This is a picture of a tree in my backyard. Spring is in the air and sprouting from the trees. :) Of course, along with wonderful blooming flowers the weeds have also returned with a vengeance. I spent some quality time in my backyard last weekend and on Monday night, pulling evil weeds. Simon spent some time outside with me, giving weeds the evil eye. If only his stare would have caused them to spontaneously combust. Click on his pic for a closer view.

I didn't nearly do as much SXSW as I would have liked. I just wasn't motivated enough to spend my downtime running around at night. Maybe next year I will take some days off and get a wristband. There were quite a few musicians that I would have liked to have seen. I did get to go to Waterloo Records and see Lilly Allen and Sparklehorse. I wasn't too impressed with with Sparklehorse but Lilly Allen was on after them and she has a great voice.

Lily's music has been called cheeky pop. I like it. Although some of her lyrics are a bit inappropriate, overall what she does works. I really like the music that accompanies the lyrics, which can be a bit sophomoric but she is aware of this. She is marketed as cocky but that part of her personality was not evident at the in store. She seemed a bit nervous at first, she played to a packed store. It may not have been nerves, she may have been tired, or just ready to perform.

What really sold me on her was seeing her live and hearing her sing a song by The Kooks called Naive. It was nothing like her music as it was a slow heartfelt acoustic song. It is painful for me to go to shows and discover that an artist is sub-par or the sound is messed up. She sounded great and was only accompanied by a young man on guitar. She sang a few covers as she did an acoustic show and as she said her music isn't really acoustic. I found a site where her version of Naive is located if you want to hear it. Go to Myspace to hear her songs.
http://www.zshare.net/audio/lily-allen-naive-radio-1-live-lounge-mp3.html

I thought of a funny story from my childhood last night that I wanted to blog about but then I promptly forgot it. Ooops. I just remember that it was funny. Anyway, this week has been going rather quickly, which I am thankful for as I would like some chill time. I think I am going to treat the yard this weekend so that some of the weeds will die. DIE WEEDS, die. Ehem. I hope to also do something fun this weekend but I don't know what that will be yet.

I am thinking about selling my camera and getting an SLR as I am just not happy with the time delay that I experience when taking photos. I am going to see if I have better luck with the manual function and then I will make my decision.

If music were measured by the pound then I have a few pounds of SXSW mp3s to wade through. I am going to try to weed through them and delete the chaff so that I do not clog my system with music I don't enjoy. I will post about some of the artists...eventually. :)