I woke up to find some very nasty–and anonymous–comments on a couple of my blog entries. Not my favorite way to start the day, but it’s dealt with now, and I’m over it.

The good news is that I just got back from having breakfast with my friend Jack, who I haven’t seen in fifteen years. He lives in Spokane now, and I obviously live here, but we both used to live in Yakima. He’s in town for the week, visiting a friend, so he called this morning to see if I wanted to meet for breakfast. I was just waking up, but I jumped at the chance to see him. We went to Milo’s, which is one of my favorite restaurants in town, and also happens to be right down the street from my place.
(Incidentally, today they had a special eggs benedict at Milo’s, with shrimp instead of ham–or smoked salmon, which is my favorite breakfast–and with Thai curry mixed into the hollendaise sauce. Jack and I both ordered it, and it was mind-blowingly good.)

Oh, right. . .Jack.

Here he was, back then:

and here he is now:

It was fun reminiscing about some of those old times. Former bands we were in, and what everybody’s doing now, all that kind of stuff. Seems that a lot of the musicians we knew have had difficult or tragic lives since then. One in particular has had quite a hard go of it. Many are still in Yakima. One of them–who I’ve actually been talking to also–is now in Seattle, making a decent living as a Professional Musician With A Day Job, like me. (Hi, Brandon!)

After we finished at Milo’s we walked back here and talked for another hour or so. We played each other some music we’ve worked on, and I gave him a Crystin Byrd CD. Jack’s a very intelligent, hilarious and genuinely good person, and I’m really glad he was able to make some free time and get together. It certainly won’t be another fifteen years, I’m sure of that.

Tonight is another gig. I’ll be playing cello, I think. I say ‘I think’ because one of the tuning pegs on my cello is slipping again, when it’s in a warm room. It doesn’t happen all the time, but often enough to be really annoying. I’ll take it into the shop this week. Luckily it’s a really cheap and easy fix.

Anyway, yeah. Should be a really good day and night.