Cheevyjames’ Musical Roundhouse

Instead of putting them in the diary here, I made a seperate page.

http://www.geocities.com/cheevyjames1/WashingtonPics.html

Whee!

Current Mood: calm

Current Music: Twang Twang Shock-a-Boom - It’s a Twang Thang

Sunday, 5/29

We woke up Sunday morn and my thought (naturally) is to eat.  We didn’t eat our desserts from the night before as the meal stuffed us and since dessert was included, we just took it to go.  I had some cheesecake thing (very good) and Julie had a piece of chocolate cake.  Julie had no room for food, but I did and she said I could eat some of hers with her.  Well, once she tasted her cake she wanted to eat more of it since it was, as she said, the best chocolate cake she’s ever had.  I also enjoyed the wonderful cake and I wanted it all to myself.  I think we ended up splitting it.  And yes, it was most excellent cake.

So we pack the bags, take some pics and head out with a mission to go to the beach.  We stopped at the Fred Meyer (kinda like a Wal-Mart) there in Forest Grove to buy some beach towels and such.  I saw the Iron Maiden Rock in Rio DVD for only $15 so I had to buy it since if I bought it through B&N, it’s twice as much.  A most proud purchase.  We navigated our way up hwy 26 until we hit hwy 101, which goes along the coast for the whole state of Oregon.  This was a gorgeous drive with amazing scenery of trees and ocean (when not blocked by the massive trees).  We decided to stop in Gearhart for our Beach Excursion.  I had never seen the Pacific Ocean before so it was really important for me to fulfill my own personal Manifest Destiny.  Dan and I wanted to actually swim in the ocean, but once we got on the beach it was way too cold and windy to get in our trunks and go in the ocean.  Next time, I suppose.  I did touch the water itself (super cold) and that was great.  It was an extremely overcast day, with some mountains sort of jutting out into the Pacific.  The girls got too cold rather quickly (15 minutes maybe) so they headed back to the car while Dan and I stayed on the beach and flew his kite that he brought.  He’s an expert at it (this was a trick kite, so it could do cool stuff), but as I hadn’t flown a kite in over 20 years I only did OK.  I crashed it often when trying to make fancy turns, but nothing was damaged so that’s great.  I had a lot of fun flying it.

After the beach we headed up the highway and passed through the town of Astoria, which is where they filmed The Goonies.  It looked like a cool place; I love how it’s bordered by the Pacific and the mouth of the Columbia River.  It’s really pretty there.  Most of the rest of the trip back to Olympia was uneventful, except for Dan and me cutting up in the back seat the whole way home.  The girls definitely got annoyed with us during that long ride home.  For the life of me I can’t remember what we did that evening once we got home.  My brain right now says that we got in kinda late and just crashed.

Monday, 5/30

Memorial Day itself and Cherish actually had to work so while she was at work Julie and I just hung around the house and walked around Olympia a bit.  There was yet another great breakfast fixed by Dan.  For our long walk we walked to the state capitol (very nice grounds) and then over to the farmer’s market which was actually closed, probably for the holiday.  We had some coffee at a little place next to the farmer’s market and that was nice.  Of course I didn’t write the name of the place down so I don’t remember what it was called!  After the nice walk we went back up 4th street (the one with the *really* interesting people!) and hung out at the home until Cherish got back from work and then we got ready to go out *again*, this time to Vancouver.  That’s in Canada, kids.  There was a pretty bad accident an hour or so north of Seattle (I think some people died, and it's hard for that to not effect you in a major way) and that held us up a lot.  Once we passed it and stopped for some coffee, we headed to Oh Canada.  The border check didn’t take too long to get through (10 minutes maybe) so that was nice.  Cherish had never been to Canada so it was a cool new thing for her.  Julie and I visited there last time we were in Washington in 2000.  For me, the most confusing thing about Canada is the gasoline.  Instead of being in dollars per gallon, it’s in Canadian dollars per Liter so we’re seeing something that says “89.9” and we have NO CLUE what it means.  Is that cheap?  We didn’t feel like trying to do double math and thankfully we didn’t have to get gas in Canada.

