Muse Concert Trip April 11-16
-This post in still in construction, I haven't added any links, pics, or LJcuts. I'll be working on it more later in the week.-
For a while, I considered setting up a Twitter account just for when I take trips; I'm now regretting my decision not to.
Sunday April 11-
The original plan was to have my parents drop off the Cabrio for us to drive up, but it was decided that it would be a lot cheaper just to ride back up with them since they were in town anyway. We left in the evening. I had been drinking earlier in the day, and had just the slightest buzz left. My mom's Fusion has Sirius radio, which is generally on "Rawdog Comedy", and most of the ride up was no different; we heard a bit of Eddie Izzard, Aziz Ansari talking about Coldstone Creamery, and John Mulaney and "The Best Meal I've Ever Had". We stopped at Weinerschnitzel right after the John Mulaney bit, and my dad and I were tempted to check out the jukebox. As we sat waiting for our food, my dad used the free wifi to check his email and Kevin tried to figure out what Lindsey Lohan movie was playing silently on the tv above us, especially since it had Megan Fox in it. It was Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, I used the laptop to IMDB it. Kevin had borrowed his cousin's DS, so we dicked around on PictoChat for a bit. When he got tired of accidentally bumping the power switch, I caught up on a bit of Pokemon Diamond before zoning out for a while. We finally got to my parents house around one in the morning.
Monday-
I took some pics of the dogs, to show those last saw them when Huey was almost hairless and assumed he was dying.
When everyone was finally awake, we went to visit my dad at his new plant. I always like checking out all the cool machines and processes, and he certainly likes showing them off. Apparently, one of his bosses asked him if I was looking for a job. While it would unquestionably be a better job than I have right now, there's a couple major problems with it: I doubt they'd be as forgiving about my migraine call-outs, and I'm sure I'd be back living with my parents at least for a while. We went to Target after the tour. This Target has no first floor, it's all interior parking and stockroom. You walk in from the parking structure, there's an open two-story room with elevators, escalators, and a catwalk. As far as I could tell, this catwalk served no purpose other than to allow you to look around the neighborhood. I only needed a toothbrush, but we were there a good hour or so and I ended up buying ice cream, english muffins, Excedrin, and a couple other things I can't recall. Kevin bought Ice cream as well, and chess because he was so very concerned we'd have nothing to do. My mom took us to a fast food chain called Dairy Belle for lunch. They have a huge menu for such a small location, but I just got a bacon burger and onion rings. The burger was somewhere between BK's Whopper and In'N'Out, yet better than either. They have three sizes of smoothie: Medium, Large, and Grande or something like that. I was warned that the largest one would most likely melt before I'd be able to finish it, so I just got a medium blueberry smoothie. We then grabbed some McD's to take back to my dad for his lunch. When we got back to the house, I took a nap because I'd been harboring a migraine since we'd first left the plant. We played a bit of chess when I came to. My mom made my favorite, taco cassarole, for dinner. We watched Inglorious Basterds while eating and played some more chess. I won every game. I watched the Ricky Gervais Show for the first time that night, which was funny enough that I've recorded a few episodes since we got back. I ended up eating about 1/3 of the ice cream tub before going to bed.
Tuesday-
We still didn't have use of the Cabrio, due to a broken valve or something, so Kevin and I decided to walk to the Southland Mall. I scribbled down a few directions and we set out. I made the mistake of assuming we could cut through the local park/manor, but found our exit path blocked by a chained gate so we had to double back. We grabbed some Quiznos to go because Kevin was too hungry to wait until we got to the mall. I don't know if I've ever actually had Quiznos before, much less been inside one. I ended up with a Pesto Turkey Torpedo, which came to be only the first item of the day to look like a giant dick in my mouth. The first thing we did at the mall was buys belts; Kevin, because he actually needed one, and me, because we were buying them from a kiosk where they're cheaper when you buy more. the main attraction of hitting the mall was not one, but two GameStops. at the first one I bought Gears of War Collector's Edition with metal tin, bonus DVD, and art book, all for $10. We walked around, going into a lot of stores where we bought nothing. The smell of Auntie Anne's drew me to the food court and I bought a jumbo jalapeno pretzel dog (giant dick-shaped object #2), and Kevin was mistaken for a mall employee and given a discount simply because he wears his keys on a 49ers lanyard. He was starting to get a headache so we looked for somewhere to get aspirin. I told him to look out for a dollar store, which turned out to be right around the corner, and they had aspirin just like I told him they would. He then bought some hella expensive blinged-out Family Guy shirts at some store where I was tempted to spend all my money on a fur coat they had on clearance. While looking for the restrooms, I discovered that there was an arcade hidden away under with the food court. We spent a while there playing prize games. I won a Pokemon Shinx from my second or third try at the claw game. On our way out of the mall, we passed by a furniture store and saw a great red and black leather set I wish I had room and/or matching everything for.
