post fest

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I survived festing once again. When PBR is the only beverage in sight, most of the food is of the "fast" variety, and you're required to stand for hours at a time either watching a band or waiting to watch a band, it's easy to see why survival might be hard. Anyway, I won't go into too much detail but it was a good time. We stayed with Charlie's brother who lives in Gainesville while he goes to school and he showed us a good time outside of fest activities. For example, I got to hold a kinkajou! If you're like me and you wouldn't know what a kinkajou was unless it was hanging from your shirt, allow me to show you..

The absolute softest, fuzziest, thing I've ever held in my life. He was such a little climber! I had to keep plucking him from the back of my shirt and pull him back to the front, where he tried in vain to get a bite of my fest bracelets. I wanted to take him home with me so bad.

Speaking of fest bracelets, I had to get a photo of how ridiculous the accumulation was before we tore them all off..

I'm pretty sure we had more last year, but there were WAY too many people there this year since it was an anniversary show so it was very hard to get into different venues between shows. But that allowed us some time to do some other things so it ended up working out alright.

For one, we got to watch the Union/Dynamo playoffs at Stubbies and Steins, our favorite bar in Gainesville. We weren't too pleased with the outcome, but at least we got to watch it all go down. Stubbies has a huge variety of different beers and amazing German food. It's an awesome break from PBR and fast food.

As you can see, no crappy lite beers there! ;)

But anyway, the reason you are probably here right now. If you entered the giveaway, that is. I didn't get in until after 10pm last night and I did randomly generate a winner but I was way too tired to do a proper post. So here it is, without further ado, the winner of my very first giveaway!


Sarah B. of Yes Teacher! Congrats! I will send you an email later today to discuss the details so I can come up with a good Moleskine package for you. :)

Thank you so much to everyone who entered. You made my one year blogiversary a super happy one. Since I had so much fun with this, I'll definitely be doing more in the future. I'd say it was a good first experience. And thank you to all the other readers and friends who have come along over the past year. You are the main reason I keep my little piece of the internet up and running.

Happy November! Hope your month is starting off well! :)

the fest part deux

So I kind of failed at the whole picture taking thing. I brought my camera everywhere with me but after a few pictures and two videos my battery died. This wouldn't have been a problem had I packed the right charger. When I went to grab it I realized something wasn't quite right. It was the charger for my DS. Oops. I also don't have those whole five pictures I took of one band because I don't have my camera on me at the moment but I'll probably put them up later this week.

Anywho, the band I did get pictures of was Larry and His Flask. They were the opening band after registration and played poolside at the Holiday Inn. I hadn't heard of them until then but they were amazing. If you can somehow picture a bluegrass-folky-punk band, that's them. I've never seen such a variety of instruments. There was a guitar, drums, a banjo, a mandolin, an upright bass, and then two of them would switch to horns. So good. I got their 7 inch to add to my sloooowly growing vinyl collection.

We also managed to find out about one of the secret shows that was behind an empty warehouse. Apparently these secret shows happen each night but you have to somehow be in the know. We got a tip from a guy we were talking to in a German bar which is officially my favorite place in Gainesville. It's called Stubbies and Steins and was a nice place to rest between shows and get some good German food and a beer that was not a PBR. They had a huge selection too. So after the tip and hunting down a bit more info we managed to get to this warehouse for a 2am show. We left after Paint It Black and I am very glad because the cops came and broke it up shortly after. Not that anyone got in trouble, but it would have been hell competing with that whole mob scene for a cab.

Overall it was a great weekend with great music but it was sooo tiring. My legs were killing me after all the standing and I was just generally beat. It was fun but I'm glad to be back, even though the temperature was a shock. It was sunny and warm the whole weekend in Florida and by the time we got off the plane in Philadelphia I had two sweaters on. I'm glad though because I love fall for all that it is, cold and everything. Now it's my birthday week so there should be some fun stuff coming up! So that's my recap for the past five days. Now I have lots of stuff to catch up on!

the fest

I'm packing pretty much as I write this, but I just wanted to stop in and say that I will be gone for about five days. The boyfriend and I are headed to Gainesville, Fl for The Fest. If you don't know what it's about, check it out! The pic below is linked. If you do know, maybe you'll be there! We're flying out there tomorrow morning and coming back on Tuesday so I'll be back then, hopefully with some photos.



Happy Halloween!