Those Crazy Schuberts » United States

Seeing our favorite people in San Francisco

Amy — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 09:10:57 +0000

Andrew made plans to see some of his friends play a concert the first weekend of December.

Of course, this concert was in San Francisco.

Only Andrew would look at the calendar, see he has about 48 hours off of work and turn that into a quick trip to visit friends!

We left L.A. early early Saturday morning for the drive up the middle of California … We listened to the second half of Tina Fey’s Bossypants audio book, some podcasts and a couple CDs… and reached C&A’s apartment in Oakland just about lunch time!

Which, really, is just a perfect excuse for Andrew to get to try yet another Mexican restaurant.

He’s pretty easy to please

With a free Saturday afternoon, we actually went into San Francisco-proper to visit the Bazaar Bizarre - a holiday craft fair with booths full of handmade jewelry, homegoods and more.

Andrew and I had already finished the bulk of our Christmas shopping so we didn’t end up picking anything up, but Avalon found earrings for herself

After the Bazaar, it was off to Trader Joe’s to pick up dinner ….

I love visiting Christian and Avalon because they are just so easy. They cook for us in their home (yum!) and we play video games or cards and just talk.

So easy and relaxing and just like being at home ….

except someone else is cooking and cleaning…

After dinner (and Shang-hai), Andrew left to go to the concert …. I stayed home w/ C&A and got badly beaten at Tetris ….

Also, realized my eyes are getting BAD and I need glasses, but I can only *partly* blame my poor playing on my eyesight …

Sunday morning and it was time to go home!

Christian was finishing up his semester and had a group-project-meeting around noon, so we had time to go out to breakfast early before we headed out of town ….

I love the way C&A decorate…. I need to find big mirrors like this for our home….

Another long drive home filled with podcasts and music ….. But we got home early enough to have dinner together at home and just relax the rest of the night….

Traveling with Andrew is one of my favorite things ever – no matter where we’re going ….

Andrew in NYC

Amy — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 09:40:09 +0000

{the following photos and journaling are all by Andrew}

This was my first trip to New York.

Every year Chris pays for the Mix LA staff to fly to the Audio Engineering Society Convention. The convention alternates cities – every other year it’s SF and NYC.

CLA took a separate flight from his staff, so Brad, Keith, Nik and myself all car-pooled to Burbank Airport at 5a on Thursday morning, October 20. Flight scheduled for 7a.

We got to the airport with no traffic and breezed through security … We boarded the plane at around 6:45a ….. And sat. …. And waited …. And sat and watched other flights take off …. and waited.

Turns out our Jet Blue flight is an AirBus and with the improper wind we couldn’t take off yet… .

For 2.5 hours. Everyone was a little tired and mad – Brad even left!

The pilot took the plane back to the gate and everyone deplaned to get a bite to eat and pee and stretch. We got back on the plane around 10a and took off (3.5 hours late) at 10:30a

Not a great start for a trip.

We landed at JFK around 6:30p (local time), took a cab to Times Square Mariott Marquis Hotel and checked in.

45th floor (the very top) with a Times Square view…. Incredible!!

Nik and I shared a room and Keith got his own. We were all pretty pumped for a good time. So we hit the town, soaked up the lights and crowd of Times Square and then got on the subway at 42nd street and made our way toward Prince street to find some pizza on Bleeker street and then see a concert at the Mercury Lounge.

Nik Yelp’d a tiny 20 table restaurant called Bianca, served authentic Italian food. The customers looked to be our age New Yorkers. Perfect. I got sausage and beans Italian style, Nik got a seafood pasta and Keith got lasagna. It was soooo dark and cozy in the restaurant.

After dinner we walked towards The Mercury Lounge area where the CMJ festival was going on. I wanted to hook up with The Audacity who ere in town from CA. We met up with a friend of Keith’s, Kaitlin, at The Cake Shop and headed to a dive bar called Meet the Johnsons. It was all decked out for Halloween.

Around 12:45a we headed to The Mercury Lounge to catch the 1a set by the Dum Dum Girls. They were pretty good – not a lot of stage presence but it was their 3rd show of the day.

After the Dum Dum Girls we all walked around, hit Katz’s Deli around 2:30a or 3a when they closed for the night and the 4 of us shared a pastrami sandwich.

Walked around the city in the cold, laughing and having fun.

Keith looked up “late night billiards” on Yelp and we took a cab to Fat Cat Pool hall. They served beer until4a and had a great jazz combo playing. NY Jazz!!

