I hope I have a blur someday...

Yesterday was Sonshine day, and today was crash/work/crash day! So I worked from 8-10:30 yesterday, then got cleaned up and on the road to Willmar. My arrival time was approx. 2:30 PM CST. First thing, I went to see who was on what stages at the time. Barlow Girl was just finishing up on the Main Stage, some random band was on Stage 2, and the Showmobile Stage looked to be between acts. I took a walk through the merch building, which was kind of disappointing to be quite honest. The coolest shirts there were mocks of the "Jesus is my Homeboy" shirts that said "Tobymac is my homeboy" on the front and "Jesus is my savior" on the back. They even had them in decent colors, but EVERYONE and their brother had them already, and I'm not a big fan of the type of shirts artists produce anyway (always that stupid retro tight look with super short sleeves), so I passed. On my way out of the building, I bumped into Jill, and we talked about what was happening when for a little bit.

After this, I partook in the greatest of all Sonshine rituals: The Hawaiian Shaved Ice booth. Since it's we're in the middle of the hottest week of the year, the line was pretty long, and I ended up waiting about 20 minutes. But it was totally worth it. Mmmm, Grapeade.

While in line, I saw Danielle from Belmont who lives in St. Cloud, and so we talked for awhile and she helped me pass the time in line, and then we headed over to the Showmobile because MuteMath was on, although I missed most of their set, which was very disappointing because they were pretty sweet. Later, I would purchase their only album, Reset", an EP, and thoroughly enjoy it on the ride home. While my reason for being at the Showmoblie was MuteMath, Danielle wanted to see Disciple, who were up next. I stuck around for them, and they were much better than I expected them to be. If I could have heard the lead singer better, I probably would have liked them more, but still a good show indeed.

At this point, Danielle and I got seperated for the duration. I went through the merch building again, and this is when I purchased the aforementioned EP, along with Mat Kearney's album, which I thoroughly enjoyed on the way home as well.

This is when the wandering began.

I'm not sure exactly what I did for about an hour there, but by 6 I was at the maindtage, waiting for TobyMac to start. He played a pretty sweet set (I LOVE Nirva Dorsaint, who does back-up vocals for him. Keep waiting for her rumored album to surface, but so far, nothing.) I would have liked it if he'd done a bit more off of his new album, but it was still good. He did an encore of "Jesus Freak", which got everyone really pumped. And, with all of this energy, people did... nothing, mostly because the evening speaker was up next, so people were forced to calm down if they wanted to reserve their spot for the later shows. I got some pizza and wandered some more, then caught the end of the speaker when he did this sweet chalk drawing on the spot in front of everyone. One of the coolest things of the night.

Following what felt like an eternity of soundchecking, Relient K began playing at about 8:45 I think. Not gonna lie, I was pretty disappointed with them. They had to keep stopping after every song because they couldn't hear themselves in the monitor or something. You're professionals! Just play the fricking music! It doesn't matter if you can't hear yourself, the thousands of thirteen year-old girls (myself included) are drowning you out anyway!

The intermission between RK and Switchfoot was about as long as the previous one, but this one was better because the brought a fire hose over and sprayed down the crowd, which I think got the biggest applause of the night. Then, magic happened. Switchfoot took the stage and blew everyone away. My left contact had been bugging me all day, and I was tempted to leave after RK bombed, but I'm so glad I stuck it out. They played almost every song off "The Beautiful Letdown", including a version of "On Fire" that opened with Bob Dylan's "The times they are a'changin'", complete with harmonica and acoustic guitar. They played 2 songs off the new album, "Nothing Is Sound" (which drops Sept 13 btw). The first was the opening track, "Happy is a Yuppy Word", which I loved. It's kind of hard to think a style for it, but it's excellent, trust me. They closed with the first single from the album, "Stars", which was excellent as well, and which may be my favorite song of the moment.

Switchfoot finished at about 11:30, and I arrived back at home at 1:45 AM CST, at which point I promptly fell asleep until 7 this morning, when my dad woke me up to say goodbye to my sister, who left today for a two-week mission trip to Detroit. Fell back asleep until 9, worked from 10-6, and now I'm sitting here, thinking about how much I want to sleep. I realize that very few people will make it this far in the post, but I'm gonna keep goign anyway with 2 rants specific to yesterday.

1. I think one of my top 5 pet peeves is when people try to move their way to the front of a crowd at a concert or whatever. They come through all nice, with their "Excuse me"'s and their "I'm just gonna sneak through there"'s, and I just want to punch them in the face. Not so much the short people, because I can understand how frustrating it owuld be to not be able to see, but people taller than me trying to get through is just plain rude. and the worst is when they decide to move past you and can't move anymore, so they stop, and you have to move back to breathe. I mean, seriously, if there was more room further up, I'd already be in that space, so why the frick do you feel the need to check it out anyway and take my spot?

2. People crowd-surfing during slow songs. Sooooooooo lame. I think crowd-surfing in general is lame, but especially during slow songs. It's the people being passed around and those that put them up there that make menot like some concerts as much as I should. They're not there for the music. They could care less who is singing up front. All they want is to look cool. Trust me guys, it's not the way to go about that. There are a million different things you could do to try and be cool, and this is probably ranked 7th as far as least effective goes.

Congrats! You made it to the end of a super-update!
Peace out.

P.S. Happy Birthday Ben Stein