At this point, Kevin was already talking about heading back for Ventura a day before we had originally planned.
We headed out the wrong way and had to walk around a bit before we found the Blockbuster we were looking for, though along the way we did find the second Gamestop. We rented a few movies and I found out they made a movie of the Stephen King short story "Dolan's Cadillac. Sadly, we didn't rent it. One thing I should mention about the drivers up there; not one of them gives a damn about things like traffic laws or pedestrians. I was nearly run over by a city bus halfway through a crosswalk. He honked at me as though I were inconveniencing him by crossing when I had the walk sign. This was after a good four or so other cars simply drove around me. We took some pictures of the college. Kevin complained about being hungry on the way home, but I assured him that my parents most likely had dinner plans for us once we got home. We did stop in at a gas station to get snacks for our later travels. I almost lost Kevin to a pick-up game at the park's basketball courts. We made it back to the house, found out my mom had picked up the replacement part for the Cabrio, I showed my spoils of the day, and we got ready for dinner at Trader Vics while my dad installed the valve so we could have of the Cabrio the rest of the week.
I took some pics on the way over the bridge, nothing spectacular. Let me say first that I'm just glad I wasn't paying for dinner, it was very good, but expensive and we ordered a lot. To start, I order a "Coffee Grog"; coffee, rum, lemon twists, cloves, cinnamon stick, and FIRE. After finally blowing out the flames, I was somewhat disappointed to find it taste a bit too much like tea. The rest of the meal made up for it though. We ordered three appetizers, which included thing like: fried kalamari, crab cakes, crispy prawn that tasted like pork, and spareribs. I eat fish sticks/patties, imitation crab, sushi, shrimp, kalamari, crab, but I don't often eat fish in restaurants. I decided to try something I normally wouldn't, and ordered the Macadamia Nut Mahi Mahi served with steamed vegetables and wasabi potatoes. And it was honestly one of the best meals I've had in years, I even ate the zucchini and squash without hesitation. We were all too full for dessert at the time, and Kevin and I excused ourselves to go look at the Tikis hidden away down by the bathrooms (why everything awesome is hidden downstairs near bathrooms, I don't know). Not to be upstaged by my mock fellation of the Torpedo and pretzel dog, he fondled the fertility tiki's man-parts. I'm fairly sure that means he blessed/cursed now. I wish I'd taken pictures of the hanging plastic tube lights they had in the main dining room, as I want them in my room. We watched one of the rented movies, Crazy on the Outside, when we got home, it was actually pretty funny. We then kinda watched Armored while playing chess and eating more ice cream. I won more games than he did, but not by too many and the second movie wasn't exactly amazing. I then played a bit more Pokemon. I should mention that Kevin opted to sleep on the "marshmallow" rug rather than use an extra mattress my parents had or switch places with me on the pull-out.
Wednesday-
I knew our day was off to a bad start when I realized we had forgotten to charge the GPS the night before. My parents have been living without a printer since they moved, so I started the day by downloading and installing the right driver so I could print out some directions to Winchester Mystery House. I could feel the slight twinge of an oncoming migraine as we headed out. As soon as we were on the freeway, Kevin realized we needed to find a gas station. It seems as though there are no offramps in the San Jose area, only freeways branching off onto more freeways, which then merge back onto the first freeway. Eventually, we made it off and to a station. We were officially off the map by then. After half an hour, we were back on track, only in time for me to realize I was reading the wrong directions, and we were headed for Oakland rather than WMH, completely opposite direction.
We did discover the greatest local radio station though, 92.3, they play Muse, a lot. We finally reached our destination an hour later than we would have liked, and even then we missed the parking lot the first time passing by. We browsed the shop for a couple minutes after buying our tickets. I stamped a penny, the first of four different machines they had there. We did the mansion tour first, and our guide really seemed to downplay the haunted aspect of the house, which seemed to really go against a good portion of the merchandise they push in the shop. You can't take pictures inside the house, sorry. While we waited for the backstage/garden tour, I collected the other three stamped pennies, a good luck token and a handful of plastic aliens and ninjas from an egg machine.