We got slightly turned around in Vancouver (an hour-ish north of the border) and had to get into downtown a round about way, but we still found our hostel just fine.  Just like in Europe we used the heck out of our trusty Let’s Go book.  Those things rule, I highly recommend them.  Anyway, we stayed at the Seymour Cambie Hostel on Seymour Ave.  We arrived pretty late so once we got checked in it was kind of difficult to find food.  We ended up going first to the bar under the hostel (Malone’s Sports Grill), but we got there about 10 minutes after they stopped serving food.  Since we were in a bar we figured we’d at least get a drink before heading out to find food.  We decided on some huge blue thingie that ended up tasting good but had like no alcohol in it.  Eh, oh well.  After asking the server for food advice, we took her advice and went across the street to an internet café called the Electric Internet Café.  Small place with very few people in there, but they had food, it was good and we were happy.  The radio wasn’t on too loud and it just seemed like random heavy music playing, but at one point my ears perked up.  I heard this guitar passage that sounded incredibly familiar.  I listened closer and realized that they were playing Iron Maiden’s Back in the Village and it was a *radio station* playing this song.  OK, this may not be a big deal to you reading this, but this is why I freaked.  First, Iron Maiden on the radio itself is a rare thing.  The only songs most stations ever play are 2 Minutes to Midnight or Run to the Hills (the big hit singles), so to hear an obscure, but great, non-single album track on the radio is a major thing.  For me…I mean, Julie thinks I’m quite weird for freaking out over a Maiden song on the radio.  The station also played a Pantera song a little bit later (it was an all-heavy metal station, which surprised me) and that was cool.

After the meal we went back up to our dingy little hostel (trying to avoid the teenage hoodlums on the street) and hung out until we went to bed.  I’ve stayed in hostels when Julie and I visited Europe in 1998, but none of them were as small and dingy as this one.  The rooms had stacked single beds which were very icky and scratchy and SO uncomfortable.  Plus it was really hot (no A/C, but the window was open…it didn’t help), so Julie and I were not too comfortable that night.  Plus there were people every so often making lots of noise on the street below for most of the night.  But hey, we’re in Canada!

Tuesday, 5/31

Julie and I woke up a little late, probably an hour before the check out time and when I looked out the window I saw that it was raining.  Everyone here in Texas thinks that it just rains endlessly up in the Pacific Northwest, but that rain in Vancouver was the first rain that we saw in our trip.  Of course, it rained for most of the day (revenge, I suppose), but it wasn’t too hard so I wasn’t bothered most of the time.  After checkout and eating of our complimentary muffins we dropped some stuff off at the car and then went exploring throughout the city for the day.

The natural first stop (proximity-wise) was the tourist-trap area of Gastown.  OK, it’s nice there and there’s lots of cool shops (we stopped in a Scottish gift shop where Dan and Cherish found out that their last names trace back to the same Clan back in Scotland…ha!) but it was touristy.  I had kind of forgotten exactly where all the druggies were in Vancouver, as we went through their area back in 2000 when we were there, but I knew they were somewhere near Chinatown.  Well, in hoping to avoid them we kind of failed.  We had to cross the street in quite a hurry to avoid a huge group of them.  OK, here’s my Editorial Piece…in certain parts of Vancouver there are such a huge conglomeration of addicts and it’s so absolutely disgusting to be a tourist in this town (which is for the most part a great place and really beautiful) and being confronted by all these…people.  I have no sympathy for addicts who just hang out on the street and shoot up right in the open.  There are so many not-nice things I can say about these people, but I’ll just keep it simple and say that they are quite disgusting.  This isn’t actually *in* Chinatown, but they all hang out a street or two over so chances are you’ll run into them if you go there.  Yes, the people are very scary.  While looking at the window of some store there in Chinatown some female comes up to Julie and myself and starts saying some weird stuff and she’s holding a VIAL OF CRACK IN HER HAND.  I am not lying.  This is in Chinatown, a definite tourist area.  We quickly run into the store (which had some incredibly beautiful furniture especially) to tell Dan and Cherish what we just saw.  A little bit later I happened to look down at the sidewalk and saw a USED NEEDLE just lying on the ground.  Disgusting and so creepy.  Is that how they want Vancouver to be seen by tourists?  Chinatown is a tourist area, I repeat, and these druggies just hang out there and nothing happens to prevent them from being there.  Unless you really care about seeing Chinatown and the stuff there, I’d suggest avoiding it at all costs.  I mean, plus all the food out front of these places smelled horrible and nearly made me puke.  I love seafood and I never have any aversion to it, but I guess the seafood sitting in front of these places was rotten or something because I had to get out of there.  OK, that’s the end of my fun editorial.

