Verizon Center – Sip of Starrshine

Can you believe today is the last day of March? I know the months seem to fly by faster and faster, but it really seems like the single-digit days were just yesterday and now it’s the 31st!

March is usually when things pick up in pace for me, as spring tries to spring and activities are on the uptick! So here’s a little recap of how my month went:

I started the month with a sleep study It was a bit strange, but I’ve been having a lot of sleep issues for the past few years and thought it was high time I asked my doctor about them. The sleep study was definitely interesting, so let me know if you’d like to hear more about that experience!

In general, I re-prioritized my health. I have been making my doctor’s appointments instead of putting them off, and even though I am missing time at work (that I make up by coming in early and staying late), it’s good to know that I’m getting care, especially because not everyone is currently insured and able to do so. I’ve seen several different doctors this month and will be seeing many more with the appointments I’ve made, and this is mostly to maintain good health and as follow-ups to past appointments. I do think it’s important for me to think of these visits as health maintenance, rather than think of visiting the doctor as something I only do when I think something is wrong. Prevention is key! I have also been exercising and I gave up fried foods for Lent, so it’s been a healthy month!

I visited San Francisco! I will be putting up recaps from my time there shortly (I swear!), but I made solo trips to museums during the day, caught up with friends for dinner, and was able to support my boyfriend after he gave his first big conference talk. I also got to see Christine (and meet her boyfriend!) while I was out there, my first time visiting her in SF since we became friends!

Um, it snowed for the first time all winter in DC. We’ve had an unseasonably warm winter this year. Like actually warm many days, and no where near as brutally cold as it usually is. It’s been comfortable for us as humans but very worrying, especially given that the cherry blossoms seemed poised to peak weeks earlier than usual. Then it snowed and dipped below 30 for the first time in weeks and we were all very scared for the cherry blossoms. I only wish we got more snow, as the initial predictions for this Stella were much higher than anyone experienced. Oh well! It looks like that is all DC will be getting this winter and we’ll have to wait until the next one.

I met Danny Boyle at an early screening of T2 Trainspotting. He was such a sweet man, honestly, and I really have a renewed respect for him and his films after hearing his Q&A and being able to meet him. I haven’t seen all of his films yet, but you can bet that will change soon!

I got to see the Instagram-famous cherry blossom + Super Mario pop-up bar! This was an awesome Instameet, so we were actually able to sample the cocktails free of charge an hour before the bar opened to the public. This bar is as cool as they say, and here’s my friend Andy‘s video to prove it!

Fun fact: I actually met Andy for the first time over 2 years ago and hadn’t seen him since until this Instameet! He’s an amazing photographer and vlogger and overall dude, definitely check him out on Instagram.

I was able to experience Yayoi Kusama’s Infinite Kusama exhibit and the Hirshhorn. The same week, I got to see another Instagram-famous DC happening and it was pretty spectacular. As stressful as it was to be rushed through the infinity rooms (20 seconds to try to take in… infinity?!), I really enjoyed this exhibit and really hope I can come back before the exhibit goes to the next city.

You know what, here’s another one of Andy’s videos because I just have not edited my videos or footage together yet!

Christine and Phil visited DC! The weekend after my SF trip was Christine’s birthday, and then the weekend after that, she and Phil actually came to my city and visited DC! It was so great to be reunited with Christine and to spend more time hanging out with Phil.

17494882_1849631271953695_7793326761135046656_n — Reunited and it feels so good!

I attended the second Women in Tech Summit DC in a row. Last year was the first year of the DC Women in Tech Summit and I was able to come back for another year, this time at the new(ish) Washington Post building! (The last time I was at WaPo, it was for a hackathon in the old building. The old building is now completely gone!) It was fun to see some great women in tech that I haven’t seen in a while and also to just be surrounded by so many awesome ladies and supportive men. It’s hard not to feel motivated and inspired after events like this.

I saw my first Wizards game! And they were playing the Nets, so it was my first time seeing Jeremy Lin ~~(and his terrible hair)~~, too! This was a work outing and it was a lot of fun, minus the part where I didn’t know where the free food + drinks were for a long time while watching the game alone (because everyone else was eating free food and drinking free drinks).

