Free Press Summer Fest 2013!

Hey, y'all! I'm blogging again! Three times in the same decade? Uncanny! Mostly it's because I still have 2 sets of 220 essays to grade and I hate grading essays, but that's neither here nor there.

This past weekend was Houston's Free Press Summer Fest. My friends and I went two years ago and saw Cut Copy and Chromeo and Weezer and Yeasayer and Beirut and it was AWESOME. Last year the only three acts I was remotely interested in were Snoop, Willie Nelson, and Flaming Lips. R.A.N.D.O.M. But we didn't go, because we were protesting the price increase from $25 to $55. Little did we know...

This year FPSF sold out. Which is ridiculous. We bought our tickets early, then got to upgrade to Fancy Pants status (yes, that's a thing), so we managed to break even with the price inflation when we sold our original tickets. I heard tickets were going for $250 for general admission by the day of the festival. That's crazy talk!

The lineup of people I was interested in seeing:
*Saturday*
Chase Hamblin
Vintage Trouble
Alabama Shakes
The Mavericks
Arctic Monkeys
Borgore
The Head and the Heart
Passion Pit
The Postal Service
Calvin Harris
*Sunday*
Kashmere Stage Band
Mavis Staples
Matt & Kim
SOJA
Savoy
Of Monsters and Men
Macklemore and Ryan Lewis
Bassnectar
Social Distortion

That's a tall order, peeps.

Did you know that Free Press SUMMER Fest is a terrible idea? Why not Fall Fest? Or Spring Fest if you'd like to keep the same initials? THIS IS HOUSTON. IN JUNE. WHAT THE EFF. I thought I was going to die, y'all. Fancy Pants AC tents or not. I wasn't alone, either. Those medical tents were full of hipsters in too much fringe/not enough sunscreen. Not to mention everyone was covered in grass and mud made from sitting on the hills and sweating profusely. I even had a few minutes of feeling like a football player when I started getting leg and side cramps from the dehydration. Not my best look. But I powered through for the sake of Passion Pit and The Postal Service.

Bands I actually saw Saturday:
Vintage Trouble (SOOOOOOOO FUN!!!)
Alabama Shakes (until I got the dehydration shakes and had to take it to the Fancy Pants tent)
Arctic Monkeys (after these guys I wandered in the streets like I imagine a person lost in the desert would wander...literally going in circles and feeling faint and discombobulated)
Passion Pit (sorry, H&H)
The Postal Service

Those were some tough decisions.

Then, Sunday morning we woke up to rain. GLORY!!!! I'll take mud over heat stroke any day. Turns out, though, it wasn't muddy at all. In fact, there was a pleasant breeze and a lack of crowd (I'm guessing some of those people I saw flailing around and hulahooping the day before weren't quite up to day 2). It was like the SF gods looked down and said, "Hey, guys. You took it like champs yesterday. Here you go!"

Sunday's bands:
MAVIS STAPLES!!!!!!!! (Convo of  the day: "Why aren't you up there with her, Katie?" "I know, right! I wanna be Mavis Staples when I grow up.")
Cat Powers
Matt & Kim (so fun!)
We heard Macklemore in the distance, but we decided to capitalize on the lack of food lines and abundance of shade.
TV on the Radio
Bassnectar (WOW. FUN.)

So there you go. I don't know if we'll complete the trifecta next year or not. There would have to be a pretty good lineup. And special Fancy Pants bathrooms. And a cold front. But we'll see!

The Pintester Movement

So, I'm an avid reader of The Pintester. My daily obsession is due in part to the hilarity of every.single.post., but also because I feel like each time I try something I find on Pinterest I'm more surprised when it comes out halfway decent, and there's a sort of bond that I feel with someone else who is also not blessed with the "I saw a tiny thumbnail on Pinterest and copied it perfectly!" gene.

Sonja Foust, creator of this glorious addition to the internets, challenged her readers to participate in the #pintestermovement. I thought about it, but didn't really have the brain power to put much effort into trying out a pin. I'm a freaking high school teacher and it's the end of the year, y'all. I'm lucky I'm alive. And/or sober.

The idea of testing something and blogging about it is rather daunting to me. I always have the desire to blog, but as you can see from my blog history, I SUCK at the follow-through. HOWEVER, that's where luck came in, my friends. I accidentally sucked something up so bad it was like it was BEGGING to be blogged. I only realized the suck-ti-tude part of the way in, though, so I didn't know such things needed to be documented via camera. Use your imagination, peeps.