After the fun of Chinatown we stopped for a break in the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden.  This is pretty serene place with some nice architecture and ponds and stuff.  We chilled there for a bit before going to some indoor mall thing and eating some excellent Chinese Food at Wild Ginger.  The food helped us get all the bad thoughts out of our heads and put us in a great mood for the rest of the day.  Our next mission was to walk across the city and go see the park (Stanley Park) at the other end of Vancouver.  It took a while to walk there, over an hour at least, but it’s a great walk and once you get there you don’t want to leave.  Even though it was rainy and overcast you could still see how beautiful Vancouver is out by the water.  We hung out at the park for a while, visited the aquarium and saw some enormous sea lions (they liked showing off for us).  We were tired after the long day of walking so we headed back to downtown and stopped by at a place we saw on the way that advertised “the largest pints of beer anywhere”.  I don’t know if they were the largest ever, but they were 23 ounces and that’s plenty big.  This was the Seawall Bar & Grill, at the Westin Bayshore Resort & Marina.  We all drank local Canadian beers and weren’t disappointed (Julie and I had a rule of only drinking local beer and wine for the whole trip).  On our way back to our car we stopped at a liquor store so Dan could buy some special Rum for a friend of his.  This rum, called Screech, is actually not available in the US.  You can’t even import it in!  Julie and I decided to get a bottle also to see what the fuss was about.  At the border the wait was a bit longer than coming in but it wasn’t too stressful.  The border officer asked us all kinds of questions, like where our parents were born, but I guess he was just being thorough.

Since I was in massive need of seafood, and hadn’t had any yet, on our way back through Seattle we stopped off at the world famous Ivar’s Acres of Clams, which is located on Pier 54.  It’s a really nice restaurant with great food.  I had the “Best of the Northwest Seafood Platter”.  Oh, it was awesome.  Dan went all out and got the “Acres of Clams” which is just a huge plate of clams.  I think we were all quite happy after that meal.  We ended up getting back to Dan & Cherish’s house at a very late hour…quite a full day.

Wednesday, 6/1

This is what’s known as a Travel Day.  We saw Dan off before he had to go to work (he was working in Oregon, I think) and Cherish also fixed us yet another great breakfast.  I have to say, they were extremely awesome to us.  I mean, they’re our friends, but it’s still nice to have friends that generous.  After gathering our stuff we hit the road back to SeaTac with our rental car.  It was a small ordeal finding the rental car return place, but we did and made it to the plane just fine.  We had another layover, this time in Denver.  I wish we would’ve had more time, because I think it would have been cool to see Brian for a bit.  Next time.  By the time we got to DFW and then to our apartment it was close to 10, possibly after.  All I know is that we were tired and we both had to work in the morning.

So that’s it.  Excellent vacation.  Can’t wait for the next one and the next visit to the Pacific NW.

I just have to do a quick update on this. Finally, after all these years, I have started doing something that brings me much happiness. I now am able to transfer my cassettes and records to CD! YAY!!! I only got a burner like a year ago, so that was one hurdle, then the next was having room on the HD to actually store more than a CD’s worth of music. The new computer solved that one. Then it was just a matter of buying a simple 1/8″ X 1/8″ cable from Radio Shaq and plugging it in. Oh, and I had to figure out how to use Cakewalk to edit music. Didn’t take too long, once my brain started going, “oooooh, that’s how you do it”. And then once I transfered my first disc, a combo of tape & vinyl, my out-loud reaction was, “This is so cool!”

And it is.

