Zeigen

For our one-year wedding anniversary back in February, Kimi brought us tickets to see Elvis Costello, and Tuesday night was the night of the show. And I guess Yvonne was collaborating with Kimi because they all brought tickets at the same time.

We decided to take public transit, which meant leaving work a bit early. Kimi and I met with John at the Menlo Park Caltrain station where we trained it up to where Yvonne works, and then we drove to the Daly City BART station, and from there over to downtown Oakland for dinner at Le Cheval (a very well known Vietnamese restaurant). Service was very quick (and the food is very good; it’s been a long time since I’ve eaten there), so we had plenty of time to walk on over to the Paramount.

I used to work in downtown Oakland for quite a few after I graduated from Cal, and as Yvonne put it, it was literally a walk down memory lane. When I first started working at Diversified in 1990, it was down at 15th and Broadway (although later we moved to City Center when we spun out Diversitech, the training business). That area of downtown just wasn’t doing well. Once the Emporium Capwell closed, it seemed like the heart went out of all the surrounding businesses. It got to the point where almost all of the doors were boarded up. So I was pleasantly surprised to see that the area had come back: All of the ‘89 earthquake damage had finally been repaired, the street work that had seemed to drag out for years was finally done, and both small and large businesses seemed to be doing ok (and the Emporium building was now occupied by Sears). The old Fox theatre with its beautiful Byzantine motif looked like it was back in business. And the clock on the old Oakland Tribune building even had the right time, which I had never seen before.

As for the concert, I was very impressed. We were in row NN in the Orchestra, sort of the middle of the pack. If you haven’t been to the Paramount, it’s a gorgeous Art Deco theatre. It’d been a few years since I saw Tori perform there, and if there’s a more beautiful concert hall in the Bay Area I don’t know about it.

Elvis was in rare form, and Allen Toussaint with his Crescent City Horns lit up the joint. A lot of the music really brought back memories of the first and only time I’ve been to New Orleans, with Kimi right after we got engaged in 2004 (staying with Jeff P. and his then-girlfriend Amber on their floor during Mardi Gras). Of course with Katrina and the theme of their recent collaboration, The River in Reverse, the tone was bittersweet at points.

I was a little nervous that I wouldn’t know a lot of the songs (since I haven’t listed to the new album yet), but they opened with the Nick Lowe-penned classic “Peace, Love & Understanding” (one of my favorite songs) so I was exhilirated right from the beginning.

The new arrangements of old Elvis classics like Pump It Up, Alison, Clown Strike, Watching the Detectives, Deep Dark Truthful Mirror really worked — especially the conjoining of Alison with the old Smokey Robinson & The Miracles’ classic, “The Tracks of My Tears.” With Elvis and his three Impostors plus Allen and his four-person horn section as well as his guitarist, Anthony AB Brown, this was a big noisy group. But what really hit home were the quiet moments, especially on a number like Broken Promise Land. A high point for me was a very impressive “Clubland.”

Altogether, they played for over three hours. Amazing, just amazing. You wouldn’t know that Elvis (Declan Patrick Aloysius MacManus in real life) was a 52-year-old. I’ve had these songs in my head for two days now.

With the reverse public transit logistics and dropping people off, we didn’t end up picking up Sammy until after 1am from Kyrie’s place (thanks, Kyrie, for watching him!) and I actually had to get some work down so I didn’t get to bed until 2:30. I was definitely dragging at work on Wednesday. But what a wonderful concert. It had been a while since Kimi and I had seen one, so it was really great to get out.

If you have a chance to see one of the stops of this tour, it’s highly recommended. Here’s a sample of what the set list looks like.

Sweetie, thanks for the anniversary present.

So you’ve got a video iPod, right? And you have a Series2 TiVo, right? With the new TiVo Desktop 2.3 released this week (for PC only for now, sorry Mac users), you can automatically transfer shows from your DVR to your video iPod (or PSP) without having to lift a finger. This is really cool.

When Kimi and I were heading out to Tacoma two weeks ago, I got into a conversation with the guy sitting next to us about his video iPod. He’d been on the fence about getting a TiVo (because he doesn’t watch a lot of TV at home) but when he heard about this feature, he was sold. (He commutes between Seattle and San Jose every week, so he’s on the plane watching his video iPod a lot.) Personally I don’t fly that often, but when I do it’s been great to have portable video. It helped me out when Kimi was in the hospital last week, too.

Download TiVo Desktop 2.3 now!
or
Get a brand new dual tuner 80-hour Series2 for just $30 plus service!
or
Get a video iPod free via TiVo Rewards!

Ok, shameless promotion done.

I was all set to write a nice long entry about our Tacoma trip when we came back, but Monday we were both exhausted and went to bed early, and Tuesday was the hospital thing. Wed and Thu I just played WoW instead. And even though I’m busy at work, I’ve got a couple of minutes while waiting to meet with a VP, so…

Last Thursday evening we flew out to Tacoma, in order to see Kimi’s parents and brother Sam (Sammy’s uncle and namesake) who are moving to Fairbanks, Alaska. (Alaska! Who moves to Fairbanks?)

By coincidence we ran into Mishy at SJO, because she happend to be flying out to Idaho (Idaho! Who goes to Idaho?) to visit relatives and her flight was taking off at the same time at a neighboring gate. She was very happy to see Sammy, who was in a good mood and happy to see her.

The flight out was uneventful, and once again we stayed with Kimi’s sister Tomi and brother-in-law John and their 3-year-old, Kira. They have a really nice little house (little? well, it’s bigger than ours) near the Tacoma mall.

Friday we visited the Point Defiance Zoo, drank a bunch of coffee, and John and I ended up watching Team America: World Police on DVD. (Kimi actually wasn’t feeling well that evening, perhaps foreshadowing of her hospital visit the next week.)

Saturday, Kimi and Sammy and I ventured up to Seattle and after driving around a bit we ended up at Irwin’s, a quaint cafe in the middle of nowhere, and then zigzagged back over to the Seattle Center because I had a jones to visit the Science Fiction Museum.

Ooops, time to meet, so more later.

You love her, you know her from her comments here as “Scrappy” (plus my frequent references to her babysitting skills), and now she’s got a blog of her own. Maybe she will update hers more often than I’ve updated this place lately…

Go read Yvonne’s blog now!

Tuesday morning around 11, Kimi called me at work and said she wasn’t feeling well and was going home. Around 4 she called me and she was in so much pain she could barely talk — a debilitating headache, nausea, vomiting. So I rushed home and I ended up taking her to our doctor since he had an appointment. She was very weak and sensitive to lights, and couldn’t keep anything down, not even water. The doctor was mystified, recommended we head to the emergency room and he ordered a CT scan.

Long story short, they couldn’t find anything scary in the CT scan, and eventually the IV and anti-nausea and anti-pain medication kicked in. By 10:30pm Kimi had moved from a 9 on the 1-10 pain scale to a 4. The diagnosis was neck muscle tension leading to a migraine.

Kimi had never experienced a migraine before (and judging by the pain she was in, the things I had thought were migraines that I’d had in the past weren’t really migraines at all).

Yesterday she slept most of the day. Today she’s feeling a bit better but still a bit delicate.

Thanks to Kyrie for watching Sammy for us on Tuesday night.

Hospitals are noisy, slow-moving, and scary places. This was Kimi’s third time as a patient at El Camino (once, when pregnant, for a sprained wrist after a fall, and the second time to deliver Sammy). I think the people who work there are generally competent and caring, but they all seem a bit jaded.