The Wizards are currently the #3 team in the NBA Eastern Conference! The Nets are the lowest ranked team, so we beat them easily. ~~Probably because of Jeremy Lin’s hair.~~

I watched the Hamburg Ballet’s production of The Little Mermaid at the Kennedy Center. The tickets were on sale so I had to snag one for myself, starting a pattern of me seeing ballets at the Kennedy Center solo. This one wasn’t quite my cup of tea (I wasn’t a fan of the choreography, as it was distracting…? and was so abstract that it was difficult to suss out the actual story) but I still really enjoyed seeing these incredible dancers. This production in particular had a lot of male dancers, and I was reminded at how stunningly athletic male ballet dancers are. (Two words: six-packs.) (Everywhere.) It’s fun to take myself to see a show every now and then, and the Kennedy Center remains one of my favorite venues to do so!

I was also crazy close! Maybe too close, the dancers occasionally were out of my field of vision…

I am seeing results after working out for 2 months. I always heard that it takes 6-8 weeks to see any semblance of progress when it comes to exercise. About 2 months ago, I decided enough was enough, I need to stop struggling to lift things and open that heavy glass door to my office building. (Look, it’s really heavy and sometimes the wind catches it, which makes it harder to open and… I mean you get the picture, small arms, heavy door.) I got a ClassPass membership back in January, which I’ll be telling you guys all about really soon here on the blog, and have also been doing some very casual/haphazard strength-training and running at my office gym so that I can eventually accomplish those resolutions I set at the beginning of the year. This past week, after a day where I somehow squeezed 2 intense workouts into one day, I got home and could see tiny signs of progress! It was really exciting to not only look stronger but to feel a little bit stronger, too. (That being said, I still huff and puff up the stairs and I struggled with a heavy glass door this week, so I have a lot more progress still to make!)

To wrap things up, I wanted to share some things I’ve been loving this past month:

Jidenna’s album, The Chief: I have been waiting for Jidenna’s debut album for a long time, ever since I saw him open for Stromae. That was almost 2 years ago and I’m really enjoying the album. I highly recommend having a listen because it’s very likely you’ll find at least one song you like, given how flexible Jidenna is with the genres that he plays around with on this album. I watched his music video for “Bambi” when it was still just in the tens of thousands of views on Youtube and I’ve had the song stuck in my head ever since.

Jordan Peele’s Get Out: This movie is as good as the hype. I was too scared to see any of the press screenings, even with Annie telling me it was sooooo good and that I have to see it. STILL I was much too scared to see it, until she sent me this article where the author is a self-professed wimp but didn’t find the movie too scary. Ultimately, I went when Annie invited me and my boyfriend to see the movie with her and her boyfriend, because we don’t get to see the two of them that often and they were really close to where we live. I was SO NERVOUS to see it, but it really is a tour de force and you really should watch it. It’s masterfully done and, you know what, not really that scary! In the traditional horror movie way. (Maybe it’s scarier because… the horrors of the movie are not too far from reality.)

The March Disneybound Challenge: I’ll be posting up my annual March Disneybound Challenge recap but this was a lot of fun! This year was different because Leslie actually posted a day-by-day challenge guide, so I was able to lean on that for inspiration rather than thinking of something from scratch every day. I did feel like it was harder to break that guide to go with outfits that I had that didn’t fall neatly into them, but overall, it was good to have some structure to the challenge. Also, I got to see some really incredible outfits on Instagram and this challenge reaffirms how much I love the Instagram Disney community every single year. These folks are amazing.

Screen Shot 2017-03-31 at 12.30.01 AM.png — A little preview of some of my #disneyboundchallenge posts on Instagram

How has your month been? Any highlights to share?
What are you looking forward to in April?

If you would like to see a recap of my Red Lobster Yelp event, check out my review for the event on Yelp, because I made sure to be nice and detailed and include my photos from the night. I am usually not THAT active on Instagram (I typically do a maximum of one photo a day) but they were giving out gift cards for the social-media-ly active.

BASICALLY I holla’d for a dolla. And I got a gift card so it paid off! It was an amazing event, I had the BEST time. It would’ve been the sole highlight of my week.