I feel a frenzy coming on, but I have to keep it reeled in since I do have that album thing kinda going on. It’s just thrilling to me that I’ll be able to listen to all my old Dah-veed & Flat Mass tapes (among other things) and not actually be listening to stupid cassettes! I hate, with much passion, cassettes. They served their purpose back in the day, and many great mix tapes exist because of them (esp. all the ones I’ve made. Ha!)…BUT they have way outlived their usefulness and I don’t want to have to go through a whole ordeal if I want to hear, oh, the studio version of Adam & Eve. But I don’t! Not anymore (well, I haven’t done the 3PO album yet, but you know what I mean). If I want to hear that great version of Summer Song from Dah-veed’s Local Licks Live, I can just pop it in on the CD and boom - instant happiness.

You may think I’m a dork, (OK, you already did) but this small bit of technological wonderment makes me so dang happy.

So far I’ve done 47 Indians (sweet) and 3 Flat Mass CDs. Yeah, I know it takes lots of time to get it right (and I’m a perfectionist), but the results are so worth it. Flat Mass, dammit!!! I don’t have to bust out with my tapes anymore. I can’t wait to start on the Dah-veed and Twang. I think I have like 18 CDs to burn on that guy.

And you also know what that means…

Digital Cheevy. Awwwwwwwwww yeahhhhhhhhhhhh.

Current Mood: frickin’ happy!

Current Music: in my head - Rita by 47 Indians

Here’s the first installment of the ‘trip diary’…enjoy!

Friday, 5/27:

After work I headed home, packed (as I only packed the CDs the night before!) and left with Julie to the Pacific NW. It took a while to get to DFW (no surprise) and then both remote parking lots were full, but we went into the North Lot anyway and found a spot. The flight to San Francisco seemed a bit more cramped than usual, but no biggie. I think my “good” headphones are set at a quieter volume so that means I have to turn them up louder. Eh, whatever. The layover in SF was around an hour, so no real time to go see anything in the city, much less see any part of the city from the air (fog, you know). I’ve never been to SF so some day I hope to go there and not just stop at the airport. While at the airport we did pick up some See’s Chocolates from the little store there and it kicked some serious ass. The long day continues and we head to SeaTac airport, which is oh so conveniently located between Seattle and Tacoma. It took us a while to navigate through the maze of the airport. By the time we got our car (which was only about 30 minutes after we landed) and got on the road it was around 1 am. Hell, it mighta been later! Either way, a tad late, especially considering that we were both on Texas Time so that meant it was 3 am for us. Cherish and Dan live in Olympia and that’s about an hour south of Seattle. We found the house just fine and were happily greeted by our friends who we hadn’t seen in a while. We hadn’t seen Dan since the last time we visited them in Olympia back in 2000. We last saw Cherish last year at Pat’s wedding in Los Alamos. She has gotten herself pretty skinny and she seems pretty happy. She has braces now (at 27) so that’s pretty amusing. Like Julie is now, she’s thinner than she was in high school. Awesome. I don’t think Julie had a shot when we got in, but they offered me one so I happily took it. I think it was Bailey’s and something else. Who cares, it tasted good! So, we chatted for a while and by the time we got to bed it was just past 2, with my ass having been up for the past 21.5 hours. Long day.

Saturday, 5/28

I think we ended up waking up around 8, maybe 9. Yes, definitely not enough sleep, but as the sun rises around 4:30 in the NW in the summer, we didn’t have much choice! Dan was awesome and fixed us a great breakfast with eggs and beef and onions and a bunch of other stuff that all tasted so good together. Like I said, a great breakfast. Since Julie and I already had our stuff packed, it wasn’t too difficult to get ready for the day ahead in Oregon. After Dan & Cherish were packed we hit the road. Before getting on I-5, we just had to make a pit stop at the Fishbowl Brewpub (www.fishbrewing.com/fishbowl.html). This is the local brewpub that Dan & Cherish first showed us back in 2000. I am not exaggerating when I say that this is some of the best beer *anywhere*. We needed to fill up our two “Growlers” (gallon bottles that you can refill on the cheap) so we had some pints while waiting. Since it was around noon, the bar wasn’t too busy, but there were a couple other patrons besides us. So, after the pints we put the growlers in the cooler in the trunk and head to Oregon for a day of wine tasting. Yes, uh, we drank a lot on the trip.

