Discovering the Athens Music Scene

There's this free magazine published weekly here in Athens called Flagpole. It provides a nice calendar of events for the week, including concerts and shows downtown. I've lived in Athens for over a year now and I just recently discovered this magazine and, with it, the awesome music scene in Athens.

I'd heard of the music scene in Athens but I ignored it because, well, I've kind of become somewhat antisocial since moving to Georgia. (Bad. I know. I'm working on it.) Because of my antisocial tendencies, I generally tend to avoid places where there are a lot of people (duh)-- including downtown and various events. But after discovering Flagpole magazine and their website, I realized I'm not allowed to be a hermit anymore because then I'm going to miss all of these awesome concerts. Just recently I missed concerts by Explosions in the Sky and Azure Ray. It kills me to think of the shows I may have missed this past year I've been living huddled up in my house.

Well, on Thursday last week, Brenden and I grabbed lunch at this awesome burger place called Stuffed Burger where they literally stuff your meat patty with food. It sounds a little gross but is actually really delicious. Anyway, at this burger joint, the latest Flagpole magazine was sitting in a stand near the counter. I grabbed it to flip through while we waited for our food. I quickly discovered that there was going to be an Album Leaf and Tycho concert on Saturday night at the Georgia Theatre. I didn't know who Tycho was but I've loved the Album Leaf since high school and I told Brenden right then and there that we were, in fact, going to a concert on Saturday.

And we did.

We sat on bar stools in the balcony to avoid the bulk of the crowd on the main floor which was standing room only. The music was so good. It was loud and I never really thought about listening to the Album Leaf at such a high volume but now that I have, I'm not sure how else to listen to him. Tycho was pretty good too. The crowd seemed to be more familiar with Tycho than Album Leaf, which okay, I'll admit, I'm really behind in discovering new music. New music for me, lately, has been the most recent albums of artists I liked in high school.

I'm sort of on a quest to rediscover things that once made me really happy but I pushed aside for one reason or another. This concert was a stop on that quest.

I determined I still really love live music shows despite the crowds.

Thank you Album Leaf and Tycho for bringing me back.

Here are two Youtube videos of songs from Tycho and The Album Leaf. The first video is Daydream by Tycho, which they performed at the show and the second is Into the Sea by The Album Leaf, which is a track I just really like (for some reason this video's length is seven minutes but the song is only about four and a half minutes long so the rest of the track is silence.) Enjoy!

So...

It's been two months and two days since my last post here.

Sorry about that.

A lot of things happened during those two months. My parents and my sister came to visit at the end of July and then Brenden's mother and sisters came to visit right after. Brenden started school again and did so well in his auditions that he made both the top band and orchestra for the year. Brenden celebrated his twenty-third year of life. I celebrated my twenty-fourth. I got more blood drawn and an additional diagnosis (what are we on now, like, six?) Some of my hair has started to grow back. We discovered some fun hiking trails on UGA campus. And sadly, Brenden's dear great-grandpa Vern Nelson passed away. We were saddened to hear of his passing but so grateful for the life he lived and the lives he touched, especially our own.

Each of these items deserve posts of their own. And I might get to them some day. But for now I just wanted to say hello. We are here. I'll try to be better about this blog thing.

During these past two months and two days I've been absent, I've thought a lot about what it means to be an adult. I've thought about how much I miss my carefree days of childhood. I've thought about what independence entails. I've thought about the importance of maintaining family relationships across the miles.

And I came to a profound realization: I worry a lot. Probably too much.

I worry so much I literally get sick from worrying. And then I make Brenden sick of my worrying. And then I worry that Brenden isn't worrying enough. And then I worry that our lives are ruined, we'll be poor forever and die alone.

But at least I'm sane enough to recognize this is a problem.

I'm going to work on it. In fact, I'm currently working on it. For my birthday, I got roller blades.

Let me explain how those two previous sentences are related. I miss those carefree days of childhood and while I will never be able to completely return to those days, I can revisit them on occasion. And I will revisit them by rollerblading up and down my block, across park sidewalks and around a roller rink.

I'll revisit those days in jokes with my husband, free sporting events, ice cream scoops, and movies. I'll revisit them by not cleaning the house and saying out loud, "MY HOUSE IS A MESS AND I'M GOING TO BE OKAY WITH IT RIGHT NOW AND NOT FEEL LIKE A FAILURE."

I'll revisit those days by trusting my Heavenly Father has a plan for me and Brenden.

Today Brenden and I were told our car would need close to a thousand dollars in repairs. (We're taking the car to another mechanic tomorrow to see if that quote holds true.) I worried about that all day today while I was at work. The worrying accomplished nothing except giving me an upset stomach.

Would you like to know what I did when I came home? I decided I'd stop worrying about it.

And then I put on my roller blades and skated throughout the house doing laundry and putting away dishes. (Brenden was a little annoyed to learn that I was handling stacks of plates while rollerblading.)

