"she wants to dance like Uma Thurman..."

Fall Out Boy concert last night. USANA Amphitheater. 20,000+ people in attendance. Outside in the cool summer air.

Amazing.

Seriously, this was an amazing performance. Wiz Khalifa and Fall Out Boy were coheadlining, but Sarah and I arrived right in between their performances (as intended). We had a lovely drive there, taking the scenic (and faster, and less traffic-occupied) route on Mountain View Corridor. Perfect name, by the way. We ate Five Guys (Sarah's first time, and she loved it, though we didn't have anything to drink, so we had to go easy on the Cajun fries) and listened to Funeral For A Friend's Tales Don't Tell Themselves (great album) while we drove. The sun was setting and turning the mountains pink and the full moon followed us through the hills.

Fall Out Boy killed it. They always do, of course, but I never fail to be impressed by their delivery. Patrick's voice is the best it's ever been and one of the best in the genre. Andy and Pete and Joe were all in their element blasting away. And the fire and cannons and lights and videos (they played an American Beauty/American Psycho–inspired clip backed by a reading of Alan Watts's "The State of Nothing" lecture, which is now on my to-read list) were exciting and the sheer numbers in attendance were daunting.

I really enjoyed their setlist this time around. Here's the setlist they played (it's not the one for SLC, but it's accurate as far as I remember). Of course I would have loved "Grand Theft Autumn/Where Is Your Boy" or "Reinventing the Wheel To Run Myself Over With," but I can't say I'm surprised at any of their choices, and every song was impeccably played, energetic, singalong, and super fun. In particular, the acoustic performances of "Immortals" and "Young Volcanoes" were amazing and "Uma Thurman" was incredibly catchy. Hard to pick favorites because every song was fun.

More than anything I loved how much Sarah enjoyed herself. She's not a huge fan of the band and it was her first real rock concert, and she just had the time of her life. She was really fun to watch and I'm glad we both had such a good experience. (It was great that my sisters & their friends were there too, of course.)

I just realized that it's been nearly 10 full years since my first Fall Out Boy concert: November 8, 2005, on the Nintendo Fusion Tour with The Starting Line and Motion City Soundtrack. What a concert. And then of course I saw FOB with Paramore about a year and a half ago. Great performances all around. I don't know if I'll for sure catch them the next time they're in town—it might depend on who's accompanying them/if they've released a new album in the interim—but I know it wouldn't be a mistake to grab tickets the second they're available.

That's all for now, I think. We're going camping after work today with the extended family. Looking forward to 24 hours of card games, smoky food, fishing, good atmosphere and company, and probably reading Gardens of the Moon on the lakeshore for an hour or two.

music

So turns out Sarah and I are going to a Fall Out Boy show tomorrow. Kind of a last-minute decision. We're really excited. They put on a great show. Sarah's never really been a fan, but she likes their newer stuff, and I think she'll enjoy the performance.

Also, I'm halfway through my first listen of The '59 Sound by The Gaslight Anthem. Can't believe I slept on this for so long. It's like The Killers meets Go Radio meets Bruce Springsteen. Amazing stuff.

mid-week update

Well, the Sunday School lesson was a success, as were the cookies Sarah made for it. And now we're halfway through the last week of July. I can't believe how quickly time is passing. (As usual.) I've been married for 39 days. I've been 25 for a full month. I've been at my job for 10.5 months. I've been out of college for a full year, home from Mexico for 4, and out of high school for 7.

That's just crazy talk.

I've been working at accomplishing goals lately. That sounds redundant (or something like it); I'm always working at my goals. But lately I've been trying to do more of them each day. I'll often have a lengthy to-do list that includes everything under the Sun I'd like to accomplish, and then at the end of the day I've only done about 15% of my goals and I feel a bit disheartened. So I've been working on setting more manageable goals and on simply doing more each day, and it's been going really well.

For example, I have a goal to write every day. I also have specific goals regarding different writing projects in the works. Usually I only have/make the time for one project per day—I can either write more of the short story I'm working on, work on polishing my first novel, or continue with the outline for its sequel. Well, lately I've been trying to do all three of those things every day. It's a bit of a sacrifice, but honestly not much; I'm sacrificing loafing-around time, if anything.

And yesterday I wrote 500 words in the short story, ~750 in the outline, and read half a chapter of my novel. Not bad at all.

Anyway, I've been seeing improvement there. I'm still pushing to hit ~80% of my weekly goals on a regular basis. That's the number that I think is significant: It shows that I'm setting good goals and working hard to achieve them.

