10 Don’t Let Them See You Cry (Album Version)

               

Manchester Orchestra

            
            

   
       

   

So breathe while you’re alive
Let the big band play as you tap leather with your fingers
And I tried to write in style
But the words just come and I write them as soon as I see them.

One of my Mom’s biggest frustrations about me living in California is the timezone difference. I’m not a big phone talker to begin with, and couple that with me being 3 hours behind and Sue Sabala feels like her daughter (yours truly) is WAY too far away. I totally empathize – I miss my Mom every day, and while I’m not always great about telling her it (or hell, calling or emailing her) I wish we lived a lot closer. Now, granted, my Mom loves to communicate – if she had her way, we’d talk 3x/day – so take this all with a grain of salt, since I most likely talk to my Mom more than any of you do. Regardless, my Mom reads my website to "keep up with me" – something she regularly laments…YES, I KNOW, I NEED TO CALL HER MORE OFTEN! – and lately, given the craziness of my job, has started emailing me. Now, remember this is the same woman who used to give my email and phone number to people she met on planes and cab drivers as an attempt to finally set me up, so she’s no stranger to email. As such, her emails are nothing but entertaining, and until today, I thought, original.

Then my friend Micah sent me this site: Postcards from  yo Momma.

BRILLIANT! It’s a compilation of emails and text messages from Moms to their kids, and one thing is clear: all Moms are both crazy and darling. I found myself cracking up repeatedly over the similarities between my conversations with my Mom and the emails posted up there. And as funny as they are, I wonder if my Mom thinks they’re funny or totally normal. Because the answer is definitely BOTH. And makes me miss my Mom.

Mom, keep the awesome emails coming, but please, stop giving out my digits to random 47-y/o Pakistani cab drivers. Love you, mean it!

There’s a new service called "Muxtape" which easily allows you to make a mixtape, and since bandwagons are fun to jump on (though not nearly as fun as trampolines or hotel beds) I figured it was due time for me to hook one up. While you can’t download it (can only listen) hopefully it will make your days (and nights?) less mundane.

ENJOY.

My friend Kevin recently started using Qik, which lets him broadcast live video from his Nokia phone. It’s pretty amazing how well it works – people watch the video stream and then comment live, which shows up on the phone that is doing the taping. Real-time interaction and pretty good video quality to boot. Here’s us at the Digg offices – yes, my job really IS always this awesome.

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SXSWi&m 2008 – 255, originally uploaded by lizstless.

Which makes me oh-so happy, not only because the thought that he’d have to replace such a fabulous piece of equipment totally SUCKS, but now we have some more of his fantastic photo-documenting skillz! Like this one, in which I look like I’m saying something naughty.

Me? Never…

This weekend was one of the best I’ve had since I moved to California. I noticed that the weather was supposed to be lovely on Saturday, so organized a picnic in Dolores Park as the "unofficial" kickoff to Spring. A ton of people came out to enjoy the sun and good times with friends – couldn’t have been a more delightful day.

Then, Shayla and I headed up to meet some of our favorite people alive for what we thought was a small, intimate private party at DeLoach Vineyards.

Thanks to the power of Twitter (and Scoble!) our little gathering was attended by nearly 100 people and Gary even filmed a WineLibrary TV LIVE in front of the crew. (You can read more about the party here.)

The party was at the beautiful DeLoach private guest house and we easily went through over 24 cases of wine (Thanks, DeLoach!)

That hot tub got put to good use late in the evening. And that’s all I’ll say on that.

The next day, we headed out for a quick Starbucks stop (nothing else was open in Santa Rosa!) and then Daniel, Shayla and I drove down Highway 1 en route to The Marshall Store, the self-proclaimed home of the best Oysters on the planet. I concur.

We made an inadvertent early detour (read: turned the wrong way) and ended up in Bodega Bay, which was so beautiful that we had to take some photos and document the awesomeness.

We took one more detour on the way home to do a little flip-flop rock climbing – the view of the city over the ocean was too good to pass up.

The weekend of awesomeness ended by seeing YACHT and Vampire Weekend – for free, no less – at the Rickshaw Stop.

It’s been a rough few months for me personally, and it’s weekends like this that make me just remember how very insanely, amazingly lucky I am. I have the best friends a girl could ask for, am so privileged to enjoy my life surrounded by some of the smartest, most inspiring people I’ve ever met, and let’s face it: I live in the best city in the world. I’m just overflowing with gratitude, so thank you Universe, thank you life, thank you, friends, for being so awesome.

Was going through my saved text messages from SXSW (all 8 million of them in all their ridiculous glory) and though my Twitters provided most of the hilarity, the following is my favorite text message of the entire week.

Me: Rumor has it you’re in town.
Him: Lies! Who told you such things?
Me: Unicorns
Him: Well, you can’t argue with that.

Ok, so perhaps it’s not my FAVORITE text message, but it’s my favorite, ‘safe-for-work-and-the-interwebs-uncesnsored’ text message. And that’s gotta say something.

For those of you who weren’t at SXSW this past week, you may not be aware of the hottest trend to come out of this once-a-year drunkfest: SouthByScurvy. Yes, 5 (or 9, depending how rockstar you are) days of partying left some most of us bringing home more than our schwag bags on the plane; we also came down with the most vile, most putrid, and apparently most contagious virus to hit the Geek world since MyDoom. Endless coughing (I pulled a muscle last night in my chest; thought I had first punctured a lung), sneezing, runny noses, fever, headaches, sore throats and more, you’d think we were all a walking Ny-Quil ad. In fact, we kind of are, except NOTHING seems to be curing this affliction, and some (read: me) are starting to (facetiously) wonder if this is the Beginning of the End. Like the alien species in an 80’s sci-fi flick, it’s gaining strength (and even has its own Twitter account!) and is now tackling poor, undeserving souls that didn’t spend the last week or so putting nothing but Mexican food and alcohol into their sleepless bodies…you’d think it’d spare the innocent. But NO. As for me, I consider myself lucky – I managed to (thus far) avoid the fever and body aches, though my doctor today said I could expect to harbor this pornstar voice and pesky cough for another TWO WEEKS. Oh, joy.

Will this keep me from SXSW ’09? You must be kidding? Who’d let a little thing like the plague keep me from having this much fun?