Now, I should like to point out that when one of your jobs lives in the interwebs and can be worked on wherever, whenever, and the other is retail with no predictable schedule or ever more than a week or week.5’s notice, and your social life is more likely to include coffee shops and board games than bars and… well, whatever the “partying” sorts do, weekends are apt to pass more or less unnoticed.
Obviously, sometimes I do weekendy things on the weekends, but neither the schedule inflicted upon me nor the ways I choose to fill in the blanks make the fun stuff any more likely to occur on a Friday or Saturday night than any other time in the week! (Particularly since most of the time, I’m not entirely sure what day of the week it actually is.)
So, for me to have 4 legitimately weekendy weekends in a row is kind of impressive. And! This fourth weekend of awesome featured another awesome Marian Call show!
Crazy, several years of waiting/trying to get to one of her shows, and now I swing two in eight days!
This one was rather closer to home, at the MilkBoy Coffee just over in Bryn Mawr! I used to go to the MilkBoy in Ardmore all the time when I took the train home from school, (since it was just across from the train station, and I’d walk over for a coffee and a warm place to sit until my Dad came to get me,) but I’d never been to the Bryn Mawr one before… and frankly didn’t remember it existed, so it’s a good thing I checked the address!
Once again, I helped with the selling of stuffs, but it’s a tiny place and she didn’t bring much this time, so I was mostly free to just enjoy the show. And once again, a great show, complete with Jayne hats, the TSA-friendly rainstick, typewriter percussion, a feather boa and kazoo, and lots of witty, geeky, folky, jazzy goodness!
This one’s not a very good photo, but it just makes me giggle!
Afterwards, I was invited to join Marian; her very talented guitarist, Brian Ray; their host for the night, Donna; and another couple, for drinks and “Nibbles”, as the menu called it, at the conveniently located Verdad Restaurant and Tequila Bar next door.
That’s a place I definitely want to get back to – can’t speak as to the tequila, but the sangria was tasty, the atmosphere lovely, and the food was friggin fantastic. I had a Black Truffle Flatbread, which was smallish-but-not-unreasonably-so for the price, and absurdly delicious. The kind of thing you force yourself to eat slowly so the flavor will be in your mouth longer. Mmm… and everything I didn’t taste looked delightful too!
The highlight of the evening, of course, was not the meal, but the company! Marian is just as lovely to chat with as to listen to her music. Donna, it turns out, is from the same town as my family and works with the Bethlehem Mounties(!) on social media. Somehow a conversation about shoes revealed that Brian and I have both been to and loved Taiwan! All in all, a seriously fun evening with a group of seriously fun, intelligent, snarky, very nice people! Can’t wait ’til the next tour swings our way!
As promised, this weekend continued the sequence with yet another adventure, and this one a bit more of an adventurous adventure, being the sort that requires several hours of driving and an overnight stay. But to see Marian Call play at ThinkGeek headquarters with my awesome #NASAtweetup friend/co-conspirator @stephonee AND get to hang with Megan and Andrew, the travel was most definitely worth it.
Having finagled my way into the sold-out show by offering to help Marian out, I needed to get there early… which might have been more successful had I remembered that driving near DC at approximately rush hour on a Friday afternoon is a terrible idea.
Luckily, I was planning on stoping by Megan’s before the show, so I did have a bit of cushion time, and by giving up on that idea, I still managed to get to ThinkGeek a while before the show was to start, which was later than I was supposed to arrive, and much later than I planned to arrive, but still technically within the realm of “early,” which meant it was fantasmically earlier than I generally show up to such things. o.0
Marian Call live! (Finally!)
I was assigned to man the merch table, which was nicely situated on the side of the courtyard, so as to give me a pretty sweet view, so in between peddling cds and posters, the camerabeastie came out to play:
Jayne hat! For singing a song about Jayne.
This one, to be precise:
(Which, we soon learned, was not originally about Jayne, nor written by Marian, but fit him so perfectly, she adopted and adapted it!)
The crowd enjoying the showTypewriters are the best percussion instruments.TSA-friendly(er) rainstick!
