Then we got in her rental car and started the long, strange journey to go pick her car up from the dealership where it had been repaired.
First off, it was almost impossible to get to the freeway. For some reason the downtown entrances are all blocked off (like I discovered when I tried to use them on Tuesday). So Sandy planned to go through the international district and onto the onramp by SafeCo Field (like I ended up doing on Tuesday). This proved to be extraordinarily difficult, though, due to the fact that for some reason there was a fire truck parked at almost every intersection in the International District, lights flashing and spinning and all that. We didn't see any smoke anywhere, so who knows what that was about, eh?
Well, finally we got on the freeway, and that wasn't actually too all that bad until we got around Tukwila. But that's always bad. We went over on 405 to 167 and took that down to Auburn. That was wide, wide open all the way through Kent, and then came to a grinding almost-halt. We slogged our way down through to Auburn's Auto Mall, the horrifying string of car dealerships that stretches for miles and miles in the north half of Auburn. There we finally made it to the car dealership after well over an hour of travel.
After Sandy paid for the new radiator, the manager came out and looked over the paperwork and said that he'd go through everything, but he might be able to as much as half the price that Sandy was charged, and if so then he'd cut her a check the next day. I don't know if that was every actually done or not, though.
Anyway, we went and ate at a tiny little hole-in-the-wall Mexican place for an early dinner 'cause we were both starving (this was around 4:30 or so). We were given our place settings by a six-year-old girl! It was kinda adorable. The restaurant was just a mom, a dad, and their daughter running the whole place. The daughter brought out silverware and napkins and stuff like that while the parents waited and cooked and all that stuff.
I had two cheese enchiladas with onion, and they were very tasty. We also each had that drink that's like rice milk with cinnamon. It's called horchata. Get it if you're ever in a restaurant that offers it. Ve'y tasty.
After that Sandy & I had to slog through much traffic to get to Highway 18 so she could go to Mathias's mom's house and pick up two packages that Mathias had had delivered there. Then we went up Weyerheuser to avoid getting back on 18, and finally we got back onto I-5 and took that all the way up to SoDo, where we retrieved Mathias from Cobalt much later than had originally been planned. But we got a meal to go from the Mexican place for him, so it was all good.
We headed back to their apartment, and as we parked and were walking up to the door, long came Jason, with whom Mathias & I were gonna hang out that evening. We dallied in the apartment for a little bit so Mathias could open his packages (he got an animé DVD, some new fancy headphones and a signal scrubber thing so that his audio monitors would stop picking up radio signals).
Then all four of us walked to Neumos, where Sandy split off and continued walking on to the garage bowling alley to have a bowling night with her co-workers at Starbucks. Jason, Mathias, & I stopped at Neumos, because we all had tickets to see Busdriver live on stage there!
While we were waiting in line a redhead girl asked if she could buy a ticket off of us for $40. We declined, and then proceeded to waste her time by talking about exotic fish and animals with her. Later on her boyfriend or somebody arrived and they were offering $100 for a ticket. A little tempting, but I really wanted to see Busdriver and hang out with M&J. So no go.
We got in and staked out a position towards the right of the stage, close up but out of the way of anyone who wanted to get rowdy. This being Seattle, though, of course nobody got too rowdy.
Busdriver was actually opening for a band called CSS, which I learned did not stand for the internet term "Cascading Style Sheets." It stands for "Cansei de Ser Sexy," which is Portuguese for "tired of being sexy." Before the show started I bought Busdriver's new CD, RoadKillOverCoat. I bought it by handing a $10 bill to Busdriver himself, then he handed me the CD! Yes, Busdriver works his own gimmick table. He was on the phone, though, so unfortunately I didn't get to talk to him. Jason did later, though, and Busdriver actually remembered him from an earlier show! Jason made an off-hand mention of Master P, which will be important soon...
Anyhoo, there was a band before Busdriver played. It was called Natalie Portman's Shaved Head, which I assume is a reference to V for Vendetta. They sounded like early 80s energetic electro-pop stuff. Nothing terribly original, but very well done, and I really appreciated the fact that they wore matching costumes and had two backup dancers! They were very much a kitschy nerd band who were kinda parodying the music they were making. Like an electro-pop version of The Darkness.
Busdriver came on after NPSH, and he had a super mixing board thing, a digital turntable, and two mics (one for regular voice and one with a variety of effects). That was it. It was a really, really good set, and he really tried to work the crowd, which is always hard in Seattle. He made some subtle fun of Seattleites, saying how we made depression look so very stylish and stuff like that. Funny stuff.
Between several songs Busdriver would go off on a tangentical freestyle. During one of these freestyles he did a bit about Master P! Jason was proud for having planted that seed in his head.
My favorite moment, though, was when Busdriver performed a brand-new song based on the They Might Be Giants song "Man it's So Loud in Here" !!!!! It was spectacular! One of my favorite musicians doing a song by my all-time-favorite musicians! I turned to Mathias after he finished that song and said, "Well, I liked that a whole lot!"
We didn't stick around to hear CSS because we were all kinda tired and weren't terribly interested. So Jason was picked up by Jennifer, and Mathias & I walked back to his apartment so I could pick up my murse, which I had intelligently left there. I said goodnight to Sandy, who had also a very fun evening of bowling, and then I got in my car and drove back home.
It was after midnight when I got back, but I was hungro so I mixed some sour cream with salt, pepper, onion & garlic powder, bacon bits, and bleu cheese. I used this concoction as a dip for a bunch of carrots, which I ate in bed whilst watching Teen Titans. Then I fell asleep.
Labels: Life, Links, Music, Restaurants
