We surprised Karli and my niece Emma with a limo ride and tickets to go see Taylor Swift at Ford Field in Detroit, MI. It was the perfect night out with the girls :-)
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music & concerts
The first thing I had to do when we got our home gym was create a new playlist of music for working out. On a typical day I will get on the treadmill and walk for about 10 – 15 minutes to warm up my muscles so my playlist begins with a few slower songs that I am just loving right now. Then I move on to working out on our trainer (Inspire FT1) doing my core and arms one day and then the next day would be core and legs for about 40 minutes to an hour. I have begun to work in short bursts of running on the treadmill or a couple of intense minutes on the elliptical in between weight training. I’ve read this type of working out, some what like circuit training, is a real effective way to lose fat. We will see I guess!
Here are my favorite songs to workout to right now:
Here is the running playlist that I posted last summer if you are interested.
I’m a little obsessed with finding the right music to run too. This list has been tweaked quite a few times. The first 11 songs were the songs I had set for the day of my first 5K race. It is somewhere right around 45 minutes long. The rest of the list are the songs on my “Running” playlist for training days. Or chatting…walking…and listening to music days. I know there are a lot of repetitive artists and most of the music is pretty much the same genre, but it’s what I like and it keeps me motivated.
Hope you are all keeping cool this weekend. It was a toasty 105 degrees earlier when I was at my son’s baseball game. His team came back to our house to cool off in the pool. After 50 hotdogs, 5 2-liters, 2 bags of Doritos, and 2 watermelons later, they all headed off to a second game. I stayed home in the air with the rest of my kiddos. I have to say right now my toes are actually frozen!
After much deliberation we decided to get rid of my Yukon and go back to a minivan. 5 years ago I was begging for anything other than a minivan after owning a Town and Country and a Voyager. That was right at the time that crossover vehicles came out and we bought a GMC Acadia which I owned for 2.5 years and put only 20,000 miles on. I traded that in for the Yukon back in December of 2009 – remember the crazy day we went for an oil change and came home with two new cars? That was insane and I still can’t believe we did it. Ken still has the Camaro and we do enjoy driving it when the weather is nice. (Right now it’s under a cover in the garage.) I loved my Yukon dearly, but the trunk space was atrocious and the payment was double what I really should be paying for a car considering I drive on average 6,000 miles a year. I had my Yukon for 27 months and only put 14,000 miles on it. CRAZY!! (A luxury of working at home!) So we went back to a minivan and I have no complaints. I am sort of past that stage of caring what car I drive and just want something comfortable that my kids can all fit in, I can toss lawn chairs into the back for the kids sports, and I don’t have to worry about the groceries falling out the back when I open the tailgate. I’m really loving the hard drive on the radio. How awesome to be able to upload all my favorite songs and play them with the touch of a button. No cords to plug in my iPhone or iPod, it’s great.
My most played songs right now are:
In for the Kill – Skrillex remixSkrillrex is amazing!
Wild Ones – Flo Rida with SiaUpbeat fun song!
Every Teardrop is a Waterfall – Coldplay Love Coldplay, best concert I’ve ever been to. OMG, that was in 2008. Wow, time flies.
Cosmic Love – Florence and the Machine – I’ve loved this song every since it was played in the commercial for the movie Water for Elephants.
Too funny, these songs really show how my taste in music is all over the place. They are all so different from one another.
As soon as I heard that New Kids on the Block were going on tour with the Backstreet Boys I knew I was going to the concert no matter what. Thankfully they came to the Palace of Auburn Hills in Michigan which is within a decent enough driving distance last month. I had previously seen Backstreet Boys in concert in 2000. As for New Kids on the Block, well let’s just say I was one of the crazy teenagers back in the late 80’s – early 90’s that bought all their cassette tapes (remember cassettes?) and posters. I even had a VCR tape of one of their concerts that I am sure I watched a few dozen times. I was obsessed with Jordan Knight.
I was pretty pleased with the seats that we bought 6 months in advance. We were on the floor off to the right side of the stage. I was so excited about seeing them in concert, even more than I was for 30 Seconds to Mars who we seen earlier this year.
I took a gazillion photos from the concert along with many video clips from my camera and Ken also took some video with my Flip. At one point this security guard came out there and warned Ken about using a “webcam” and that he was going to take it away if he seen him using it again. It was ridiculous considering 70% of the people in the place where holding up their cameras and cell phones recording the concert.
Comments about the concert, while I share some photos….
– Jordan Sparks, the winner of American Idol Season 6, was the opening act. Some other girl was there before Jordan, but I don’t even remember her name and we didn’t even watch her because we got caught in traffic on the way there and I was standing in line to get a t-shirt before Jordan came out. I didn’t get any real good pictures of Jordan unfortunately. She looked and sounded amazing though!!
-The first song they played was a mashup of both the groups songs performed to the music of Viva la Vida by Coldplay…pretty cool! (p.s. Coldplay is still by far the best concert I have ever been too!)
– Other than that opening song and the encore, the groups took turns performing their own songs. I wondered about that before the concert…if they were going to sing one another’s songs or what???
