LUDO concert September 28th

I absolutely love the band LUDO from their masterful lyrics to their sweeping melodies, catchy tunes, dramatic flair and humorous stories. I mean, what band do you know of that sings about, self loathing pirates, winking cyclopes, robots and cyborgs, parading skelletons, dreams of manta rays, true love, banking robbing with the girl you love, and all that topped with whipped cream? Who wouldn't love that? I feel extreemly lucky that D.L. White introduced me to them about a year ago. Her blog Storm In A Tea Cup often features LUDO as her muscial interlude. She also sent me a copy of each of their albums about a month before the concert. What a wonderful surprise that was. I have been listening to all four albums over and over ever since.

The self titled LUDO(2003), Broken Bride (their rock opera from 2005), Your Awful I Love You (2008) and the brand new Prepair the Preparations(2010).

I was very excited to discover that LUDO would be in my hometown as part of their tour in September 2010. We had to attend, even though I have not been to a concert since the Police in 2008. D.L. White was able to travel and attend the concert with us. What an amazing night ensued. Here are some pictures to document this fantastic concert during the "Prepare The Preparations" tour.

They opened the concert with the main theme from "Never Ending Story" (which I had not heard since I was a kid and LUDO admittedly say they are all big fans of 80's music, so this was quite fitting) and traveled right into "Go-Getter Greg" about a guy who is a bit obsessive over a girl who has moved into his apartment complex. Greg is a bit of a stalker, but it's a humorous song with funny lyrics and a very catchy chorus. Watching Andrew Volpe's facial expressions when he sings makes the song even that much more humorous.

Next it was on to one of my all time favorite LUDO songs, Hum-Along which tells the story of unrequited love which includes an imagined journey which spans being kidnapped by pirates, and singing to jaguars in twelve bars. My favorite line in that song: "And between the jungle and the stars, you sing nonsense songs in 12 bars to me / And in my sleep I hum along / You'll never hear this song / You'll never see the movie in my head."

Drunken Lament a song about drinking away the pain of a break up, and I just adored "Too Tired To Wink", which has lyrics that are impressively complicated, and reminds me of something from the mind of Lewis Carrol. For example, check out this line: "I stored a cyclops for a week with hard-tack in the clink / If ever he would bat a lid I thought it was a wink / But the world is flush with monocular mush and dingbats to despise / You find they're not thinking, just narrowly blinking, / But never quite cleaning their eyes."




Later on they performed "Lake Pontchartrain" which is a fantastic LUDO song, telling a story about a guy and his two friends who discover what is really at the bottom of the lake during a dark and stormy night. Tim Convey, the keyboard player made sure to get the audience all riled up to sing toghether: "Come down to Lake Pontchartrain / Rest your soul and feed your brain /That's where you will get to see everything the water can be" and watching Andrew's facial expressions was hilarious during the "scary" parts of the story.



Tim Convy also took charge of the whipped cream spraying during their "Whipped Cream" song as we all did the funny "Whipped Cream" dance from their video.

"Anything For You", was a great change of pace and Andrew and Tim Ferrell shared the mic.



At some point there was a break in the music that I am a bit confused about. I still didn't understand all that "MIKEY!!!" stuff between Andrew and another guy from a different band named Mikey. You just had to be there for that one I guess and then they all got into a dog pile during a long guitar solo of Tim Ferrell's. It was a bunch of boys and guitars all over the place, but they were able to untangle themselves to finish with "Love Me Dead" much to the delight of the entire audience.



I have never seen an audience who could sing their hearts out to almost every word of every song. You could feel how much everyone loved LUDO. We cheered and cheered. When the house lights came back up everyone gave up cheering eventually and we figured that was the end of the concert, but LUDO returned to shock us with "Girls On Trampolines" which they swore they were NOT going to sing. Haha, jokes on us! Thanks for the unexpected oncore!


The actual set list:

Go-Getter Greg
Hum Along
Drunken Lament
Too Tired to Wink
Topeka
Lake Pontchartrain
Rotten Town
Part I: Broken Bride
Whipped Cream
Horror of Our Love
Anything for You
Save Our City
Good Will Hunting By Myself
Love Me Dead

Encore:
Girls on Trampolines

After the concert, and much to our delight and surprise the band members signed autographs, took picture with fans and talk to everyone. It was amazing to get to meet these tallented guys and we couldn't help snapping some photos of them. I got my CD signed by each member.

Andrew Volpe (Lead Singer) and us. We were total nerds talking to him, but he was cool anyway. I am sure they are used to fans being silly and forgetting what they really want to say. I've never met anyone famous before, so I was pretty star struck and I couldn't think of anything intellengent except, "Your show was fantastic!" I can think of about a thousand things I would like to say now, but at the time I was just giddy from the concert experience. Maybe next time I'll keep my head together better.

Matt Polermo (Percussionist) and my husband. They had a nice conversation.


Tim Convy (Keyboardist) He called me a "sweetie."

Tim Ferrell (Lead Guitar)

My Pets Are My Pals.

I found my little dogs all sleeping on my couch today. I decided to break out the camera and snap some pictures of my old pals. Ivory is 12, Ebony is 11 and Rascal is 9 years old. Having older dogs is a challenge because they are kind of grouchy at times. They don't adjust fast to new situations, but their personalities are pretty sweet and have been since they were puppies.



Ebony loves to sleep in my bed, although I don't let him do that except at nap time occasionally, he will snuggle as close to me as he can, right next to my back. One morning it was so cold outside he ran in, jumped up on the bed and literally dove under the covers. He was hiding. He didn't move a muscle in case I decided to put him into his little doggie bed instead of let him stay under the warm covers with me. It made me laugh so hard I let him stay under the covers of course.




