Back from Bumbershoot!

I have successfully returned from a weekend spent with our friends Jon and Matthew in Seattle.  It was good times.  I got to meet their Dachsund for the first time–I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it turns out Adeline’s a sweetie and I totally loved her.  Even with her big plastic head cone to protect her ear stitches.  (Some giant woman stepped on her ear and tore a hole through it and didn’t care–talk about hit and run.)

Anyway, we had Bumbershoot tickets for Saturday and didn’t make it without a series of mishaps.  First, I set the alarm for 7:30 so we could make the 2 hour drive down from B-town to S-town in a timely manner.  But I sort of forgot that our alarm has 2 settings, and I left it on the weekdays only setting.  So it didn’t go off on Saturday, the day I needed to get up.  Oops.  The stupid part is I was lying there for a while going, “It *feels* later than 7:30 and I don’t think I’m going to fall back asleep, but if it’s not 7:30 yet–and I know it’s not, because the alarm hasn’t gone off–then I still need more sleep!”  Eventually I got suspicious and looked at the alarm and it was–*gasp*–9:49.  Crapzors!

We made a mad dash for Seattle and got a little lost coming over the West Seattle Bridge.  But we finally found our friends’ apartment just in time for them to call and say they’d just left for the festival.  -__-  But we managed to catch up to them.

Bumbershoot was fun.  It was kind of hot and muggy out, but it could have been worse.  (I remember one Labor Day weekend waiting in line at Kumoricon for hours in some serious heat.  They had to pass out water bottles to the crowd so no one keeled over.)  We saw Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head.  They were fun to watch, and they talked about being from Seattle and writing their first songs at the nearby high school.  Which was cool for me because I was writing novels in high school, and even if they didn’t turn out to be publishable quality, I’m still a big supporter of teens who want to do art/writing/music/theater.

At some point we waited in line for half an hour to see a band we’d never heard of called Akimbo.  (I think.  I might have it wrong.)  It was at the Sky Church at the EMP–as soon as we walked in, I was like, “WHOA, this is just like the place in the opening of my book!”  There were even disco balls.  But as the crowd thickened and we were herded to the front to make room for more and more people, and the band started up a couple test notes, I at least started to realize that this was kind of a small venue and that it was going to be LOUD.  Maybe too loud for me…  Then the band introduced themselves, everybody cheered, and they launched into some serious metal and the whole crowd started headbanging, except for me and Chloe and Matthew, who got this “OMG, I’m in the WRONG place!” look on our faces and found our way to the exit.  O__o

Bumbershoot is aptly named, because even though the sun came out for a while during the day, by early evening it was raining and we had to use our bumbershoots.  (We don’t do umbrellas in B-ham because of the wind, but luckily our Seattle friends had 2.)