Work and Play

So for Labor day weekend C and I started on our visit-as-many-top-American-cities as-we-can for 'business' and/or pleasure.

This time we picked Seattle (or the general area that is).

Our trip was cool. Glad we went.

We got to kick it with lots of Nigerian Microsoft kids, and we got to attend 2/3 days of the bumbershoot festival (we had 3-day passes) which was a primary motivation to making our stop at this here city at that there time. We didn't really get to do as much touristy/exploring things as we had planned (as C may have liked).

day 1.

Let's say I'm not a fan of the outskirts/suburbs areas of Washington, and probably I could only live in Seattle (or close) and may not be able to afford it. That was the only part that I was able to swallow. The 'burbs with all it's 300 unit one-color paint is sooo not my thing. I need culture, contrast and color in my life. At least in the Bay you can go outside of San Francisco (east as far as Oakland or south; Daly city & co) and still have like some culture & color.

We started out with a work session. Got a bunch of work done between the both of us...and then headed out to our planned exploration, a la space needled, pike market, downtown shopping and what not.

One thing that may have hindered our exploring was the fact that... Ha ha, okay funny story. We are on our way...C driving, N navigating. I tell her to make a turn this here right. She starts yelling 'OMG OMG OMGod!' I'm freaking out like 'What what', never mind if you can't make the turn just keep going we can backtrack' Finally after she stops screaming she tells me that when she tried to brake, the car kept accelerating. This happened two more times. So we made our first stop and decided that we would risk it back 'home', but not go anywhere else after this.

Come to find out the reason that was happening was cos the emergency brake had been up the whole time. Yeah! But by then we'd pretty much just whiled away time and given up on our exploring the city. So we ended up going out to dinner with a bunch of Microsoft kids who were gracious enough to hang out with us even though they were pretty much meeting us for the first time. A few microsoft kids were clowning on C about her prehistoric phone, talking about it looks like a phone from the Flinstones. I, of course had the decency at this point to leave mine in my purse and just join forces to have my girl C's back... whatever i'm not gonna get a fancy phone. sue us.

We then headed over to Seattle's First Friday (the black people kind)...did some yahoo yahoo moves to get in....and had the time of our lives: Which included C winning a salsa dance competition. LMAO. C... she who does not know the first basic move in any Salsa or ballroom/partner/latin related dance. This is a whole blog entry on its own...but you just had to be there, so I'll let the story go...

day 2.
Bumbershoot fest
First we saw this dope Taiko drum/dance/singing group that had me at the edge of my seat the whole performance: COBU. Then on to De la Soul but got turned off by the maybe thousand or more people... 90% whom were probably 18 or younger. Why did De la Soul come out asking "I want you to think of where you were when you first heard this song 3 feet high and rising." I'm looking around like ummm their parents hadn't even kpanshed at this point, shoot some of their parents hadn't even been BORN. So our whole plan to like be up front and wink wink at them, and probably get to kick it backstage and promote one3 was shot to sheeet, when we found ourselves backed up like crazy. We tried to squeeze through, but after a while it was like ...okay I feel old and irritated, so after two songs we headed out. When we finally got some air and kicked it in the outskirts it became fun, especially when I started wilin' out with the oldest and latest dance moves. 4 songs or so into my madness we really kicked rocks...bed time!

day 3
We flaked on going to see Rafael Saadiq, cos I had lazed around all-day (dvr is the devil especially when you're like me and you barely have a tv with antenna). So we just kicked it, visited and networked... see Sikulu and then had an 8-course dinner cooked by me and my sous chefs which included: Mac & Cheese, Yams, Fried Chicken, Pan-Fried Tofu, Rices & Blackeyepeas, Fruit Salad, Greens, Kale salad, Grime virgin cocktail & some store bought red velvet cake.

day 4.
The last day of Bumbershoot was probably the day that made it all worth the money. First off we already were like "okay we're not gonna be no punks, we will be at the front for any show we wanna see." Most of the folks that came through with us today wanted to see Blackeyed Peas but I was cool off them...I'm thinking okay De la Soul was that packed, I can't imagine how BEP would be... so I just wandered around with C and closer to the end of their set we made our way in. craziness. how can you be at a show and you're looking like "is that ant on stage fergie?" at the end of it, i stopped faking the funk and let loose and started dancing...then we headed out.

about 30-40mins before Janelle Monae came on, C and I were there looking at them setting up. She was cool. Very interesting performer. Tiny human being. Her guitarist is very fun too look at... we were hella mad though cos somehow we ended up on the side of the crowd that she didn't favor, not only did she always perform towards the OTHER side, she crowd surfed AND threw the live painting canvas she did on that side too. Not fair Monae not fair!

We then waited for Vieux Farka Toure (yeah the one with the famous father) which was cool, it was definitely an older hippier crowd...funny and fun to watch people dancing. Toure's music was a good way to end the day. Part way through his performance we headed to see Youth Speaks Seattle and Staceyann Chin...(I HAD TO). So glad we did, I love Staceyann, she makes me laugh and cry and burp and fart all in one move. Bought her book "The Other Side of Paradise" (loving it so far, will let you know how it goes), got it signed.

peaced out.

and we're back home to reality. to the daily grind of day jobs and more events and what not. Got vid clips and pics will try to get those up asaaaaap

uhuh,
N