beautiful, funny, sad & true

This past week was one of the best and most memorable of my whole life. I had the opportunity to tour with Breanna and Justin through the American West, and let me just take a minute to say that it was a total blast.

The cast of characters:

Breanna

Justin

and me. :)

Breanna and I both took hundreds of pictures on this trip. After I get done with the entries for the individual days, I’ll post another entry called ‘Best Pictures of the Tour’ or something. But you’ll find that out for yourself soon enough, I suppose.

So here we are, van packed, ready to hit the road.

Somehow it became our ‘thing’ to pose for every group picture twice; one in which we pose normally and the other in which we pose ‘gangsta’. Yeah, I don’t know what’s wrong with us either, but it did make for some funny pictures.

One other thing that’s important to know about Breanna and Justin is that after a year of friendship, they recently started dating. This, by the way, is awesome and gets my full blessing.

Okay, so on with the story. We started the tour in Eugene, Oregon, at a pizza place with a cosmic theme. We shared the evening with a duo from Los Angeles called Homesick Elephant.

They were really great, and super nice people as well. Their music was very influenced by Simon and Garfunkel, in a good way. One of their songs is entitled “Ghost of Philadelphia”, which is actually a phrase that Justin had randomly said earlier in the day, so we both kinda perked up and looked at each other when they sang that line in the song, as if to say, ‘Did they just say that? That’s so weird.’

One of the waiters had a very funny and effeminate way of inhaling through his teeth while he was thinking of something to say.

For example, when we asked him about good places to explore, he answered, “Well. . .sssssss. . .try going downtown–” which Justin and I immediately adopted and incorporated into our own speech patterns for the rest of the trip. The three of us walked all over downtown, and went shopping for clothes at Buffalo Exchange, but somehow we ended up empty-handed.

There were two guys in the audience who kept making me laugh. One guy was drunk by 5:30, while we were arriving and setting up. He came in to have some pizza and sober up, but he kept having difficulty sitting up straight, while dealing with his duffel bag at the same time, so I kept trying to surreptitiously take a picture of him. Here’s the only one that actually came out:

There was another guy who sat right up front and clapped for an uncomfortable (and slightly creepy) length of time after every single song. You can see what I mean from this picture:

He seemed a bit loaded also, but harmless enough. He was just a little bit weird, that’s all I’m saying. But the night was a blast, and the show went off without a hitch. Afterwards, we backtracked and drove an hour back up north to Salem, to stay at Breanna’s aunt’s house.

It was the perfect way to start a tour.

OneYearAgo

One of my musician friends hates the phrase ‘mixed bag’, but I’m going to go ahead and use it (albeit with my tongue planted firmly in my cheek), because that’s what this week has been. After a debilitatingly sad couple of weeks, I’m finally feeling able to go and do all the things I normally do. Wednesday night was the play-reading group, and I feel like that’s what brought me back to life. The play we read was the story of a quirky pianist (so naturally I played piano) who had lots of children, and the story was set in an Irish Catholic neighborhood of Chicago, around the time of Prohibition. Very well-written and humorous, and I got the honor of reading the lead role. After that, two of the guys from the group and I went out and talked, and shared a basket of French fries, and caught up on each others’ lives. It was nice, and genuine, and I appreciated it.

Thursday I raced over to my favorite new sushi place to meet Genie-Wa. She’s here visiting her mom and interviewing for jobs so that she can move back here again, which I for one am very glad about. Her rental car was a white convertible, and after some trial and error, we finally figured out how to put the top down. Perfect timing, too, because the seemingly interminable months of shitty, depressing weather are finally starting to break here in Portland, so I’m sure she’ll have plenty of opportunities to race around and enjoy it.

As we were heading our separate ways, my hospitalized friend called. Since she doesn’t have a phone in her room, she has to walk clear across the building into a public area, and sometimes there are people milling around, and other times the place is empty. Sometimes people are using the phone, so she has to walk clear back to her room and try again later. She spends most of her days sleeping. Weekends are particularly long, because the doctors aren’t on duty, so I’m going to go visit her this morning, actually, before my afternoon cello gig and evening accordion gig. These will be the first shows I’ve played in over two weeks. I had to back out of four different gigs since this happened, but now I feel ready to play again.

