so i really enjoyed this blog. you have to scroll down and see her spider cartoon. hilarious. she also provided a link to victorian spider identification charts which of course i felt the compulsion to follow and then scream silently as the spiders flashed by on the screen. really, it was the scariest thing I've ever seen.

So GNR was awesome :)

We got to the concert by 8:00, and CKY was just finishing up their set. I only heard 2 of their songs, and I couldn't tell you which ones, but they were pretty good. Then the lights came on and they set the stage up for the next warmup act, mixmaster mike. what an odd act to have at a GNR show. They played this like 5 minute video before he started that was like an infomercial for Mixmaster Mike... it was like they had to play something to let us know who he was so we could get excited about it... He was a DJ who was apparently really good at doing his DJ-spinny-scratchy thing. He played a lot of songs that white people would know (because that was the makeup of the entire crowd) but it kept getting annoying because of course he wouldn't just let a song play the whole way through, and some of the songs were pretty good... every time he played a song that beck, alex, or i knew, he changed it like right away or right before it got to the really good part. The guy was pretty good, but it was just the wrong venue. The arena wasn't crowded enough for everyone to be dancing and partying to his music... if he were in a club or at a party, he'd rule. but in an arena, it kinda sucked.

Soyeah. When Mixmaster Mike was done, the lights came on again (this was about 9:30) while they set up for GNR. Then they announced, "come on ladies, get them out, you know what we want" and started focusing the camera on some of the girls in the audience. if a girl flashed the camera, she got cheered. if not, she got booed. this was kind of entertaining for about 15 minutes, but then they couldn't get any more new girls to flash the camera, so they kept going back to the same girls over and over. it was odd. a girl would realize that she was on camera, and then just either (1) wip up her shirt and stand there proudly as she jiggled her boobs around with her tongue out, (2) smile and wave and laugh hysterically with her friends, but not flash the camera, or (3) look really hella pissed off and give the camera the finger (after which she'd get booed). Beck said that if they put that camera on her, she'd definately give it the finger. I decided that I wouldn't flash it, but I probably wouldn't give it the finger either. soyeah. unfortunately this girl flashes camera thing went on for like 45 minutes and got pretty boring.

around 1030 beck's phone rang and it was some people that she knew from work who were also at the concert and who'd come over to see her earlier. they said that they heard that GNR wasn't there and so they were leaving and getting a full refund of their tickets. So beck told us that and I was like, that sounds like a rumor, and we sat there for another minute and all of a sudden GNR came on. Alex and I told beck that she had to call her work friends back and tell them, and she did, but they were like, yeah, oh well. Beck said later that that guy kind of has a defeatest attitude all the time. i'd be hella pissed if i left and then found out they were there.. ah well. anyway.
the show was great. they played like every old song that i wanted to hear, and they only played a few new songs (which were pretty good). there were some awesome pyrotechnics: flames shooting up from the stage and sparks... During November Rain, at the end when it starts up again, sparks showered down like a sheet of rain... it was awesome :) And during the encore, when they played Paradise City, there were these huge pinwheels of sparks in the background, and they shot tons of confetti into the crowd. Axl sounded great, and the new band sounded pretty much just like the old band. The new band was huge: 3 or 4 guitarists (can't remember now), 2 keyboardists, a drummer, and Axl. We were very happy that this new band didn't try and change any of the old songs, they played them just the way you wanted to hear them without really adding any of their own flavor to it or otherwise making it their own. Soyeah, it rocked. Very cool show.

the only really odd thing about the night was some of the people around us. There were two guys both wearing jeans, fleece sweatshirts, and shaved heads sitting in front of Beck and Alex who sat pretty much perfectly still the entire show and looked straight ahead. Even during GNR! I mean, why did they come to the show? were they enjoying it at all? freaking weird. they looked like cult members or something the way they were sitting there, looking alike, and looking like they weren't even hearing the music. The couple in front of me smoked pot the entire time. Every time I looked down at them they were either lighting up another joint or making out. When GNR started they both got up and were dancing around at their seats (i think they were even dancing when there was no music). The guy kept yelling annoying things like, "Freebird!" or "Skynard!" which made me want to punch him. His voice was really annoying too, he sounded like a 12-year-old boy. On my left, at the end of our row sat 2 angry-looking-dyke-women. they got hella annoyed every time we had to get by them. i apologized to them every time i went by them, and one of them kept smiling at me, and i think that's because when i went by them i'd face them and i was wearing a very low cut shirt (hey, i figured if i had to keep making them get up, i'd give 'em something to look at). anyway. to beck's right sat a couple on the end of the row who kind of looked pissed off the entire time, and two older (30sish) guys who just sat the entire concert not really getting into the music either. who are these people that go to concerts to just sit still and look like they're not having fun? anyway. yeah. I had a good time :)

