The City in Colour

Last week was lovely. On Wednesday, I went to the City and Colour concert at the Ogden Theatre here in Denver. Great venue, huge crowd, good seat (again! Hooray for going solo!), and awesome show. 

The opening band was called Sleepy Sun. I had never heard of them before, but they were fantastic! They put on a super mellow but rockin' performance. Their sound is almost a grunge / 70s trip-rock throwback, and the lead singer has a great voice. 

Now, City and Colour has been one of my favorite singers for a few years (his given name is Dallas Green; see what he did there with the name? Clever!). Just before he and his band came out on stage, the whole place was blacked out and the speakers were blaring Soul II Soul's "Back to Life" ("However do you want me, However do you need me..."). I greatly appreciated the late 80s musical reference. :) You could tell that Green was having so much fun rocking out with his band during the show. It was so much fun to hear and see! He did a few loud songs with the whole band, then they left and he sang several acoustic songs before the band came back for more tunes. It was a great night, and I even bought a sweet t-shirt. :)

This weekend, I spent a quiet few days in Seattle with Kris. :) We missed each other too much and couldn't stand it, so we trolled the web for cheap tickets, and voilà!

Kris had classes on Friday, so I spent the morning on the UW campus catching up with a couple of former professors and hanging out with former roomie S! It also happened to randomly be the Friday that the UW was celebrating their 152nd anniversary, and she and I were getting free stuff left and right! We both got free UW t-shirts (I snuck one for Kris too ;) ), free cupcakes from Cupcake Royale, and hotdogs and a drink (not free, but only a $1 donation), served to us by the President of the UW, Michael Young! I guess I picked the right day to hang out on campus, eh? I love that I snagged all that stuff and I'm not a student there any more. Alumni pride! Haha.

The UW's president is the one in all purple.

After Kris wrapped up classes, we drove up to Woodinville and tasted whiskey at the Woodinville Whiskey Co., did a wine tasting at the Columbia Winery, then a tour and tasting at Chateau Ste. Michelle Winery, then had a beer at Red Hook Brewery, and then went back to Columbia Winery and did another tasting and ate some food. Whew. Woodinville will get you, man. All those delicious beverage facilities in the same corner of town is dangerous... ly awesome and delicious! We had a great afternoon together. :)

The remainder of the weekend was quietly spent studying away in coffee shops or at Kris' place, and I left first thing Monday morning. I'm happy that we're both going through graduate school at the same time. We can study together and commiserate about how much stuff we have to do in so little time! I'm very glad I decided to make the trip up. It was lovely to be in the same room as that man, let alone the same state, for a few days.

PS- I wound up getting an "A" on my very first graduate school paper! That's great and I'm stoked and all, but holy crap, it's week 8 of 10 and I have three more papers to write!! One of which is due this coming Monday that I need to get serious about likerightnow...