You know what I miss? mix tapes. Specifically mix tapes made by friends that were trying to get you to listen to some new bands or their favorite songs.

I know Last.fm exists and is the answer to mix tapes in this day and age, but I’m a bit slow and haven’t quite figured it out yet. Besides with Last.fm you don’t get the tape or cd cover that your friend personally designed or wrote out for you. And really, that’s just as important as the music.

When I was a kid I remember taping songs from the radio for the highest quality mix tapes possible. Or, even better, a friend of mine and I held a tape player up to the radio to record a song, but then her brother came in the room and started talking. We ended up with the song featuring a snippet of her brother talking and then us hushing him halfway through.

Lately I’ve been feeling like I’m in a musical rut and it’s making me miss mix tapes with selections of new musical possibilities. If anyone wants to take pity on me and make me a mix tape (read as a cd since I haven’t had a tape player in years) I would love that. If you need my shipping address find the contact button and send me an email. Otherwise, I guess I’ll just go back to listening to the same old stuff.

I’ve recently decided that I need to play tambourine with a band and I’m going to need to do this soon. So if you’re a band looking for a tambourine player here’s a list of reasons I might be just the right person:

1. I will provide my own tambourine. And as I don’t currently own one, you can pick one out for me in whatever style you think best fits the band’s image (do tambourines come in different designs?)

2. I’ve been watching studying other tambourine players and it seems that it’s good form to hit your tambourine against your hip. Well, potential band mates, let me say I’ve got plenty of hip to hit a tambourine against. This means there will never be a chance that I’ll miss my hip and have a silent tambourine. No, my hips can keep the music flowing.

3. I like good music. I also like some crap music, but it’s good crap music.

4. I have no musical talent (other than rocking the tambourine HARD). This means I won’t ever try to take the band in a new direction or ask to write songs. I’m totally neutral, so long as I can shake my tambourine.

5. I don’t want to sing backup vocals, but if you insist on me doing it I’m willing to take voice lessons.

6. Maybe you’re not sure you need a tambourine player all the time, well I don’t mind only playing one show. Don’t get me wrong, I could go on the road with you, but I’m cool only playing one show.

7. I’ve watched Almost Famous more times that I can remember. That’s got to count for something.

8. I rock.

So, who wants me to join their band?

My new year’s resolution for 2007 is that I will continue my shoe sobriety for the whole year. Yup, no shoes from now until January of 2008…

I had you going there for a minute, didn’t I? Did you really think I could go a whole year without buying shoes? Oh, hell no! I’m not ever half way through the 90 days and I’m wondering how I’m going to make it. So far, I’ve only had one pair of shoes I’ve seriously thought about breaking down and buying, but I somehow managed to walk away. But, that’s all beside the point.

My early new year’s resolution is to record and make comments about every book I read, album I buy, and movie I see next year. Sound silly and like I’m going to be making very boring blog posts for the next year? Yeah, maybe a bit of both, but the point is that when 2007 ends I’ll be able to accurately create a best of list (best movies I saw, books I read, etc).

Right now I can’t tell you what the best movie I saw this year was, simply because I can’t remember half the movies I saw. And don’t get me started on music. I buy more music than I should, it’s as simple as that.

I don’t plan on overloading my blog with all of this information on a daily basis, maybe I’ll have a side page with the most recent comments and stuff. I haven’t really worked out the specifics yet.

Anyway, stayed tuned for that.

I know I’m late on the new iTunes 7 hating bandwagon but my complaint is different than most folks’.

On the 12th Apple released a grand new iTunes and I went ahead and downloaded it. At first I thought it was okay and I could live with the changes. I even downloaded some new songs to celebrate (okay, I was going to download then even if a new iTunes wasn’t released, but whatever). The next day when I plugged in my iPod to update, something went wonky. It continued to update for 30 minutes. And when I tried to eject the iPod, iTunes refused to let it go. I had to manually quit iTunes to break the grasp it had on my poor little iPod.

Jump to the next day when jparks starts investigated what’s up with iTunes. It turns out that some how, when iTunes updated, it lost a bunch of my songs. Or it had them but couldn’t locate them. I’m not really sure, but if you really want to know, jparks can explain it to you. And (here’s the heartbreaking part of this tale) the only thing jparks could figure out to do was move my whole library off iTunes onto the computer’s desktop and then move them back to iTunes. And this was going to cause me to lose my playlists, my perfectly constructed, time consuming to create playlists!

So here it is, five days since iTunes was updated and I’m still fixing my library and playlists. I am very upset with Apple. Damn it Apple, now when I see your witty little “Hi, I’m a Mac” commercials I won’t be so quick to laugh at them. You have created a little black spot in my heart of love for you.

How was the Counting Crows concert you ask? Pretty damn good. Except for that other band that played; I was a little less than impressed with them. But Counting Crows were excellent, much much better than I was hoping they would be.

But I do have some words of advice for Mr. Adam Duritz. You see, Mr. Duritz came out before the show to drop off a set list at the sound booth and a group of fans gathered around him. Mr. Duritz was pretty miserable about said group of fans but reluctantly signed autographes and took pictures. My words of advice are: if you don’t want to be bothered before the show, stay backstage. I’m sure you have a roadie or someone to run your errands. And if you must come out, at least smile a little when dorky girls want to take a picture with you.

