With your help, we increased the traffic from my site to Shipwire by 550%. Who knew I had you trained so well?

As a reward, I will introduce you to The Hold Steady. I was just turned onto them this morning and they are knocking me on my ass. My favorite song right now is Stuck Between Stations, which reminds me of Springsteen mixed with some of the 80s Minnesota punk-rock bands. The video is below:

Don’t say I never gave you nothin’.

Today I went to see Matt Nathanson and Collective Soul at KFOG’s KaBoom show. They were each a lot of fun, although I’m still not huge on the whole big outdoor concert thing. It seems like so much energy is lost. Both of them tried to do the whole call/response thing, but in the SF winds it’s hard to hear anyone singing along.

Anyway, I was intrigued by a tattoo on a guy near me. He was shirtless and had “BURNS” in giant letters across his upper back. I wonder if this is there as a reminder to apply sunblock to that area when he is going to go shirtless, since it burns. On the same token, I speculate that he may have tattoos on his inner thighs that say “chafes”.

I’ve given up on the idea of writing a coherent blog post to sum up the last 6 months. With each passing week, it gets more overwhelming to think about recapping, so if I don’t just start posting my usual random stuff here, I’ll never use it again. In no particular order, I have:

• Seen the launch of the new Shipwire.com in October, as well as many new features since then.
• Taught a two year old that "mooses" is the plural of "moose" after his mother laughed at me for not remembering that (despite the fact that I’ve never actually seen a moose, let alone more than one, so this is hardly relevant information).
• Tricked someone into redesigning my site for me, only to procrastinate on actually slicing the images and building it.
• Started taking guitar lessons again.
• Become obsessed with Rock Band.
• Decided to start a new genre called Agnostic Rock to compete with Christian Rock, including such bands as Unknowable, A Priori Objections, and Scintilla of Evidence.
• Wasted thirty minutes researching agnosticism to write that joke.
• Come to believe that people riding their bikes on the sidewalk is bothersome, but less so than people riding their bikes the wrong way in the bike lane.
• Ridden Rachel’s horse.
• Killed my Treo 650, thus getting an upgrade to a Treo 700 and giving me an excuse to purge my phonebook of people who I never call and who never call me.
• Come to terms with the fact that my musical taste leads to like bands who are younger than my brother.
• Received a USB humping dog due to contractual obligations.
• Rocked out in matching haiku shirts with Rachel and Allison.
• Spent my second consecutive New Year’s Eve in Minnesota, as well as many other weekends along the way.
• Been to see Cowboy Mouth, Melee, Matt Nathanson, Magic Bullets, Glen Phillips, Jonathan Kingham, and Will Hoge in concert.
• Attended An Event Apart in San Francisco.
• Voted for Obama.
• Started planning a trip to Hawaii.
• Lost 12 pounds on an office diet bet to avoid dressing as Santa.
• Partook in a Wii hunt during the holiday season.
• Forgotten many interesting and exciting things I have done in the past few months.

It’s bonus blog entry night! This has been half-written in my drafts for a long time, but the book was so fabulous that I’m going to just post what I had written so it doesn’t get lost in the pile of half-written memories.

Based on a recommendation from Pamie.com is reading when I was at the library because it sounded neat. It’s called “Love Is A Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at Time” and is written by Rob Sheffield, who is a music critic for Rolling Stone, and it’s his memoirs, but he uses a series of mix tapes he’s made to relive those times. The first chapter talks about his wife dying after 5 years, 10 months of marriage, and it is him listening to a mix tape she made and he’s staying up all night listening to it over and over. “I now get scared about forgetting anything about Renee, even the tiniest detail, even the bands on this tape I can’t stand - if she touched them, I want to hear her fingerprints….I count on the music to bring me back — or more precisely, to bring her forward.” I just freaking love that, probably because I see myself in there so much. Music is like that for me. We were just talking about that at lunch the other day, how a song can bring back such a vivid memory. A specific moment in time, a person, an emotion. So many songs remind me of so many things, and that can never be replaced. The book goes on to tell the story of their relationship and his life after her death, and uses various mixtapes to do it. It’s really a beautiful tribute to someone that obviously impacted his life in a huge way.

Magic Bullets are the “Artist of the Day” on Spin.com Go check ‘em out

Steve Clark turned me onto Mêlée’s new album Devils & Angels this week, and it’s been getting some steady play both at work and on my MP3 player. Very solid power pop, and I would be willing to bet that the first single “Built To Last” ends up in about 75 TV soundtracks in the coming months. Remember, I was listening to them BEFORE they were on “The OC”. Just sayin’.

I also found this video that the band put together themselves. It’s cute, but I was sold by the guy at 3:15 into the video. Kylli, tell me that does not remind you of Otis, our favorite homeless panhandler from that Cowboy Mouth show.

