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Day-parking at Bonnaroo

by on March 28, 2012, in around town, life etc.

I rarely pander to an audience, but I can see that a lot of people have been finding my blog lately by searching for some variation of “Bonnaroo day parking.”

So in the interest of helping my fellow Bonnaroo-goers out, let me tell you about day-parking: It is awesome.

More to the point, if you aren’t big on camping in the middle of a giant field with no tree cover for three to four days and live relatively close (or are thinking of getting a hotel reservation nearby), the day-parking situation is fucking great.

I live about 20-30 minutes from Bonnaroo (depending on traffic—driving in from Murfreesboro is generally busier than leaving), and day-parking last year was the best decision I made besides choosing to eat the gourmet pizza every day. I love camping, but I do not love camping in the blazing heat for several days with no shower or refuge from the sun. My sister and I drove in and out every day, and it was great.

Depending on how early you get in, you will have about a mile to a mile-and-a-half walk from day-parking to the entrance of Bonnaroo. It’s really not bad at all, but be prepared to not be able to just run out to your car quickly in case you forget something you wanted to bring in with you. I carried a Camelbak backpack with water, snacks and other supplies, and only once did I have to come back to the car (Emily and I got cold and went back for our hoodies later one night).

When you drive in the first day, tell the people who are checking your car for contraband (they will do this every day but it gets, ahem, more lax as the days go by) that you’re day-parking. They will tell you which way to go, and you’ll end up in a very large field where the parking volunteers will wave you into your parking spot. It’s probably a good idea to tie a helium-filled balloon to your car so that you can find it easily when you’re leaving later that night, because the field fills up with cars and you will be disoriented.

Day parking at Bonnaroo

The walk to Bonnaroo from day parking is lined with food and drink vendors, and you’ll pass by the car-campers, port-a-crappers and some first aid tents, too. The walk back to day-parking is well-lit at night, and I never felt concerned for my or my sister’s safety last year. I mean, be alert, of course, but you’re not going to be walking down a pitch-black gravel road for a mile.

Bottom line: If you’re considering day-parking because you live or will be staying close by and value cleanliness and air-conditioning, go for it.

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On baseball and revisiting past haunts

by on March 22, 2012, in but in our house we never get bored, jump aboard the crazy train, life etc., past lives, photography

On baseball and revisiting past haunts

Years ago, before Ian and I started dating, we took a trip to Atlanta together to see the Braves play. We had been friends for years, but it was the first out-of-town trip we’d taken together. When we got to the hotel, I fretted a bit over the single bed they assigned us, as I had a boyfriend at the time. I didn’t fret too much, though. It was the first of several trips Ian and I would take as friends, all of which I look back on fondly. Trips that eventually bled the lines between friendship and more. That led me to see who we really were to each other.

This Atlanta trip was not my first to the city, but it was my first Braves game. His dad had gotten us pretty good seats, I recall, and afterward we took the MARTA to Underground Atlanta and hung out in this dirty, dingy Irish bar called Irish Bred. There was nothing Irish about it, but it was filled with other 20-somethings pouring cheap beer down their gullets. We found a table on their patio and made friends with some people from the University of Florida. Or maybe it was Florida State.

Eventually we paid our tab and headed to the MARTA station—on the way to which we were accompanied by a homeless man who professed to know where the best party in town was, and would we follow him there? Ian had a bit too much to drink and thought this was a great idea, but luckily he took my advice and followed me to the train station instead (where he proceeded to inform me that the way to avoid potentially dangerous situations was to “make everyone aware that you are crazier than they are,” and then he began singing L.A. Woman, specifically that he was Chief Mojo Risin’).

We visited Atlanta again in 2003, and went back several times while we were dating, but we haven’t been there since we got married in 2008. But with the news of Chipper Jones retiring, this is going to change—this summer.

I don’t think our Irish bar exists anymore, and I’m not sure Underground Atlanta has fared well over the years, but it will be fun to go back and spend some time in one of our favorite southern cities, seeing what kind of mischief we can get into. That’s the thing about being married to someone you’ve known for 15 years—you have plenty of memories to call on, but it’s effortless to make new ones, too.

