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Ok, wow. That show was nuts! I couldn’t have asked for anything better.

We (my sister and I) arrived near the end of the second DJ’s set (Dyloot) and just scoped the place out. We grabbed a drink and then picked a spot on the floor to soak it all in. Tiesto came out about 30 minutes after we got there and they did a seamless switchover. When Tiesto was on the tables, they splashed his name on the screens behind him.

The sound was incredible - you could feel it in your chest without a problem - and the lights were cool to watch (more so for some than others). Here’s some video I shot last night. The video is not bad but the sound really blew away my camera so once the bass kicks in it doesn’t sound good at all. (You can listen to a better version here.)

All the lights at the bottom of the screen are mostly other peoples’ cameras and phones (and some glow bands). I’ve clipped the video to not show much with the horrible sound, but you can get an idea of the energy involved.

I also got video of Tiesto doing his mix of ‘He’s a Pirate’ from the Pirates of the Caribbean, but the sound is so bad that I am not going to post it (email me if you want it). Instead, you can hear what it sounded like thru this video.

We saw all the expected characters one would find at a rave - crazy dancers, substance-friendly folks, lots of making out, and scantily clad bodies. Rest assured (mom) we were the boring vanilla patrons and we kept clean, but that didn’t stop us from being entertained.

If Tiesto comes to California again I am totally going to go. My sis is invited back (thanks for coming this time!) and I think we’ll try and recruit some others to go too. I mentioned before, these kinds of shows aren’t for everybody, but the energy is palpable, as is the music, and there’s not many feelings like it (at least for me) and I would recommend it to anyone who has ‘clubbed’ at some point in their life.

My sis and I are off to see Tiesto tonight in Sacramento. She’s made a big effort to come down from Seattle and we couldn’t be more excited.

I’ve embedded some videos for you to see. These will either make you jealous or think that I’m crazy. I think the third one is my favorite. I’ll let you know if the show is actually like that.

How long does it take you to unwind after a typical day of work? What do you do to unwind?

My unwinding process begins on the bus ride home. Then it’s usually close to dinner time when I arrive so my unwinding continues while we’re cooking and/or eating dinner. Other times I’ll watch TV, write for this blog, or go for a run. On average though with all these activities, it takes me an hour to decompress after a workday. Sometimes it takes a lot longer (after a nice afternoon of being screamed at, for example) but an hour is a safe estimate.

I would imagine that this is pretty normal (at least I hope so) for most of the corporate-employed folks like myself. I am curious about all this because I’ve been thinking about how much decompressing would be required if I was coming home from a difference environment. What if I didn’t have to work for a living, would I need to unwind then too? What if I gained great satisfaction from the work I performed, would I come home energized instead of tired?

These are things that aren’t talked about when you are a kid or when you’re in college preparing yourself for 40 years of employment (maybe longer). You probably experienced your family members - parents, older siblings - coming home from work all frazzled and grumpy, but there was little discussion about the process that is undertaken to be made whole again… Partly because it’s individual and the method is different for everyone and partly because by the time the grumpy-energy is spent talking about how much crap you had to deal with, you’ve got no energy left to live life, the good parts of your existence, the reasons (family, friends, love) why you go to work in the first place.

Anyway, I’m starting to wander a bit so I am going to cut it short here, but I’d like to revisit this in the future and I am curious about what you all think.

It’s been a while since I wrote about bathroom adventures (see here and here), but I just couldn’t let this one go…

I walked into the shared mens restroom at my office the other day. Oh, quick sidenote - our building, although it’s 80 years old, has been upgraded to feature energy-saving lights. I often ‘trip’ the light sensor as I walk into the bathroom, flipping the lights on making me feel like I’m the star of the show.

Well the other day was no different, I walked in and after a few steps, the lights came on and then I was surprised by a melacholy, “thank you.” Woah, where did that come from? Dude was sitting in the stall and must have been there long enough for the lights to turn off. I’m not sure what the time limit is… I’ve never been in there long enough for the lights to go out on me, but I am sure the limit is long enough for your average bathroom visit.

The first thing I thought was, ‘holy cow, how long does it take?’ I didn’t say anything to him while I was there and then left as quietly as I arrived.

Walking back to my office I was thinking about that guy and what his deal was and no matter what I came up with I felt sympathy for him. Maybe he was having a bad day and wanted to get away from things so he sought solace in the stall. Poor guy went to the restroom for some actual rest and they basically shut down operations on him. Maybe he was ill and was fighting something really nasty. I’m sure we’ve all been there. Or, there’s the more obvious answer.