Noting out of the gate: the entire Murkworks household is well. Dara, Paul, and I, along with George, are staying at home as much as we possibly can. We were doing so even before Governor Inslee issued the stay-at-home order for Washington state–and really, at least for Dara and Paul, being at home all day isn’t much different from pre-COVID-19 days. Dara’s “day job” is to be the landlady for our rental house, and Paul’s been working from home for months now, ever since his employer shut down their Seattle office.
Internets! This past August I promised you that if Faerie Blood cracked 300 sales, I would dye my hair. And now, since that milestone was reached, today I have made good on my promise!
This is the second time I’ve ever had my hair colored, ever, and getting it professionally done was a big change from the one time we did it back in Kentucky with a home coloring kit. That was a weird strawberry blonde color that ultimately didn’t look quite natural on me, but it looked like it should have been natural on somebody. I figure if I’m going to put weird colors on my head, screw it, go with colors you just aren’t going to find in nature. :D
Blue and green were my colors of choice, as those are my two favorite colors, and the stylist agreed that they’d work well with my coloring. I got the work done by Jade at Scream Salon in downtown Seattle–the same woman who does Dara’s vivid fire-engine red. Jade was very amused by the contrast between Dara having a “warm” color and me rocking the “cool” tones, though, you can make a real strong argument for the shades of blue and green we selected being very warm.
I chose to do a few different shades, with highlight-type blocks hiding underneath my actual hair color. This seemed easier on my hair, and also avoids the problem of my roots growing out and therefore losing the color. Plus, having bits of brilliant color lurking in my otherwise blonde hair seemed to fit me well personality-wise. So now, depending on which angle you look at me from, you’ll get different bits of color!
Jade used bleach on the bits of my hair that she colored, and used the second lowest amount necessary just because my hair’s pretty pale to begin with–and I’m starting to go gray in front anyway. Which meant that when the bleaching was done, parts of my hair were lighter than it’s been since I was a little kid! And it also means that the bits of my hair that’ve gone gray in front turned into some neat highlights against the added color. Jade said as well that this is the brightest she’s seen the colors. My hair apparently took to this really well.
This was huge fun, and it’ll be neat to see how the color changes and fades. I may decide to keep doing this, I dunno yet. Paul says that if I do I should totally rock this brilliant dark blue that’s lurking on the right side of my head.
So here’s some of the after shots! This one shows the colors being kind of subtle:
You’d think, looking at that, that I had hardly any color at all. But you’d be WRONG.
And this one’s my favorite. You can see bits of the blue AND the green:
EDITING TO ADD 1/3/2019: I had to move the pics off of Flickr, so now they’re on annathepiper.org. The links in this post have been changed accordingly.
Last round of errands and household chores today, before I head in for the surgery tomorrow. And one of the big things I did today was get a haircut–partly because my hair had gotten to that “okay, officially too long now” point that I periodically hit anyway, but mostly because if my hair is short, it’s way lower maintenance. And since I’m about to spend the rest of the month in recovery mode, low maintenance hair is a good thing indeed.
And this is the new haircut. Not bad for a phone selfie, if I do say so myself.
Short Hair Selfie
Meanwhile, I also got my thyroid prescription renewed a week early so I don’t have to worry about that later. I bought a few pairs of sweat pants as well as some pajamas since I was advised to wear loose things, and I did manage to find some pajamas that weren’t too stupid-looking.
AND, most importantly, I have acquired five of the six crappy movies for the forthcoming next round of the Murkworks Movie Suckoff! I had to swap in Alligator and Crocodile for the shark contenders, given that Scarecrow didn’t have Ghost Shark, Snow Shark, or Sand Sharks. And while they did have Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, it’s still a new enough movie that Scarecrow still has it on 2-day rental status, which ain’t gonna work. So we’ll be streaming that one. Still though I did rent five things from Scarecrow and that does my heart good.
Rest of the day will go to laundry and bathroom cleanup and synopsis writing. After midnight I’ll go on “can’t have any food or beverages” status, and Dejah will come get me in the morning so I can report for “be knocked out so they can do uncomfortable things to my innards” duty.
I may or may not be able to post from the hospital; we’ll see how coherent I am after the procedure is done. Evergreen has wifi so in theory once they settle me into a room for the evening I should be able to check in. But if not I’ll check in as soon as I’m able to come home. More bulletins as events warrant, all.
Dara put up afewposts of her own detailing her POV of our adventures in Harrison Hot Springs, including a loverly picspam of various things we looked at. Including a couple of shots off of her camera of me and the boys of De Temps Antan!
I particularly like this one, of my reaction when I got called out for being a double agent for Le Vent du Nord, since I was wearing their T-shirt:
Quebec Boys are Amused When I Explode from LOL
Go click over to Dara’s post to see the other one, of me and Éric Beaudry, current holder of the title of Anna’s Favorite Bouzouki Player from Quebec!
