You gotta hear this one song, it'll change your life I swear

You might recognize the title as a quote from Garden State referring to The Shins. Their new CD Wincing the Night Away has been out for a week and a day now and its excellent. I don't want to steal Leslie's shins review thunder, so this is by no means a review, just commentary.

First I'd like to say that I love the cover design. I have no idea what it is, but it fascinates me. Kinda Dr. Seuss meets blood platelets meets space meets little shop of horrors.

I definitely don't have a favorite song yet since they are all good, but two of the ones that stood out to me were "girl sailor" and "sea legs". Girl sailor more because I like the lyrics and sea legs because i like the tune. I started to wonder if these stood out to me because I was obsessed with water and boats and all that good stuff, but they did have two songs on one 11 song CD about that stuff so maybe it was them that was obsessed.

If any of you know me you know that in reality I am obsessed with it, so I wont try and deny it. But I think it might also be equal parts them. They have another song on the CD called "black wave" and then multiple other songs including "Australia" talks about the ocean. I began to think more about this so I listened to their second CD which Leslie gave me and it also had many songs that mentioned these same topics. So I've come to the conclusion that the shins and I have one very important thing in common, our love for all things water related. (notice how i didn't say water sports b/c that would have been gross)

great, now I have sea legs stuck in my head.

My Very own Dr. [not so] McDreamy

Sat night I was on my apt floor elevator lobby with Leslie waiting to go down when we ran into my neighbor. He was wearing a emergency medicine t shirt and was one of those overly friendly people. He tried to get an invite to play twister with us that night, but when it was clear we weren't going to offer one he asked for my apt number and said he'd stop by to play some other time. What could I do? just say I don't remember where I live? He suggested we set up a twister league in DC, but he wouldn't quit his day job to work on twister...trying to get us to ask what he did, but we didn't ask. Before parting ways he told us that if we got hurt he had some morphine in his apartment that we could have. umm...thanks?

This story goes back a little farther than that. We met earlier this year when he moved a few doors down from me. He is always very chatty and quite the gentleman offering to hold doors for me, helps me take out the trash etc. I always ran into him at the pool too. Now the weird thing about all these run ins is that he was without fail always either wearing his med school shirt, some other medical related shirt, or his scrubs. Ok I get the hint, you are a doctor.

Well to make it even better I saw him in the garage about a week ago. I know I shouldn't be the one to make fun of vanity plates, but I'm gonna anyway. his plates read "dr dan".

I don't think I've ever met anyone so proud of their own profession.

as a side note, mike and will are good twister players, and I still think there has to be some amazing story behind why ted refused to play.

lets get stupid, cuse stupid is free

iThis weekend was totally random and a lot of fun, I think i will have to break up the blogs though so it doesn't get too long, so look for the rest in following days (unless you get antsy then you can just see my photo website b/c i posted new pics). I'll start off with Friday night. (as most of you know I have a concert blog as well, but you've probably noticed I've started only blogging there about the important shows)

Leslie and I met up at "mexico Lauriol Plaza taco" with Tristan, mike, will, ted, and Joe. collectively we had some margs, some gin destroyers, some rum and coke, and some beer....oh i think there might have been food too.

Then Leslie Joe Will and I walked to the black cat to see some of Lets French, and all of These United States, and Washington Social Club. I've been wanting to see Lets French (who seemed really good from the 2 songs we saw) and These United States, and I love seeing WSC since Leslie introduced them to me when we started off being friends (yes, our friendship was built on music, but really, what good friendship isn't?)

These United States were nowhere as good as they are recorded. In fact they were almost comedic. At least Leslie and I found humor in their outfits...one of which included rain boots...read Leslie's blog to find out about that. (that being said I'll prob see them again)

WSC was awesome. One of the best times I've seen them. Totally got the crowd going, even at one point started a mosh pit! We only had one person in front of us so we had a pretty good view. I cant wait for their second cd.

Worth noting is this guy that was next to us. He tried to get Leslie to dance with him, briefly tried to get me to dance too but i hid behind Joe, so he fixed his target on Leslie. After we both refused to dance he got himself front and center and was the most ridiculous dancer EVER. Marty Royal even saw this and started laughing and then he started mimicking his hand motions. I haven't laughed that hard at a show ever. The kid just threw his body around and his arms up into the air, its almost indescribable except to say that he resembled Jack Black.

I am Rachel # 1 and proud of it!

I guess sometimes you have evenings where you don't immediately remember things, and over time it comes back to you. Evidently last weekend was like that.

Last night Will and I were chatting about random things like midnight forest (quite scary) and deep dish vs thin crust pizza when he reminded me of the drunken phone call I had with him on the way back from Camelot (yeah, already blogged about that). But that reminded me of one amusing thing. Outside Camelot they list all the girls dancing that night. One of the girls listed was "Rachelle 1" ...I know its spelled differently but its practically me.