You have to wear hard hats when in the basement, due to a lot of low pipes. on the underside of the hat, it says something along the lines of "Not to be used as a safety helmet". At one point during the second tour, while in the basement, I helped our guide out when she realized she'd forgotten her flashlight, as I have one on my keychain. You're allowed to take pictures through most of this tour, so I did. Any areas painted black on the house are places where work was unfinished when Sarah Winchester died, either where she expanding or where repairs still needed to be made after the earthquake.Took pictures of the statues and fountains, the most interesting of which was the cherub riding what I had assumed was a kelpie, but I'm not sure Kelpie have fish tails. I was disappointed by the shop's lack of "keychains with names on them", but ended up buying some raspberry almonds, some cabernet flavored bars, and a book about WMH, all for $20, not too bad.
My migraine started to pick up pace as we headed back home, especially once we stopped at Target (not same Target as Monday) where Kevin wanted to pick up another game since he was getting a little bored with chess, I convinced him to buy Pentago. I also got a smoothie and pretzel. The migraine was almost unbearable twenty minutes later when we got back to the house. I took some more Excedrin and stood around in the bathroom for about fifteen minutes, wetting down my head and neck and wondering if I was going to throw up. This put us in the category of "kinda late for the start of the concert", but we assumed that like any other concert, it would start a little late. I opted not to bother bringing my camera, being so used to concert signs saying "no flash photography" My mom had already agreed to drop us off and pick us up from the concert so we wouldn't have to pay $30 parking. It was pretty quick getting in, even with a bigger protest group stationed outside than I've even seen at any other concert, which includes Manson. Silversun Pickups had already started their set by the time we made it to our seats, which means that they actually started on time. I tried my best to zone out in my seat and hope the Excedrin would kick in soon. I hadn't really heard SsPu before, so I wasn't too worried about missing anything. During one of their final songs, they asked the whole audience to get out their cameras and use the flash. Not only were cameras allowed, the were encouraged. Damn.
I started to feel better during intermission. I'll just say that once Muse came out, it wasn't just the music in the air that made my migraine feel almost all better. They came out on their three raised platforms that you may have seem in their videos. The show was just as grand as I would have hoped. If you like their music (and why wouldn't you?) I'd certainly say that their live performance is not to be missed. At one point, massive balloons were dropped down on the audience. They were printed to be eyeballs and carried red/pink confetti. Maybe not the most original concept, but great fun watching them bounce around. We bought shirts after the show, I would have bought more but their card machine was down and I didn't want to wait another twenty minutes in line after hitting an ATM, which I assumed would also have a line to wait for. After leaving the far exit so as not to have to fight back through the crowds, and circumnavigating some "do not cross" barricades, we waited for my mom to pick us up at the gate where she'd dropped us off. Apparently, wherever we go, we look like we work there, because we were mistaken for security several times during the fifteen or so minutes we were waiting. We grabbed some Jack in the Box on the way home. We watched the third rental, Something Something Something Darkside and a movie I had set up to record called The Skeptic because it had Zoe Saldana. We played chess and pentago, he won all but one of the chess games, I won the greater portion of the pentago games. I was too tired to watch the final rental, Bronson. Kevin started to watched, but said he fell asleep not half an hour into it.
Thursday-
We got off to a late start that day, as we couldn't even decide where to go at first. I had wanted to take an evening tour of Alcatraz, but all those had been sold out for the rest of the week. I looked online for things to do, and it came to a choice of either a harbor tour which included an aquarium pass, or the California Academy of Sciences, which has penguins. We chose penguins.
