Last night Patrick and I went to the KINK FM Holiday concert in Portland with Patrick’s friend Andy. It was great! There were four acts:
Matt Nathanson – my current fav (pictured, thanks to Andy). Love his music and he is fabulous live! What a great entertainer. We just saw him live in Eugene in November, where he played for two hours. I would have loved him as the headliner.

Amos Lee – Kind of a funky folk singer. I loved the music but didn’t like his voice at first, it grew on me through his set. Great beat.

Augustana – a young band that sang acoustically for this concert, because the stage was being set up behind them for the headliner band. There were some sound problems with their mic and the audience kind of left them, but I left the concert wanting to hear more and downloaded their 2 CDs off of iTunes today. They are a great “find.”

The Pretenders – Yes, the one with Chrissie Hein. They are still around – go figure! She’s been rockin’ for 30 years now and still put on a good show. Her voice is great! The lead guitarist (definitely not the original one, probably not even 30 years old) was fantastic. They were fun but didn’t play too much of their old stuff, and I don’t know their new stuff.

It was a great time! I’m lovin’ live music these days. It is fun to go to these smaller concerts (we were standing second row) and “get to know” the musicians in a different way. I also love finding a new band like this… now I have some new music to enjoy.

Brandon got this Lego guy in his Advent calendar this week. I love it! Too bad they don’t seem to make women Legos, or I would grab one, give her this camera and then claim it as my own. It’s amazing what you can do with Legos!

I went in to change my blog design to a more holiday template, and they didn’t have one! Eventually I’ll need to learn some of this HTML design myself. But in the meantime, I remembered this picture I took last December on a frosty morning and thought that would be a nice one for a holiday mood! Too bad I haven’t figured out how to make my own blog banner with the photo, or I’d put this up.

OK, I haven’t updated my blog because I’ve been spending my computer time on Facebook. Thanks a bunch Katey! She sucked me into it. Actually it’s been fun because I’ve already been chatting with people I haven’t been in touch with for years, as well as throwing snowballs at my brother and cousin. It’s easy to spend time on it though!

Today was a really good day for work. Really good. Last Tuesday we found out that we had a potentially HUGE problem on the project I’ve been working on for six months. Like it could delay the project another six months. We had to wait until today for the final data to come in though, and it was GOOD. So we don’t have the big problem we thought we would have and we’ve passed another hurdle. I am so relieved, the whole team is relieved, the managers are relieved. We have happy people on this project from here to Italy and Singapore. Whew! We’re not done yet but this brings us one step closer.

So that makes it a really good day! You don’t get days like this very often, where things go right instead of wrong. I am enjoying this moment for sure.

Today I went shopping. BOOK shopping, and what fun it was. I already posted on the fact that we are taking book donations for the Italian branch of the Sloma Family Library. 🙂 In addition, I decided I would also stock up on a bunch of books in my favorite genre, fantasy fiction. I researched some new authors and series (I love Listmania on Amazon.com and scifan.com for this), made my list and then headed out to The Book Bin in downtown Corvallis.

Was that ever fun to take a big basket of books up to the checkout! I think it was one of my most fun shopping trips ever. Imagine this stack of 20 or 30 paperback books at the checkout. A box and two bags to take to the car. I don’t know why doing this was so much fun, but it I just get giddy thinking of that pile of books. I want to go read but I must control myself. (New mantra – save them for Italy, save them for Italy.)

There are some missing books here and there in the different series, but I’ve got my list now and I’m going to hit used bookstores wherever I can to fill in the gaps. How handy that we have a trip out of state planned soon. Any suggestions on used bookstores between here and Colorado?

Vote for my layout for the Pen Scrappers contest:

Please.

Pretty Please.

Pretty Please with a cherry on top. Tell your friends too!