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Taken March 19 at 5:30 p.m. in Nashville

by on March 20, 2012, in around town, life etc., photography, Project365

Taken March 19 at 5:30 p.m. in Nashville

I don’t even want to think about what summer will bring.

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Last week I was in California

by on March 4, 2012, in Apple, happy happy joy joy, life etc., travel

And it was AMAZING. I’d never been before, but I was lucky enough to get to go for a conference at which my company was exhibiting. I flew out a couple days early to spend the weekend exploring on my own.

I stayed in San Jose, rented a car and spent Saturday afternoon at the Computer History Museum and that evening with my cousin Christina and her family. Sunday I drove up to San Francisco and tooled around Haight-Ashbury, the Golden Gate Bridge and Muir Woods.

Monday morning, before returning the rental car, I drove up to Cupertino and visited my Mecca—Apple headquarters. It sounds so silly, but I almost teared up when I saw the 1 Infinite Loop sign. I wanted to punch (out of jealousy) and hug (out of love for their work) each employee I saw going into the buildings. Oh, and I spent about half of my mortgage payment at the Company Store.

The rest of the week was spent working the company booth with two of my co-workers, and as boring as that might sound to some people I had a lot of fun.

I want to come back here and write more about my whole experience so I don’t forget it because it was an amazing time, but I still need to cull through all of the photos I took. Isn’t it funny how vacation photos were once a torture device used on friends and family members, but now thanks to the Internet they’re almost expected?

I won’t be offended if you don’t look through them. But they’re going up, eventually. I don’t want to think back in a few years and not be able to remember how lucky I felt to be in the part of a state I’d wanted to visit my entire life. I missed Ian and the cats a ton, but damn: It was a really, really great trip.

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Things

by on January 3, 2012, in life etc.

I hate to say that I’m making New Year’s resolutions because that always seems like such an invitation for failure. (A therapist might have a field day with this proof of my rejection of authority going so far as rejecting my own, I know.)

But there are some things that I would like to focus on to improve my state of being, and I suppose this would be a good time to put them in writing. So:

  1. Write in a paper journal once per day. One of my friends at work is pursuing a degree in psychology, and we often discuss memory. One such discussion revolved around the connection that is made between the mind and what is written and how the connection is stronger when the writing is done by hand. As in, with a pen or pencil, not on a computer. And so while I also want to blog more often, I’m going to make it a point to jot down at least one paragraph—hell, one sentence even—per day in a journal.


  2. Take one picture every day. I’ve attempted Project365 twice before, and each time failed to take a picture every day. I’m going to lower the standards this time even further and allow myself to take every freaking day’s picture with my iPhone if that’s what it takes. No pressure to capture the entire day’s atmosphere in one shot, no post-processing necessary. Just one snapshot per day. Uploaded to Flickr here.


  3. Eat healthier. Weight-loss isn’t really a goal here, though I can’t lie and say it wouldn’t be nice. But my main goal here is to get my guts to stop revolting against me, something that was basically cured in my first year being vegetarian. But then I stopped getting my food from a CSA, which inevitably led to consuming a lot of frozen pizzas. I’ve rejoined the CSA this winter and paid in full up-front, so I kind of need to be committed to eating all of the great fresh food that they bring me or I’m going to be the kind of asshole that wastes several hundred dollars. And I don’t want to be that asshole. I want to be a healthy eater who doesn’t get sick after every meal.


  4. Read more. I used to devour books when I was a kid. By the time I made it to high school, I was asked repeatedly by teachers if my parents had sent me to speed-reading classes (they hadn’t) because my retention was ridiculously high for the amount of time it took me to finish books. (In middle school I finished this 181-page book in two 45-minute class periods and the teacher didn’t believe me that I’d read it until I gave her a run-down of the entire story. I then gave my copy of the book to a classmate who couldn’t buy his own and who had been having to borrow the teacher’s after school to stay caught up. The rest of the class finished the book in about two weeks. I spent that time reading a few other books of my choosing. Yes, I was a nerd.)


    Anyway, as I grew older I got busier, and even today I mostly prefer video games to books when I have a chunk of free time staring me in the face. But then I bought my iPad and installed the Kindle app, and I remembered how much I loved getting lost in a good story. I’ve been reading a lot more lately, and I’d like to keep up the momentum.


