beautiful, funny, sad & true

As those of you who are among my Twitter minions (or ‘Twitches’, which is the hilarious term that my friend @barrington coined) are already well aware, there is a smallish group of us at work who curtailed our usual activities in order to work in the basement.  It’s not filing, exactly, but it’s not much more difficult than that, and it’s way too boring to waste any more space describing here.

I told you all that to tell you that when you work in close quarters with people for eight hours a day, you tend to talk to each other about lots of subjects that had previously been undiscussed.  The majority of the people working downstairs are women, who either already have children or who are trying desperately to have them, so I now feel that I know way more than I ever wanted to know about dilation and labor and episiotomies and all that.

But it isn’t ALL glamorous.

We do talk about lots of other things too, and a lot of the time we enjoy being down there and it makes the day pass much faster.  I learned something interesting last week, when one of the women claimed that the ‘inner’ female reproductive system could be drawn in the shape of a cute little bunny.  I had to see this for myself, so she pulled out a pen and a sticky note pad and drew the following picture:

In order to salvage some dignity for my blog and hopefully still retain a compelling sense of mystery, I will leave the parts unnamed, but I think you get the picture.  If you don’t, uhh. . .well. . .I guess you can have your parents explain it to you or something.  This is a hilarious idea, and if I remember correctly, she did say that she used this to explain the very basics to her daughter when her daughter got to a certain age.

So there, you see?  Despite the fact that I haven’t been able to listen to any CD’s or NPR (not to mention all of the music I need to learn by St. Patrick’s Day to perform with IrishBand) for three weeks now, being in the basement has provided many opportunities to learn new and interesting things.

As I find out more, I’ll keep you posted.  You know I will.

I don’t normally like to do ‘filler’ blog entries, but I’ve been too busy to write. With all apologies for the long time gap between entries, I’m going to have to ask for your prolonged patience. This has been, and continues to be, a very busy week. In a good way.

I’ll be celebrating two birthdays tonight and tomorrow, AND rehearsing with IrishBand. Sunday I’m sleeping in and listening to This American Life, then meeting with a guy who wants me to produce one of his songs, and THEN I’m seeing a movie with a new friend.

I’ll letcha know how it all goes, and hopefully even manage to take a few pictures. It promises to be a great weekend.

Today was, quite frankly, hellish.

The company at which I work was recently bought and taken over by a (formerly) rival company.  Originally, my company was split into three different ‘brands’.  Today we got word that the company that bought us is planning to close one of those three brands, and that Friday will be the day of reckoning.  This means that quite a few of my friends are going to be on the dole.

For a while, we thought that they intended to close the entire department that I’m in.  It wouldn’t surprise me if they do that, to be honest, but at least we made it through this round.  For me, the timing would be spectacularly bad, but then again, I don’t suppose there’s ever a really good time to lose a job.

So yeah.  Between thinking I was heading for unemployment, and then finding that no, a bunch of my friends are heading for unemployment, I just feel like I’ve been tied in knots.  It was an emotionally challenging day.

And by the way, I still have something in my eye; the same thing that was in there yesterday, in fact, and it hurts like effing hell.  Someone told me today that a “crazy but good” way to get things out of your eye is to pull your eyelid away from your eye by pulling on your eyelashes, then plug your nose, and then blow.  Yeah, I know.  It didn’t make any sense to me either, but I did give it the old college try, and I’m here to report that it was ineffective.  Apparently, rather than being ‘crazy and good’, it’s just crazy.

Sorry for the long lapse between entries.  I had a super busy and fun weekend, and then an incredibly busy and stressful week so far.  On Sunday night, IrishBand’s drummer came over and we recorded the drum tracks for another song, then I recorded the bass part and worked out a few guitar parts.

Tonight I have rehearsal, and my cohorts will be here pretty soon, but I did want to check in and give you an update.  And now I’m going to eat dinner and shut my eyes for a while until my friends arrive.

Was today frickin’ Christmas and nobody told me?  I got so many random gifts, it was absolutely unreal.

At work, my friend LC sent me an e-mail that said, “Are you here?” and then showed up with a bag full of CD cases.  There must have been twenty-five or thirty cases, and in each case was three CD’s!  I mean. . .oh my GOD that’s a lot of CD’s.  And best of all?  They’re all 80’s metal.  (Except for maybe a handful, like the New York Dolls and At The Drive In.  But otherwise. . .)  Seriously.  I was shaking, I was so excited to start listening to them.  After listening to the inauguration speech and a little bit of the commentary, I got through two Dio’s, a Mötley Crüe, and At The Drive In.

So then I called my mom while I was on my lunch break, and she happened to be over at her friend’s house.  This friend is my adopted aunt, by the way, who recently tracked us down on the net after we’d all been out of contact for almost thirty years.  Turns out that she lives about two blocks from my mom, so she wrote to my mom a few weeks ago and they’ve been reconnecting and spending incredible amounts of time together, which is mind-boggling and also makes perfect sense at the same time.  Naturally, my mom passed the phone to her, so I got to talk to her too.  In fact, here’s a picture of us together, which was taken when I was about a year old.

It was. . .I mean, I was practically speechless by then.

But there’s more.  My friend VL-W sent me a message which said, “Come in and see me when you can.  I have something for you.”  We were super busy, so it took me about an hour and a half, but when I was finally able to make it in there, I found that she had a super-cool black bowler hat waiting for me, which was the same one she let me borrow the other night at the IrishBand show.  She said that I could borrow it until I got one, but then wrote back right afterwards to say, “You know what?  I always think I look like a dyke in that hat, and you totally rock it.  It’s yours.”  Again. . .oh my GOD.

So I got home and there were two copies of the new Susie Blue CD waiting on my doorstep for me.  I’m in her band, and on this CD, which looks great and sounds great.  The other copy is for GuitaristDavid, my neighbor and friend, who also played on the CD.

Oh yeah.  The Susie Blue CD’s were resting on top of a box from my mom, which I didn’t even know that she’d mailed!  It  was full of new towels and kitchen stuff that she just randomly got just because she’s nice that way.

So. . .between the 75 new 80’s metal CD’s, the Susie Blue CD that I’m on, the hat, the box of housewares, the fact that Barack Obama is president now, AND I have an IrishBand show-slash-Obama-celebration tonight which is gonna frickin’ RULE. . . could today be any better?

I suppose that if I didn’t have to work (and work overtime at that) it would’ve been better.  But then again, if I hadn’t gone to work, I wouldn’t have the 75 CD’s or the hat.  So there you go.  Pretty damn good day, if I do say so myself, and it ain’t even close to being over yet.

Riding my bike home from work at night:  check.
Riding without lights of any kind:  check.
Riding without a helmet:  check.
Riding home at night, without lights or helmet, while wearing a black hoodie:  check.
Riding home at night, no lights or helmet, with said black hoodie, carrying a bag of groceries:  check.

Yup, I’m officially an idiot.

In other news, IrishBand is doing a write-in interview for MessengerGodAlternativeNewspaper.  I need to somehow get enough energy tonight to whip up some compelling, insightful, and hopefully witty and intelligent answers to their questions, many of which are political in nature, rather than just musical, so they’re not ones I can just answer automatically.

First of all, dinner.  I’m going to attempt stuffed bell peppers, but I only have energy for chips and salsa.  Perhaps some chips and salsa while I’m making the stuffed peppers.  Hmmm. . .I like the sound of that.