The bar was in the basement filled with pool tables and ping pong! We grabbed some beers and pool cues and played a few games until around 5a.

In bed by 5:30a …. Great intro to NYC!

DAY 2 – October 21

We had planned to go to Central Park on this day. We did not plan on staying up until almost 6a however.

We woke up around 2:30p, showered and then headed to the Convention Center to see the AES show. Got our passes and began the show. As at past conventions, I always end up following Keith and Nik around since they’re the audio guys.

We met up with CLA for the first time and he drove us to Kellari for the 4th annual Mix LA/Vintage King AES dinner.

Great Greek food and people.

After dinner, CLA and the VK guys went home while Keith, Nik, the Sterling Sound crew and I went to the View Bar at the top of our hotel. The View is a rotating bar showing you a good glimpse of the city. We got a table and each got a drink…

After the View closed, one of the Sterling Sound guys headed home and the other 5 of us walked around town to find a place to hang. We found some bar I don’t know the name of and when they closed, one of the other Sterling Sound kids left while the other 4 of us bought cigars and beers from a convenience store and drank from paper sacks and smoked on the stoops…

… and around 4a maybe, decided to walk around and find Occupy Wall Street.

Well, we got a little lost, ended up walking past Ground Zero around 5a and finally found Occupy Wall Street at 5:30a. Some young Canadian had climbed atop a sculpture at the site and was making demands before he would come down. So the cops and fire department and Hostage Rescue all showed up … It was quite a scene.

We hung around until about 8a – it was light out but the kid was still up there and we were tired.

I got breakfast and finally passed out around 9:30a

Day 3 – October 22

I woke up only about 3.5 hours later… to catch CLA mediating a Grammy Sound Table at AES – “Songs that Changed My Life” – Ken ‘Duro’ Ifill, Steve Lillywhite, Ann Mincieli, Phil Ramone, Al Schmitt. It was about what I expected – Al and Phil, however, have great stories since they’ve been in the business so long. About Harry Nilsson and Billy Joel and everyone really.

Around 430 Nik, Keith and I headed to famous Carnegies Deli to get huge pastrami sandwiches!

Carnegie Deli is crowded and narrow and cramped. The walls are covered in autographed 8×10 headshots of famous people. The trademark sandwich is The Woody Allen – $17 worth of pastrami and about 10x the size of a normal sandwich. Their signature drink is the New York Style Egg Cream. A fizzy type of soda with whipped egg whites, I think. It sounds weird, but it tastes like cream soda. I got a pastrami sandwich which was huge and of course I only ate 1/3 of it.

After Carnegie we walked across the street to a gift shop so Nik could get his wife a souvenir. Then on to Central Park…

We spent about 15 minutes there, but had to rush away to go to the Afterglow Party held at Electric Lady Studios in the Village. We walked back to the hotel, got ready for the party and took a cab down there. There was a decent-size line outside the studio, so we waited and got in after about 15 minutes.

Electric Lady Studios was built by Jimi Hendrix. I couldn’t snap any pictures because there was security everywhere. It consists of 3 rooms so far as I can tell. 2 below street level and one at or above. We were able to view/ visit the 2 below. We ran into CLA and a few other people we knew and quietly left to meet up with Nik’s cousin, Roxie.

We found a bar that had SST/SubPop bands blasting out of the jukebox and decided to wait for Roxie there. I checked out a record store, Bleecker Bob’s, but it was so overpriced with no real treasures that I quickly let. It was a college town, I guess.

We met up with Roxie and decided to search out some Vietnamese sandwiches. Walked to a place and made it just before close. Then Roxie led us to a bar with Skiball where she was going to meet her friends.

The Skiball bar was sooooo packed. We got a call from Chris Dugan (Green Day’s engineer) that he was in the area, so he met us at skiball and we left Roxie to her friends and Chris took us to an underground secret bar. We hung out for a bit and decided to cab it over to meet up with some Vintage King guys at the bar they were at.

Cabbed over to the place, made small talk and when the bar closed we walked over to Papaya King for some 4a hot dogs!

Chris Dugan got into a battlerap “Yo Mama” with a toothless homeless guy. That went on for about an hour. Just hanging out on the street, laughing, talking and eating hot dogs

We made it back to the hotel about 6a….

Day 4 – October 23

Just enough time to shower and check out before flying home at 1p …

Autumn tradition: Corn maze

Amy — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 09:22:26 +0000

One of my favorite newer Autumn traditions has been visiting a corn maze!!