  5. Move to Nashville. Ian and I carpool every day for our 80-mile round-trip commute, and while I enjoy having time to spend with him, whether it’s spent sitting silently watching the landscape roll by or chatting, the drive is getting old. Traffic sucks, and even when it doesn’t I’m still looking at a minimum of 90 minutes in the car every day. We’ve been threatening to move for years now, but I’m hoping that this will be the year. I will miss Murfreesboro, but I won’t miss the soul-crushing commute (especially when the weather is bad and I have to wonder if driving in to work ahead of a storm will mean I won’t be able to make it back home that evening).



We’ll see how it goes, I guess.

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Let’s do this, 2012

by on January 2, 2012, in life etc.

I feel more energized at the first of a year than I have in a while. I’m not entirely sure why, and I’m not sure there really is a reason, but I’m going with it.

2011 was a great year. Ian and I took several great trips (New Orleans for St. Patrick’s Day, Bonnaroo with my sister Emily, Asheville for our anniversary in October, and several camping excursions in state parks), spent a good amount of time with our friends and families (mostly his family, though mine came down to visit for an epic Thanksgiving) and were generally healthy.

After some time of feeling I was in a rut professionally, I was offered a job in April (without even interviewing!)—and after about a week of hardcore obsessing and analyzing, I took it. And while I was sad to leave my great co-workers at my previous job, I joined an amazing, innovative company with new great co-workers. Who upped the nerd ante by like a billion. And teach me stuff. And drink a lot of beer. It’s awesome.

The year wasn’t all good, though—my 94-year-old grandmother died in May after being in declining health for several years. And while I miss her at the oddest times still (hearing O Come All Ye Faithful in Kroger almost brought me to tears at least twice this holiday season), I know that she wasn’t happy laying in a nursing home bed. She was ready to go.

But! All in all, it was a pretty good year. I didn’t take pictures every day, but I did take a lot. And looking back on the year in pictures, a lot of great stuff happened in 2011:

January: Welcomed in the new year with awesome friends at a party that included me getting $100 for cleaning up a friend’s vomit. (It’s OK, I was at a level of non-sobriety where I couldn’t smell anything.)

February: There was, according to Nashville standards, a horrible snowstorm and it took me FIVE HOURS to get home. Two and a half hours were spent drive five miles to pick up Ian, and the last two and a half hours were spent driving 30 miles home. This doesn’t really count as a great thing that happened, but it was the most notable thing in February.

March: St. Patrick’s Day in New Orleans. Oh yes.

April: The new wedding band that Ian ordered me was delivered. It’s still perfectly me. Oh, and I accepted a new job.

May: Started my new job. And Ian and I went to the Renaissance Festival!

June: BONNAROO!!!

July: Bought my MacBook Pro! With CASH! And Ian, Scott and I completed the Paddle of Destiny at the Mellow Mushroom.

August: Emily and her friend Steph came to visit. We went to the Bell Witch Cave, hung out in downtown Nashville and played Rock Band.

September: Successfully replaced the hard drive in our PowerBook, a beautiful machine that someone dropped on the floor.

October: Ian and I celebrated our third wedding anniversary in Asheville. My favorite place with my favorite person.

November: My family came to visit for Thanksgiving.

December: Ian had his promotion ceremony at work. Got all my Christmas shopping done well before Christmas. Celebrated the holidays with Ian, his family, our cats and our friends.

Here’s hoping for an equally great—or better—2012. (And no Mayan apocalypse.)

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Fa la la la la

by on December 15, 2011, in but in our house we never get bored, holidays, life etc., video games

I haven’t really had the urge to blog lately, though I don’t think it’s because I’ve been super-busy. I mean, I have been, but that’s never been an excuse to not blog. Ugh, I don’t mean for this to turn into one of those “Sorry I haven’t updated lately!” posts, either, because I hate those. I only blog for myself, so if anything this is an apology to my future self when I come back here to figure out what I was doing in the fall and winter of 2011 and there’s no record of my life.

Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim came out Nov. 11, which was a game I’d been looking forward to for about five years. It’s consumed my weekends lately, and some weeknights. It’s worth it, though. It’s the third Elder Scrolls game I’ve played but the first I’ve played on the Playstation platform (I played Morrowind and Oblivion on the Xbox and Xbox 360, respectively), and there have been some freezing bugs that I’ve had to work through, but for the most part I’m pleased with the game on the platform. I bought it for the Playstation because that’s the system that’s got Internet access, so I’m crossing my fingers for some sweet DLC.

And despite the fact that I’m not Christian and I do not, in fact, try to keep the Christ in Christmas, I’ve really been enjoying this holiday season. I have finished all of my holiday shopping, and I was able to complete about 99 percent of it online. Actually, being able to avoid rabid asshole shoppers is probably why I’ve been able to enjoy the season.

I decorated our bookshelf with big colorful lights, our living room window with small, warm white lights, and the kitchen cabinets with light-up stars. I’ve already burned through my WoodWick pine-scented candle, but another one is on the way. I used to get bummed out that we couldn’t have a tree in the house because of the cats, but I think I like our tradition of decorating the bookshelf and putting presents underneath it better, anyway. No trees are killed, no sap stains the floor and the cats really don’t give a shit about trying to eat the lights after about 20 minutes of them being up.

To me, Christmas is completely secular. It’s that feeling when the air has turned bitterly cold but the house is warm, and turning on sparkly lights and sitting under the Slanket on the couch with Ian and the cats makes it even warmer. It’s sharing wine and good food with friends and family as we exchange gifts and cards. It’s the smell of pine or mistletoe-scented candles that crackle as I fall asleep on the couch each night.

It’s a last bastion of contentedness before we move into the doldrums of winter, which always bring with them a boring nothingness that drags on until the terrain begins to green again in the spring.

But for now the lights are up and the candle is lit, and it’s Christmas.

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Steve Jobs was my Elvis

by on October 6, 2011, in Apple, life etc., technology/yes I am a geek

A friend of mine tweeted that at me this morning, that when she heard the news about Steve Jobs dying she immediately thought of me. Because he was my Elvis. I’d been trying all night to think of the best way to explain why he was important to me, and she nailed it.

Yesterday afternoon a co-worker and I were talking about tattoos and I showed her mine, a black Apple logo. Then a few hours later I was driving home and Ian said suddenly, “Did Steve Jobs die?” Confused, I asked him why he said that, and he explained that he was watching text after text pop up about it on my iPhone, which was sitting in the center console between us.

At a red light, I pulled up Twitter. “It’s not on the New York Times or USA Today,” Ian said. “They won’t have it. Twitter will have the news first,” I responded. I pulled into a Panera parking lot and checked. It was true. Steve Jobs had died.

Ever since he resigned as CEO of Apple a few months ago, I’ve been trying to come up with a way to explain what Apple products have meant to me. Continue to mean to me. And nothing really sounds good enough. The words I come up with are either not enough or I sound like a complete lunatic, all over-dramatic and mushy about a company, for chrissakes.

But the thing is, ever since I was five years old Apple products have been ubiquitous in my daily life. I’m not really sure how to fully explain what they’ve meant to me. They’re not just hunks of plastic and metal, like most computers. That’s where Steve Jobs’ genius came in. He wanted to make using a Mac, using an Apple product, an aesthetic experience, and he succeeded.

And I remember back when they weren’t so great. The first computer my family bought was a Performa, I believe, back in the early 90s. That thing was ugly as shit, but the operating system was boss. (So was that game Lemmings—remember that?)

I guess it’s probably tacky to use the old “I loved Apple when Apple wasn’t cool” line, but fuck it. I did love it back then. I’ve been an Apple user—an Apple fangirl—since as long as I can reach back in my cobwebbed brain for memories. I’ve never owned a computer that wasn’t a Mac and I never will. I have never accepted a career-field job that did not provide me with a Mac to work on. I won’t. It has always been a quality of life issue for me. Macs break and have bad days, sure. But most of the time, they just work. And they just work beautifully.

This is getting rambly now. I guess I just wanted to thank Steve Jobs for making technology that I form emotional attachments to. I honestly love my Apple products. I will never sell my first iMac because I have such strong feelings of attachment to it. I almost cried at the thought of my PowerBook being irreparable. I think I slept with my iPad in the bed the first night I got it.

