The Black Keys. Amazing.

You know I'm a fan of live music. I have seen a LOT of concerts and I always say concerts are a hobby and it's at the top of my list. Every time a good concert comes along, I always have to scramble to find a date and I have decided that I need more friends who are music enthusiasts because nobody is ever as excited about these shows as I am and that kind of sucks.  But my mom is kind of amazing and she's up for almost anything and when I saw that the Black Keys were coming, I knew she was going to be my date. 


Let me just start by saying my mom's Facebook status says it all of this concert: "still recovering from The Black Keys concert that my fav daughter took me to Tues. night in Minneapolis! That was the best concert I have seen in years!! They are now in the top 5 concerts I have been to. And that is saying a lot because they are in the company of The Stones, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath... Thanks for the good time Sar! :>)"

Now, the fact my mom has seen all of those bands makes her badass and me jealous, but for her to say that about this concert? Huge. This concert was easily one of my top shows ever, not surpassing Kings of Leon in Chicago though. 

I was kind of worried where our seats would be, but you can see we were on the side not too far. We actually had a great view of the stage. Plus, it was ridiculously loud, as it should be. 

 I love nerdy boys, so my love for Dan and Pat are kind of unmatched. Pat is a beast on the drums and Dan's voice is like butter to me.

 One of my favorite songs, Ten Cent Pistol, was awesome to see live because they turned the lights totally down and then flashed them towards the end. Such a great song and I've had it in my head for days.

 But my hands down favorite part of the show? When they did their first encore song, Everlasting Light. That is a great song anyways, but anytime you add a disco ball to the mix? You have a winning performance. Every bad should haul out a disco ball because a disco ball is kind of awesome.

 And then add colored lights for those around us who were high with their ninja pot smoking skills.

If it were practical to have a disco ball in my house, you know I absolutely would. 

The only down side to this was getting home at 1am and having to work the next day. Then, because I am an idiot, I took a Benedryl at work for allergies and I was even more tired. But to my credit, this is the first time in my LIFE I have ever had a pollen allergy and I feel like I am getting my ass kicked by plants. Seriously. It's unbelievable to me that I can make it until I'm 30 without an allergy to speak of and the year I start I feel like I am going to die and that pollen is actively trying to attack me. So I'm kind of an allergy medicine retard, but I at least know why everyone is hard core about non drowsy. Sheesh. 

Anyways. I'm still recovering from my lack of sleep but it was absolutely worth it. And it makes me kick myself even more for not buying tickets the last time they were in town even though I would have had to pay scalper prices. It obviously would have been worth it. 

Deck, Shitty Gardening, and Matt's new motivation.

I know you want another deck progress report and I aim to please bitches. This weekend we had a massive yard sale and with our earnings, we bought some stuff for the house. This means I learned what stair stringers were. And then Jeebus gave us stairs.

Look at that four foot section of stairs!

We still need to put the stair railings on, but hey- at least I don't have to jump off the deck to take the garbage and recycle out!

But you're probably curious about Matt's solution for the gap?

As it turns out, there was no solution. So the gap will remain forever and ever. I tried not to be angry about this obvious fuck up. So I took it out on my planter.

Every year I start with good intentions on this planter and every year it's a mother fucking fail. But since the lovely Shannon is all hard core about yard care, I figure I need to give it another try. So I pulled out everything in it, put new soil in it, and some petunias.

So far, the petunias are still alive. But check back in a month, I bet they will be dead. Sorry petunias.

In other news, I have been thinking of new ways to motivate Matt to continue with the home improvement projects. And then yesterday, a crazy woman in Superior gave me the idea I needed.

On 21st Street in Superior, this bitch took it to the next level. As it turns out, her divorce that she filed last July finally became final this week. And so to celebrate, she put her ex husband's stuff out in the yard, decorated his junker truck, and then hid out in her house.

Because you know hoards of people came by to take pictures.

And apparently, the pile of shit was much larger earlier in the day and people actually were taking things off of the pile.

At the end of the afternoon, the truck ended up being towed. The sad part is that they have kids and so that's shitty. I mean, kids don't need to know that their dad is a fucking cheating douchebag, but on the other hand- I want to buy this lady a beer. How many women have been angered and wronged... and wanted to do this? I think we've all been there and most of us didn't have the guts to do it. So good for her.

Matt feels a little more motivated, so good for me as well.

The Exceptionals (GIVEAWAY)

I have another post for you this evening, but here is a book review for something I've read recently that I think you will really like.