So, Happy Thanksgiving everybody! I'm heading up to my parents house today, and I think I'm going to spend the entire day with the family for a change. When I was little, I always had to go to my mom's in the afternoon, and when I was older I had to go to Tim's house to eat with his family. So today's like the first Thanksgiving (other then the time we were in Disney World for Thanksgiving- which rocked) that I'll be able to spend the entire day with my family. We're going to eat earlyish and then go to see Harry Potter, and then come back and eat some more :) I'm in charge of making the rolls this year (I'm kind of a guest now, so I figured that I should bring something) because mom always burns them every year. So here's hoping I don't burn the rolls, 'cause I completely made fun of her every year that she did. Soyeah, now I've got to go to the store and pick up roll mix (because I'm a dumbass and didn't do it before) and the store's going to be hella hella crowded, so this should be fun... then it's home to watch the parade, make rolls and head down to the fam. Soyeah, I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving!

Yay! Today is guns 'n roses day! I've been so excited about going to this concert for months! Yay! i've been checking out the setlists at some unofficial site and it looks like they'll start with Welcome to the Jungle and that they'll most likely play pretty much all of my favorites. yes! yes! excellent! (said with clenched teeth while pumping arm). butyeah. cool. :)

soyeah. plan for the day: sit here at work, bored off my ass until around noon, when i'll go run some errands for jeff. i have to drop a letter and some books off at a judge's chamber at albany family court. i know i'll probably only see a secretary, but how do you address a judge? i mean, what if he's just there and i have to hand it over to him. do i call him Your Honor? i guess so... couldn't hurt. yeah. so i figure that since i'll be downtown anyway i'll swing by the pepsi arena and see if i can pick up the tickets at the will call window then. i don't know how early you can pick them up, but it'd be nice if i could get them early instead of having to go later and wait in line for them. yeah. then hopefully my sister will be able to meet me and go to the mall with me to exchange my blue bra for a black one (important mission). then i'll probably go home and clean up a little (cat litter. ew.) and forage around for some food (really, I actually don't know if i have anything in my house to eat.) and then call beck incessently asking when we're going. then concert. yay!

Oh! So, I'm trying to work a new word into my vocabulary: grim. See, I've always been unhappy with the amount of times I say "suck" because it's just so unoriginal. I'm always like, oh, that sucks. blah. so last night Dodi and I were watching that 70s show and on one of the repeat ones Donna uses that word. It's after her first day of Catholic school and she's sitting there in her uniform talking to her friends in the basement and Eric asks her how her first day of school was and she says: "Grim. A nun spanked me with a ruler." I was quite impressed with the usage of the word grim. So Dodi and I decided that we'd totally have to start using that word. soyeah. i'm tired, and that's grim. (see how easy it is? you try it)

today in a nutshell:
230am: receive call from keith. who calls at this hour? don't pick it up because of the ungodly hour. he must have been drunk. left a message saying that he "wanted to see how [my] night went" and that he'd call me later in the week. weird. 9am - 915am: do some actual work at my job at the doctor's office 915am - 1pm: sit around bored off my ass at my job at the doctor's office. listen to the movie harry potter and the sorcerer's stone playing on the laptop that some smart parent brought along for their kids to watch in the waiting room. hum the theme song and wish that i could just join the children in the waiting room because i'm not doing any work anyway. play on the internet. make copious copies because the copy machine is in the waiting room and at least then i can slyly watch the movie. finally go home. 1pm - 130pm: have lunch (marinated portabella mushroom cap on salad) and make plans to walk with michelle. decide to take a nap. 130pm - 205pm: nap. wonderful. sleep later than planned though. 205pm - 225pm: try and get myself out of the house but end up writing an email to Dodi and then putzing around until i realize that I'm to meet michelle in five minutes. 225pm - 240pm: fly down northway to meet michelle. am a horrible friend because i'm always late. 240pm - 330pm: walk with michelle. we go the less muddy way, but it ends up being shorter than the usual route. decide to go to starbucks. 330pm - 440 pm: travel to and arrive at starbucks. have a tall caramel machiatto. is not as carmally as expected. call home to find out what's for dinner and "make reservations" 440pm - 640pm: have dinner with the fam. cheesy corn chowder (very good). listen to little brothers play on the piano, watch them play video games, promise to watch star wars episode II in its entirety with the littlest guy on thanksgiving day. "help" dad play you don't know jack on the computer. 640pm - 9pm: go to target with dodi. return to her place and watch 3 episodes of that 70s show. love the hyde/jackie storyline because can't help but think hyde's cute. am annoyed that eric proposed to donna because they're only in high school and will end up divorced. 9pm - 930pm: travel home. call my sister a few times to bug her. decide to exchange blue bra bought the other day for a black one. listen to guns 'n roses. get excited that will see them tomorrow, and then sad that there's no one to call and share my excitement with because beck was not at home. 930pm - 10pm: check email and update blog. decide to read and go to bed early. tomorrow will be a long day. also decide that this is a boring post and that i should apologize to everyone who wasted their time reading it. sorry.

