both of which you can listen to<a href=\"http:\/\/www.jonathancoulton.com\/primer\/listen\/\"> here.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>**they were rather bawdy, but hilarious.\u00c2\u00a0 fantastic banter with the audience (including prizes for people who caught their particular attention&#8211;the prizes were snack foods with &#8220;suggestive names&#8221; that they&#8217;d picked up at a convenience shop&#8211;like a pickle with the brand name &#8220;hot mama&#8221;).\u00c2\u00a0 let&#8217;s see&#8230;. i&#8217;ll recommend their <a href=\"http:\/\/www.paulandstorm.com\/songs\/\">celebrity singer impersonations<\/a> at the end of the 1st gumbo pants album.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>yesterday, as i was recovering from a possible migraine (nausea, headache, bleh) mr. happy stuff brought in the mail and told me that i&#8217;d gotten a letter.\u00c2\u00a0 i opened it and it was a note from a small friend of &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thisishappystuff.com\/?p=1006\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-la-la-la","category-stuff-that-makes-me-smile"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisishappystuff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisishappystuff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisishappystuff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisishappystuff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisishappystuff.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1006"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisishappystuff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1006\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1008,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisishappystuff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1006\/revisions\/1008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisishappystuff.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisishappystuff.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisishappystuff.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}