I took a bunch of pictures while we drove up/over to San Fransisco. Because a navigator is only as good as the driver's ability to listen, we were lost again almost as soon as we got off the bridge, so I really didn't take any pictures while we tried to find our way. We had charged the GPS, but it was proving useless, so we used the GPS function on Kevin's phone. It was just past three by the time we got our tickets, which only gave us two hours to check out the place, but meant we had half an hour until the penguin feeding show. I took some pics of the penguins, then walked around talking pictures of the rest of the Africa exhibit while waiting for the feeding to start. Took more pics during the feeding, then we went and explored a bit. We spent most of our remaining time in the underground aquarium level, where I bought some gifts for myself and others (sadly, still no "keychains with names on them"). With no more than fifteen minutes before the place closed, we ran around checking out as many exhibits as we could. Took pics of new "GPS octopus". We stopped by a different Dairy Belle and Taco Bell to pick up dinner. As we got out of the car, there was a guy walking around who gave Kevin and I the same impression of "This guy is looking to steal something", so we made sure that one of us had eyes on the car at all times. Two cars over from us, someone was smoking pot, I'm assuming in preparation of buying Taco Bell. This Dairy Belle had an ever bigger selection of smoothie flavors, more than a dozen at least, and I ended up with Marshmallow. My mom was in bed, sick, when we got back. There was more chess/pentago/pokemon played that night, don't remember much else.
Friday-
We woke up early to head back to Ventura, though not as early as Kevin had hoped. He said he didn't need directions to get home, so we left the GPS unit on the counter. I asked him how long he wanted me to wait before I told him he was headed the wrong way, he told me to shut my mouth. He had already turned North at this point. Through a series of wrong turns and even wronger turns, we ended up on a toll bridge with no exit. Not only that, but he didn't understand the difference between "Cash" and "FasTrak", and went through the latter without paying. So, we ended up back in SF, and after half an hour of him trying to make his way back over the bridge (more freeways leading to freeways, he wanted to see if he could stop and walk up to one of the tollbooths and pay them directly for his mistake), we ended up simply heading south for another bridge. The rest of the trip wasn't too exciting. Once we were out of range of 92.3, I played some Muse through my portable DVD player, but he started bitching about the crappy speakers and asked if I had any CDs. So I popped the only CD I had into car's system. He was quite upset to find that it was Shakira. About 2/3 through the album, he asked if it was on repeat, I assured him it wasn't it's just the extended CD. Took some crappy shots of myself. With the purple jacket, yellow shirt, facial hair, and zebra-stripe cylinder pillow, I thought I looked a bit like the King of All Cosmos from Katamari Damacy. The pictures, not so much. Meh. Also, my large marshmallow smoothie from the night before lasted about half the trip. Right around Santa Barbara, Ke$ha came on the radio, which I had no choice but to bump as loud as comfortably possible and spaz out to. Got home around 1pm.
TL;DR: Had Fun, bought stuff, not actually gay.
For a while, I considered setting up a Twitter account just for when I take trips; I'm now regretting my decision not to.
Sunday April 11-
The original plan was to have my parents drop off the Cabrio for us to drive up, but it was decided that it would be a lot cheaper just to ride back up with them since they were in town anyway. We left in the evening. I had been drinking earlier in the day, and had just the slightest buzz left. My mom's Fusion has Sirius radio, which is generally on "Rawdog Comedy", and most of the ride up was no different; we heard a bit of Eddie Izzard, Aziz Ansari talking about Coldstone Creamery, and John Mulaney and "The Best Meal I've Ever Had". We stopped at Weinerschnitzel right after the John Mulaney bit, and my dad and I were tempted to check out the jukebox. As we sat waiting for our food, my dad used the free wifi to check his email and Kevin tried to figure out what Lindsey Lohan movie was playing silently on the tv above us, especially since it had Megan Fox in it. It was Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, I used the laptop to IMDB it. Kevin had borrowed his cousin's DS, so we dicked around on PictoChat for a bit. When he got tired of accidentally bumping the power switch, I caught up on a bit of Pokemon Diamond before zoning out for a while. We finally got to my parents house around one in the morning.
Monday-
I took some pics of the dogs, to show those last saw them when Huey was almost hairless and assumed he was dying.