My friends and I went to the lake this weekend. Memorial Day weekend? Check. Turquoise waters? Check. Rain for three days? Check. Too much time indoors with boys watching Sci Fi? God yes. So, in the spirit of "camping" and "I'm incredibly freaking bored", I decided to make these S'mores Bark thingies I saw. I mean, the deliciousness of s'mores without the fire (not that a fire in a downpour is possible) and mess? Perfection! This is what they were supposed to turn out like:

(weight watchers link here )

Looks simple, right? The pin said "Lay out Graham crackers for the crust. Spread mini marshmallows, pour melted chocolate on it, let it cool. And Voila! S'mores bark." What could go wrong? So, I set out to wow my friends with a tasty feat of culinary strength. I must note that nowhere in my planning did I find it necessary to actually click on the Pinterest link and go to the website. Not that it would have mattered, because I actually had to Google the title to find it. Problem #1.

First, I busted out the double broiler to melt the chocolate. No microwaving here. I'm effing serious about melting chocolate. I poured in a whole bag of chocolate chips. While I waited for the chocolate to melt I spread graham crackers on a cookie sheet and covered it in marshmallows. At this point I started to think I may or may not have underestimated the cookie sheet to chocolate ratio. I looked at said double broiler and thought to myself, "Self, should you add something more to these chips? Milk, perhaps? Thin it out a little?"  But, like any good cook, I said, "Nah," (in my best Si from Duck Dynasty voice). "CARRY ON!!!!" 

Apparently this is what they mean when they say to listen to your gut...

Uhhhhh....... What. The. Eff.

At this point, I started saying words that weren't holy, drawing the attention of my best friend who thought it was VERY funny. So I said more bad words towards him and said to get out of my kitchen. 

(This is me trying desperately to spread out the chocolate. For future reference, it is no easy task to spread chocolate that is quickly thickening on rolly mini marshmallows.)

BUT REALLY. It wouldn't spread AT ALL. So I improvised. I cleared off the extra marshmallows and placed the extra graham crackers on top. See??? It's even more s'more-like! 

I think I was trying to convince myself that it wouldn't be a hot damn mess while not drawing attention from the rest of the crowd to my disaster.

The ever-helpful best friend who decided that leaving my kitchen was not in his best interest had taken up post leaning against the counter laughing. And drinking a beer. And laughing. But then he suggested I put the entire pan in the oven to further melt the chocolate and marshmallows and maybe the mess would spread out. What the hell? Couldn't get worse, right? That's why I keep him around. 

I popped the disaster into the oven for a while, and NOTHING. Absolutely nothing happened. When I took them out they looked exactly the same as before. You would think that an oven at 400* would make a difference, but you would be wrong.

PINFAIL. Except then I remembered that, as ugly as they were, I was still looking at melted chocolate and marshmallows in a crispy graham crust. So we ate a few. You can't really kill melted chocolate and marshmallows, amirite?

The next day the chocolate had FINALLY hardened, but the marshmallows were stale and the grahams were soggy. Now, I'm not saying we didn't still pick at them, sans crust. But they weren't good. So, we resorted to the puppy chow I had made previously and didn't completely destroy. And then I threw more than half of them away. Along with my pride...

***Side bar - When I went to link to the original post I realized that the description on the pin LIED and I may or may not have missed key ingredients in the making of this "delicious" treat.... That explains that...***

Well, THAT didn't work. As of  the summer of 2009 I vowed to start blogging again. It was part my own desire, part being bored, and part wanting to jump on the blogging bandwagon. Oops.

Since then my brother got married to aforementioned fiance. Three years ago. My sister graduated high school and is a junior in college. I taught 8th grade for 2 more godforsaken years and am wrapping up my first year back in a high school. I joined the church choir, the Junior League, and started dying chunks of my hair weird colors.

I suck at documenting my life.

New Beginnings

Wow. Entering the blog world yet again. I was a Xanga addict in its hay day but fizzled off post-college. I loved posting my meaningless thoughts for whomever to read or even just for a bit of self-gratification, but it got a little mundane. I skipped out on myspace blogging and never posted notes on Facebook, but have often wished for a place to post stories longer than allowed in a status update. So, while sitting in our condo in the Cayman Islands watching my brother's fiance update her blogspot, I began to break down. Let's see if this sticks.