Resolution (or !!!!!)

Friday, April 25, 2008

Oh my god, fuck it, we did it- it ended up costing us even more money than we thought (more than my first car cost, we'll leave it at that) but after we got through (the server went down a few times, but Davey is the ultimate ticket securer) and the tickets were booked we were jumping around the kitchen, shouting incoherently.

I ended up talking to my mother about it yesterday, since she's typically the one who tells me to think realistically about things (rightly, since she's tried to save me from an innumerable amount of personal disasters throughout my life, in spite of the fact that I've rarely listened) and I thought she would convince me not to buy the tickets. Instead she was excited and enthusiastic about it, and even encouraged us to get a room right inside the venue instead of a hotel room outside of it, which would have saved us a few hundred bucks. I had been looking at a lot of different lodging options, including camping, renting an RV, and staying at a Best Western a town over. But my mother, typically a paragon of parental-type reality checks, said that I have no idea how much my life is going to change after the baby is born and that I should consider this my slightly belated "babymoon" since nothing after it will ever be the same. "Go all out!" She said, "Don't put yourself in the position where you guys need to worry about traffic or driving or never being able to split up or having to sober up if you don't want to; just go and enjoy it and have the most carefree possible time." Weighing that in on top of the overall truly legendary feeling of this festival and the knowledge (as Natasha commented yesterday) that we'd kick ourselves for the rest of our lives if we didn't go finally pushed us to decide to get tickets if we could. So we did! Eeeee!

I think I've mentioned this before, but David and I are in a truly unique and uncharacteristically convenient position right now, money-wise. We're going to be living in a five room house rent and utilities free for the next two years; Massachusetts has a five year look back period to seize non-monetary assets from people in elder care, like my grandmother, if/when they can no longer pay for the care on their own. It's fucked up, but it's the law. My grandmother transferred ownership of the house to my mother and my aunt after my grandfather died in 2005, meaning there's two more years left before we'll feel comfortable selling it or whatever we decide to do. We don't *anticipate* my grandmother's other assets running out, but don't want to do anything rash just in case. In the meantime David and I will raise the baby here while saving up money for our own place, preferably somewhere a little more pastoral than Springfield. We still have to pay for food, gas, and car and baby-related things, obviously, but we've got a free roof over our heads for the time being, which is ridiculously lucky and one of the major reasons why I thought spending such a large amount of money on festival tickets would be okay (or at least not COMPLETELY irresponsible)- it's the right time and place, and we'll probably never be in a position like this again.

Focusing on the positive, here's what David and I now have to look forward to in late September:

1.) Staying on-site at Kutsher's Country Club, where all of the shows will be taking place in small, intimate, indoor venues. Everything will literally only be a short walk away at all times, and we won't have to drive at all once we get there if we don't want to.

2.) Once again: We get to see MY BLOODY VALENTINE play to 3,000 people MAX, not to mention similarly small performances by Built to Spill, Mogwai, Thee Silver Mt. Zion Orchestra, Low, Shellac, Tortoise, and Thurston Moore (performing all of "Psychic Hearts!")

3.) More performers are going to be announced soon! Who knows who else we'll get to see?!? We entertained ourselves all of last night fantasizing about it.

4.) My return to Upstate NY, where I once used to live some time ago in one of my many former lives. The Catskills aren't Rochester/Buffalo by any stretch of the imagination, but it warms my heart just the same.

Eeee!!!!!!