When everyone was finally awake, we went to visit my dad at his new plant. I always like checking out all the cool machines and processes, and he certainly likes showing them off. Apparently, one of his bosses asked him if I was looking for a job. While it would unquestionably be a better job than I have right now, there's a couple major problems with it: I doubt they'd be as forgiving about my migraine call-outs, and I'm sure I'd be back living with my parents at least for a while. We went to Target after the tour. This Target has no first floor, it's all interior parking and stockroom. You walk in from the parking structure, there's an open two-story room with elevators, escalators, and a catwalk. As far as I could tell, this catwalk served no purpose other than to allow you to look around the neighborhood. I only needed a toothbrush, but we were there a good hour or so and I ended up buying ice cream, english muffins, Excedrin, and a couple other things I can't recall. Kevin bought Ice cream as well, and chess because he was so very concerned we'd have nothing to do. My mom took us to a fast food chain called Dairy Belle for lunch. They have a huge menu for such a small location, but I just got a bacon burger and onion rings. The burger was somewhere between BK's Whopper and In'N'Out, yet better than either. They have three sizes of smoothie: Medium, Large, and Grande or something like that. I was warned that the largest one would most likely melt before I'd be able to finish it, so I just got a medium blueberry smoothie. We then grabbed some McD's to take back to my dad for his lunch. When we got back to the house, I took a nap because I'd been harboring a migraine since we'd first left the plant. We played a bit of chess when I came to. My mom made my favorite, taco cassarole, for dinner. We watched Inglorious Basterds while eating and played some more chess. I won every game. I watched the Ricky Gervais Show for the first time that night, which was funny enough that I've recorded a few episodes since we got back. I ended up eating about 1/3 of the ice cream tub before going to bed.
Tuesday-
We still didn't have use of the Cabrio, due to a broken valve or something, so Kevin and I decided to walk to the Southland Mall. I scribbled down a few directions and we set out. I made the mistake of assuming we could cut through the local park/manor, but found our exit path blocked by a chained gate so we had to double back. We grabbed some Quiznos to go because Kevin was too hungry to wait until we got to the mall. I don't know if I've ever actually had Quiznos before, much less been inside one. I ended up with a Pesto Turkey Torpedo, which came to be only the first item of the day to look like a giant dick in my mouth. The first thing we did at the mall was buys belts; Kevin, because he actually needed one, and me, because we were buying them from a kiosk where they're cheaper when you buy more. the main attraction of hitting the mall was not one, but two GameStops. at the first one I bought Gears of War Collector's Edition with metal tin, bonus DVD, and art book, all for $10. We walked around, going into a lot of stores where we bought nothing. The smell of Auntie Anne's drew me to the food court and I bought a jumbo jalapeno pretzel dog (giant dick-shaped object #2), and Kevin was mistaken for a mall employee and given a discount simply because he wears his keys on a 49ers lanyard. He was starting to get a headache so we looked for somewhere to get aspirin. I told him to look out for a dollar store, which turned out to be right around the corner, and they had aspirin just like I told him they would. He then bought some hella expensive blinged-out Family Guy shirts at some store where I was tempted to spend all my money on a fur coat they had on clearance. While looking for the restrooms, I discovered that there was an arcade hidden away under with the food court. We spent a while there playing prize games. I won a Pokemon Shinx from my second or third try at the claw game. On our way out of the mall, we passed by a furniture store and saw a great red and black leather set I wish I had room and/or matching everything for.
At this point, Kevin was already talking about heading back for Ventura a day before we had originally planned.
We headed out the wrong way and had to walk around a bit before we found the Blockbuster we were looking for, though along the way we did find the second Gamestop. We rented a few movies and I found out they made a movie of the Stephen King short story "Dolan's Cadillac. Sadly, we didn't rent it. One thing I should mention about the drivers up there; not one of them gives a damn about things like traffic laws or pedestrians. I was nearly run over by a city bus halfway through a crosswalk. He honked at me as though I were inconveniencing him by crossing when I had the walk sign. This was after a good four or so other cars simply drove around me. We took some pictures of the college. Kevin complained about being hungry on the way home, but I assured him that my parents most likely had dinner plans for us once we got home. We did stop in at a gas station to get snacks for our later travels. I almost lost Kevin to a pick-up game at the park's basketball courts. We made it back to the house, found out my mom had picked up the replacement part for the Cabrio, I showed my spoils of the day, and we got ready for dinner at Trader Vics while my dad installed the valve so we could have of the Cabrio the rest of the week.
