RATT at Oakland Metro Operahouse

Haha! Got a chance to see RATT at the Oakland Metro on Tuesday night. Had a total blast! I feel like this summer has been a string of show after show, lately going to and planning on going to see bands that are old enough to be my fathers. Awesome! Gotta do it now, may never happen again. Anyway, my friend Amanda runs Lava Booking, a local talent buying/agent company responsible for a lot of great shows here! She put on the RATT show, dealt with the band's shit, and still managed to come out stoked. What a woman! The dudes made the crowd wait a SUPER long time before coming onstage...for whatever reasons rockstars have for doing things that piss their fans off. When they finally did play though, they did us all proud and brought everyone back to their hair metal roots in a goooood way. Originally I was sort of questioning going, but since I'm saying yes to experiencing pretty much everything nowadays, (and I knew deep down it'd be fun), off to the show we went and thank baby metal jesus we did! Fun, fun, fun.

Asking for a Raise

There's been quite a few changes going on recently where I work. The company likes to shuffle around their management team from store to store, using the specific skill sets each of us have, to address whatever issues are going on in that store. When the problem is resolved, a good manager can expect to train their replacement and be transferred on to the next opportunity. Keeps things fresh. I started working at a store in San Francisco, was transferred down to a store in Fremont about a month into my training, and in about 10 days will be transferring back to the San Francisco store to complete training to manage my own store! I've only been with the company for 6 months! The upper management for my company proposed the move to me, and told me the reason was that they wanted to get their most talented Assistant Manager into the busiest store in the company to fast track my training. Whoa! I'd think they were blowing smoke up my ass if they hadn't been totally saying the same things to me throughout my entire employment.
So, hearing this praise, I jumped at the opportunity and requested to be compensated a bit better for all that I was doing for them! I didn't word it like that, but instead in a way that illustrated I knew how valuable I was to them and I felt I had a LOT to continue to offer to their philosophy as well. It was wordy, and pretty, and most importantly, effective! I was immediately responded to with resounding agreement and hey, I got my raise! Never in my life had I felt comfortable enough in my abilities to request something like that, especially while still so new with the company! I guess confidence really does go a long, long way. Life is full of new lessons, every day, for sure.

Scorpions at Concord Pavilion, Le Cheval - Oakland

Sunday was an amazing day! I got a chance to see one of the bands that was a big part of my youth, Scorpions, on their farewell tour's Bay Area stop. Sonny, Stash and I started out the day with a stop at Le Cheval, a Vietnamese restaurant in downtown Oakland I'd never been to. They value the relationship between a balanced, healthy diet and overall good health, and construct their menu of French/Chinese/Southeast Asian cooking concepts accordingly. Tasty!!!

From there, we picked up the lovely Katie and headed out East to Concord. I wasn't quite sure what to expect from the show, since these dudes have literally been a touring band for 45 years. Regardless, they have a firm spot in the memories of my childhood roadtrips, the most formative years, which obviously helped to form my preferences for music in general. Must go! I had luckily won tickets for the show about a month prior, and about 20 of out other friends were going, so it was a total no brainer.
Unfortunately the sound set-up at the pavilion seemed like it was only half on. For those of us up on the lawn level, there was a bit left to be desired as far as how much noise was getting thrown at us. However, what we could hear was great! Everyone was completely right on music wise. Klaus' vocals were phenomenal. The energy of the band was totally rockin! I got like 0 good pictures, but for some pretty good ones check out the umlaut blog.

Primal Raw Cat Food

So I've been introducing my cat to a raw food diet for a couple weeks now. A little bit on the benefits of feeding a raw diet as opposed to a dry diet can be found here. Basically it boils down to feeding your pet the diet their body has evolved to best digest, which is the closest thing they would be eating in the wild. For cat's specifically, that means a no grain, high meat, high moisture diet. At first I started off with the chicken medallions from Nature's Variety. He eventually took to them but it always took a bit of time for him to eat the whole thing. He'd literally eat all of the Grandma Lucy's (which is an amazing freeze-dried grain free food that you rehydrate with warm water)around it and pick at the little patty last. I'd heard that cats take a little longer to get used to eating raw food, especially if they're used to eating nothing but kibble. No surprise! Kibble is sprayed with fat and other things to make it tasty after the extreme heat cooking process kills off all the flavor. That, and domestic cats are notoriously picky eaters. Recently, I was given a few bags of Primal Beef and Salmon formula for cats and just started feeding it on Saturday.

I found that the easiest way to portion out this food, since you need to serve it completely thawed, is to wrap each nugget in the bag in tin foil, and transition one piece from freezer to fridge at each meal. That way, by the time feeding time rolls around, I've got a thawed piece ready to go and an easy, low contamination risk method of thawing the next one. I never have to touch the raw thawed meat, which is good for me on more than one level!

So, the transition has gone excellent. Poe took to the new beef and salmon formula surprisingly quickly, and he looks great from the amazing benefits it provides! His coat is softer, shinier, and he sheds less! He's got renewed energy like a kitten. And this may sound gross (but helpful for pet owners) there's less poop! I've become a big fan of both the freeze-dried and raw diets and would be more than happy to help anyone out with a transition from kibble!

Ladies Night at Dominique's

Our friend Dominique threw a Ladies Night gathering last Friday night. Bringing together all different types of women and creating new relationships between them over wine and loads of good food is sort of her specialty. Dom has one of the most amazingly deep, giving, and loving spirits of anyone I know.