For her tribute to YoSafBridge, she got out a feather boa and her best ‘bad girl’ attitude and sang us this!
We were also so very lucky to be the first to hear her new song, written as an entry to NASA’s astronaut wake-up song contest! (And would have won, if I were the judge! Been stuck in my head ever since!)
Dear ThinkGeek, please hire me.
After the concert and merch-selling wrapped up, Steph gave me the grand tour of ThinkGeek’s very entertaining office, including her natural habitat and many other intriguing sights. Definitely looks like an awesome/awesomely geeky place to work! *must apply*
Timmy, the ThinkGeek monkey, complete with Jayne hat.The coolest plant home ever.…well… read the sign.And of course, the Ninja Exit.Lots of Timmys! (Timmies? Timmyi?)Mythbusters Timmys!
(Also, remember the tent/canopy thing behind/over Marian in the pictures? Well… it may or may not have migrated into somebody’s office.) o.0
We then moseyed back to where the lurkers were lurking and lurked with them a bit (a very nice/friendly/ entertaining bunch!), eventually said our goodbyes, and I headed off to find Megan and Andrew’s place and acquire sleep. That I did, quite successfully, and spent Saturday hanging with those crazy kids.
A Trip to the Post Office (no really!)
When we’re together, our power of indecision is greater than the sum of its parts… or something… anyway, as usual, it took us a [very amusing] while to decide what we wanted to do, but eventually we ended up on the metro heading into DC.
We went to the Old Post Office Building (it’s actually called that– the “Old Post Office Building” (and has been since 15 years after it was built!)) and toured the Clock Tower, which has an observation deck with a pretty incredible 360 view of Washington DC:
The clock tower also houses the Official Bells of Congress– the ringing of which, apparently, is both a regular occurrence and quite the ordeal! There’s a whole organization of “change ringers”… there are different types of “peals,” ranging from a couple hours long to pretty-darn-near-forever… and this supposedly attracts visitors from all over! Who knew?!
Also, BSoD. I imagine there was supposed to be a very informative presentation of some sort running here, but their display wasn’t cooperating… which may have had something to do with the fact that it was actually just an old Dell laptop with busted hinges hanging from chains, with a printout in a plastic binder sleeve taped on the keyboard.
There was also a barbecue festival going on that weekend which we thought might be worth checking out. ^
It cost $12 to get in, so I assumed we’d at least get lunch’s worth of BBQ included in the ticket… but all that was actually included were a couple samples, most of which seemed to be toothpaste…? We’d paid a decent meal’s worth to get in, but we’d have to pay it all over again at one of the stands to actually get that decent meal. What free food there was was tucked away in the “sample tent,” the line for which was so long and folded back on itself several times, that we couldn’t see where the end of the line even was, nor what sort of samples were available to decide if they were worth attempting that sort of a line!
It was super crowded (much more so when we got there than it looked from above earlier), rather too hot and sun-blasted, not even a cheery atmosphere, and basically a colossal rip-off! After we walked the length of it a couple times, we finally found a stand where we could actually taste some BBQ (on sweetbread the size of a small dinner roll) and it was tasty, but by then it was pretty clear we were never actually going to get our $12 worth of anything, and it was generally unpleasant enough being in there that we just gave up and left.
Just outside the fence, we discovered an ice cream cart, bought an overpriced soda and some strawberry popsicles (the awesome kind with legit chunks of strawberries frozen into them), found a nice shady patch of grass to sit and eat them, and it made it all better! That was sufficient adventuring for the day, so we hopped back on the train and headed back to their apartment for dinner and some bumming around. We watched “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” which was both really good, and amusingly appropriate, though I am not Mr. Smith.
Some adventures are the fun kind, others are… well…
The next morning, armed with The Latte of Happiness from the Starbucks in the bottom of their building (*envy face*), I headed home, and made most of the journey uneventfully. The better part of the way back up through Maryland, however, I stopped for gas, and when I got back in the car and attempted to start it back up, it decided not to. Seemed like the battery was dead, which was odd, since I’d been driving for two hours just fine, and stopped for all of four minutes, but whatever. Thankfully, the gas station was at one of those full service rest stops, and thus included a garage with a mechanic, who gave me a jump start and sent me on my way.