We drove south for a few hours on I-5 until we hit Portland (looked like a cool city) and then went out into the country where all the wineries are. I honestly don’t remember how many wineries we hit, but I’m assuming it was 5 or so. Some of the wineries charged for the tastings, but you got a souvenir wine glass for giving them your $5 or so. Even if you do get wineglasses (we ended up with 9 glasses by the end of the day), it’s still a rip to charge you for small nips of wine. Also, I noticed in the places that they charged, the people working there were much snootier than the places who gave the wine away for free AND the wine was also not near as good at the charging wineries. So there you go, if you go wine tasting in Oregon, go to the places that don’t charge. At the first ‘free’ winery we went to, after the tasting (good stuff…I can’t remember the name though), we went out back to their gazebo and had lunch. Of course we brought a bottle of wine from home, as well as some great sandwiches that Cherish had made. Oh yeah, cherries too. A great lunch with the house-dogs coming to our table to try to get food. They failed. The winery that really made an impression on me (and the rest of the gang) was the Oak Knoll Winery in Hillsboro, OR (www.oakknollwinery.com). The people that worked at this place were so unbelievably cool. They had their wines all in a row in the testing area and I’d say there were, like, 10-12 wines that we tasted (with generous portions, I must add) all in the perfect order from lights to darks to desserts. The guy pouring was super knowledgeable and just the nicest guy in the world. He went into great detail about how the wines were made, and what food they went well with and all that. All of them really good, but the Niagara was the best. I think Julie and I bought a couple of bottles of it, and Cherish bought a CASE. OK, when we left this winery, I think she had purchased a total of 3 cases. Maybe it was 4, I’m not totally sure! We bought 4 bottles total, but I guess that doesn’t compare with multiple cases. The trunk was already full with our bags, so the cases went in the back seat of the rented mobile and formed a wall between Julie and Cherish. Oh, FYI, I was the navigator while Dan was our designated driver. Yes, he was actually good and only had slight tastes of a few of the wines. The wine country in Oregon is gorgeous, but our last stop had probably the best view of all. Of course I can’t remember this winery either, but all of us ended up buying more wine. Julie got 2 more bottles and Cherish bought two more cases. I don’t even want to know how much they spent.

While we were heading to our destination for the evening, the girls were in the back opening up bottles and going to town. I’d get handed a glass periodically, but they definitely got the lion’s share. That night we stayed in the town of Forest Grove, OR, at the McMenamins Grand Lodge (www.mcmenamins.com). This was a pretty cool place kind of tucked away off the main road. They have some nice lodging packages. For $100 a couple we got a night’s stay, dinner that evening, breakfast the next morning, two pints of their home-brewed beer, as much disc golf as you’d want to play, plus the other stuff at the lodge like live music, movie theater, hot tub, etc. Yeah, cool place! We stayed in the Bob Marley room, which really wasn’t as cool as it sounds. The rooms were “European Style” which basically means that you had a sink in there, but there were communal bathrooms on each floor. Eh, no big deal. The only things that made it the “Bob Marley Room” were the sign on the front of the door, a strange painting of Bob on the wall by the bed (evidently it creeped out Julie all night long!), some quotes by him and about him on the walls, and that was basically it. But hey, we stayed in the BOB MARLEY room!

After we dropped our things off in our respective rooms (D&C had the “Revolution Room”…I have no idea of the significance. They were disappointed to not get the JRR Tolkien room, which was right next door to them) we went outside to play some disc golf. I had never played, but Dan had loads of times (Cherish a few times) so he showed Julie and I the ropes. While the girls walked down the street to get some phat cigars, Dan and I got drinks at the bar that was *on the grounds* by the disc golf course. How cool is that? We both got some of the home-brewed beers and they were excellent. I had the Hammerhead and he got the Terminator (really dark), and I sort of went between my beer and Julie’s Terminator while she was at the store. Two fisting, sweet! Once the girls got back we commenced our game. Being drunk-ish and novices the game took a few hours, but we all had a blast. The last hole was pretty cool in that you had to go through the lodge itself and go out on the back balcony and throw from there…and to get down to the ground there was a big slide. After the game (which Dan probably won, but we weren’t keeping score) we sorta changed clothes and went had dinner inside. Good dinner and some hilarious conversation then we went to the rooms and changed into our swimsuits and hit the hot tub. We didn’t get to stay in the hot tub too long (only like 20 minutes) before we were kicked out because they were closing it for the night. So, with us a bit water logged and full of food and drink we hit the hay sometime pretty late.

