ACL Day One

This post is going to be much shorter than usual, mainly because I have a slight fever (or so Sayali says, and I think she's right). Hence, I'm going to jump into bed right after this post, sleep for 8 or 9 hours straight, and try to sweat it out. My head always feels disoriented unless I'm sitting down, and it's probably my body trying to tell me that I need to slow down. I've had a busier than usual week though, and I think things will calm down after this coming week. I am pretty relieved that Hurricane Rita has degraded to a Category 3, so I no longer have to fear for my family members' lives and I can enjoy ACL (assuming I beat this fever) without much rain I hope. I almost lost my ticket actually, but by the grace of God I managed to find it on the floor of my CS 108 room (I know, I'm really lucky).

I didn't see many bands today, but just being there was so cool. I went with another NSCer and her mom, which may sound lame but it would be much lamer for me to get lost in South Austin. She was a pretty cool mom anyway, and she revealed the secret that parking at City Hall is totally free so we just walked a mile from there to Zilker. Zilker is such an amazing park being on Town Lake and so large. There's no equivalent to it in Houston, hence Houston being one of the fattest cities. There were thousands upon thousands of people there, and I believe there were 8 stages, though like 2 of them were kind of BS stages. There were like 4 or 5 that were really active. You could tell that it was planned really well though because the stages were set up well and the big bands had monitors so you could see them from the back. Also, if you were at one band you could mainly hear them because the stages were arranged as such that you would only hear what you came to hear. Also, the food court had a wide variety including Austin favorites like Amy's Ice Cream, Stubbs, Hudsons, Salt Lick, Thundercloud, and many more. Plus, the prices were $3-$6 for pretty decent meals. I got a sausage roll from Stubbs for only $3, so I'm glad that I'm not getting totally ripped off.

We got there later than we had planned, but as long as we got to see Keane I was happy. Keane wasn't as good as I thought they'd be as they sounded basically just like their album, but it was still pretty cool to see them in person and sing the chorus from "We Might As Well Be Strangers". I went to Blue October afterwards for the end of their set and they're actually harder than we had previously envisioned. They did play "Calling You" though, and that seemed to have more energy than anything Keane played so that was cool. Then my friend's mom wanted to see Lyle Lovett so we chilled there for a while before leaving. It doesn't seem like we did much, but we were there for like 3 hours probably, plus all the walking. What was really cool was that at night everything was even prettier because they had these big round lamps that were held in midair by helium and some string as well as various glowsticks among the audience and some of the stage sponsors were giving out free light things. Not only that, but from one stage there was the backdrop of downtown and it looked totally and utterly amazing, almost as good as sunset just a couple of hours before. The weather got real nice after sunset too. Despite being a little sick I had a great time overall and can't wait for round two tomorrow with Jet and freakin' Oasis among others. I'll likely try to give a Saturday report either that night or Sunday morning in lieu of having normal posts this weekend. This is my first festival after all and it's not like this happens all the time.

I'll still do the Friday's Feast meme:

Appetizer
Name something someone has done lately that impressed you.
Bethany actually completed a decent issue of the Catalyst! It's not that I didn't have faith in her, but rather that I'm not used to seeing the Catalyst (this is the monthly newsletter that NSC is supposed to put out for the College but didn't really do much of it last year).

Soup
Do you have any relaxing rituals? If so, what are they?
I think the most relaxing thing is kicking back and watching some television, or even better is laying on the couch and watching a movie. Other than that, not really.

Salad
If you could spend the winter season somewhere other than your current location, where would you choose to stay?
I'm not really sure. I kind of want to see snow, but can I really handle that kind of cold weather? Maybe I should just stick to Austin, though I spend half my winter in Houston anyway.

Main Course
When was the last time you had dinner out, and what was the name of the restaurant?
I think it was that time my car got towed, so Collina's. I try not to eat out too much. If you count the Stubbs booth at ACL having dinner out then I guess Stubbs!

Dessert
If you had a boat, what would you name it?
The S.S. Pinto, naturally!