All seemed peachy… for about a mile. Then Charlie (my poor little car) started acting all sorts of not-thrilled.
When I say valiantly, I mean it. Here you see the tools required – including the hammer & dollar-store butter knife.
The middle of a 4-lane freeway didn’t seem like a great place for Charlie to develop a mind of his own (or lose it, maybe?) so I coerced him to the shoulder, just as it gave up/out again, and called Daddy. A highway maintenance dude came along and gave me a jump again, so I could make it to the next exit, and Charlie cooperated long enough to get to a shopping center.
I got some lunch and camped out in a Dunkin Donuts with very pleasant airconditioning and wifi, and waited for Daddy. When he got there an hour or so later, he discovered the battery was not just drained, but well and truly dead, so we found a WalMart, bought a new one, and he valiantly coaxed the old from Charlie’s corroded clutches and replaced it.
Kicking off what promises to be a fairly epic month of smaller-yet-geektastic adventures in between space shuttles (yes, that’s a valid notation of time in my life lately!) was CSTS Philly last night.
For those who may not know, CSTS = Can’t Stop The Serenity, in which browncoats from all over the world gather in their respective cities to watch the movie, generally goof around, and raise money for Equality Now, a charity Firefly/Serenity creator Joss Whedon supports.
It’s been happening and growing every year since 2006, and I tried to go the last few years, but never could, for one reason or another.
Finally, a year arrived when I knew about it well in advance, yet remembered when it got closer, and had no other obligations that night! Of course, when the day actually arrived, I didn’t feel like going anywhere, but Marian Call (who made an awesome album inspired by Firefly and BSG) was coming to play in the area a couple of weeks later, and I had told her I’d take some flyers to put up/pass out there, so that filled in the missing motivation my inner lazy introvert ate, and it turned out to be a really fun night!
There were refreshments, trivia, raffles, and live music by Sean Faust. At one point he asked if anybody in the crowd could sing, and nobody volunteered, so after a minute I did, and ended up singing “The Hero of Canton” (also known as Jayne’s song) with him, though I didn’t know all the words to the verses, and once folks realized that was what they were being asked to sing, others quickly picked up the slack!
The main organizer, Matt, called me back up on stage a little later to announce the Marian Call show, which was awesome, and a bunch of people took flyers. We watched Serenity then, as a “Special Hell” screening, in which the audience is encouraged to talk in the theater, adding emphasis and snark a la MST3K, which definitely added an interesting layer to the always wonderful ‘verse. Definitely glad I went! I even won a couple of the raffles, coming home with the book finding Serenity (edited by Jane Espenson) and a copy of the “Done the Impossible” DVD!
I can’t decide which I’m more excited to finally have / which to read first! (The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss (who also wrote this lovely note), and Serenity: The Shepherd’s Tale by Joss & Zack Whedon with art by Chris Samnee.) Both I already know I’m going to love, and both have been a long time coming (my own doing, only actually ordered them Tuesday morning)… feels like so much more than a box of books… More like… a car… no, a mail-order bride…
*Segue to semi-creepy allegorical [day]dream sequence*
I’d spent ages fawning over pictures and descriptions…researching, contemplating, discussing and soul-searching, until I knew I had made the right selection. I placed my order and waited. One day I arrived home from work late in the evening, and as I came up into my room, saw that my beauty, my beloved, was there waiting for me. I tore away the coverings of a long journey, and lost myself in [literary] ecstasy for the next four days…
Yeah, that went creepier than expected. :/ But hey, the bond between a she-geek and her books is profound. 😉
by Patrick Rothfuss (who also wrote 
by Joss & Zack Whedon with art by Chris Samnee.) Both I already know I’m going to love, and both have been a long time coming (my own doing, only actually ordered them Tuesday morning)… feels like so much more than a box of books… More like… a car… no, a mail-order bride…