More tomorrow.

Current Mood: cheerful

Current Music: Zappa - Halloween

I’m curious about this, but here are the CDs I listened to Friday at work, on the trip, and today at work (that’s the time span of not changing the CD case).

Heard:

Beatles - Tragical History Tour
Adrian Belew - Mr. Music Head
Bryan Beller - View
David Garza - Oh Dread EP (TWICE)
David Garza - May Ides EP (TWICE)
Bryan Dunn - Static & Scripture (THRICE!)
Jeff Freling - S/T
Grumpy - S/T
Iron Maiden - 7th Son
Journey - Dream After Dream
Mike Keneally + Metropole Orkest - the Universe Will Provide/Parallel Universe
King Crimson - Absent Lovers, disc 1 & 2
King Crimson - Projekct 3: Masque
Living Colour - Live at CBGB’s
Metallica - Master of Puppets
Parliament - Gold, disc 1
Phish - Undermind
Pink Floyd - Dark Side
Radiohead - Kid A
Shaolin Death Squad - S/T
David Sylvian/Robert Fripp - Damage
Frank Zappa - Absolutely Free
Frank Zappa - Broadway the Hard Way
Zero 7 - When it Falls
Stevie Ray Vaughan - Texas Flood

Here’s what I didn’t listen to:

Alice in Chains - Jar of Flies
John Coltrane & Jonny Hartman
Trey Gunn - Joy of Molybdenum
The Mistakes - S/T
Parliament - Gold, disc 2

Why did I skip these? AIC…too short for when I wanted to hear it. Trane…never in the right mood to feel all that romance. TGunn…never struck me as wanting it. Mistakes…Man, I am having a hard time getting into this CD. I love improv, but this borders on wanking. It’s dense, that’s for sure. Thing is, some of these songs, like Aye Aye Monster kick so much freaking ass that I smile for a week. Parliament…I love these guys, but the extended cuts of their songs DRAG OUT like there’s no end in sight. Disc 2 is very difficult to listen to, and I really haven’t enjoyed it that much since I bought it. I bought it at the same day as Mr. Bungle’s Disco Volante and I’m not enjoying that too much either. That was a bad CD buying day. I hope that these two albums will connect with me, because in the case of Parliament, I just froth at some of these songs and Mr. Bungle’s California is such an amazing album, I want to love everything they do. Hell, you know, I want to love every single album I own. I don’t believe in the Beavis & Butthead Principle which says that to have stuff that kicks ass, you have to have stuff that sucks. The whole balance thing. So, if there wasn’t stuff that sucked, then nothing would truly kick ass. I don’t believe that. I don’t need to hear Ashlee Simpson to know how freaking amazing Grumpy is, and specifically that chord change on the chorus of #7 rips my freaking head off every time I hear it. Oh man, THAT was a freaking revelation when I re-heard that a few months ago.

Oh man I’m tired!

It’s funny, this originally wasn’t an intentional entry, just a reply to my previous one, but along the way I went for the New Entry path. Fun!

I decided that I’m working on Saturday to catch up and get my receiving room in order. It was a damn sty when I came in this morning.

Watched the rest of the Beatles’ First US Visit tonight. Very cool. I love seeing the old footage of them and watching them cut up. Even though I’ve seen most of the footage before (on the Anthology set) it’s still great to watch and a really cool documentary.

I got the email today saying that The Oasis in Austin on Lake Travis burnt down. This sucks so bad. I actually liked the food there (great Tex-Mex), but the obvious best part was watching the sun melt into Lake Travis and everyone there roar with delight. I hope no one was hurt…because the picture Wiley sent me gave me chills.

OK, bad thoughts to go to bed to. Washington/Oregon/BC was bootie-kicking. I’m working on the full and anal recap.

Rock on!

Current Mood: tired, but peaceful

Current Music: in my head - “#7″ by Grumpy, esp. that one change