beautiful, funny, sad & true

The night of plays. . .was awesome. Definitely one of the most fun and interesting things I’ve ever been a part of. No pics of the actual play yet, but here’s one of the cast-and-crew ‘after’ party.

The night was so much fun that words actually fail me. I made a new Seattle friend at that party. We’re there in the back left corner (I’m the short one dressed all in black), and I think you can tell by our posture that we’d rather be talking to each other than to the person we were talking with right then.

I washed my car for the first time in ages on Saturday, then today it rained AND I parked under a tree, so it’s already covered with crap again. But even that looks much better than it did before. Hopefully the rainstorms will come again tonight and wash it again for me.

I have a couple more days of down time to enjoy, and a play reading night, and then I’m busy with mixing and gigs and helping friends move and more gigs, and a trip to Yakima for a wedding, and all kinds of other stuff, every day and night for the next two weeks.

I need to learn how to end my blog entries. I’ve learned how to name them, now I just need to learn how to end them, and tie everything together in a nice way. I feel like some of them have been abrupt or left you hanging.

Not this one, though. This one has a neat, tidy little ending, if I do say so myself.

OneYearAgo

This month is effing crazy.

First twelve days of the month, I have only one day with nothing extracurricular planned. Then I have a few blissful days of nothing–besides work, that is–before the craziness starts in again. From the 16th on, I have only four ‘me’ days.

It’s like, play rehearsal, play rehearsal, gig, play rehearsal, play rehearsal, actual play, nothingnothingnothing, gig, out of town to mix a CD, friend’s birthday, gig, gig, gig, out of town to be best man in friend’s wedding, nothingnothingnothing.

So that’s why I’ve been a little more scarce lately. I’ve been traveling at close to light speed for this whole month.

OneYearAgo

Sorry I’ve been away for a few days. I’ve been meaning to write, but I’ve been busy every single night for the last two weeks. Between the multiple rehearsals for the play, an impromptu recording session with Steph, working a full day every day, it’s just been exhausting.

It’s been crazy. Go to work, go out for lunch with work friends or other friends (like today), come home for an hour or so to eat (or sometimes not), then go either out with a friend, race to a play rehearsal, or off to a gig. On Tuesday, RockShowGirl and I had dinner together here at my apartment, and then she came with me to Stephanie’s recording session–which, incidentally, was great!–and then I dropped off her off and got home at around 11:45. I checked my e-mail really quickly, and saw that Tossed-In was online too. He saw that I was on and called me. We then spent the next hour talking about music and ‘flow’ on the evening of the play, so I finally went to bed at one in the morning.

So yeah; lots of long phone conversations, lots of working, lots of playing, lots of rehearsing, lots of gigging, and it’s not even the weekend yet. Tomorrow I’m working a half day, then driving an hour and a half to visit my dad and stepmom. I’m staying overnight there, then coming back to town on Saturday morning in time to grab my cello and race over to a rehearsal for Bryn Loosely’s CD release party, which is Saturday night. Sunday afternoon is play rehearsal in the middle of the afternoon.

Right now I’m supposed to be getting ready for tonight’s Breanna gig. I’d love to be able to take a shower (woke up too late this morning) and play the cello for a while, but a little bit of down time will help immensely. If I’m lucky, I may just be able to squeeze in all three things.

Last night’s St. Patrick’s Day celebration was a total blast.

Played accordion with that pseudo-Irish group I play with occasionally, and I have to say that we totally rocked the house.  The other two bands were total yawners and will remain nameless–partially because I don’t even know their names!–but we had the place packed and the people dancing and singing.  The violinist and I did a bit of Irish dancing too, if you can call what we did ‘dancing.’  Try doing that jig thingy where you jump up and cross your legs behind you while wearing a forty-pound accordion, and after drinking two glasses of wine.  Good times.  My legs and shoulders are certainly sore today!

One guy in the front of the crowd noticed us sweating up there, and seemed to take it upon himself to cool us off by using his straw to spit mouthfuls of cold soda on each of us.  You could tell that he wasn’t doing it in a malicious way, but I’ve never seen anybody do that before, ever.  Gross, but still kinda funny at the same time.  Jeez, dude, if you’re that worried about our hydration, grab us some glasses of water instead of spitting on us.  But whatever.  All is forgiven.

Tonight and tomorrow are rehearsals for StephBand.  Friday is our first show in six months, because Steph was so laid out after masterminding the Uganda shows, and then she spent the next few months collaborating with an electronica guy.  We get to hear on Friday what they’ve been cooking up all this time.  Can’t wait.  And can’t wait to play with everyone again.  I can’t believe that six months have already passed.

Incidentally, I’d like to express my gratitude to those of you who wrote and commented on my previous post about using powers for good.   It seems that I needed to be reminded of a few things, and to take some of the pressure off of myself again.  And incidentally, when Bill Cosby’s name is invoked in a discussion like that, it stirs up things deep inside me, you know?  I was raised on Cos, and to this day I think he’s brilliant and under-appreciated.

So that’s what’s what.  I’m off to rehearsal!

This is a pretty intense weekend.

Last night was a Breanna/cello/violin gig, and it was incredibly fun. A couple of friends who either haven’t been to a show in ages, or who have never been to a show came out last night, including TossedIn. Nice night, all around. On the way out, I ran into one of my old friends from my previous apartment building, which was a great surprise.

Tonight is another Breanna gig–minus ViolinistKarlee–down in Salem, which means I’m going straight from work and driving in rush-hour traffic to try to make it down there by 7:00.

Tomorrow morning, I’m meeting my dad and stepmom for breakfast over here at Milo’s, one of my favorite spots. From there, I have a recording session with TheShinsEngineer at noon. From there, I have an gig playing accordion on what will very likely be the last Crystin Byrd gig for quite some time, because she’s very pregnant. From there, I’m meeting one of my oldest friends–should I say ‘longest friendships?’ It’s not as if she’s ninety years old!–who is down here from Seattle to visit her Stumptown friends. It promises to be quite a long and interesting day.

I don’t know what it is about leap year that I find so intriguing, but I do. Perhaps it’s the lunatic (as in ‘saturnine’, ‘martial’, and ‘lunatic’) connections that it has with the moon’s cycle; I don’t know. Maybe I don’t need a reason. Maybe I just find it intriguing. I’ll have to do a little bit of investigating. Is it unusual to have a lunar eclipse so near to the leap year?

Answers another day.