The concert

Mumford & Sons was amazing. Somehow even moreso than I thought they'd be. I've never seen a band have so much fun making music. And we had a blast listening. The crowd was dancing around, singing along, and cheering so loudly.

You could tell how humbled the band was. Evidently this is their first tour, and they explained to us that the show was their biggest gig yet. Throughout the show, you could see them exchanging glances that said, "I can't believe this is happening!"

They opened with "Sigh No More," the first song on their album. I actually teared up watching them because it really was one of the most beautiful things I'd ever seen.

I didn't feel so bad about that when the big screen after "Little Lion Man" showed some late-40s man with red, teary eyes. And a girl walking near us as we pushed our way out of the venue was talking about how she "wept. Like, bawled."

I'm pretty sure it was impossible to stand still through that concert. To resist the overwhelming urge to dance to the uplifting music. To keep from smiling like a jackass at the energy in that pavilion and the men loving every minute of playing on that stage.

Mumford & Sons sang three or four new songs along with most every other song (maybe all, actually) from their album. When the band headed backstage after about an hour and a half of playing, the crowd roared until they came back out for their encore, "The Cave" (of course).

It was the most fun concert I've ever been to.

Totally worth not getting home until 3 a.m. on Friday (and having to work that full day).

Exciting night ahead

I don't know how many of you took my advice about Mumford & Sons, but I'm still loving their album. Since I saw the footage of them playing at the Grammys before Bob Dylan, I knew I had to see them live.

Their energy was amazing, and they sounded exactly the same live as on the album. I definitely never thought I'd see someone headbang to music involving a banjo. The band looked like they were having a ball. The audience looked like they were having a ball.

I've been curious ever since about what it's like to see Mumford & Sons live.

I'll let you know tomorrow.

!!!!

Things you should try

1. Watching Zombieland. When K and I saw it at the theater, I just knew I'd hate it. The first 5 minutes were exactly what I expected. I prepared myself for torture ... and boy, was I surprised! The movie is so funny! It came out on video last night, so we watched it again. Hilarious!
2. Halestorm. You may not be a rock music fan, but seriously, give them a listen. Lzzy's voice is just amazing -- and it's even better in person! K and I saw them in concert Monday night for the 3rd time. Man, can that girl wail! Considering 2009 was their breakout year, I wouldn't be surprised to see them explode in 2010.
3. H&M. If you don't live near one, you may be lucky enough to wind up near one at some point this year. If that's the case, make the trip. It's worth bringing a bigger suitcase!
4. Envirosax bags. I love these things so much that I gave them to my closest friends as Christmas gifts this year. Who wouldn't want to save the planet and look good doing it?!
5. ULTA's formaldehyde-free and toluene-free nail polish. (That means it's more environmentally friendly than most other nail polishes!) It stays on great, and I am loving Deep Desire on my fingernails right now. I can't find it on the website, but thank goodness I found it in the store! It's a nice dark purply color, so it's a subtler version of the gothic black nails everyone seems to be wearing right now. It's a perfect winter shade!

Oh, and speaking of that concert on Monday, I have to share a picture of the loot I scored during the performance of the headliner band, Theory of a Deadman.

That's right, a guitar pic and a drumstick. I actually managed to get 4 guitar pics, but I gave the other 3 away to people who didn't get one. Why not share, right?

Happy Hump Day!

There's so much to do here!

K and I didn't do anything crazy for our anniversary. I guess we're still so excited about finally living together (we're going on 3 months now!) that just having a "normal" night in still feels pretty special. K got me a cute little card, and we cooked some pasta and had wine with dinner. Then, we went to the gym, which has unfortunately become an abnormal event for us. Last night was our third night in a row, which is more times than we've been to the gym in weeks. Heck, it's probably more times than we went to the gym for the whole month of July (and we didn't do much better than that in August). It feels great to be getting back on track -- finally.

Part of the reason we were OK staying home on Tuesday night was that we'd done some special things in the days before.

On Saturday, we went to VA Beach for an Italian festival. There was a strolling musician and of course delicious Italian food and wine. We got to crush grapes with our feet, which was something I never thought I'd do! It's definitely a slippery job, and the grapes stick to your feet a bit when you get out.

And of course, we had to eat some delicious Italian dessert.

K was kicking himself for forgetting to wear his "Kiss me, I'm half-Italian" shirt. At least he chose wisely if he wasn't going to wear that one.

Plus, our shirts resulted in an unexpected change: As we were walking to the oceanfront, a passenger in an oncoming car leaned out the window and yelled, "BOOMER!" to us (the awesome call of Sooner fans. The initial yell is, "BOOMER!" The response is "SOONER!"). Our new friend was also sporting Sooner gear in the form of an OU hat. I was so excited by the pleasant surprise that I was jumping up and down. (I'm a dork like that.)

I love lighthouses, and K's boss had told us about one near VA Beach, so we checked it out. There were actually two. They were so neat! The brown bricked lighthouse is Old Cape Henry. It was completed in 1789 and established in 1792. It was the first lighthouse built by the federal government! It's one of only 9 lighthouses to be registered as a National Historic Landmark.

You can actually go inside the lighthouse! You have to climb quite a few stairs and even a ladder, but it's worth the view.

The black and white lighthouse stands only feet from the historic lighthouse. It opened in December of 1881 and is called New Cape Henry. It's beautiful!