And now, to finish up my posts about going to Victoria at the beginning of April, here’s the recounting of what we did on Sunday of that weekend! The previous posts, for those of you who may have missed them, are:
Friday, in which Anna and Dara declare that 6:30am is not an actual time of day, in which a ferry is taken, in which the Royal BC Museum has HOLY SHIT MAMMOTH!, and in which Fernwood has a highly awesome open mic
Saturday morning and afternoon, in which much wandering of downtown Victoria is done, in which Anna’s new mammoth is photographed having adventures, in which books in French are bought, and in which Anna acquires SURPRISE GUITAR!
Saturday evening, in which Anna and Dara have a spectacular time seeing Le Vent du Nord, in which Anna’s mammoth meets a polar bear, and in which there is photographic evidence of fiddle players
On to the final leg of the Victoria adventure: Sunday!
Y’all remember my and Dara’s friends maellenkleth and siestabear, right? The fine ladies with whom Dara and I snagged us an encore from Le Vent du Nord last year? Well, they scored themselves some of the super-fancy deluxe backstage tickets to a Great Big Sea show on the current tour–AND! Because they love me and want me to be happy, they got me a shirt!
SIGNED BY THE B’YS THEMSELVES.
Alert persons may note that this is actually the exact shirt I just bought at the Seattle show this past March. But that’s QUITE OKAY. Because seriously, if you’re handed a shirt signed by the members of Great Big Sea, I am here to tell you that the LAST thing you want to do is wash it. Because it would make the signatures sad. And we can’t have that, now can we? So my belovedest of Daras informs me that there are in fact frames for T-shirts. I will be acquiring this t-shirt one. And in the meantime, please behold the T-shirt signature goodness!
Alan's Signature
Alan signed the shirt right smack dab in the middle of the design! It's a teeny signature but you can still make out his trademark smilie face with The Hair.
Sean's Signature
Sean's signature is to the left of the design and kinda barely distinguishable, even with the flash on my camera. This is what happens when you sign a dark grey shirt in black ink. NOT THAT I AM OBJECTING OR ANYTHING. :D
Bob's Signature
And here's Bob Hallett's signature over on the other side of the main logo.
This being the writeup + photos post for what Dara and I did in Victoria earlier this month, on Saturday the 5th! Aside from going to see Le Vent du Nord, that is, which of course I covered already. :D
The previous post of this set, for Friday the 5th, is here!
I already went on at considerable length about the general awesomeness of seeing Le Vent du Nord perform at Hermann’s Jazz Club. And of course, y’all also know about my newly christened mammoth!
But I’ve been reminded that I did not in fact give you a proper writeup of the weekend as a whole. And it’s worth talking about that, just because Dara and I never had been to Victoria before, and Victoria in general was absolutely worth the visit.
So behold, my recounting of my and Dara’s Victoria Adventure! This post’s going to focus on what we did on Friday the 5th, with as many pictures as look decent enough to share. I’ll do other posts for the non-Le-Vent portion of Saturday the 6th, and for Sunday the 7th!
It has not escaped my attention, O Internets, that I never did actually finish the series of posts about our Great Canadian Adventure this past summer–and of course the highlight of same, the Great Big Sea show at Torbay in Newfoundland. Given that it is now several months after the fact posting about that would be anticlimactic. Especially given that we did just have ourselves the pleasure of Great Big Sea right here in Seattle, and oh my yes, it was good to have them back again.
Maybe not quite as awesome as seeing them on their home turf, but pretty damned awesome nonetheless!
All the usual suspects were on hand for the show, and in my particular case, this meant meeting up for dinner beforehand with friends for Mexican food at Pacific Place. My friend Geri came down from Vancouver since our show was cheaper than theirs, and I was happy to offer her crash space–in no small part since she’ll be reciprocating for me next month when I come up for Le Vent du Nord! Had we had time, we might have enacted a Cunning Plan, since I’d been hearing amusing rumors of a 20th anniversary cake brought to the B’ys in Portland–but! Even without such, it was almost universally an excellent show. (The one exception was my poor friend Jenny whose dinner disagreed with her, but thankfully she made it through the entire concert!)
Arrival at the Moore as per usual put me right in smack dab sight of the merch table. Which I promptly raided for my latest GBS shirt–this one, in fact. And I started running into quite a few folks I know from the original OKP as well as its current Facebook group incarnation, since people were on the lookout for my hat! Much love and many hugs to Angela R. and Helen and Julie and Martha and Lynda, all of whom I said hi to at various points during the show.
And without further ado–and a ONE! And a TWO get up now! ONE, TWO, THREE, JUMP AROUND!
The full show writeup is on the way, but for those of you who haven’t already seen me post these pics to the social networks, behold! My first attempt at getting a full shot of pics of the B’ys on my phone!
These were taken from Stage Bob in the second row, so we were pretty darned close to the stage. I was able to only get a small number of good shots, though–most of the songs were too brightly lit from my vantage point to get clear shots, especially given my newbie skill level. I don’t have a very steady hand yet either.
But! I did get several kinda okay shots during “The Mermaid” and one or two on other songs as well. The sparkly thing hanging off of Séan’s mic stand is actually a mobile saying “GBS XX”, which someone gave to the band as a gift before the show! Plus, there are quite a few shots of the crowd immediately around and above me, during the intermission between sets!
