CUViper

I’m happy to report that the tag on my car has been removed! Ben has some “miracle” wax with a mild abrasive in it, and that took the marks right off with very little effort. A tiny bit in the crack evaded our effort, but it’s hardly visible, so I’m not worried about it. I hope that whoever did it realizes how stupid that kind of behavior is, but now I can put it behind me.

We were up in Eugene this weekend to attend a wedding — I’ll put up pictures from that later…

Just when you thought you were lucky to get a post from me, here comes another one! And this one has pictures too!

Ben and Kelley invited us up to Lake Tahoe for the weekend, and we were happy to oblige. Neither of us had been up there before, and now I wonder why we waited so long. It feels a lot like Colorado — it’s even at a decent altitude! I tend to be a bit snooty when people mention “high altitude” that’s not even any higher than Denver, so it was nice to see that Tahoe is at about 6200 feet.

The lake itself is amazing — now I understand the “Keep Tahoo Blue” stickers you see everywhere. But just being up in some real mountains made me feel right at home again. It’s a bit of a drive, at about 4.5 hours, but we’ll definitely have to be going back there…

Better late than never, here are our pictures from our trip to Mexico! Be sure to click for the full album.

We had a really great time in Puerto Vallarta. We stayed at the the Dreams Resort, which was all-inclusive and had a private beach. I’m not much of a swimmer, but I really enjoyed going out into the ocean. The water was so warm that it might as well have been bath water!

One day we went out on a tour boat to see the Marietta Islands, where we got to go snorkeling to see tropical fish and coral. (Unfortunately we didn’t bring the camera that day.) It was crazy to see so many fish swimming right around me! The tour also took us to a “virgin” beach with great sand and big waves, and tide pools with a bunch of crabs. On the way back the crew opened up the bar and got everyone dancing (even me!), which was a lot of fun.

Another day we went on a canopy tour, which was basically a long series of ziplines, high up in the jungle canopy. We took a ride about an hour into the heart of Mexico riding in an truck that looked like an army transport or something. Then we rigged up, and started zipping around about 100 feet off the ground. The guides were explaining all of the vegetation and wildlife to us on the way, so it was even a bit educational.

My only negative about the trip is that Puerto Vallarta is such a tourist town. Everywhere you go people try to sell you souvenirs, and most things are still written in English. That’s good in a way, since I only know a few words in Spanish. But apart from paying for everything in pesos, the whole “different-country” aspect got a little lost. Maybe next time we can go to Mexico with someone who speaks Spanish (Ben?) and we can go off the tourist path a bit.

All in all though, definitely a good trip.

I know, I know, I still need to post pictures from Mexico. I’m getting to it, I promise. But in the mean time, take a look at what I found on my car this afternoon:

Seriously, who does shit like that? What did I do to piss you off? It looks like one of those silver markers was used to write this dumbass message on my car. I managed to get some of it off with a rag, but not all. I may have to try buffing it out with wax or something. I don’t think there will be any permanent damage, but it still makes me want to hit someone…

My car, my precious car!

The Warped Tour was today, but I’m not very excited about having gone. It was a lot of chaos and commercialism, with booths everywhere. It was hard to figure out where each band was playing, and even when we found the schedule there was no good way to see all the bands I was interested in. Plus, probably 90% of the attendees were still in high school. I’m too young to feel that old, dammit! My dad will probably laugh to hear me say this, but I don’t think most of those kids or even the bands really know what punk rock really is.

Hot Topic is not punk rock!

It wasn’t totally a waste I guess. NOFX was ok — they made a really funny comment about there being way too many tattoos and too much makeup in the audience. People latch on to the minor things that they think represent the genre, and completely miss the point. And then what really saved the experience for me: Zebrahead was awesome. They weren’t on one of the main stages, but that meant we could get a lot closer, and they still drew a large crowd. I hope all of those kids saw Zebrahead and thought, “Wow, is this punk rock?” Yes, yes it is…

On a completely unrelated note — we finally booked our vacation! Puerto Vallarta, here we come! It’s nice to have that all squared away, so now we can just look forward to the trip. We’ll be there for four nights at the Dreams resort, and we’ve also scheduled a canopy tour and an eco-discovery package. Plus the gorgeous beach that’s already calling our names…

I meant to post a decent review after BFD, but I forgot, so here’s a quick rundown of the bands we actually got to see:

• Anti-Flag — rocked the stage. We only saw them for a couple of songs though, so I look forward to seeing them again at the Warped Tour.
• Wolfmother — as much as I like their CD, they were kind of boring on stage.
• Panic! At The Disco — awesome. I definitely need to get their album. I give them third best of the whole show.
• Yellowcard — ok, but not as cool as I’d hoped. They kept doing the thing where they try to get people to mash and go crazy, but they’re really not that hard-core…
• DJ Mike Relm — annoying. He was filling in between sets on the main stage, but I think I would have preferred the generic mix-tape-filler that most events use.
• Echo & The Bunnymen — wtf?!? Totally lame. I got the impression that they didn’t really want to be there, and no-one really got into their songs.
• HIM — pretty cool, but a lot of it sounded exactly the same, and it got repetitive, and almost a bit redundant.
• Franz Ferdinand — awesome. Great crowd interaction, great performance — this is one of those bands that really should be seen live. My second pick for the whole show.
• The Strokes — good, but I think I was expecting more.
• AFI — a great headliner! They sort-of have a pop-rock feel, which I feel guilty for liking, but it’s a formula that really works. Tons of fun, and I’ll even give them best-of-show.