so the general consensus seems to have been for me to call him (my mom even emailed me and said that my dad said i should call him... i guess they do read my page). soyeah. i did call him today. he seemed pretty receptive to talking to me. I think he wanted to do something tonight, but Dodi's boyfriend broke up with her and I wanted to take her out so that she wouldn't be sitting home and sad. I said that we might go up to Saratoga and he said that if we went up there I should call him and he'd come meet us out. Then he asked what I was doing this weekend and I said that I'd probably be going up to the parting glass friday night because hair of the dog is playing. so he said he'd look for me. yeah. we talked for a little while (but it was a little hard to understand him because he'd just woken up from a nap and he was mumbling with the accent and all). then beck arrived so i said i had to run. so beck and i took dodi out. we ended up just pretty much going to friday's. then we drove around looking for somewhere else to go, but it was monday night and pretty much everything was dead. soyeah. this week will be cool. tomorrow: well, pretty much nothing. decent tv though (that 70s show). wednesday: guns 'n roses concert (awesome) thursday: thanksgiving (yumm). friday: parting glass, hair of the dog (awesome). saturday: ghettocharliebrownthanksgiving party at my house (menu: toast, popcorn, ramen, other ghettopoorkidfoods). Soyeah. cool.

so i've been sitting here thinking about whether or not i should call keith (see post below) today as he asked me to (he said, "call me on sunday, even if you have to work") and now i have to share my horoscope and i'm going to need some feedback here, so if anyone reads the page today or tomorrow (cause i'm thinking i might wait until tomorrow to call) they have an obligation to leave a comment or else all of those bad things that chain emails say will happen to you if you don't send them on will happen to you. here's my "extended horoscope" from ivillage.com:
Quiet, giving Cancers get another splashy day or in the sun, and you could really use it! Find the time to relax and take care of yourself. Later in the day, love makes you wild and selfish, and everyone stands up and applauds the change. You deserve any good thing that you can create for yourself. Tonight, don't rely on other people to make plans. Take the initiative and revel in the glow of being in command. No one says no to your confident demeanor.
seenow, i'm thinking that the take the initiative part means i should call. Then i read my "singles love" horoscope (also at ivillage):
You'll get what you want. The stars give you the wink. All the elements for a hot romantic time are firmly in place. You feel strong but tender, alive and immortal in this fleeting moment. Speak now or spend your life wishing you had.
seenow, the "speak now" part seems to be pretty much just putting it out there: i should call him. i dunno though. oknow, comment away please.