I took some pics on the way over the bridge, nothing spectacular. Let me say first that I'm just glad I wasn't paying for dinner, it was very good, but expensive and we ordered a lot. To start, I order a "Coffee Grog"; coffee, rum, lemon twists, cloves, cinnamon stick, and FIRE. After finally blowing out the flames, I was somewhat disappointed to find it taste a bit too much like tea. The rest of the meal made up for it though. We ordered three appetizers, which included thing like: fried kalamari, crab cakes, crispy prawn that tasted like pork, and spareribs. I eat fish sticks/patties, imitation crab, sushi, shrimp, kalamari, crab, but I don't often eat fish in restaurants. I decided to try something I normally wouldn't, and ordered the Macadamia Nut Mahi Mahi served with steamed vegetables and wasabi potatoes. And it was honestly one of the best meals I've had in years, I even ate the zucchini and squash without hesitation. We were all too full for dessert at the time, and Kevin and I excused ourselves to go look at the Tikis hidden away down by the bathrooms (why everything awesome is hidden downstairs near bathrooms, I don't know). Not to be upstaged by my mock fellation of the Torpedo and pretzel dog, he fondled the fertility tiki's man-parts. I'm fairly sure that means he blessed/cursed now. I wish I'd taken pictures of the hanging plastic tube lights they had in the main dining room, as I want them in my room. We watched one of the rented movies, Crazy on the Outside, when we got home, it was actually pretty funny. We then kinda watched Armored while playing chess and eating more ice cream. I won more games than he did, but not by too many and the second movie wasn't exactly amazing. I then played a bit more Pokemon. I should mention that Kevin opted to sleep on the "marshmallow" rug rather than use an extra mattress my parents had or switch places with me on the pull-out.
Wednesday-
I knew our day was off to a bad start when I realized we had forgotten to charge the GPS the night before. My parents have been living without a printer since they moved, so I started the day by downloading and installing the right driver so I could print out some directions to Winchester Mystery House. I could feel the slight twinge of an oncoming migraine as we headed out. As soon as we were on the freeway, Kevin realized we needed to find a gas station. It seems as though there are no offramps in the San Jose area, only freeways branching off onto more freeways, which then merge back onto the first freeway. Eventually, we made it off and to a station. We were officially off the map by then. After half an hour, we were back on track, only in time for me to realize I was reading the wrong directions, and we were headed for Oakland rather than WMH, completely opposite direction.
We did discover the greatest local radio station though, 92.3, they play Muse, a lot. We finally reached our destination an hour later than we would have liked, and even then we missed the parking lot the first time passing by. We browsed the shop for a couple minutes after buying our tickets. I stamped a penny, the first of four different machines they had there. We did the mansion tour first, and our guide really seemed to downplay the haunted aspect of the house, which seemed to really go against a good portion of the merchandise they push in the shop. You can't take pictures inside the house, sorry. While we waited for the backstage/garden tour, I collected the other three stamped pennies, a good luck token and a handful of plastic aliens and ninjas from an egg machine.
You have to wear hard hats when in the basement, due to a lot of low pipes. on the underside of the hat, it says something along the lines of "Not to be used as a safety helmet". At one point during the second tour, while in the basement, I helped our guide out when she realized she'd forgotten her flashlight, as I have one on my keychain. You're allowed to take pictures through most of this tour, so I did. Any areas painted black on the house are places where work was unfinished when Sarah Winchester died, either where she expanding or where repairs still needed to be made after the earthquake.Took pictures of the statues and fountains, the most interesting of which was the cherub riding what I had assumed was a kelpie, but I'm not sure Kelpie have fish tails. I was disappointed by the shop's lack of "keychains with names on them", but ended up buying some raspberry almonds, some cabernet flavored bars, and a book about WMH, all for $20, not too bad.
My migraine started to pick up pace as we headed back home, especially once we stopped at Target (not same Target as Monday) where Kevin wanted to pick up another game since he was getting a little bored with chess, I convinced him to buy Pentago. I also got a smoothie and pretzel. The migraine was almost unbearable twenty minutes later when we got back to the house. I took some more Excedrin and stood around in the bathroom for about fifteen minutes, wetting down my head and neck and wondering if I was going to throw up. This put us in the category of "kinda late for the start of the concert", but we assumed that like any other concert, it would start a little late. I opted not to bother bringing my camera, being so used to concert signs saying "no flash photography" My mom had already agreed to drop us off and pick us up from the concert so we wouldn't have to pay $30 parking. It was pretty quick getting in, even with a bigger protest group stationed outside than I've even seen at any other concert, which includes Manson. Silversun Pickups had already started their set by the time we made it to our seats, which means that they actually started on time. I tried my best to zone out in my seat and hope the Excedrin would kick in soon. I hadn't really heard SsPu before, so I wasn't too worried about missing anything. During one of their final songs, they asked the whole audience to get out their cameras and use the flash. Not only were cameras allowed, the were encouraged. Damn.
