Halloween

This year I didn't actually celebrate Halloween on the 31st. By that point I had a cold and decided to just leave a bowl of candy on the porch with the "Take one or two" sign so I could lay around in bed. I had fully expected that I'd have one or two greedy teenagers empty the whole bowl into their sack, what I hadn't expected was that one of them would actually TAKE MY BOWL thirty minutes after I put it outside. If I hadn't felt awful, I would have driven around my neighborhood and hunted them down (once a teacher, always a teacher! lol). Instead, I put more candy in a styrofoam ice chest with a sign:

My candy chest

My actual Halloween celebration happened the Saturday before. My band had a show at the Sail Inn for No label AZ Radio. Being that Halloween is my favorite holiday, I had to get serious about my costume. I decided to be an evil nurse, so of course, I had to cover my costume in blood :)

 

The first layer. I added a lot more after I put it on. Cleaning the blood out of the shower was not so fun, however.

An evil nurse has to be able to give you a shot! Mwahahaha! I found some giant syringes and hot glued some straightened paper clips in them for "needles." Then I filled them with water and food coloring. I sealed the whole thing with more hot glue.

Bill wasn't able to come to our show that night but Angel got a pic of us.

Here's a video of us playing "Candle Wax" that night. I embedded this as a playlist, so if you've missed some of the other videos we've posted recently, they will play afterwards.

Angel and I in our evil nurse costumes.

Night Shots

Night time is my favorite time in the desert. It's the time when all the living creatures breathe a sigh of relief and come out of hiding. You can hear crickets, coyotes, owls, and sometimes bats. The night air feels fresh and calm. I love going out into the pitch dark and staring at the open expanse of stars and sky. The desert always feels welcoming at night.

Last week, the desert was calling me and I decided to go take some night pictures. In order to take good night pictures, you have to own a camera that is capable of gathering enough light. My old camera was a good camera, but didn't have enough exposure time and the quality of the lenses wasn't as high, so my night night pictures were often very grainy and dark. My new camera, while still not close to the quality of Bill's camera, takes much better night pictures. There's still a little bit of grain in the pictures because they are compressed when uploaded to blogger, but at least you can tell what you're looking at!

For the first set of pictures, I decided to drive out by Saguaro Lake.

Some boats on the lake,

The far shore of the lake with some more boats.

These hills separate the lights of the city from the lake. The Mesa/Phoenix/Scottsdale lights are so bright that they create some really cool night time silhouettes.

The same pictures with my car lights turned off.

  The tiny dot in the middle of this hill is a single saguaro. The white lines in the sky are planes.

For these shot's I drove over by Usery Mountain Regional Park. This is where the lights of the city begin to reappear. I always feel like the people who live in the house on the hill in the middle of this picture must have the most amazing views. Their house seems to be the highest in the area.

Some saguaros and an ocotillo silhouetted by city lights. There are a couple of plane trails in this picture

Usery Mountain is in the east, so it isn't silhouetted by city lights. The lights in the picture are from buildings at Usery Mountain Regional Park.

Usery Mountain during the day from a different angle. For some more pictures of Usery Mountain Regional Park, check out my blog about it from last year.

The next night I decided to take a picture of some of the palm trees in my backyard, and I discovered something amazing: we DO have stars at night in Phoenix! It takes a 15 second exposure to see them through the light pollution, dust, and smog, but they're there! ;)

Last night, Bill and I decided to take some city light shots. We initially wanted to go up on South Mountain, but we realized it the road up the mountain was closed at 7 p.m., so we decided to drive around and find another vantage point nearby.

All I can say about the spot we found is that it did not say "Area Closed to Bill and Lauren." ;)

There are two planes in this picture. The giant "swoosh" of lights in the middle of the picture are from a car driving by.

This picture was taken in the direction of Sky Harbor. I think the planes in the picture are either getting ready to land or just taking off because they're so low to the ground.

Downtown. Look at all that light pollution!

  Camelback Mountain.

No, that's not a shooting star. :) I think it was a helicopter. It had a very bright light that was shining in our direction for a few minutes. I achieved the star effect on all the lights by changing the f-stop settings on my camera.

PoorWater Update

So, It's been quite a while since I've written a PoorWater update (since April 16th)! A lot has happened since then. In May, we had our last two shows with the original members of PoorWater. Bill took some awesome pictures:

May 5th at 910 Live (Cinco de Mayo or Cinco de Drinko as it's known around Phoenix lol)

 Devin sporting the coolest combination of shirts ever.

 Rock in the awesome hat!!

 The wind was blowing up on the stage during our set, so I had a lot of fun getting the "rockstar hair" going.

What you can't tell in this picture is that James and I both had the crazy

 hat and glasses on earlier in the set lol. Mine were red. Of course!

May 19th at Crabby Don's:

 

 Nate singing some back-up.

 Gotta have a picture of the shoes!!

 I love the filter on this one. It's like Devin is playing guitar in the wild west! That's pretty awesome.

 This one is very ghostly...

In June, Nate and Rock announced their resignation from the band. We were very sad about this, but we understood that they both had different paths they wanted to take. This is something that happens frequently in bands. In order to create music together, the people in a band all have to be going in the same direction at the same time. Often times people start out going in the same direction, but circumstances in their lives change. We had a lot of fun playing music with them for the last two and half years. Rock was actually in a previous band with us before PoorWater, so I've been in a band with him for four years. Crazy! We will definitely miss them!

So. What happens next? We've spent the last couple of months figuring out. Devin, James, and I, decided to stay together as PoorWater. Initially, we spent a lot of time thinking about whether we would audition new members and continue to be a five-piece. After a lot of consideration and jamming as a three piece, we've come to the conclusion that we're going to move forward with just the three of us, and if we happen to meet someone a long the way who is the right fit for our band, we might become a four piece. 

How will we work as a three piece? Well, James plays the drums and that won't change. Devin and I are both huge fans of having a bassy, deep sound in our instruments, so the two of us have taken over the low range. I've actually turned the bass up on my cello and started using the lowest of my six strings, E, more often. I never really used it much before because it's so low that it interferes when we play with a bass player. Devin is now playing through both a guitar amp and a bass cab. It sounds pretty cool in my opinion. We are also both still playing in our high ranges too. Devin sang before on some of our songs and will be doing most of the singing now. I've also started singing back up. My voice has finally come back after a year off of teaching music. I'm really happy about that!  

It's definitely been fun to experiment around with creating a new sound. We've written three new songs already. The soul of PoorWater is definitely still there, but we've started to bring in some darker, heavier elements as well. Playing with three members has allowed us a lot of flexibility in our sound and dynamic range. I can't to wait to have some of the new songs recorded so we can post them up! In the meantime, you can hear some of our new music at our upcoming shows:

This show is happening on Thursday. Rock has been able to join us for this show and we have found a bass player to fill in, so we will be playing several favorites from Harvesting Habits. This is a farewell show to Rock. We can't think of a better way to celebrate than to play an awesome show with some of our favorite local prog bands and an awesome group touring from Canada! We will also be debuting two of our new songs as a three piece. This should be an exciting show!

This will be our first show as the new formation of PoorWater. We're playing some new songs and some new covers. It will be awesome!

Summer Vacation 2012: Day 9

Last but not least: Day 9! This was the last day of our road trip, and our first day back in the heat. We woke up in Price, Utah (M on the map) and rolled out in our packed car. By day nine of a road trip, all of the wonderful, precise packing we did in order to fit our camping gear, food, clothes, and two people into a tiny Honda Fit went out the window. I gave up trying to dig out the proper bags to put things away and keeping all of the empty drink bottles in the front of the car until I could dispose of them at a gas station. I was sitting in the passenger seat, and I wanted my feet free! All the bags, atlases, brochures, receipts, shoes, and jackets were beginning to make me claustrophobic. The car was also beginning to develop that road trip "funk." If it was in my way, I threw it into the abyss of the backseat and I wouldn't see it again until we were back home in Mesa (P). The teacher in me gave way to the artist! 

Canyonlands was the perfect place to visit for the artistic mood. Every trip I go on, there is always a place left "unfinished." A place that I have a deep yearning to go back and explore. Last year, that place was Zion. This year, it was Canyonlands. Canyonlands is a really interesting park. It's very close to Arches, which is extremely crowded, yet there is almost no one there. It is 527 square miles in size (a little over half the size of the Grand Canyon and five times the size of Arches National Park) and feels empty. The park is divided into three sections, only one of which is accessible without any four wheel driving. This is the other reason I find it so intriguing. I feel like driving into one of the unpaved sections of the park would be like exploring a virtually unseen land. 

Click on the pictures to see at full size. 

We visited the Island in the Sky district, which is the only area with all paved roads. This area offered great views of the canyons.

I love this view. It's fascinating to see the various layers of the mesas and canyon.

This gives you a good idea of the size of the canyons. The haze is dust in the air, making it hard to see details at a distance.

A close up of some of the awesome rock formations in the canyon.

In this picture you can see some of the dirt roads down in the canyon. I totally want to go explore down there!

The clouds casting shadows.

The red sand makes this area look like Canyon de Chelly or Sedona.

Bill taking in the view.

Bill also took a shot of me taking in the view.

After spending the morning at Canyonlands, we started on the long drive home. We made it back to Mesa at about 2 in the morning. It was a long day!