This is something neither Andrew nor I did growing up, but when we lived in Arizona, Michelle introduced us to the wonder and glory of navigating a corn maze after dark …

This year, we returned to Pierce College with Fernando and Jessica …. except this time on a Saturday night.

First to Fab Dogs for dinner, and then we ended up getting to the actual Halloween Harvest Festival a little before 9p (after stopping for cash AND having to park miles away).

Once we FINALLY got there …. this was the line..

Correction: This was TWO lines of equally ridiculous length …

So, we had to wait about … 30 minutes? 45? maybe longer, I’ve blocked it from my memory….. Just to buy tickets to get in.

Finally in … Just before 10p sometime.

In addition to the corn MAZE … there is also a haunted corn … path (we did this last year), 2 haunted-house type places, a petting zoo, crafts and (of course) a pumpkin patch.

For whatever reason, the line to do the haunted corn path was looooong. Even though it’s not so good.

Luckily for us, we seem to be the only ones who know that. There was no line whatsoever for the actual MAZE…

If you’ve never done a corn maze … I should tell you: they GIVE you a map. There maze is set up as some sort of picture/creature/etc with check points throughout. They give everyone a little map (maybe about 4×6) and the idea is to punch your map with the hole-punch provided at each check-point.

For whatever reason, when we used to go with Michelle we would always forget to bring a flashlight. …. And, yes, it’s less scary with a flashlight, but there’s no way to actually read your map w/o one.

Unless, you WANT to get lost in the dark in a corn maze…. I mean, I’ve seen Children of the Corn, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre and all those other movies that involve middle-of-nowhere fields … I’m glad Andrew remembered the flashlight this time.

Besides, having just that spot of light makes for some fun photos (without using the flash on the camera)….

Also helpful?

I am EXCELLENT at ‘Corn Maze’ … . Or, rather, I am excellent at reading a nonsensical map in the dark.

We didn’t really get lost at all…. .Ok, maybe my excellence took all the fun out of it (for Andrew at least), but I led the charge and got us to all the check points …

Do you think corn-maze-skills translate into any real-world skills?

Jessica pulled up her Pandora app on her phone and started playing some John Carpenter soundtrack while we wandered around in the dark …. It was that perfect little extra touch

(blurry, but still spooky…. after all, what do you expect in the dark?)

after soaring through the corn maze with flying colors (no prize for being awesome, though) … we wandered around a bit more.

Most of the ‘exhibits’ or activities, or whatever you would call them were closed since it was so late ….

…. but we still got to feed a 4-horned sheep (goat? Just realized I have no idea)…

And got the best cotton candy deal ever.

2 for $5 …. and they handed me this one and I just about laughed out loud.

$2.50 for cotton candy twice the size of my head?? Yes please!

Yep, corn maze has GOT to be an autumn tradition from now on … tooo much fun!

You can view more photos and purchase prints here: 2011 Pierce College corn maze

Alaska souvenirs

Amy — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 09:55:38 +0000

So I know you’re sad, but …We have now reached the end of our Alaska vacation posts….

It’s OK. … You’ll be OK…. Scotland blog posts begin next week….

As a last good-bye (at least until I get my film from the trip developed) … I wanted to show you the souvenirs Andrew and I got from our trip!

We tend to get the same souvenirs on every trip – and all are pretty much stuff my parents get on their vacations. I can’t imagine leaving a vacation without at least one of the following:

Playing cards:

I like getting souvenirs that are *technically* practical … even if we don’t play cards all that often!

Drinking glasses:

(Actually, we get coffee mugs more often)

In our last port in Alaska, we ate lunch at the Skagway Brewing Co … Andrew had really been wanting a nice sturdy beer stein he could keep in the freezer, and I love this style of drinking glass, so we each picked one out.

I liked this particular glass (above on the left) because of the color, and because of the image (that nice tree line + ship)….

….. it wasn’t until we got home that I actually read the tagline…

and now I love it even more!

I call it the ‘scurvy glass’ …

Ornament:

Christmas ornaments are a Hann-family tradition! We picked out this bald eagle ornament in Ketchikan after seeing so many of them on our wildlife tour!

But, of course, the most important souvenir from our trip is our memories that we made and the stories we can tell about the trip.

I spent a little bit of time ON the trip, and quite a bit of time AFTER the trip jotting everything down in our Alaska travel journal. We included ticket stubs, pamphlets, Instax mini photos, hand-written journaling and more! (I even got Andrew to journal a little bit).

I love that I have all of this in one little book (all the journaling from the Alaska blog posts are taken from the journal)

and just a quick example of one of the pages…

What kinds of souvenirs do you bring home from your vacations?

