Author: skweeds

2025 late checkin

Posted on by skweeds

Hello 2025… and goodbye 2025 in a little over a month. 😅

It’s been quite the year! I got to do Loons on the Lake Comedy Festival, North Carolina Comedy Festival, and soon Blue Ridge Comedy Festival.

At the start of the year, I created a new show, Pictaboody.
The concept is that comedians draw cards and do Pictionary and Taboo of the words on the cards, they then have the opportunity to riff on the topic from the card, then they do their set.
It was really fun, but my mom had a health scare so I put it on indefinite hold to spend more time with her.

She is okay now (at least she has recovered from the pneumonia) and fortunately I have been able to spend more time with her.
This year we visited Italy, Mexico, France, and stopped in Monaco for about 2 hours.

My partner Will and I did a group tour of Morocco this spring, which was amazing. We went to Tangier, Tétouan, Chefchaouen, Fez, Casablanca, Marrakech, and a few others over 11 days. The tour was with G Adventures (who I did my Canada trip with last year), and I recommend them highly.

Morocco is beautiful, the people are very kind, the food is great, and there are cats everywhere.

We saw the oldest university in the world (in Fez, founded by a woman!), visited the 2nd largest mosque in Africa in Casablanca, I ate a camel burger in the blue city of Chefchaouen, went to Atlas Studios, filming location for movies like Gladiator, The Mummy, Asterix & Obelisk, and Christopher Nolan’s new film “The Odyssey”, Ait-Zineb where Game of Thrones was shot, rode dromedaries (like camels, they’re great because they kneel on the ground so you can climb on more easily), and camped amongst the sand dunes in the Sahara.

Fortunately 3 of the people on our tour were nurses, unfortunately Will got heat exhaustion, so we also got to visit a rural hospital. It was not as advanced as an American hospital but they were great and took care of him.

We had some issues when we first arrived (got stuck in Spain for a night, then they lost our luggage), so I was delighted to find they speak French there and I was able to communicate fine.

Anyway, I’m not currently running any shows, but I hope to get started soon.
Not sure what big trip we’ll plan for next year, but I’m looking forward to it.
I turned 40, and other than the fact that I need progressive lenses now and my knees crack when I move, I’m feeling pretty good.

Maybe I’ll post here again soon, maybe I won’t. If you want to follow me, my instagram stories and my X account (both @skweeds) are where I post the most.

Hope everyone reading this (i.e. no one) is doing well!

2024 checkin

Posted on by skweeds

So, since I don’t update this as often as I should, here’s an overview of what’s happened in the last year.

2023: in April I got wrist surgery, which was awesome. The pain isn’t going away, the mobility isn’t coming back, but at least they took out my crumbling lunate bone (literally, crumbling) and replaced it with one made from pyrocarbon. I’m bionic. My surgeon was in Houston, so I got to visit several times, and it’s a pretty awesome city. I recommend visiting the Color Factory.

I was awarded an artist residency at East Austin Comedy Club, which took place in June. I tried to get on Kill Tony but failed. When I returned to Knoxville, I got to perform on my first Don’t Tell comedy shows, both of which sold out.

In July I won the “Spicy One-Liner Contest” held by Tiny Stage, which was lovely. I also had a guest appearance on the “Food Addict” podcast, hosted by Anthony Quinn. He passed away suddenly a month later. Rest In Peace.

In August I got to open for Zane Lamprey, a great travel comedian & drinker. This was exciting because I saw him as a fan a few years earlier, when I saw he was coming back I reached out to see if I could get a spot on the show, and I succeeded!

In November, I opened for Tom Dustin in Key West and got to perform for many family members and family friends, which made my mom very proud. I also got to perform on the Deliciously Nothing podcast, to which I’ll be returning on April 13th.

In December, I performed in the Blue Ridge Comedy Festival, which was a lot of fun.

I got to perform many times at Ale’ Rae’s, which has been great. In February I got to open for my favorite comedian of all time, Stewart Huff, and we talked after the show for 3 hours, and it was one of the best nights in my whole life.

I’ve been hosting weekly at Two Doors Down in Maryville. We started 4/23 last year and ran Sunday shows until August, when we moved to Wednesdays. Wednesdays didn’t go great, and we switched back to Sundays in January which has been going quite well.

It’s Wednesday, March 6, 2024 as I write this. On Friday I’m flying to Fort Lauderdale for JoCo Cruise. It’s supposed to be nerd-mania, which excites me. I get back 3/16, and I’ll be hosting the open mic on Sunday 3/17. The following weekend, I’ll be going to Key West to see my sister perform in “Murder on the Orient Express,” and I’ll be back to host the open mic Sunday 3/24. The following Monday-Friday I’ll be in New Orleans with my mom and her friend Jimmy and his boyfriend and his boyfriend’s boyfriend. I should see if I can hop on a show somewhere. No travel planned for April, but in May I’ll be going to Amsterdam with Mom for 3 days, then back to Arles. Might do some European train travel, might not. Back to the US on 5/17. At some point in late May or June I’m going to try to visit my aunt and uncle in New Mexico.

Shows: Watch “The Curse” on Showtime, it’s amazing. “I’m A Virgo” is stellar, too, and “The Vince Staples Show” is interesting so far.

Movies: “Poor Things” and “American Fiction” are both laugh-out-loud hilarious. “Oppenheimer” was good, but I didn’t love it. Didn’t see Barbie.

Books: “An Immense World” by Ed Yong is outstanding. Working on “Antkind” by Charlie Kaufman and loving it.

That’s it for now. One day I’m going to update this website and my online store(s) and alllll the things, but today is not that day. Until next time! Here’s the 2024 flyer I made for shows at Two Doors Down.

Spring 2023 Update

Posted on by skweeds

I don’t really use this blog anymore, but i SHOULD, so I’m going to try to.

New show alert! Starting April 23, 2023, I host a weekly open mic at Two Doors Down in Maryville, Tennessee. Maryville is about 20 minutes south of Knoxville, so if you’re in Knoxville, you have no reason not to come out! The open mic is every Sunday except the first Sunday of the month.

Evistr audio recorder disk error fix

Posted on by skweeds

This is Amanda! I do comedy! I also care about computers.

I had a tech issue and I couldn’t find an answer on google. Maybe I’m the first person to have this issue, but I doubt it. I’m certainly not going to be the last. So, since I figured it out, I’ll post this and maybe some day it will save someone else some time.

I have an Evistr L36 audio recorder. There’s a slot for a micro SD card, but the device has a built in 16gb hard drive.

I needed a small hard drive for something else, so I reformatted it and used it for my other project.

When I finished, I went into disk utility (I’m on a mac) and reformatted it, hoping for the device to go back to its intended purpose, but every time I turned it on, it just displayed Disk error! I tried resetting it, but nothing changed. The manual just said “For Disk Error, reformat on Windows computer.” I’m on a mac.

I had to reformat it a few times before I figured out the right settings, and here they are:

if you have an EVISTR L36 digital voice recorder that’s showing “Disk Error”, to format it back to its original settings, go to disk utility, for Name put in “USB DISK” (I don’t know if this is necessary, but this was the name of the disk before I first formatted it, back when it worked). Under Format, select MS-DOS (FAT). Below that, for Scheme, select Master Boot Record.

Run the reformat, unmount the device, turn it on, and it should be working. Make sure you correct your time and date!