so friday night i was supposed to go out with dodi and one of her friends in albany. now, i live in albany, but i really don't enjoy going out here. there are a few bars i don't mind, but i'm just not into clubs all that much. dancing really doesn't thrill me and there are always a bunch of college kids running around... but i figured that going out is going out and it's better than staying in so i wasn't going to complain. when dodi got a hold of me later though, she said that since the weather was so bad (it was raining and supposed to turn to snow) she didn't feel like going out and would rather just stay in and watch a movie and get drunk. I was a little disappointed, but i figured that doing that was better than nothing, so i headed up to clifton park. i figured that maybe i could convince dodi to go to the parting glass because it's my favorite bar and it's up in Saratoga (i just love it up there) and i'd been in the mood to go up there all week.
so i got to Dodi's house and we sat around for a while and her cousin Chris called and said that he was on his way over and then I proposed going up to the Parting Glass. Dodi was receptive to the idea (it seems that there was more than just the weather that prevented her from wanting to go to Albany) and when her cousin arrived we headed on up.
when we arrived the front of the pub seemed pretty busy, so we decided to go back to the dart room where there was another bar. we passed through the performance area where a rather shitty band was playing (the "adirondak rednecks") and went into the dart room... which was almost completely empty. There were two younger guys playing darts and one guy sitting at the bar talking to the bartender and a waiter. the three of us sat down at the bar and decided that it seemed weird to sit in here when it was nearly empty, so we'd order our drinks and then go into the pub part of the bar. but then Dodi and I got a look at the bartender who was incredibly good looking, spoke with an irish accent, and was spinning bottles in a "Cocktail" way at the other end of the bar and decided that a hot bartender was enough incentive to stay in that room.
we ordered our drinks (a guinness for me, a captain and coke for Dodi and a for Chris) and we started talking and covertly staring at the bartender. There was a glass full of stirrers in front of me, so I showed Dodi and Chris the trick you do with them that's supposed to tell you if you're going to get laid that night. You take the stirer in one hand between your thumb and your middle finger and you try and bend it directly in half just using those two fingers. if you get it directly in half that means your getting laid that night. well, they were not sucessful at first and so we kept trying it and before long there was a pile of creased red stirrers in front of us. The bartender (whose name was Keith) came over and asked us what we were doing. Dodi explained the game and he tried it - and got it right in half the first time. we said he had to do it again, so he did - and got it right in half again. he got it like six times in a row. the waiter that he'd been talking to earlier, Law, came over and asked what we were doing. then he showed us a trick where you have a glass, a cherry, and an upside down brandy glass and you have to get the cherry inside the glass using the brandy glass but not turning it rightside up at all. we couldn't figure out how to do it, and when he showed us how, we were all very impressed (i'm not going to tell how to do it, because it's a neat trick and you'd want to be surprised when you're shown how). we then sat there with Keith and Law and did a bunch of bartricks (can't really remember most of them anymore).
Dodi had her phone out and she was playing with it, then she put in on the bar. Keith picked it up and started playing with it and Dodi said, you can put your number in if you want to. he did, then he looked at me and asked me for my phone. He put his number in mine as well and handed it back to me. Chris said that it probably wasn't his number, that he probably put different numbers in our phones. Dodi and I then compared numbers and concluded that it's probably his real number because he put the same number in both.
it was very dead in the bar, and Keith showed us how he could flip "bar mats" (which is what he called coasters) and bottles. then he said that when he was bored he made up shots. he started preparing a shot that used a lot of green alcohol, some coconut-tasting alcohol, some milk, and some pineapple juice. then he put out four glasses and poured us each some of his shot, which he called a "little green monster." he did the shot with us (which was very good) and let us have it on the house.
then it was last call, and he asked if i wanted another guinness (i'd just finished my third... or was it fourth?) and i said no, that's ok, but then Chris said, "no, she wants another one" and I said, "I do, I just don't want to pay for it" and Keith said, "I've got it" and poured me another one. The bar started to clear out, and Keith and Law finished closing up and came to the other side of the bar to sit with us and have a drink and tell jokes (most of which i can't remember. i was pretty drunk by then. Keith told one about a "little green man" which involved him saying "little green" in his irish accent about a million times and I can't remember at all what the punchline was, but I really enjoyed listening to him speak). Keith sat next to me and before I knew it he had his hand on my leg. i responded in kind, and when Dodi and Chris said that they were hungry and wanted to go to Denny's he came with us. it's ridiculous how not perceptive i am about this type of thing. i never know when a guy is interested until it's extremely obvious. i had no idea most of the night and when i told Dodi this the next day she said that it had been obvious.
anyway. i won't go into detail because i think my parents look at my page every once in a while but i had a very good night with the hot irish bartender. he told me that he has every sunday and monday off and that i should call him. he told me a bunch of times that i should call him, but i'm not sure that i will. i mean, i don't really know if he meant it (but he did ask me to an awful lot, and i do have his number) and, what would i say? hi keith, it's ali, the girl from friday night... hmm. i dunno. and he's divorced with two boys under the age of five. but he is really hot. and the accent just kills me. and we did have a really good time... we'll see...