What a fun, slow weekend Jason and I have had thus far. In the past few weeks it seems like we rarely get to spend time at home and since we somehow managed to get a weekend with no plans we decided to use that to be homebodies, do some cleaning, and maybe get some dangle time in (aka go to the climbing gym). And Jason had time to sort his Warlord cards and work on his D&D story. Oh yeah! He was double dorking this weekend.

The weekend started Friday night with the Radiohead concert in Berkeley. The venue was really nice, an outdoor Greek style theater that was just the perfect size for concerts. I was amazed by the fog that rolled into the theatre as dusk hit, until I realized it wasn’t fog, just huge quantities of pot smoke. You would have been hard pressed to find anyone besides Jason and I that wasn’t stoned. In fact, I’m pretty sure just sitting in that theatre got us a little stoned. Jason did ask for five more churros when he was finished the one I bought him.

Anyway, the show was good. Thom Yorke had technical problems with mics and such all throughout the set and got to throw hissy fits at his crew. A few times I was sure he was going to storm off the stage and I know I wasn’t the only person thinking that. There were a few moments it seemed the whole crowd held their breath to see if he was going to continue with the set. Or maybe everyone had just taken a hit and was holding it in. Now that think of it, the silences were followed by everyone coughing when they exhaled.

When Radiohead left the stage during their first break Jason turned to me and asked if I wanted to go. And in true 80-year-old style I said yeah. I remember when you wouldn’t have been able to drag me out of a venue even after the band was done, the lights were on, and security was dragging all the knocked out moshers off the pit floor. But last night it just seemed like a good idea to leave during the first break. Jason had heard the songs he wanted to hear and I had gotten up at 7am for work that morning, so why not beat traffic and leave ahead of the crowd? On the way out of the gates we were handed AARP cards and told we were officially eligible for senior citizen discounts at Denny’s.

This morning Jason had his belay class at Planet Granite and once he was done with that we got our climb on. And by “got our climb on” I mean: got about half way up the wall while 9 year-olds flew past us on much harder walls, laughing and mocking us the whole time. I think I was called granny by one of them.

Okay so it wasn’t that bad, but the gym was crawling with kids that were doing much better than Jason and I. We tried a few medium level walls and couldn’t manage to complete them. We were there for a couple of hours and were tired and beaten up at the end of it. Well, Jason was beat up. He slammed into the wall of the way down one time and got a scrapped knee and elbow. That’ll teach him for making me dangle.

Tonight we’ve hung out at the apartment, not doing much of anything. As I previously mentioned, Jason played with his Warlord cards and worked on his D&D story. I did some laundry, washed some dishes, and ironed. Hells yeah, I’m just like Donna Reed. Give me a pair of pearls and the transformation will be complete.

I hate to admit it, but my plans for tomorrow aren’t much more excited than tonight’s. I’ve got to do some more cleaning, read some of magazines that are piling up and overtaking the living room, and maybe run back to the gym to use their fancy schmancy workout equipment. If I’m feeling really adventurous I might run to the mall to return some things I bought, but don’t fit.

I know, it’s hard to imagine how any life can be this fast paced and exciting. It’s a darn good thing I bought a planner to keep track of everything.

Who would have thought that a free concert in a huge city would be really crowded and getting there a mere 2 hours before the show started was not early enough?!?

This was the view of the stage from where we camped out:

While it was really cool to sit and listen to music outside, surrounded by tress, it might have been nice to have a clear view of the stage as well. Ah well, maybe next time.

Here’s a picture of the crowd in front of the stage:

Can you see why this is such a neat venue for a show? I can’t wait for the Shakespeare festival in the fall.

Tomorrow night I have my first class at the rock climbing gym. It’s just a beginner belay class to see if I like scaling fake rock cliffs to reach the top and experience the joy of ringing a bell. The thing I don’t understand is why Jason signed me up for this when two of his friends have recently broken limbs doing almost this exact same thing. It’s like he somehow got the idea that I’m coordinated and strong enough to cling to a wall and propel myself upwards at the same time. If I end up with a broken arm, I’m going to be the first person to tell him “I told you so”

Here’s what I have on my calendar for the next few weeks, just in case you are concerned with my social life:

Saturday, the 17th Crawdad Festival

Sunday, the 18th Aimee Mann, for free, at Stern Grove

Friday, the 23rd Radiohead concert at Berkeley

Tuesday, the 27th Counting Crows concert

Sunday, the 2nd of July the Violent Femmes and Dresden Dolls concert (It seems I’m going to this one by myself, but I have an extra ticket if anyone is interested)

hmmm, feels like I’m forgetting something.

Living in the bay area is like living perpetually in the 90’s. And I LOVE THE 90’s! And what was the best part of the 90’s? The music of course. Which is why I’m twitterpated over the concerts coming to this area in the next few months. Counting Crows! Toad the Wet Sprocket! (assuming we can still get tickets) Radiohead! Dave Matthews Band! And oh so many more!

Living in California is turning out to be great. Assuming I don’t get trapped under a bookshelf in the next few months during an earthquake. I would hate to be trapped and have to miss one of the concerts.