So rest in peace, Steve Jobs. I don’t really believe in heaven or hell, but I hope your soul is somewhere quiet. Somewhere without Windows machines.

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Ten years

by on September 11, 2011, in life etc., news/politics

I don’t like writing about what I was doing or what I was thinking on 9/11 because I wasn’t in New York, and I didn’t lose anyone in the attacks, and I tend to get a bit irritated with all of the tragedy p0rn I read where people get over-dramatic and try to make it about themselves. But I understand the necessity to discuss feelings and thoughts about the day, though. For our generation, this is our Kennedy assassination. This is our Challenger explosion.

I’ve already written my “what I was doing” post, four years ago, and I don’t really feel like re-hashing it, but I have to write what’s in my head right now because I’ve been feeling increasingly uneasy as the day has progressed.

I can’t really remember much else about that day. Some friends and I were discussing last night where we were when the planes hit, and I seemed to recall that my second class of the day, my Spanish class, was canceled. But I honestly can’t remember for sure. I am inclined to think that it was, because I remember going to the KUC (Keathley University Center, the student center on MTSU’s campus) and gathering with probably 50 other students in the drab, dimly lit room that had TVs and couches and watching the news as everything was unfolding. I remember the low mumbles and sharp whispers as the newscasters announced that the first two planes were hijacked, and then that the Pentagon was hit and the other plane hit the ground in Pennsylvania. I feel like I remember a little later in that same room hearing that this group I had never heard of before called Al-Qaeda was taking responsibility for the attack, and I guess I went home some time after that.

That semester I believe is when I was working my insane schedule of 10-hour days on Mondays and Wednesdays, eight-hour days on Fridays and four-hour days on Tuesdays and Thursdays, because I scheduled all four of my college classes on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. I think I was supposed to be at work at 2 p.m. those days. Since 9/11 happened on a Tuesday, I’m assuming that I went to work later that day, but I don’t remember what it felt like or what anyone said.

I remember watching non-stop news coverage for about a week, alone in my apartment, until I had to turn it off and rest my eyes and my brain. I felt fatigued by everything that I was seeing and feeling until I couldn’t really process what it all meant. I stopped getting upset when I saw images of the destruction, which might have influenced my part in the discussion we had in my Media Ethics class about whether or not we would publish the photos of people jumping out of the burning towers if we were newspaper editors. I said yes. I said I wouldn’t censor the news. I said no matter how bad things get, protecting people from what was really happening would only hurt our society.

I still agree with what I said in class back then. Although, as I sit here watching a 9/11 program on NatGeo, I wonder what I would have said if I’d known anyone who died that day.

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New MacBook Pro!

by on July 31, 2011, in Apple, computadores, life etc.

New MacBook Pro!

After six years, the last couple filled with numerous frustrating sessions wrestling with the slowness of my 2005 iMac, I finally bought a new computer. And it’s badass, too: The high-end 15-inch MacBook Pro. After never having owned a laptop bigger than 13 inches, I decided to go with the 15-inch model since I won’t be getting an external monitor to hook it up to. I’ve been using an older 15-inch MacBook Pro as my work computer, and realized pretty quickly how nice the extra screen real estate is for photo editing and coding.

I figured since I had the money (I’d been saving my pennies like a good little girl for quite some time), I’d go ahead and splurge on the model with the better graphics card since I plan on gaming along with all of the photo editing I do. And! I’ll finally be able to do some video editing since I now have a computer that can actually handle it. Every time I tried to make a video in iMovie on my iMac I ended up wanting to stab someone. I’m not even kidding, I would click something and could go take a shower before the computer would respond.

Now I’m going through the process of transferring all of my applications and photos over from my other machines. I didn’t want to use the Migration Assistant because I’m sure after years of use there are some bad preferences on the iMac, and my stuff is kind of scattered across multiple computers. Including the one I use for work, I have three functioning Macs with files and applications on them that I need to transfer to this machine.

So. I’ve got my work cut out for me, but luckily it’s been pretty easy so far. After nearly 30 years of working on Apple computers, I often take for granted how everything works so flawlessly (most of the time) and just makes sense. It’s kind of nice to be reminded of that again as I move stuff around, copy and paste libraries, and work through getting this beast set up to my (very specific) liking.

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