moe. The band that brought me the love of my life!

     So, I have been trying to figure out where I want to take this blog, or maybe where the blog wants to take me.  My crazy life stories, don't happen on a daily basis, although I feel like they do most of the time.  But, what do I really want to write about?  What do I really love?  Well, that's easy, MUSIC!  But do I know enough about music to write about it?  Ok, so I'm not an expert in it, but what's to say I don't have an opinion about it that someone might want to hear?  And music is such a broad topic that there would be plenty of material out there to keep me and my readers interested.  The tricky thing is where to start?
    Well, I happen to be badly missing my boyfriend today.  He is away for the week, yes I know it's only Tuesday!  He is visiting friends in Vermont, and going the moe. shows in Burlington this week.  My initiation with moe. was at a New Year's Eve concert, which incidentally is where I met my boyfriend.  moe. for those of you not familiar with them, is an American jam band, formed in 1989.  The music as described by the guitar player is  "...an amalgamation of a wide variety of the history of rock, all regurgitated and recycled through the eyes, ears, hands, whatever of the guys in our band and all of that with a sense of adventure, a sense of humor, also a constant desire to push the envelope. All in this arena of taking chances, improvising live, and making things up on the spot."  
     As with any jam band, the magic happens during the live shows.  In fact, moe. was smart enough to include the audience in their album THE CONCH.  The first two weeks of recording for this album, took place in the State Theatre in Portland, ME.  Then two live shows at the same venue were also recorded, including mass crowd participation that made its way to this album.  But THE CONCH is not their only album, DITHER received a 4-star review from Rolling Stone Magazine in 2001, and WORMWOOD also received a 4-star review in Blender Magazine in 2003.  But ask any of their fans, "moe.rons." and they will all tell you that no matter how good the albums are, the live show is indescribably better.
    moe. live, well that is an experience you have to see, hear, and feel for your self in order to grasp is fully.  It definitely captures all your senses and has a way of settling deep inside of you.  The music will take you on a journey if you let it.  It will excite you, amaze you, and give you reason to dance.  The light show that goes with the music adds that extra punch to go with the sensory journey.   The crowd at a moe. show is all about good vibes.  Strangers talking to each other, sharing with each other, dancing with your neighbor even if you just met them, a community of strangers coming together to celebrate music.
     You can find out more about moe. and their music on http://www.moe.org/ .  Or if you maybe want to go see them this week at Highter Ground in Burlington, VT you can get tickets at https://higherground.frontgatetickets.com/ .

Weekend Explorations

      One of the new things that comes with self-employment is having my Saturdays off.  I have worked retail all of my working career up to this point, which means Saturdays have always been spent inside a store dealing with every variety of person you can possibly imagine.  For those of you that work retail, you know what I mean.  We get the pleasant thankful customer (very infrequently), the loud annoying customer, the can't ever please me customer, the I don't even know what I'm looking for customer, the I'm gonna let my kids run everywhere customer, the know it all customer, and the list could go on for days! Needless to say, I am not sorry to be away from that.
     Yesterday, with freedom on my mind, my boyfriend and I decided to go hiking.  So, I pack a picknick lunch and by 11am, we are headed up north with my little 5lb chihuahua, Chica, on my lap.  Where shall we go?? Yes yes, I know, hikers with any experience would have known exactly where they were going, would have been out of the house by 8am at the latest and have worn and brought proper hiking equipment.  But not us, no, we just wanted to get out in nature and enjoy our Saturday together.  So, off we went.
     Well, thanks to smart phones, we find a 5.5 mile hike up South Moat Mountain in Conway that sounds lovely.  It's described as a moderate hike 2.7 miles up, appropriate for families and dogs with 360 degree views at the top.  Perfect right? We get to the trail head at 1pm and realize that we didn't bring a backpack to carry the lunch in.  Well, now what?  Luckily I had an old backpack in my trunk that I used to use in college, not an ideal pack to carry up a mountain, but better than nothing.  Off we go, with Chica in tow.
     The trail starts off beautiful, nice wide path, uphill but not a horrible incline.  After about a mile, the incline changes dramatically!!  Chica bless her little legs, can't climb this, so up on my shoulder she goes, because I have not brought a backpack to put her in.  We are now climbing what looks more like a dried up river bed with loose rocks and boulders.  Now I'm sure we were not going straight up, but to my legs, it sure did feel like it.   I like to think that I'm in OK shape, but after twenty minutes of that, I was out of breath, light headed and had the shakes. Not off to a very good start for someone that is supposed to be in shape.  But, after a few minutes of rest to catch my breath, and a piece of fruit to get some sugar in me, off we go again.
     We finally get to a lovely plateau with a fabulous view.  This is the top I think, YES, I made it! Hallelujah!  Wrong, still more trial markers headed in the upward direction.  It can't be much farther, right??  Well, that's what my boyfriend kept telling me, and telling me, and telling me for another thirty minutes.  Now, Chica, after my bit of light headedness,
 has had to start climbing for herself and MAN was I amazed at how well she did!! We passed several hikers that were completely in awe that my little baby was climbing these big rocks.  She was a rock star. I on the other hand was half dead by the time we FINALLY made it to the top. But OMG what a view.  We had the entire top of the mountain to ourselves with views of Mt. Washington and all the surrounding mountains, a couple of lakes, the town of North Conway, and leaves that had just started to turn color.
     A picknick on the top of the mountain all by ourselves!!  The world belonged to us.  Such an amazing peace and so much beauty up there, I was so glad my boyfriend was able to drag me all the way to the top!
I may be sore today and possibly sore tomorrow as well, but what an adventure and I'm so proud of all three of us (Chica included) for tackling that mountain!

Printer Catastrophe!!

    So, I'm not just a musician, I also paint.  It's basically a hobby for me, but last Christmas I accidentally found a nitch that I'm kinda good at.  Small sized watercolor paintings that you can make cards out of.  I sold quite a few, much to my surprise last Christmas!  So, this year I thought, instead of making prints on my home computer, I would have them made at a professional printing company.  My plan was to save me a little time and headache from doing it myself.
     Well, I call up Infinite Imaging in York, ME to see if they can give me a quote, they don't have the right machine, so I'm transferred to the the Portsmouth, ME Infinite Imaging.  YES!, they have the right machine and the right paper, so I take in my art and wait for a quote.  A day later I get the email, ... $520!!!!  Jiminy Cricket!!!!   There better be gold inset into these prints for that price!  So off to the next printer I go, not the right paper, the next printer, not the right machine or paper.
     Finally I find one that has the machine and will use my paper, New England Printing in Portsmouth, NH.  They want me to pay to have one done, before they give me a quote for all of them, so I'm reluctant after the first quote, but I agree to it.  They take the one that they think will be the hardest to match, because of the pastel colors in it.  Two days later they have a print ready for me to proof.  I don't know if I have a more keen sense of color, if the guys at the printer are color blind, or what??!  But somehow my red's are pink and my pale pinks are HOT pink.  How does this happen?? and what makes them think that i'm gonna be ok with it??  I mean really, you have the original in front of you, can you not see the glaring differences?
     So, now I have paid them $40 for prints I can't use!  How is it that I can get a print from my home printer that is closer to the original than the printers can with this big huge color printer??  Fellow artists, I now know why prints are so stinking expensive!  So, with no time saved, with less money in my pocket, and definately with a headache, I have learned my lesson. I will continue to use my home printer for my prints. Want to purchase holiday cards from me? Visit my website pianobycheri.com or email me at cherichristenson@yahoo.com

Web page DRAMA ...

     So I have had the joy this week of starting my own web page, and for the people out there that are computer techies you might say "Oh, wicked easy!" but not so much for me!  I started by searching the net for sites that would help me with this process for free.  Now don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of this massively ginormous forest of information we call the world wide web, but really?? How many different sites do you need out there to help you build a web site? The numbers are mind boggling.  So, after burying myself in all that information, I finally just took a friends suggestion and used wix.com.   I set up my account, spent the entire day uploading pictures, changing font, writing bios and taglines, arranging, rearranging, previewing, rearranging again, what would be my web site.
     By midnight I was exhausted and pretty sure I was ready to publish my site, so I hit the publish button.  Then I get a little message that says your site can be found under cherichristenson.wix.com/pianobycheri.  WTF!  Who in their right mind is going to remember that address?? Nobody, that's who.  So I see down below it, it says to create your own domain name click here, so I do.  It takes me to a site where I can purchase my own domain.  Ok, not so bad, only $14 a year to own pianobycheri.com  I can totally handle that, I think to myself.  I purchase my domain and put it into the address bar, and ... nothing! Ok, so I go back to the wix editing page and find out why my site won't come up.  Well low and behold I have to link the page I just created to my new domain, so I click on that button, and where does it take me.  Yup!! for those of you that have gone through this you know.  To the upgrade page with all the pricing!  So now that I have spend all day creating this "free" web page, I now have to pay to link this web page to my newly purchased domain.
     Well, it was all too much to take in at 12:30 at night, so I went to bed, and I'm pretty sure my night was filled with web page nightmares!   Well, in the end I payed the least amount I possibly could, $50 a year, to have them link my domain to my web page.  And of course, because I think the computer just wants to laugh at me, I found on accident two days later a site that would have done everything I just did for free the first year. You can check out my new web page at  www.pianobycheri.com