The Exceptionals- Erin Cashman

In a famous family of exceptionally talented people, fifteen-year-old Claire Walker is ordinary . . . or so she leads everyone to believe. Yet the minute she steps out of line, her parents transfer her to Cambial Academy: the prestigious boarding school that her great-grandfather founded for students with supernatural abilities, or “specials”. Although Claire can’t see ghosts or move objects with her mind like the other students, she does have a special she considers too lame to admit: she can hear the thoughts of animals.

Just as she is settling in, one by one the most talented students – the Exceptionals – go missing. In an attempt to find out what happened to them, Claire uncovers a dark prophecy involving a plot to destroy Cambial and a mysterious girl who can communicate with a hawk. Could she be that girl? Does the gorgeous but secretive boy she meets in the woods know more than he is letting on? After years of ignoring her special gift, Claire decides the time has come to embrace her ability . . . before it’s too late.

I am a big fan of books that have supernatural stuff in it, though I never would have thought so. I flew through this book within a handful of hours because this book was that good. It's obviously set up for at least a sequel, but I would love it if this became a three book series. But this is basically about a young girl who has to go to a school that she doesn't really want to go to and she doesn't really fit in. Everybody has a really cool special talent or ability, but she doesn't. She can hear and talk to animals but her parents don't encourage her to pursue it, but it isn't until later when Claire realizes why. I kind of loved Claire. Usually the lead character gets on my nerves, but I really liked Claire. She falls in love with a bad boy, who you know is bad but when you find out what he's involved in, it's really bad. All of the characters were developed really well and not to the extent where pages are wasted on useless information. 

This is Erin Cashman's first novel, which is surprising to me because it is really well done. You can go HERE to see the Facebook page for this book, and HERE for Erin Cashman's website. I am eagerly awaiting the follow up, that's for sure. 

But one of you can win your own copy of this book! Here are your entry points and good luck!

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Why you shouldn't get excited until something is finished.

So, you remember that time I posted about my glorious, so far free, deck that Matt is being a total rockstar on and is obviously jockeying for a blow job?

Yes, of course you do because that was only yesterday you senile lambwhore.

Well, I should know better by now than to praise for such amazing hard work before a project is 100% finished because I have never had a truly finished project in this house. Nothing has ever ended up the way it was intended and I know this. I know all of this yet I'm quick to praise. It's like premature ejaculation but worse consequences.

Matt was lounging on the couch yesterday and I was all, "HEY! How about you start putting railings on the deck you bum!" (You see that? It's called project management- it's how stuff gets done.) And he reluctantly went outside in the gorgeous weather and proceeded to do just that.

 Isn't it glorious??

So I was so excited and I may have done a happy dance.  To the left of the picture is where the four foot wide step is going to be, so he needs the stair stringers in before he can start on that side, which is totally reasonable. So I was like, "Hey- why don't you do the other side?"

To which he sheepishly tells me that he has a problem with that. You see, Matt failed to measure the railing sections before building the deck and just went ahead and made it 12x12 because golly gee, that is a nice even size to accommodate his wife's OCD. Except that now our problem is that this side here? 

Is too wide for one section, and it would look weird if he cut another section to half ass it. If he only puts one section in, it's like a sizable gap between the railing and the house. Awesome.

You see what I mean how NOTHING in my house can get done properly? Now, if this were anyone else's house? He would have measured everything a thousand times and would have had a draft drawing to go off of and it would have been home improvement show worthy. Our house? Ghetto fabulous all the way baby.

So he assures me he "has a plan" which better not involve buying a big grill and maybe a hedge, because this bitch will lose it.

I have also decided that since he is putting a really ugly crawl space window right there (you can see the window in the picture kind of), we're going to make a patio landing in front of the window and I'm going to put a large planter (on wheels) in front of it so you don't see the window. I'm a fucking genius. SO, I have to go online and figure out how to do that myself because I'd rather Matt spend his efforts on fixing the deck situation.

Stay tuned.

Deck Progress. No, seriously.

So you remember that time where we finished our living room project (mostly) and we (and I really mean "I") got all ambitious and was like, "Onto the deck project!" and Matt gave me the side eye like I had gone mad because it's just not in his nature to be all productive on home improvement projects?

Sure you do.

Well I will have you know that we actually have progress!

I think you can all remember what my back porch used to look like. Matt tried to get the concrete stairs out himself by trying to drag them out with his Jeep. This did not work and it only resulted in HUGE tire track holes in my yard and it moved the steps just enough for Jackson to fall through only every time he went outside. Matt told me he would have to rent a super duper jack hammer and that this was expensive (lie) and it would take him at least a whole day (lie) and it wasn't worth it.