That list I made before for the Warped Tour was apparently a waste of time, because now the official site has a different list up. It’s hard to tell if all of those bands are going to be at the SF show, or just on the tour at some point. Anyway, of that list, I’m most looking forward to Anti-Flag, Bouncing Souls, Less Than Jake, NOFX, and Zebrahead. That show is next weekend, so I’ll try to post my impressions soon after.

The Department of State was kind enough to send us a couple of little blue books with our pictures in them. I was going to post a picture to prove it to you all, but then I decided I didn’t want to try to figure out what I needed to black out. Identity theft blah blah blah — it’s not worth the risk. Trust me though, we now have the means to re-enter the country should we decide to leave.

Then there’s the minor sticking point that while we’ve both taken vacation the week of our birthdays, we haven’t actually booked a trip. Once a procrastinator, always a procrastinator? I hope this means we will be able to find some amazing last-minute deals, but we’ll see…

I’m also taking this coming week off, just because. I mean, come on, we already get Monday and Tuesday off for holiday, so I might as well take three more days, right? Anyway, Stephen, one of my best friends from college, is flying in from DC to visit, which will be awesome. It’s been way too long since we’ve been able to hang out. Look out world — when geniuses get together, world domination is only a matter of time!

(Dear NSA: I’m kidding about the world domination… Please don’t hurt me…)

Hi, my name is Josh, and I’m a recovering couch potato.

Sounds dramatic, huh. Really all this means is that I’ve been pretty lazy the past couple years, but I’m now actively taking steps to be more, well, active.

I used to do a fair amount of active stuff. Rock climbing, hiking, camping, and racquetball used to all fit into my life. Then, for no particular reason, I stopped doing those things. And my weight responded — I put on about 40 lbs in a year and a half.

Now I’m trying to get that back under control. About six months ago I started limiting meal portions, and that alone has brought me down about 20 lbs. I already mentioned that Millie and I have started running, and that’s going great. I actually feel really good about running at six in the morning, which surprises me. And yesterday I went with Dave down to Planite Granite to do some climbing. That was really good too — my arms hate me for it today, but it was a lot of fun.

So I’m starting to get off my ass a bit more. And now that I’ve blogged about it, I expect everyone to make sure that I don’t fall back again. Mkay?

Millie and I now have in our possession tickets to two huge concerts:

BFD 2006 — June 10 — Shoreline Amphitheatre, Mountain View, CA — AFI, The Strokes, Franz Ferdinand, Echo & The Bunnymen, HIM, Every Move A Picture, DJ Mike Relm, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Yellowcard, Panic! At The Disco, She Wants Revenge, Thursday, Wolfmother, Anti-Flag, Hard-Fi, The Sounds, OK Go, The Hush Sound, Street To Nowhere, Birdmonster, The Herms, Day One Symphony, Two Seconds, Dear Kerosene

Warped Tour 2006 — July 8 — Pier 30/32, San Francisco, CA — NOFX, Rise Against, Anti-Flag, Thursday, Motion City Soundtrack, Underoath, Saves The Day, Senses Fail, Against Me, Less Than Jake, The Casualties, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, The Living End, Helmet, Say Anything, Bouncing Souls, The Academy Is…, From First To Last, Everytime I Die, Silverstein, The Pink Spiders, Armor For Sleep, Hellogoodbye, Saosin, Plain White T’s, Greeley Estates, Over It, Amber Pacific, Aiden, Paramore, Emery, Dropping Daylight, Riverboat Gamblers, Valient Thorr, Voltera, Die Hunns

So that’s 24 bands for BFD and 36 for the Warped Tour — a total of 58* bands in just under a month! Of course there will be multiple stages going, so I probably won’t be able to actually see them all. That’s ok — I already have ideas for which ones are must-see and some that are nice-to-see.

It will probably be another month before I’ll be able to hear anything again…

* note that Anti-Flag and Thursday are in both shows

Millie and I finally applied for our passports on Saturday. We almost didn’t make it. I didn’t realize that there was an endurance test required, but we both survived.

I’m referring, of course, to the four-hour wait at the passport office. Why it took so long is beyond me, because it only took a few minutes once we were finally called. Maybe it’s just that other people didn’t have it together before going to apply. Or maybe the employees don’t care how quickly the line moves, so they take their sweet time.

Well, whatever, it’s done now. At least renewals can be processed through the mail, so we shouldn’t ever have to do that again. Now we wait for this-and-that agency to determine that we’re not terrorists, so we can get the actual passports. I’m told we’ll have them by July 5th, but then I was also told that the line was only going to be two hours. I’m not holding my breath…