Last night I went to Slabtown to see three bands; Lasers All The Time, Shim, and Hockey. All amazing. I already had Hockey’s CD because the drummer works with me. I first listened to their CD in my car, and I was so impressed with it that it stayed in constant rotation (as they say in radio jargon) for two weeks.

I was supposed to meet my dad for breakfast at 9:00 this morning. Around 8:00 I heard a strange tapping on my door. It wasn’t a knock, but it sounded like someone was tapping my door with something wooden, or maybe metal. Freaked me out, because strange knocks that early in the morning, particularly in my hidden apartment, are almost never because of good news. So I nervously opened the door, to find my dad on my doorstep. “Would you believe. . .I’m early?” he asked. Sheesh. Naturally, my place is a complete disaster area, because I haven’t been home for the last three nights, and I just rearranged my furniture and everything, so I felt nervous about the early-morning knocks, and also about the disarray of my place.

The visit went okay, though. He asked about my friend, and asked a bit about what our relationship was like, and how she was doing, and seemed (somewhat uncharacteristically) empathetic and understanding. But again, he was nice, and genuine, so I certainly appreciated that.

I’ve noticed quite a few blog visits from two different places recently; one of which is in the Portland area, and the other is in the Bay Area. I have a pretty good idea of the places that the regular readers are from, and of those of my friends who read this blog, but these are both new ones. If you’re one of the long-term readers of BFST, you’ll understand why I raise an eyebrow at sudden bursts of energy like that. That’s all I’ll say about it.

Took my cello in for a quick and easy repair the other day. It has a ‘wolf’ tone, which is a common affliction for cellos. It’s hard to explain, but certain notes make the body vibrate excessively, and the horrible, warbling tone it produces when that happens is called a wolf. I don’t know why it’s called that, but I’m just glad that it’s minimized now. They never completely go away, apparently. The repair guy said that the cello instructor at the main university here in town has a cello that’s worth nine hundred thousand dollars, but it has that wolf tone, which was minimized by sticking a piece of a wine cork down between the body and the tailpiece. So funny, and now I have one there too.

And now it’s time to drive out to the hospital.

OneYearAgo

I just got home (it’s 11:00 at night as I’m writing this) to find that I had a ton of hits today from a link on AOL. I checked it out, and sure enough, there it is. Top of the list. Ay-Oh-Freakin’-Ell. That’s huge exposure. The funny thing about it is that out of all the witty, insightful, emotional and heartfelt entries here on BFST, which one do you suppose the bots linked to?

This one; one of the lamest non-entries in the entire blog.

Figures.

It’s as if they’re bringing a news crew to discover the Next Big Thing. The crew turn on the lights, the drumroll begins, and the announcer-slash-supermodel says, “Okay, America, here. . .he. . .IS!” They knock on the door and I answer, surprised, blinking and squinting and raising my hand in front of the bright lights and cameras, disheveled and unshaven, wearing boxer shorts and a ‘Makin’ Bacon‘ T-shirt.

I say, “Uhhhh. . .hi?” with the rising inflection, looking around for a place to hide. “I’m kind of. . .uh. . .I never wear this shirt. Can you guys come back in an hour? I’m just. . .gonna–” I gesture with my thumb toward the back of my apartment building. “I gotta go.”

What I’m trying to say, by way of China, is that if you’re one of the people who clicked over to my blog from AOL, welcome. I have the sneaking suspicion that it wasn’t what you were expecting to find, but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless.

It’s been kind of a rough week.

Work has been super stressful this week, because one of the people in my department has been on vacation, and we’re pretty much down to a skeleton crew anyway, times being what they are.  I’m also pretty much broke from an expensive car repair and a high phone bill.   When I get stressed out and exhausted like I have been, the answer to every question is ‘No!’, even if the question is, ‘Hi, I’m a beautiful girl.  You look like you could use a hug.  Would you like to go out on a date?  My treat.’

