• As I’ve already written about on this blog, I went to see both Maggie Rogers and Snail Mail in concert last week. Going to two indoor concerts in a row is perhaps the closest approximation of my pre-pandemic life that I’ve returned to yet.
• I was in line behind a college age girl and her mom and I think aunt to get into the Maggie Rogers show. The girl was talking about her sorority sisters, which is how I for sure knew she was in college. I appreciated the fact that this girl was at a concert most kids her age would be at with her friends with her mom instead.
• I got the last real spot in the parking lot at the Ottobar for the Snail Mail show. I mean aside from the person who created an extra spot right up next to my car. I was worried I wasn’t going to be to get back into my car, but I squeezed in, and that person came out right after me anyway. He had to move his car so his friends could get in it.
• Also, as I mentioned in my post about the Snail Mail concert, I got a spot to stand on the risers in the Ottobar. I was there late enough I wasn’t expecting it. Between that and the parking spot I felt like everything was coming up me at that concert.
• I took a staycation last week. I usually take a week off in February or March that often winds up being a staycation. By this time of year I’m always realizing how much vacation time I have left to use before the end of June, so I take a week off to use some of it up. I purposefully decided on last week to take a staycation after I realized that I would have the Super Bowl, and then two concerts all right in a row. Seemed like a good week to be able to sleep in instead of being out late three nights in a row and having to drag myself out of bed for work.
• I also used my staycation to start learning to crochet. I’ve been beseiged by these Facebook ads for Woobles beginner crochet kits for months. I always thought they looked super cute, but I never wanted to spend the money on them. Then one of my friends posted about making some she got for Christmas, and her feedback on them finally convinced me to do it. I enjoyed doing it, though my poor arthritic hands not so much. I don’t think crochet is going to be a long term hobby because of that. I bought a 4 pack, so I still have three more little animals to crochet. I will have to space them out a little though and give my hands some time to rest in-between. The instructional videos for the kits were really good and very clearly walked me through everything I needed to know to crochet that specific animal. I think there are certainly other things they don’t cover that I would need to know how to do if I was just crocheting in the wild. I definitely understand some of the things I did wrong with my little penguin that I will be better about when I crochet my next little guy.
• I saw three kids out roller skating in my neighborhood the other day. Seems difficult and a little dangerous given how uneven the sidewalks are around us, but it seemed liked they were having fun.
• We went over to our friends’ new house for dinner on Saturday night. We got to see their new house for the first time and meet their new kitties. When I used to go out to eat in actual restaurants we would often meet at this Mexican restaurant for dinner. It’s a 30-40 minute drive from our house, so not somewhere we eat often. My husband and I grabbed take out from there once when we were nearish there running some errands picking out stuff for our new bathroom during our renovation, but that was the only time we have eaten there since COVID happened. It’s only about 15 minutes from our friends new house and not that far out of the way, so we swung by and picked up food from there for dinner. It was a huge cheat on this dumb low acid diet I’m doing. But that doesn’t seem to be helping my reflux issues at all either. It didn’t make me feel any worse than anything else I eat. So it was a fun night with friends and some delicious food.

And now for your musical delights.

• Both of my musical delights come from Maggie Rogers concerts in the past week. Not the one I was at. This is just a Maggie Rogers fan blog now. I shared this on Facebook, but David Byrne joined her at the first night of her shows at Radio City Music Hall. They sang “Strange Overtones” and had some choreography they put to it. I was totally amused by the fact that he clearly didn’t really remember the steps and was like a little kid at a dance recital always half a step behind watching the person beside him to remember the steps.
• There’s also this sweet story about a 6 year old who was sad she didn’t sing “Burning” in Chicago and convinced her mom to drive them to the Minneapolis show the next night if they could get Maggie to see her plea over social media to sing the song. Maggie did see it and let them know she would sing it for them, and she did.