If you missed any of the posts, click the banner below for the full Alaska travel archive:

Alaska: Seattle

Amy — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 09:28:20 +0000

After the aquarium …. we walked uphill (several flights of stairs) to Pike Place Market ….

(crowded. SO crowded. But it was a Sunday morning, so what do you expect…. )

Once we started getting a bit hungry, through the magic of technology Andrew used the Yelp app on his iPhone to look up a place for lunch with an overwhelming number of good reviews. … Obviously this was our choice – we just needed to find it!

So we walked a bit more … through Pike Place Market, visited a harbor pakr … and tried to get our bearings and figure out where to walk to find this restaurant …

It turns out Kaitlin had dropped us off EXACTLY in front of the restaurant, so we ended up walking in a big circlr.

For lunch we had Rodizo at Ipanema Brazilian Grill…

All-you-can-eat at a Brazilian grill … . One plate of salads and sides (fruit, pasta, potatoes, etc)…. One plate for the meat samples brought to us at our table …

… On MEAT SWORDS.

True story….

We had a little green-red tag on our table :

– turned to green when we wanted them to bring us meat (pepper steak, bacon-wrapped steak, sausage, chicken sirloin, and on and on and on)

– turn to red when you have more food on your plate than you can possibly eat and need a break from the meat.

It was so so so good and we were SO full afterward that we didn’t really eat for about 24 hours!!

The rest of our Seattle story involves walking around in another big circle looking for a record store so Andrew could spend his birthday money!

…. and then bravely seeking out and figuring out the Seattle transit to get to the airport.

$32 cab or $2.75 each for the light rail…

We got to the airport so early that they actually changed the flight’s gate while we were there. Luckily we were paying attention ….

Landed at home at the Burbank airport at about 9p PT … then home.

THEN SLEEP!

…. and then back to our “real” life…. sad…

Alaska: Seattle Aquarium

Amy — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 09:25:26 +0000

Sunday morning …We docked early early early in Seattle and had to be off the ship by 8a.

Due to flight options in and out of Burbank airport, Andrew and I had about 7 or so hours between when we got off the ship in Seattle and when we had to be at the Seattle-Tacoma airport.

Luckily for us, Kaitlin and Julie were driving home and offered to take the bulk of our luggage with them. We kept our laptops and cameras and books, but that was pretty much it … so we could walk around town *mostly* unencumbered.

Kaitlin dropped us off downtown early enough on a Sunday morning that there was hardly any one out and about….

We walked down to the shore …. and had time to treat ourselves to a leisurely coffee… but unfortunately where we happened to be there was only Starbucks.

Just a few days prior, Andrew and I had talked about how we hadn’t been to an aquarium in awhile. Andrew loves aquariums and we always try to go when there’s one nearby….

… Well, wouldn’t you know it? Seattle has a (small) aquarium right by where Katie dropped us off!

Fate, I tell you…

Aquariums are such fun places to take photos …

The Seattle aquarium has 1 building (1 and 1/2?) of tank-displays (which also includes the you-can-touch tidepools) and 1 building of outdoor exhibits (seals, otters, birds, etc)…

Disappointingly, no sharks or rays but Andrew and I got our aquarium fix for a little while…. and I decided I need a pet otter. Sea or river. I’m not picky …

After the aquarium, we headed up to Pike’s Market and to wander Seattle some more ….

Alaska: Victoria (part 2)

Amy — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 09:08:52 +0000

(Continuing with our excursion to Butchart Gardens in Victoria, Canada on our last day of the Alaska cruise):

I don’t really have a lot of stories of visiting the Butchart Gardens …

Just lots and lots of photos of flowers.

It was pretty crowded and we mostly felt like we had to rush … to make sure we caught our shuttle to take us back to the ship on time…

… but it really was gorgeous ….

… we DID get some (expensive) gelato at the end. From this little gelateria in the ‘Italian Garden’ …

Then back to the ship by 11:30p to go to bed to get up at 6a to finish packing to be off the ship by 8am…

Even though our CRUISE portion of the trip was over … Andrew and I still spent a good bit of the next day in Seattle ….

stay tuned!

Alaska: Victoria (part 1)

Amy — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 09:25:46 +0000

Our final day of our Alaskan cruise …. was primarily spent at sea.

We were headed back down to Seattle (all day Friday and most of the day Saturday) – one of the downsides of doing a round-trip cruise instead of 1-way.