Then I ended up working a ton of hours at work for two weeks and guess what? Matt rented that super duper jack hammer for only $50 because it only took him two hours to do.

 tee-fucking-dah.

And because I have this reasonable fear that if I didn't push him to keep going, our back steps would look like that for the entire summer or longer. So I put on my bitch panties and was making his life fairly miserable when he came into the house for anything other than water or bathroom breaks. And that resulted in this after day one: 

 Obviously, I was meant to be a project manager. 

It's kind of huge, right? So then, the next day it wasn't as nice out but it wasn't raining so outside he goes again. And he put the decking stuff on. And I had him put one of the railing sections on so you could see what that will look like:

SQUEAL. 

He has to cut the last piece of decking that goes against the door, buy some stair stringers so we can put the four foot wide step landing onto the sidewalk, and then lattice so animals don't live underneath it. And something about trim? We also have to get some deck wash (???) and power wash the deck and then DONE.

Oh, and get rid of the concrete because ew.

But the best part about this deck is that so far, we have only the $50 jack hammer rental into it. Matt knows a guy who knew a guy who had this deck and then his wife decided she didn't want this color, she wanted something totally different after only having it up for a month. So they took it all apart and gave it to us for free so long as we hauled it that day. DONE. The other bonus? We have enough to do a front porch too.

I know, I kind of peed a little there too. Totally acceptable.

What isn't funny is that while Matt was digging and getting the steps out he found a lot of empty liquor bottles. We've decided that either the person who built our house or the person who did major foundation repairs to our house was an alcoholic. Either way it's bad but it does explain quite a bit.

What else? Oh, Lillian is still here with her friends. Matt will not let me smudge the house because he's certain I will fuck it up after the cat raping incident he was involved in that very much did not work. Which he probably is right because I don't feel qualified to do this. But we've noticed that if you are watching TV on the couch at night, and you've got maybe one lamp on so it's kind of dark but not too dark, you see flashes of light in the cubby hole. It makes it really hard to focus on my Basketball Wives show if this is happening.

So yay.

The Most Dangerous Thing.

It's time for a book review, ladies and gents. I have another post for you a bit later on, but for those of you who are book addicts such as I am.... I am here with another review just for you.

The Most Dangerous Thing- Laura Lippman

Years ago, they were all the best of friends. But as time passed and circumstances changed, they grew apart, became adults with families of their own, and began to forget about the past—and the terrible lie they all shared. But now Gordon (“Go-Go”), the youngest and wildest of the five, has died unexpectedly and the other four have come together for the first time in years. Suddenly each of these old friends has to wonder if the dark secret they’ve shared for so long is the reason for their troubles today . . . and if someone within the circle is trying to destroy them all.

You know I'm never shy when I review a book and those I love I tell everyone and their cousins about it because I feel like authors are undervalued. More people should be absorbed in books and the value of a good book in under appreciated. Unfortunately, that's not the case so much here. 

What makes this hard is that technically speaking, Laura Lippman is a great writer. She isn't addicted to adjectives, her writing flows and it's easy to read. The problem with this book is that after every single chapter I was irritated wondering when the story would start. She spends CHAPTERS on character development, switching from present to past tense so you know the dynamic between the characters, and it was just too much. It felt... melodramatic. I was so frustrated by the time it got to what the "dark secret" was and when I read it, I was disappointed. It basically left me wondering "really, that's it??". 

One of my biggest pet peeves with real life people, but also fictional characters, who let things from their past dictate their future. I am a big believer that everything that happens to you in the is meant to shape your future but it shouldn't hinder it. I think people are too afraid sometimes to make a wrong decision so they rely on what is comfortable. Why go against the grain of life when it's just easy to do what you've always done? So when I read books with characters whose entire life are based on a moment in time so far in the past and they chose not to deal with it? I feel kind of stabby and I instantly dislike them. 

So, overall I didn't love the book. I was left feel underwhelmed and disappointed. Is that to say you won't read it and just love it? No. I thing if you really like books that have the thread about history dictating your future and what poor choices over a life time can do, then you will love this book. I am only the second blogger on this tour, but go HERE to see what other blogs are reviewing this book as well. You can also go to the author's website HERE to learn more about the book, her previous works, and author information. She also has a Facebook page HERE if you want to check that out. 

Happy reading!