You see in any group of friends names are bound to overlap, and lucky me we know a couple other Rachel's. Pretty soon after meeting the others my immediate friends made it clear that I was their favorite dubbing me "Rachel #1"...I think Leslie is the one that came up with that. One of our friends would trick them into going places on the pretense that "Rachel" was going to be there, and they soon learned to ask for specification if it was "Rachel#1".

A couple months into this we were at a party and one of our friends started flirting with another Rachel, so Leslie and I approached him, looking out for his best interest and said "we wont stop you, but just to warn you that's "Rachel #3" and we don't even know who #2 is, we just know she doesn't deserve that spot". He still hasn't forgiven us for putting on the mental cock block.

So thanks to my friends that made me Rachel #1. And weird that Camelot also has one!

Friendship is born at that moment when-

-one person says to another: "What! You, too? Thought I was the only one."-C.S. Lewis

Gmail's new chat feature is both awesome and terrible. At any given point I have anywhere between 15-20 "friends" that are active on gmail chat (not to mention my non gmail friends that email me). As with anything Gchaters fall into two groups, the good and the bad.

Good Gchaters are those people that im you when they actually have something to say. Whether it be a funny anicdote, or just a point that needs to be addressed asap. For example Jim will IM me to arrange meeting up for lunch, or Leslie will IM me to chat about our group email chains.

Bad Gchaters come in many forms. First is the type that IMs you just for the hell of it, they have nothing to say and are bored at work and dont realize that I'm at work too. The conversation will go back and forth for a while with one word answers till they realize this conversation is pointless, and I stop responding. Another type is the one that will leave mid convo and doesnt say so much as brb or hold on, and they never get back to you. Chris Shields is big on this, he'll start a conversation and then just leave! But i've learned to deal, he's been doing this as long as I know him(with aim too), and Jennilee and I got on his case once about it, so he knows he does it.

Gchat also allows for thier form of "away messages" I try and make mine either amusing or stating where I am at that moment, but I change it frequently. Katie Tilley is good at changing hers with amusing links daily. Some people never change thiers for example like when Diana left that she was on the west coast for like 2 weeks after she got back. Change your away messages people!

Lastly Green, Red, Orange dots...Clearly you cant help the orange dot which is good...but dont abuse the Red dot. Some people just leave it red all the time to pretend to be busy, but this ruins it for everyone. When I put mine on Red its because I am truly busy, but since you people have abused this I still get imed....although I must admit I too im people with the red dot.

For now that is all I have to say about gmail's gchat.

ipod's random shuffle...part two if you include leslie's blog

Happy Birthday Andreea on this lovely 1...2....SEVEN? ( not so inside joke from at least a decade ago, sure makes me sound old doesn't it?)

Recently Leslie decided she didn't buy the ipod's "random" in "random shuffle". I tried to explain to her about random number generators, but then I felt like a big nerd. I have to admit the ipod's function is a bit less "random" than others, this morning's ride in was a good example. I think my ipod knew it was two-fer-tuesday and played me two sublime, two harvey danger, and two phish all in a row! I guess technically that's random in some way, but definitely kinda strange.

My thoughts about the ipod's random number generator is that it takes out the most common ones first because generally what plays on my shuffle are the lesser known songs...like for Harvey danger it didn't play flagpole sita, but instead private helicopter and wooly muffler (yeah, i realize I'm probably the only one in existence that still remembers Harvey danger's lesser known songs, but hey I even went to their concert back in the day)....so yeah those are my thoughts on the ipod.

Bad attempts and strip clubs

And the winner for worst pickup attempt was.....

I was thinking about making this a weekly Monday feature in my blog, but most bad attempts are the same so I'll only post when they amuse me a lot.

Friday night I was at Lucky Bar and at one point I was sitting in a booth on one side by myself and katie was across from me while paul and laura and jessica were dancing (thanks for not saving me that time paul :( ) This guy comes and stands next to the table for a bit pretending to be on the phone. He sits down while on the fake call and hangs up. looks at me and goes for his wallet...instead of immediately going for his wallet he grabs my ass, I scoot over a little and he redirects his hand for his wallet. Pulls out a credit card and hands it to katie indicating she should order us all a round on him (he still has yet to say a word). Jessica returns at this point, figures out whats going on, hands the card back and tells him he shouldn't give his credit card to strangers. At this point he looks back to me and says (remember this is the first time he's spoken) "there is nothing more that I want then to make out with you right now"...Then he leans in for the kiss! Clearly i back away as much as you can do while cornered in a booth. He tries to lean in a few more times while awkwardly sitting next to me still neither of us talking to the other (i'm looking around for people to save me and trying to ignore him) he goes to run his fingers through my hair and pull my head in for one more attempt to kiss me...again i resist. He speaks again..."i'm persistent, i'm not going anywhere". "fine" i say, and continue to look away and ignore him. after about five awkward minutes of silence FINALLY HE GOES AWAY.

Also the most amusing part of the weekend was when we were at Camelot for chris' bday and ashley and I got up to give one girl $$ and a good portion of the guys started cheering for us instead of the totally naked girl. I dont think the girl minded though b/c after her performance she came over to me and ashley and told us we were very sweet.