On my way home for lunch today, I had six different cars pull in front of me, or run a stop sign, or box me in on the road, or something.  All in half an hour.  AND I still have to drive back.  Yeesh.  My nerves are kinda shot.

Luckily last night’s rehearsal with Lara was a blast.  We learned a Beatles song; one of their trickiest, in fact.  We got it sounding pretty good last night, but we each need to woodshed and tighten it up a bit on our own, and then we’ll rehearse again right before the show next Friday night.  The show with Susie on Wednesday was also a blast; I’d go so far as to say that it was one of our best shows.

There’s a story I’m working on that is an extremely rare subject for me to write about.  I had an experience about ten years ago that I’ve been trying to think of a way to tell here.  I was inspired by one of Tossed In’s latest entries, but I’m not quite sure how to frame it, or how to put it all into just the right words.  It’ll come, but it’s gonna be tricky.

And now it’s time to brave the traffic and head back out into the world again, after a much-too-short respite.  This month can not be over with soon enough, as far as I’m concerned.  Thank gawd for the three-day weekend.

OneYearAgo

Pretty dang good weekend.

Spent Friday evening with Joan.  We intended to watch a movie, but it took so long to make dinner, and we had such a late start, that she ended up leaving after that.  Saturday I cleaned my apartment and did about a million loads of laundry, then I had a gig with Susie, and we stayed out too late drinking and talking.  Sunday I talked on the phone a lot, and then finally got the new tubes put on my bike.  Went to meet Joan again after all that, and we went to a good, cheap sushi place on Northwest 21st, then decided to go see The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.  It was a very touching and emotional movie; many people in the audience were sniffling or choked up.  I certainly was.  I can’t wait to read the book, and I highly recommend the movie.

Yesterday I took the day off from work, in order to play accordion on a radio show with Breanna and BassistChris for the Local Music Spotlight show.  As soon as Breanna posts the song on her MySpace page, I’ll post a link to it here for you to check out.

When you first walk into the building, there are five large-screen televisions in the lobby.  I turned to Chris and gestured to them.  “Wow, there sure a a lot of TV’s for a radio station,” and then we both turned around to see the huge sign proclaiming NewsChannel 8, the NBC TV affiliate.

We played two songs, and were done and out of there in about forty-five minutes, with CD in hand.  Apparently the songs will start being played on the air in June, at approximately the same time that the radio station’s compilation CD – on which one of Breanna’s songs will be featured – will be released.  After we were done, we went and had sushi at the same place Joan and I had been to the day before.   That’s how good it was.

I rode my bike to work today, which was the first time I’ve been on a bike in about two years.  It felt great.  That is, it WOULD have felt great if I’d eaten dinner last night, and drunk any water at all, and gotten more than four hours of sleep.  I totally bonked as soon as I got to work, and instantly gulped down three bottles of water before even having to use the bathroom once.  (Don’t you just love my blog?)  Ate a huge chicken burrito for lunch, and kept drinking water for the rest of the day, which made the ride home MUCH easier.  I’m not gonna lie, though.  I’m pathetically and comically lazy and out of shape, ever since I got my car.  But not anymore.  It’s a whole new spring, and time to shake off this lethargic winter.  This experience was a reminder that there’s a right way to exercise, and that I have to plan in advance in order to have enough energy reserves to do what I want my body to do.  Looking forward to a lot more riding!

And much more spring.  After many freezing weeks, it looks like spring is finally going to come, and the weekend is supposed to be hot and beautiful.  I, however, will be in Port Townsend, Washington, to play accordion with Fenbi, the Irish band.  I’m sure it’ll be just as beautiful up there.  Love that town.  The best pastry shop I’ve ever been to in my entire life is there.  Why, that would be the Tyler Street Coffee House; I’m glad you asked.   If I lived in Port Townsend, I’m sure I’d weigh four hundred pounds from eating there all the time.  So f’ing good.

Today at work, a friend surprised me by giving me six CD’s.  They’re almost all by groups I’ve never heard of, too, which makes it even more exciting.

I find myself, again, at a loss of how to tie up all these little loose ends, and come up with a really good name for this entry.

Well, since this was just a plain old good weekend, all around, I suppose that means that the name should be. . .