We spent the morning/early afternoon reading and playing games. More Mexican Train and more Shang-hai

Still celebrating Andrew’s birthday a little bit …. He got to open up a bday present at lunch!

Saturday night we actually docked at Victoria a little early. … .about 5:30p instead of 7p as scheduled.

Good thing, too … Otherwise it would have been a REALLY quick trip.

As far as I can tell, the only reason the ship docks in Victoria at all is so the ship can open up the casino in international waters – since we are visiting an international country.

Anyway, once we docked…. We caught an (expensive) shuttle into downtown … and once there spend more money for another shuttle from the same company out to Butchart Gardens… and back to the ship. A bit annoying to overpay like that … but I guess that’s what vacations are for?

The #1 highlight that Julie wanted to see was Butchart Gardens, but that is several miles out of town.

So we jumped on the shuttle – with a narrated drive – out to the gardens …

We learned all kinds of things…. Like that Victoria is the retirement capital of Canada.

Mostly because they have perfect weather pretty much year-round and no poisonous snakes or spiders…

*jealous!*

But homes are correspondingly expensive, I guess.

Locals in the suburbs are encouraged to use their land for agriculture and such… .so apparently some of them will leave a vegetable cart of sorts at the end of their driveway with a cash box and just depend on the ‘honor system’ to sell their goods …

Kind of adorable…

We got the Butchart Gardens before sunset …. but not much before sunset ….

Holy geez this place is gorgeous ….

This is about the time on our walk when Andrew started talking about how he wanted to get wooden coffins to use as benches in our garden one day. Awesome.

More photos of Butchart Gardens to come …..

Alaska: at sea

Amy — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 09:25:36 +0000

Friday was a day at sea.

Not many stories for this day.

I spent the bulk of the day in bed.

Truly.

In the morning we went to breakfast, but I started to feel a bit of sea sickness.

This day involved covering something like 600 miles or so, all at top speed, all out in the open ocean (not the Inside Passage) and it was VERY choppy.

Our waitress (Galina) said the ship’s motion was some of the worst she’s felt in 8 years.

At times it genuinely felt like an earthquake – and I think Kaitlin was a little afraid the ship would capsize!

No real danger of that, BUT a lot (lot lot) of people on the ship spent part or all of the day seasick…

So after breakfast, I went back to our room and lay down to read.

As long as I was laying down I felt fine …. and I even felt OK at dinner that night…

… but it seemed so lovely and luxurious to spend all day (around 8 hours) napping and reading.

When I’m home I NEVER do that.

I always just read a bit before bed, or set an alarm so I only read for an hour or so.

But on vacation: NO RULES!

So I spent the day in bed…

Andrew brought be water and veggies from the buffet, other than that I just slept and read.

I started Alaska by James Michener, which is over 1000 pages, so I wasn’t in any danger of running out of reading material.

But I dolled myself up for the ‘formal’ dinner on this Friday night….

Before we left for the cruise I told Princess Cruises we wanted to celebrate Andrew’s birthday on this Friday.

When we woke up, there was a Happy Birthday sign and 2 balloons taped to our door with a card in the mail slot ….

and then at dinner that night, the waitstaff sang him ‘Happy Birthday’ and brought him a special dessert and card.

turns out I DID take a photo of Galina!

(special birthday boy …. 30 years old!)

Just one day left of our cruise! Sad!

Alaska: Skagway and the ship

Amy — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 09:24:13 +0000

continuing our Skagway excursion during our Alaska cruise ….

After our wilderness/Gold Rush tour, we were dropped off back in town about 1:30p or 2p. Just about time for lunch – at the Skagway Brewing Company.

Beer-broth chili was filling and warm and great for how cold it was outside ….

We also got a couple Alaska souvenirs while we were there (more on this in a future post)!

After lunch, Julie and Kaitlin did a little bit of shipping before heading back to the ship.

But Andrew and I sought out some more history!

waaaaay way back when Skagway started to be settled, Captain Moore stated a claim for the whole town, but when some 200 or so miners showed up, they just took it over and declared Moore’s log cabin to be in the middle of State Street – so they dragged it aside!

That log cabin is still in town (in the image below) …. and TINY!

(man, my husband is soooo handsome )

We really didn’t o a whole lot more before heading back to the ship.

It was CRAZY cold and SUPER windy on the mile or so walk, so by the time we got back to the ship, we crashed and took a nap for a couple of hours.

(continuing our streak of a nap-a-day on this vacation)

Then up to the deck for some reading and relaxing before dinner ….

And we closed out the day with this GORGEOUS sky on our way out of port: