I'm bbaaaaccccckkkkkkk! Miss me? The last half of my summer was such a whirl wind couple of months that I can't believe what I did and how I made it out alive. But alas here I am back at it and into fill swing!
So I guess the name of my blog is a little hypocritcal as I am now back at school. I'm still on waitlists and trying to figure out my crazy schedule so I'm not sure if I'm back full time or not but I'm for sure taking two classes and hopefully two more...so full time...and working 22 hours a week, and volunteering at skating competitions, my skating club, and the hospital....sooo in short I have no life. Oh well...bring that on its not like I'm not used to it! Besides if I don't keep busy what will I blog about?
My most current complaint? That Priceline are assholes. William Shatner should me ashamed of himself as he is full of himself...SHAT that is.
One of my best friends (who I love but we do not really have the same tastes) asked me a few weeks ago if I was interested in going to see some band that she thinks are "totally awesome" and that she was dying to go. In other words she needed my credit card to buy the tickets and to book a hotel. How someone could be 22 (we're not the same age) and not have ever had a credit card is beyond me. So I agreed thinking "this will be fun!"....the annoying part? I'm super cheap. This last minute 'go back to school' decision was not a cheap choice. So the idea of having to take a ferry (75 bucks one way for a car and two people), 40 bucks for a ticket, and 50ish bucks for a hotel for the night only for a couple hours was really daunting. My friend offered to pay hotel (mostly because I had no problem staying at the ferry in the car and it scares her) and I conceeded that I would go to the concert for the Gaslight Anthem (a band I had never heard of nor ever tried to listen to before).
So we bought the tickets and then when it came to booking a hotel we checked out priceline.com. Now I felt bad my friend was paying, so I didn't want to go super ritzy, and seeing as I was willing to sleep in the car I would basically sleep anywhere. So we punched in $95 into priceline and 2 stars, and figured "why not lets just try it?".
We picked a hotel that was cheap but looked clean, good reviews, claimed it had a double bed, free parking and wi-fi and breakfast included with the price. We figured that we would be out late because of the concert and that why spend a lot when we weren't really going to need it? This place was only two blocks away from the Commodore Ballroom (concert venue) So we figured why not?
Well we get to the mainland and get to the hotel and we are more than shocked to find what our 96.53 leaves little to be desired. No free parking, double bed about two inches bigger than a single, pubic hair in our sheets and that the bathroom was shared. Now granted, I went back and looked at priceline again about the shared bathroom thing and it does say it flat out. But having to park two blocks away and pay 24$ over night, after thinking that there was free parking? NOT GOOD. That brought the total cost to 120 which we could have spent on a better hotel and got free parking.
So that sucked. Granted, it was good for a laugh and it made my friend think twice about sleeping in the car at ferry terminal and now I have this wicked story to blog and whine about. But I'm still rather irked that this happened. We even told the clerk about priceline and they flat out said something along the lines of "yes we've been trying to get them to stop booking people in to our hotel because they are falsely advertising us" so there isn't a whole lot to be done.
So how was the concert? It was ok. Now don't get me wrong. I love myself a good concert. I like the noise, the lights the whole atmosphere of all these people coming together with at least one thing in common, they want to see the band. The Commodore Ballroom to date is one of my favorite venues. It's small (It has under 1000 people capacity), has 4 different wet bars to get drinks from, tons of little tables, a balcony at the back to over look if you don't want to be in the crowd, and an awesome stage. The whole place has tons of windows that all get closed when the band takes the stage, and a seriously cozy feeling to it. You don't feel like you're "watching a band play" you feel as if you are part of the show because its super easy to get within a couple metres of the stage and see the sweat on the bands face.
The main act last night happened to be Gaslight Anthem. They were ok. I had never heard of them till I got asked to go to the concert, and while I had great intentions of listening to some of their tunes before the show, life got in the way. So this whole review will be a little bias. I didn't know any of their music, didn't even recognize a single one of their own songs (they did a couple covers I liked), so this made it super hard to stay invested in the show. However, the music was pretty good. The band certinalyl looked like they loved being on stage. It didn't look like a job but more of a passion to them. Their encore lasted almost as long as their original set. It looked as if they just didn't want to leave. They did an amazing cover of "American Girl" and they looked like they just didn't want to stop singing. They ended up playing a full two hours, which these days is pretty unheard of. That having been said, I didn't love it. I mean, the crowd was great and the music was ok, but listening to something you don't know for 2 hours was too much for me. I was really tired to begin with but after two hours of 'head nodding' to beats I'd never heard really sucked the fun out of it for me.
So my bits of advice for the day? Be very careful when booking hotels online. Stick to chain brands that can be trusted and don't cheap out because you might end up with another persons pubic hair in your bed and that? NOT COOL. Second bit of advice? If you are going to go see a band, do your auditory research and save yourself some suffering and know who the band is before you go, that way the concert won't seem like the same song on repeat. Thirdly if you like The Gaslight Anthem (or you know have at least heard a couple of their songs) , then you should go check them out! The whole crowd seemed to be really loving the show and had a fantastic energy. They played a two hour gig and kept up a great pace the whole time!
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