That is, of course, if I didn’t attend the amazing Muse concert Wednesday evening.

I bought the tickets on April 11, 5 months prior to the actual concert date. I was SO so so very excited. I started listening to Muse relatively late, my freshman year of college, but I immediately loved them. I don’t really listen to any rock bands, but Muse is my favorite band. For an indecisive person, it’s nice to know I have a favorite band.

I’ve never been to a big proper concert. I’ve been to performances at school before, which are big and feature big artists, but it’s not quite the same, you know? And I saw Turquoise Jeep this past spring, but it was a small intimate venue and, admittedly, their influence is no where near as wide and impactful as Muse.

It was a struggle to get in though. I purchased my tickets through Muse’s website, as a member, earlier than the general public. I learned that the concert was using paperless ticketing, but that I was paying shipping. I guess that means I was getting a paper ticket. That ticket never came in the mail, so a few frantic emails later, they informed me that I could pick up my tickets at will call.

That service was NOT Ticketmaster, the company that takes care of will call at the Verizon Center. So when I showed up, all eager and bright-eyed, they couldn’t find my tickets. It took about half an hour of me sitting without my driver’s license and trying not to cry on the phone with customer service as the will call folks scrambled to figure out what was going on. FINALLY they figured out why they had trouble finding my tickets.

My tickets were listed under my name. But as “Last initial. First name“. Starr is my first name, but they had it as my last name, so obviously they weren’t pulling up a match. What I don’t understand is why they didn’t just use my invoice number or seat numbers to check the first time I went, since that’s obviously what they had to do to find my tickets in the end. I’m sure if you saw someone named “Thomas Jones” but the reservation was made under “Jones Thomas” for those exact tickets, it isn’t a coincidence, it’s an error. (Fun fact: I do have a friend whose first name is Jones and last name is Thomas. Apparently, many people get confused by this.)

IDIOTS AREN’T GOING TO GET ME DOWN. I made it in time to catch the opener, Cage the Elephant. Now, I hadn’t heard of them before, but I certainly have now. The frontman is… a character, to say the least. He’s very energetic (likely under the influence of… something) and lively. Their music was good, though. I was feeling it. The enthusiasm of frontman Matt Shultz helped a lot. It was pretty infectious, although I spent a lot of their set looking like this: O.o

Here's Matt Shultz standing on the crowd while crowdsurfing — Here’s Matt Shultz standing on the crowd while crowdsurfing

Their set ran for an hour, and we had to wait for another 30 minutes before…

… Muse ascended the stage.

I don’t have the words to describe… how elated I was to see my favorite band in person. I kept marveling at the fact that I have only seen Muse through my computer screen, so the fact that this experience was surrounding me blew my mind.

The laser show was amazing. The stage was magnificent. And Matt. Oh Matt. I had a confusing crush on Matt when I started getting into Muse that helped me understand why girls throw their underwear at rock stars. I was never the kind of girl who liked rock stars until Muse entered my life. It needs no mention how cool and amazing Chris and Dom were, too.

ALSO. They had some fancy video equipment, if they were playing live footage on the screen. So much editing within the live footage, it was amazing. If they use the DC footage for the tour DVD, it’s going to look SO FANTASTIC, seriously. Just the footage that was played on the screens would suffice.

Here’s the setlist from the show, courtesy of Peter Hutchins on Tumblr:

The 2nd Law Tour Setlist:

The 2nd Law: Isolated System
Supremacy
Supermassive Black Hole
Hysteria (Star-Spangled Banner intro)
Panic Station
Resistance
Knights of Cydonia (Ennio Morricone’s Man with a Harmonica intro)
Monty Jam
Feeling Good (Leslie Bricusse & Anthony Newley cover)
Follow Me
Plug In Baby
Liquid State
Madness
Guiding Light
Time Is Running Out
Unnatural Selection
Uprising

Encore:
The 2nd Law: Unsustainable
Starlight
Survival

I had the most amazing amazing time that could only have been improved if the couple in front of me spent less time making out and more time enjoying the concert. I think I wished that they interacted a bit more with the audience, but you know, I would rather have more music than waste time with people going up on stage or them trying to tell jokes. The music is ace.

PERFECTION.