I started to feel better during intermission. I'll just say that once Muse came out, it wasn't just the music in the air that made my migraine feel almost all better. They came out on their three raised platforms that you may have seem in their videos. The show was just as grand as I would have hoped. If you like their music (and why wouldn't you?) I'd certainly say that their live performance is not to be missed. At one point, massive balloons were dropped down on the audience. They were printed to be eyeballs and carried red/pink confetti. Maybe not the most original concept, but great fun watching them bounce around. We bought shirts after the show, I would have bought more but their card machine was down and I didn't want to wait another twenty minutes in line after hitting an ATM, which I assumed would also have a line to wait for. After leaving the far exit so as not to have to fight back through the crowds, and circumnavigating some "do not cross" barricades, we waited for my mom to pick us up at the gate where she'd dropped us off. Apparently, wherever we go, we look like we work there, because we were mistaken for security several times during the fifteen or so minutes we were waiting. We grabbed some Jack in the Box on the way home. We watched the third rental, Something Something Something Darkside and a movie I had set up to record called The Skeptic because it had Zoe Saldana. We played chess and pentago, he won all but one of the chess games, I won the greater portion of the pentago games. I was too tired to watch the final rental, Bronson. Kevin started to watched, but said he fell asleep not half an hour into it.
Thursday-
We got off to a late start that day, as we couldn't even decide where to go at first. I had wanted to take an evening tour of Alcatraz, but all those had been sold out for the rest of the week. I looked online for things to do, and it came to a choice of either a harbor tour which included an aquarium pass, or the California Academy of Sciences, which has penguins. We chose penguins.
I took a bunch of pictures while we drove up/over to San Fransisco. Because a navigator is only as good as the driver's ability to listen, we were lost again almost as soon as we got off the bridge, so I really didn't take any pictures while we tried to find our way. We had charged the GPS, but it was proving useless, so we used the GPS function on Kevin's phone. It was just past three by the time we got our tickets, which only gave us two hours to check out the place, but meant we had half an hour until the penguin feeding show. I took some pics of the penguins, then walked around talking pictures of the rest of the Africa exhibit while waiting for the feeding to start. Took more pics during the feeding, then we went and explored a bit. We spent most of our remaining time in the underground aquarium level, where I bought some gifts for myself and others (sadly, still no "keychains with names on them"). With no more than fifteen minutes before the place closed, we ran around checking out as many exhibits as we could. Took pics of new "GPS octopus". We stopped by a different Dairy Belle and Taco Bell to pick up dinner. As we got out of the car, there was a guy walking around who gave Kevin and I the same impression of "This guy is looking to steal something", so we made sure that one of us had eyes on the car at all times. Two cars over from us, someone was smoking pot, I'm assuming in preparation of buying Taco Bell. This Dairy Belle had an ever bigger selection of smoothie flavors, more than a dozen at least, and I ended up with Marshmallow. My mom was in bed, sick, when we got back. There was more chess/pentago/pokemon played that night, don't remember much else.
Friday-
We woke up early to head back to Ventura, though not as early as Kevin had hoped. He said he didn't need directions to get home, so we left the GPS unit on the counter. I asked him how long he wanted me to wait before I told him he was headed the wrong way, he told me to shut my mouth. He had already turned North at this point. Through a series of wrong turns and even wronger turns, we ended up on a toll bridge with no exit. Not only that, but he didn't understand the difference between "Cash" and "FasTrak", and went through the latter without paying. So, we ended up back in SF, and after half an hour of him trying to make his way back over the bridge (more freeways leading to freeways, he wanted to see if he could stop and walk up to one of the tollbooths and pay them directly for his mistake), we ended up simply heading south for another bridge. The rest of the trip wasn't too exciting. Once we were out of range of 92.3, I played some Muse through my portable DVD player, but he started bitching about the crappy speakers and asked if I had any CDs. So I popped the only CD I had into car's system. He was quite upset to find that it was Shakira. About 2/3 through the album, he asked if it was on repeat, I assured him it wasn't it's just the extended CD. Took some crappy shots of myself. With the purple jacket, yellow shirt, facial hair, and zebra-stripe cylinder pillow, I thought I looked a bit like the King of All Cosmos from Katamari Damacy. The pictures, not so much. Meh. Also, my large marshmallow smoothie from the night before lasted about half the trip. Right around Santa Barbara, Ke$ha came on the radio, which I had no choice but to bump as loud as comfortably possible and spaz out to. Got home around 1pm.
TL;DR: Had Fun, bought stuff, not actually gay.