– Thank goodness for aisle seats because the two people sitting next to us were disgusting. Like stinky, greasy, possibly stoned out of their minds low life’s, easily in pushing 50 years old. We were able to stand quite a distance from them and breathe freely. I don’t even know why they were there, they didn’t even act like they knew the music.
– Right as NKOTBSB came out my cell phone kept ringing with a call from home. I had no idea who it was because I couldn’t hear a thing. Andrew was watching the kids for us and I just kept screaming, “I can’t hear you, if something is wrong call 911 or grandma and grandpa!” After a couple of calls I texted Andrew and got no response. Finally I told Ken and he walked out to the lobby to call home and find out what was going on. Sure enough Andrew had no idea that Chase was up in our bedroom calling my cell phone. He even left me a couple of voice mails which were whispers of something like, “Hi mom, it’s me Chase. Are you at the concert?” Ugh!
– I totally favored NKOTB for some reason when it came to taking pictures. I am sure Jordan had something to do with that. However I can’t really say that they were any better than the BSB. They both were really good and sounded great. NKOTB are probably better dancers/performers though.
– Donny Wahberg totally wishes he had his brothers abs. Sorry Donny, you will never be quite as hot as Mark Wahlberg. Did you all know that Mark Wahlberg was actually in New Kids on the Block when the group was first formed, but he left and Joey McIntyre took his place. I can’t imagine NKOTB without Joey’s voice. Crazy huh!?
– It would have been a great place for single guys to pick up (mostly drunk) chicks because there were many many girls there and many were totally wasted. I would guess there were probably only 100-200 guys there total and my husband was one of them :)
– At one point they pulled some girls up on stage and gave them roses. Later on many of the guys went into the crowd and let girls paw all over them. Of course this didn’t include Jordan Knight or Joey McIntyre.
It was a great show and I am so glad we went! There is such a difference between a concert like 30 Seconds to Mars and NKOTBSB. These guys put on a performance, with so much to watch and entertain you while you are listening to the music. Where as Jared Leto runs around a bit and lets the crowd sing half of his songs. Not that I didn’t like it…just so much more entertaining to watch a “boy band”.
For the setlist from the concert along with someone else’s photos from a different show, check out this website.
And last, here is a newspaper article about the concert we attended, I thought it was a great review.
I absolutely love Skylar Grey and I couldn’t wait for her to start releasing songs from her new album. This song is sort of strange, but I still like it!!
What is your interpretation of the song??
A couple of weeks ago Ken and I went to see 30 Seconds to Mars in concert at The Fillmore in Detroit.
It was our first time seeing them in concert and probably our last. Don’t get me wrong, the concert was great…it’s just not our typical concert atmosphere. Most recently we have seen Lady Gaga and Coldplay in concert and those were awesome “performances”. 30 Seconds to Mars is definitely more of a rock band and their concerts are exactly that—a band rocking out while the crowd goes wild. There was tons of body surfing, jumping up and down, mosh pits, and just all around craziness! There were no special set changes or routines, it was just the band playing and Jared Leto singing about 70% of the time. He does a lot of letting the crowd sing for him, which is kind of a waste. I paid to hear him sing! He did talk to the crowd a lot as well, which was entertaining at least. All I can say is thank goodness we got balcony seats because I could not have handled the floor in front of the stage. There were no assigned seats and we got there early enough that we were in second row in the balcony. Perfect for us!
Here you can see how far we were from the stage and how many people were smashed together on the floor. The Fillmore isn’t really big, as you can tell.
It was sports night so all of the band had different Detroit sports teams jerseys on. Jared had this darn hat on most of the time which drove me crazy…I wanted to see his face!
I found this picture that someone took and posted on a 30 Seconds to Mars Facebook page. (I would link the photographer but there was no link- it just said “by Kristen”) What an incredible photo! Turns out there are several great pictures from the Detroit concert on Facebook…check them out here to see the whole set.
I took a few videos to share with Andrew and those turned out pretty good, however I’m not going to bother uploading because I found this webpage that has tons of great photos, the playlist, and videos of many of their songs. Check it out here.
My favorite songs – From Yesterday and Hurricane- he sang acoustic which was cool, but not what I expected. My other favorite song- The Kill, the band played, but he had the crowd sing a lot once again. Here is a video of The Kill…
WARNING….THERE IS CUSSING AT THE BEGINNING TO THIS VIDEO!!
The funniest part by far was watching Ken totally freak out every time everyone would start jumping up and down, which was quite often. The balcony was moving up and down a lot and I swear if you thought about it too much you really would freak yourself out. It did seem like it was going to come crashing down any minute! I’m glad we went…it certainly was an experience I won’t forget!
I’d like to see Black Eyed Peas in concert someday. I tried to get tickets last summer, but couldn’t get good enough seats. I was a fan of Fergie back when she was on Kids Incorporated!
We were jamming 30 Seconds to Mars songs last week in anticipation of their concert we went to last Saturday. I’ll write a post about the concert soon. But until then… my new favorite of song of theirs is Hurricane. Crash Crash Burn!