I've learned (and am still learning) that being an adult comes with a lot of responsibilities I never had to deal with as a child. But it also comes with a lot of freedom I never had as a child. Sometimes I feel I would gladly trade this freedom to avoid those responsibilities. I know that's not an option and I suppose when I really think about it, if I did have that option, I still wouldn't choose it. I have a lot to be grateful for right now and I wouldn't trade it for a few more days practicing softball or winning spelling bees (because I always won spelling bees.)

When I think too much about what the future may entail, I get overwhelmed. But, you know, I don't have to figure it out all at once. I can take it step by step, rollerblading glide by glide.

And really, who would want to be a child again when, as an adult, you can rollerblade throughout the house and no one is going to yell at you?

And for some spiritually uplifting words of wisdom I recommend listening to/watching this video. A friend shared it with me a couple days ago and I loved it. It's an audio clip from a devotional Elder F. Enzio Busche gave at BYU in 1996. You can find the talk in its entirety HERE.

Some Stuff

Firstly

Brenden leaves for Austria TOMORROW! Sorry we didn't keep you guys updated on that gig. Anyway, exciting stuff. His competition is on Sunday and he'll be in Austria for the duration of the entire conference. I'm kind of a little bit really jealous since Austria is kind of a little bit the main country I wanted to study abroad in and never got the opportunity to. I made Brenden promise to take lots of pictures. And buy me socks. (I really like socks so whenever someone offers to buy me a souvenir, I request socks.)

Secondly

A little update on my illness since people have been asking. I'm doing a million times better. I can actually wake up in the morning and stay up all day. No fevers since April. My finger joints, wrists, and elbows are still achy every now and then but I can actually use them. A new and interesting symptom is that my hair is falling out. It started shortly before I came back to Georgia and I originally attributed it to stress but it hasn't stopped since then and my hair is now visibly thinner (at least to me.) It's made me think a lot about my physical appearance and what it means to me in regards to my personal identity. Like, if I lose all my hair will I still be okay with who I am? It seems silly but it's never been something I've had to worry about before. Anyway, I decided that if this hair loss keeps up, I'm going to shave my head before it gets gross looking and cross my fingers that my shaved head isn't too gross looking. Head scarves and wigs FTW.

And Lastly,

Monday night Brenden and I babysat for a couple who is soon leaving our ward. He passed his dissertation defense that morning and they wanted to go out to celebrate. While they were out celebrating, we made cards with the girls for their dad. I brought over some colored paper, glitter stickers, and fancy markers. When you're a kid, other people's stuff is always exciting and fun to play with. This proved true with these kiddos. They were coloring for about three and a half hours and refused to sleep.

Anyway, the oldest daughter is about seven years old and she was determined to write her dad a letter on the back of the picture she drew him.

The letter went something like this:
"Congrats on the test Dad. I love you so much. I hope your students like you. Did you like the test? I am very proud of you. I think you did very good on the test. I think you worked very hard on the test. You are very smart. I think you will make a good doctor."

And she drew a picture underneath with big balloons and two students sitting at desks while her dad wrote 2+2=4 on a chalkboard.

It was completely adorable.

"Sleep is overrated." *

At 12:30am Saturday night, Brenden and I had the brilliant idea to rearrange all of our bedroom furniture. Yes, genius idea. Let's wait until it's really late at night to lift and move heavy furniture. After finishing a little less than an hour later, we discovered our new arrangement granted us more floor space than our previous arrangement. So the next logical step to discovering this floor space was to utilize it, right?

Brenden went to one of our closets, pulled out his tent and started assembling it.
In the middle of the bedroom. Nearing 2am in the morning.

I kept asking him why he needed to assemble the tent right at that moment and his only answer was, "Because there's room."


"Just don't put up the rainfly."

"But I have to."

* As often quoted by Brenden's dad. Happy Father's Day!

Yesterday Morning

Six AM: We left my parents' home on 77th Street and took Seawall Boulevard down to the ferry. We watched the sun rise over the Gulf and I took a mental picture to hold me over the next few months until I can see it again. It's quiet and peaceful. We could see people walking on the beach, running on the Seawall, doing Tai Chi all against the backdrop of a purple, blue, pink, and orange sky brightening over the water. I like early mornings on the Seawall. This is when the locals come out and reclaim their land. These are the people who belong here. Some people don't appreciate Galveston's beauty, but some people are blind. I thought about how much I'm going to miss this place. 

We took a ferry ride to the Bolivar Peninsula at six-thirty. We saw fishing boats and cargo ships bringing in their haul for the morning. Once our car got off the ferry, I turned around in my seat and took one last look at my island, her buildings grey in the distance. It was just me and Brenden on the little two lane highway bordering the Gulf of Mexico. We like taking this route to get to I-10 rather than battling the rush hour bumper to bumper traffic into Houston. 

Bolivar is a small quiet town. Houses are still missing from when Hurricane Ike roared ashore four years ago and the remaining houses are empty, awaiting their summer visitors. There are locals that call Bolivar home and we could see them walking out onto their wrap-around decks to watch the sunrise over the water while they sipped their coffees. There were flags dancing in the gulf breeze from several of these decks, signaling a friendly hello and good luck. We remained quiet to take it all in.

It was a good start to the long drive back to Georgia. 

"Inspiration at Dawn " by Rene' Wiley (a Galveston artist)