ACL

This past weekend was insanely good. Even better was that it was an insanely good 4-day weekend. I feel totally refreshed and energized.

It all started on Thursday when I picked my friend Shelley up from the airport. I went to university with Shelley (back in Australia) so we've known each other for 13.5 years! She lives in Atlanta with her husband and it was the first time we've seen each other since Christmas... which is way too long ago. So we had plenty to catch up on. Thursday night we met up with the Gordon and Damien (Shelley's husband) for a drink at Doc's Motorworks. It was one of those beautiful late summer evenings. We drank and chatted and just had a really good time.

Friday it was just us girls and we had fun having lunch and shopping in the new 2nd Street District. We both tried on our first pair of cowboy boots and were almost tempted... but we decided not to buy them and now I'm hoping that Santa might put some under the tree this year! Then we headed over to ACL and listened to our first act for the festival - Joy Davis, a female country music singer. She sounded good. Then we listened to a bit of Stars on our way over to hear Gnarles Barkley (so-so), which we didn't stay at for very long, then met up with Gordon and Damien. After that we hit Gomez (really good) and then Thievery Corporation (awesome) and grabbed a good old Aussie pie from the Boomerang food stall (yum). After that it was a tiny bit of John Mayer (bleugh) followed by Van Morrison (way too quiet!) and then we decided to head back to our place and conserve our energy for the next day.

Saturday we had a very lazy start, except for Gordon who actually got up and ran 7 miles! We arrived at ACL early afternoon to listen to Ben Kweller, who suffered from a bad nosebleed and was only able to play 4-5 songs, but what a trooper for even playing at all! Then we met up with Sheri and Jeff and we all had Chuy's (very yum) and hung out at Barton Springs pool for a while. Damien and I even did some diving off the diving board, much to the amusement of Gordon and Shelley. After that it was back to ACL and Aimee Mann (good), The Ranconteurs (very good), and Massive Attack (really awesome). We were hoping to catch a bit of Willie Nelson, but we couldn't get very close to the stage and he was REALLY quiet. So we went to Massive Attack instead and they were brilliant.

Sunday Gordon and I actually got up and went swimming with the T3 crowd. That was tough. I felt like I had lead blocks attached to my shoulders! Then it was another lazy breakfast with Shelley and Damien, and more ACL. Our first show for the day was KT Tunstall, a female singer from Scotland. She was really great - fantastic voice, really catchy songs. Then Gordon took Damien to the airport while Shelley and I had lunch and went back to Barton Springs to cool off and do some more diving. We made our way back in time to get really close up for Ben Harper. We weren't disappointed, he was the highlight of the show for me. Great music and great energy. It was fantastic.

We decided to call it a day after that, and we met back up with Gordon and went to PF Changs for some delicious chinese food. While we were having dinner it started bucketing down and there was a lot of thunder and lightning... lucky we decided to leave when we did!

It was such a great weekend. Partly because of ACL but also because we had such great company for the whole weekend. I definitely want to go again next year and hopefully we'll have more out of town visitors!