I might actually get there this week. And then it'll be August, and I can set some new monthly goals and get excited about them and all this hard work will propel me straight into fame and fortune.

Well, not really. Good thing that's not one of my goals. At least not until September.

Apple customer service is nice

Re: my last entry, I got the issue with manually managing my music using Apple Music figured out. Chatted with an Apple Care rep for about 15 minutes. He became as frustrated as I was, but eventually we figured out how to sync & upload my music, and I'm now enjoying Jumberlack and hundreds of other albums I love. Good stuff.

I've been really enjoying a few different podcasts lately. I'm going to add a podcast section below, but I thought that in the coming days it'd also be nice to feature some of the ones I enjoy, spread the word a little.

lemon cheese cupcakes and an update

On Saturday Sarah and I made a French-inspired dinner for our date night. It's been detailed better on Facebook, but I'd like to add here that the lemon cheese cupcakes we made for dessert have made an excellent accompaniment to my cup of chamomile and honey tea for breakfast. It's a rainy Monday morning and I'm pretty worn out from not getting a lot of sleep last night, but breakfast is helping.

Anyone else using Apple Music? I signed up for the three-month trial, and so far I'm loving it. I'm still not sure whether I'll pay the $9.99/month fee when my trial expires—I expect I shan't know until the time comes—but it's really been great so far. I love having access to so much music by artists I like, and the discovery tools have so far been spot on. It's really great for going to the gym, too: I just select a curated pop-punk playlist and off I go.

The one issue I've had so far is trying to manually manage my music. Apparently you just can't anymore. I have music on my laptop that isn't synced with the iCloud because it's not available on iTunes. I used to be able to just drag-and-drop the music into my phone. Not so now. It refuses to let me do so. Very frustrating. Dre and I looked at it for a bit yesterday to no avail. Ah well; perhaps there's some simple fix I'm overlooking. It's a shame, though, because I'd really like to be able to listen to Olivia Broadfield's new album, Jumberlack. It's fantastic.

a preview of classes to come

Today was our first chance to meet some of the kids we'll be teaching in Sunday School. Sarah and I have been called as youth teachers in our new ward here in Provo. We just sat in on the lesson today; next week will be our first chance to teach. Well, my first chance to teach; Sarah will be working, as happens now and then on Sundays. So those kids better prepare for an hour of linguistics and convoluted puns. I'm sure they're excited.

resurrection

Okay, it's time to give blogging a serious go. But why?

Over the last couple months I've found myself driven to solidify my social media accounts. By that I mean that I started trying to really use them for something instead of just having them lying around. I had a Pinterest account that was practically defunct, a Twitter feed I hadn't checked in ages, and a Vine login & password when I didn't even have the app on my phone anymore.

So I decided to go through all those apps & accounts and figure out if I could use them in some objective way. Pinterest became a repository for quotes, jokes, memes, Welsh stuff, language-learning articles, and wedding plans. I scoured Twitter of accounts I no longer wanted to follow, followed a bunch of new ones, and started checking it a little more frequently. I'm still in the process of figuring out Vine, but I at least took the step of connecting with family members there, so I've had some laughs.

I recognize that this might all sound very silly. Who cares this much about social media and apps and organization? I'll grant that it's not very important. There are many other things in life that take far greater precedence: family, friends, education, employment, health & fitness, recreation, religion, etc. Those all warrant much more attention than electronic diversions, and I've set goals accordingly in each category, working hard to improve.

But I nevertheless still do a lot online: I spend 8+ hours per weekday on a computer at work, I have my phone with me constantly, many of my interests involve technology and being connected with current events & other people, and I have the type of personality that loves to acquire new information, catalogue it, and store it for later reference. Combine all of that, and my recent 'project' makes a little more sense. I think all of these accounts and apps can have a purpose, can fulfill a need, and refining something will make it more useful, there's no reason not to go for it.

Anyway. All of that is to say that there's still a bit of a void left to be filled, and I think a blog can do the trick. I initially created a blog partly because it was the hip thing to do (psh) and partly because I wanted something akin to a more-public journal, a place where I could say to friends and family, hey, this is what I've been up to lately and these are my thoughts. Other platforms, like Facebook and Tumblr, could possibly take up the slack, but not in exactly the way I'd like them to. Hence: blog.

I'm going to make more of an effort to update, and at some point in the near future I'll link to the blog on Facebook and other outlets. I'm not trying to demand attention or anything, but I think this could be fun and useful. We'll see, I guess.

hwyl