Last week Rascal was barking and barking at me and I had just let her out to go potty. I kept telling her to "hush" but she just wouldn't be quiet. Finally, after a time I realized the water dish was empty and she was telling me she was thirsty. I filled up the dish and she was happy. She is a demanding little thing and cute as a button. UPDATE: As of July 2010 Rascal has been adopted by my mother in law. I am so glad Rascal has a new home that doesn't include a 4 year old to stress her out and she is getting super spoiled. I think she will fit really well there.



In this picture Ivory looks like she has one ear, but really she was just annoyed to get her picture taken. None of my Chihuahuas like to get their pictures taken, except Ebony sometimes. I often find it hard to get a picture where Ebony isn't in it. What a ham.

Laundry system de-cluttered

Sort, Straighten, Standardize, Sanitize, Sustain. These are good words to help inspire and build a strategy to answer the de-clutter process as well as more efficient time use.

Newest Project: Make a laundry schedule and organize laundry baskets.

Baskets: White = whites, large blue = colors, small blue = Levis, bathroom hamper = towels, turtle shape = children’s clothes.

Once the baskets were organized, the schedule was created. Some people in our family use a clean towel every day and others don't. Some also wear one clean pair of Levis a day, and sometimes twice a day. These two elements make more towel and Levis laundry than any other type, so it seemed to make sense to do these two types of laundry twice a week.

Schedule: Monday = whites, T = towels, Wednesday = Levis, Thursday = colors, Friday = Levis and towels, Saturday = children's clothes, Sunday = Colors and Levis.

So far this schedule is working. I don't spend hours sorting laundry back and forth between all the different baskets as long as everyone puts the right type of clothes into the corresponding baskets. I can't say it is easy to get everyone to comply.

It really seems to make sense to do laundry on a schedule rather than just waiting for different basket's to overflow before doing laundry, or having to do 5 loads of laundry on one day, or the entire weekend. One of the de-clutter strategies I learned was to do one load of laundry a day, so that you don't get behind and this is when a schedule can really work well.

Next project: The pantry!

Ebony sleeping.

I just had to post this picture of my dog Ebony, taken last week while he slept on my pillow. I love how his little paws curl around his nose to hide his face. He looks so sweet. I have tried to take a picture of him doing this before and he would always move when I approached him with my camera, but this time I got the shot. Of my three chihuahuas, Ebony is my buddy. (Rascal is the baby and Ivory is the queen bee).

Christmas Cards

I took some pictures of the Christmas Cards I hand made this year. I had particular fun with the silver paper and snow flake stamps. I used sliver and black ink. I wanted the cards to look elegant, yet simple and also let those who received them how much we care about them during this holiday season. I also didn't want the card to be too wordy. I like saying "Merry Christmas" instead of "holiday" wishes; however I had to make a choice on lettering size and decided to go with "holiday" this year for spacing issues. I tied the cards together with twine, which I think always adds an "old world" feel to any card. I got my stamps at Michael's Arts and Crafts store.


The outside:



The inside:

New Blinds: December 2009

My latest project has been putting up some bamboo roll up blinds into my son's room. He used to have vinyl blinds, but he had unwound it so many times the spring broke. I didn't really want to replace it with another blind that could break again. I wanted something different. The Bamboo filters the light and they are not completely private, so I got a privacy Roman cloth shade to cover the outside of the bamboo. This filters the light even more. I kept the blue curtains and curtain rod to add some style. I think it turned out pretty good and filters the light just enough for nap time. At night we close the curtains too for even more privacy. The blinds roll up really easy and we put the tie chords really high up on the wall so that my son will not be able to reach the chords until he is much older. This is an important safety feature to include if you have roll up blinds and children. Below is a picture of the finished product.



UPDATE: The Roman privacy cloth that is supposed to attach to the blinds did not work out. I would not recommend these at all. I taped them up many and finally took them off the blinds. They are attached to the bamboo with heavy duty sticky tape, but it just wasn't enough to hold things in place. I got rid of the floor length light blue curtains and picked up some short dark navy blue curtans with tab tops. These really block the light much better and my son can sleep in later then the crack of dawn and actually take naps in the room when the curtans are drawn. I like this set up much better. During the day I draw the cutains back, and roll up the bamboo shade about 1/2 up the window. This lets plenty of light into the room. I'll try to update this picture sometime.

Halloween Night and all the Delights.

We really enjoy the Fall time, even here in the Southwest. We don't really have a changing of the leaves, but the temperatures usually cool down at night, which is just lovely after a hot and dusty summer. Now if only we could get some rain. Another thing I like about the Fall is the holidays. Halloween is such a fun time and gives you the oportunity to decorate your house in unusual things. Here are some of the fun and unique things we enjoy having around this time of year.

Orange and black couch covers. Is that an eyeball sitting there? I also see a few dog toys there which are not a part of the decore.


Black throws with happy skelletons cover my living room chair while an end table with crystal ball glows an erie blue .


Spooky Village/ left side.


Spooky Village / right side.

One thing I really missed this year was a carmel apple from the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory. Our nearest one closed down right before October. I think they have the best carmel apples in the world.

I also missed eating a slice of one of D.L. White's amazing Halloween cakes.

We also usually watch the Nightmare Before Christmas on Halloween night after trick or treating, but this year I had to work and missed seeing the show. Every year is different!

This year trick or treating was a great success and passing out candy at our door was fun. We carved two pumpkins, and ate too much candy. All in all a great time.


The smiley pumpkin. Isn't he cute? I designed his face myself. My 3 year old tried to help me carve the pumpkin with a butter knife.


The Moon Pumpkin. This was my husband's design. I wish I had thought of it. I really liked it was simple, but beautiful.