Comings: Steph and Rachel came to play this weekend. I’m still too tired to elaborate on the details, but it was a fantastically fun weekend. We made some adventurous sushi, including PBJB sushi (peanut butter, blackberry preserves, and banana), and sushiritto (refried beans, raw onion, cilantro, and olives, then topped with a dollop of salsa and a leaf of cilantro). We went to Haight-Ashbury and shopped, and I think we all ended up with something we were excited about. Mine was the L.E.O. album I’ve been meaning to buy for a while, as well as the copy of the Pernice Brothers‘ “Yours, Mine, & Ours” which I have been listening to obsessively on Yahoo! Music and can now use to convert other people to the band, and also a couple of other CDs that I can’t remember right now. Thus is the curse of Amoeba, where I buy more than I can listen to immediately. All in all, an excellent weekend. 17 more days until Rachel and I invade San Diego. Mwahaha.

Goings: After it being a hypothetical plan for over a year, Rachel and I are making our Peru trip a reality. She and I both have the clearance for the vacation time. We’ve narrowed down which volunteer program we are interested in. We have a rough timeline of what we want to do while we’re there. Que excitante

For a while, I was doing so well with doing real updates, but now we’re back to the ol’ list of things I’ve been doing…

I survived Christmas with the two families. I think it was probably scarier for Allison’s family than for me, since a food fight cooperation broke up, due to a loophole in my mom’s attempt to stop me from shooting whipped cream across the room. She said that your partner had to be within 3 feet, which turns out to be greater than the distance a can of whipped cream can shoot horizontally. Incidentally, we did discover that holding a can of whipped cream three feet above someone’s head can get it pretty close to into their mouth. And in their hair, but that’s a small price to pay.

Allison and I rung in the new year with Rachel and her family in Minnesota, where Rachel scored us a last-minute snow storm after a couple of days of boring weather. We played Space Pirate Amazon Ninja Catgirls and Munchkin, went for a walk in the snow, ate at Al’s Breakfast (still home to the best omelet I’ve ever eaten), shopped at the Mall of America, had yummy Indian food, and had a jolly good time. Some photos from the trip. I’m counting the days until Rachel comes out again in February, which happens to be one day before Stephie to visit.

Work has been crazy busy, but still exciting. I spent a couple of days this week on Bangalore time, which was exhausting. I’m getting too old to work at midnight. So different from a few years ago when I did my best work after 10pm.

Speaking of exhausting, I’ve been going to Community Bootcamp 5 days a week, which has been kicking my ass (in a good way!). I’m also going to start running again, training for Bay To Breakers in May (although it sounds like Blake won’t be able to run with me this year) and The Relay in July, which I’ll be running as part of a Yahoo! team (and don’t think I won’t be hitting y’all up for donations for Organs R Us). I’m trying to get back to my fighting weight again, since I’ve been putting on a couple of pounds lately.

In less painful news, I bought myself a mandolin:

It just came on Friday, but I’m already getting the hang of it. Within an hour, I had a couple of chords down and could play the verse/chorus of Will Hoge’s “(Better Off) Now That You’re Gone” (first three chords in my book were C, G, and F) as well as Glen Phillips’ Duck and Cover (I suppose that having a lyric from a song tattooed on your body makes you more likely to play it each time you pick up an instrument). I’ve started learning Losing My Religion (well, what song do YOU think of when you think of a mandolin?), and that’s been going pretty well. Once I got the bridge height figured out, the hardest thing has been tuning (and retuning) it. With the pairs of strings, being even slightly out of tune really stands out. Who wants to jam?

A bunch of things, since I’ve been forgetting to post lately:

• Vance Degeneres has joined Cowboy Mouth to replace the recently-departed Paul Sanchez. It sounds like the Mouth will be in California early next year. It’s been far too long since I’ve seen them, so I’m excited.
• Exercise last week was a complete success. So far, I’m also on track for this week. I’m contemplating training for either a marathon or a half-marathon. My joints and I need to have a long talk about whether or not it’s worth it.
• Yahoo! has announced a big reorganization. I don’t know much more than what’s in the press. I’m sure Valleywag knows more than I do (or at least thinks they do).
• So far, my holiday time has been booked with spending time with Allison’s family, running to the airport to meet Ashlee during her layover on Christmas Eve, then heading to Minneapolis for New Year’s. If anyone else wants to see me, book your time now. I’ve a very busy guy.
• Recent music purchases of Brian Vander Ark, Paul Sanchez, Pete Droge, and Minibar have all been pleasing on the ears.

This was written on the plane, but I just now got it off of my Treo, so the tense may be a bit off. Deal with it.

Another visit to Rachel and Minnesota come and gone. Too quick, as always. We did manage to pack it full of cooking, eating, concerts, a dancing toddler, furniture shopping, exercise at the gym across the street, Peru planning, and great conversation, so I have a hard time complaining too much.
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