Then, on Monday night, K and I went to a concert. We saw After Midnight Project, who we didn't know before the concert; Halestorm, who we'd just seen Sept. 11 in Richmond; and Chevelle. The concert itself was great. K and I both loved AMP, and Halestorm was just as impressive as they were 9 days earlier (that girl can wail!). Chevelle sounded exactly as they do in their albums, which was awesome to see (and hear).

K and I saw a few concerts in Dallas and even some in Louisiana in the last year. They were all in big venues, and a couple were even outdoors. A few of the concerts were hard rock, so there were crowd surfing and moshing going on. You could jump, and you could definitely move if you wanted to. The two concerts we've seen in VA have been in pretty small venue. They don't allow moshing (which is fine with us) or crowd surfing (that one is a little of a bummer, since K and I have both tried it, but whatever). Somehow, though, prohibiting those actions makes everyone just stand around the whole time. K and I decided by their second song that AMP was awesome. We wanted to jump around and enjoy ourselves (not moshing, but moving to the music), but the girl next to us kept looking at K like he was crazy. Oh, well. She just wasn't as fun as we are. :)

One of the perks about a small venue, though, is that we got to meet everyone after the show. That actually made me a bigger fan of Halestorm. They're so fun, and they're really down to earth. The drummer is my favorite. (He's on the left in the second picture.)

This weekend, we're back to traveling. We leave at 5 something tomorrow morning to fly to Boston. We'll drive from there to NH for a wedding, and then we'll be staying overnight in Maine. Hopefully I can see another lighthouse or two while we're there -- I've already looked into the ones nearby!

Not much laboring going on here

We had an awesome, but exhausting Labor Day weekend! Thursday night, our friend Sully drove down from Boston. K had Friday off, so the three of us relaxed on the beach. On Friday night, our friends Jay & Ry flew in from NY.

Jay, Ry and Sully are all friends K made while stationed in Louisiana, so it was great to have a little reunion. We spent the evening relaxing and having drinks on our back porch. Ry, who is a more regular wine drinker than I am, poured for the evening, which means while everyone else was sleeping, I was seeing my wine again in the bathroom. Yikes.

Saturday, the plan was to go to Busch Gardens. Everyone else felt great, so off we went.

I love being in control, so roller coasters scare the bejesus out of me. Since I was still feeling a bit shaky, I sat the first roller coaster out. I was grateful to have a solid excuse to skip out on this dropoff (It's 90 degrees at 75 mph)!

Obviously my friends weren't worried (or hungover) as they waited in line for the coaster.

After they finished their ride (They loved it, but they said it was scary. They also said I'd definitely have thrown up again if I'd ridden it!), we all got lunch. I felt much better, so I joined in on the rides. We had a good time walking around the park, and we finished with a nice splash ride. (You can see we're all soaked in the picture as we were leaving.)

That night, we grilled out at our house and watched the Sooner football game. And that's all I have to say about that. (OK, OK. Yes, we lost. Yes, it sucked.)

Sunday, we all slept in (theme parks are exhausting!), then headed to Virginia Beach for the afternoon. We had dinner at a great restaurant on the beach. They had amazing drinks they called Orange Crushes. With the amount of alcohol in each one (and the amount of fresh orange), they were very appropriately named!

The food was also delicious! For an appetizer, we ordered calamari, which was served with some kind of BBQ sauce (turned out to be a great combo!), and buffalo-style fish bites. For dinner, K and I both got crabcake sandwiches. Jay got fish tacos, and Ry's pasta looked amazing too. It was all delicious!

After dinner, we went back down to the beach for a Black Crowes concert.

We had brought my OU quilt to sit on before the show. We managed to get pretty decent spots (in proximity to the stage AND a beer tent), so we had lots of people walking by trying to sneak in on spots around us. I just started having fun with it by doing silly faux karate/yoga/whoknowswhat poses to block people from our blanket. Obviously our blanket still got trampled on the sides, but I kept people from walking on our things in the middle. And it gave us all a good laugh.

The concert ended without a performance of "She Talks to Angels" or "Hard to Handle," which was disappointing. There wasn't even an encore!

Thanks to the city of Virginia Beach, though, our night ended with some a nice fireworks show.

Now my feet won't touch the ground

I went to see Coldplay for the first time last November. It was an amazing show, and I told K that if they came through again after he got home, we were so going. And we were getting floor seats.

Months ago, I found out about the dates the band had added to the end of their tour. K and I were able to go to the show in New Orleans on Tuesday night, and it did not disappoint.

Since the concert ended, I've been on a Coldplay high. I just want to keep looking at the photos and watching the videos I took (I got some good ones!). I've read a lot about Coldplay over the last couple of days. I can't seem to get enough.

This really isn't a good thing for my productivity at work, but seeing how I have only 8 working days left anyway, I'm kind of suffering from editoritis as it is. Maybe it'll help me to know that if I'm not looking at them, someone else is. So here you go.

(In case you're wondering, the picture taken during "Yellow" [I'll give you one guess which photo that is!] is from our seats with no zoom. We were much closer to the stage than that picture makes it seem. The 1st picture was from our seats with the zoom, and for the others, I snuck through the aisle to the front to capture those. For the 3rd & 4th photos, yes, I was really that close.)