Had a wonderful dinner last night with some newish friends who live in a swank apartment up by the college campus. We ate wonderful pasta with chicken and drank cold red wine and talked for a very very long time. I was really out of it for most of the evening, my cold comes on pretty strong in the evening so I was a bucket of sneezes and sniffles the entire time. I'm pretty sure my face was all swollen up as well.

So we watched Repo Man which I had never seen, and it was fucking great. I really liked it, there were so many lines that I had heard people use before from that movie. My favorite was "What about our relationship?" To which Emilio Estevez replies "Fuck that." Totally great.

Had a nice day in the city today, driving around everywhere and actually having pretty good parking karma. Picked up a couple new CDs at my brother's record store while we watched him help customers at the info booth. "Do you have an indie rock section?" "No." "You should." I think he has that conversation 20 times a day.

If this was my file photo, I'd be very sad that I looked like a 14 year old kid who didn't know how to comb his hair. What a bad, bad picture.

4:38 pm. Which means 22 more minutes of pretending I have something to do at work today. I guess it's been one of those days all around. Then it's home for a sweet, blessed nap. I haven't napped in awhile, it too often puts me out for good the rest of the night, but this afternoon's sounds mightily sweet. After that, Miss Rodeo America and I have been invited to dinner and a movie with some friends. Sweet.

This weekend will be the first in a month where I won't be out of town. I'm slightly looking forward to it so I can do all those pestering things like carry the big broke TV down into the garage and move our old futon into the storage space. I tried to make a haircut appointment to get rid of my near-mullet do which is threatening to take on the official title of "rocker hair." However, my "stylist" has the flu so I have to wait until *next* weekend. Off into the kinda grey yonder.

Damn, it feels good to be in a band again. The show last night went, really, really well. Even better than most of the practices we've had. Something was just *on* last night, mostly at the beginning during the slower, softer songs. The show was on the 2nd floor of this faux Irish pub (complete with the unhappiest barman in the universe who only smiled when someone mentioned U2), in a tiny room with little red lights and a little red curtain behind the stage. It was roomy up there for the 5 of us, which was nice since we didn't have to cram together. Things started to fall apart around 11:00 when we realized that we probably wouldn't go on until after midnight, but once we got on stage nothing really seemed to matter.

It was raining hard and long last night, as I was loading equipment into my car I stepped in a huge puddle and my foot stayed wet the entire night. Pretty nasty feeling to feel this squishing in my shoe when I walk. Last night would have been better if some of my friends had shown up. It would have also been nice if the people who did show up were able to stay for our set. It was definitely an evening of highs and lows, high because I was playing music again, low because nobody was there (except my biggest fan) to witness my joy. Sometimes I wonder what the point of creating something is if the people you care about don't care to share it with you.

So I’m logging out of Blogger, the software I use to update this site from anywhere I am, and over in the “recently updated Weblogs” section was a site that had the same name as my Blogger password. It took me a second, thinking that somehow someone else had the same site title, until I realized that my password and my site title were completely different. Weird. It was almost like seeing your name somewhere you weren’t expecting, and then realizing that it was a completely different person. Also like when I open Photoshop and the first name listed under the developers is Jeff Beckley, so of course I always think that somehow the dead singer/songwriter Jeff Buckley was also an Adobe engineer.

It’s been pretty slow at work today, I walked out past the loading dock outside to our yellow zone to watch the rain fall down on the trees and parked cars. These two SUVs were parked in our loading zone (illegally), so I looked into them. Both were unlocked, and one had a laptop and a dozen CDs sitting on the passenger seat. I was tempted, but I don’t have the stomach for thievery so I let them be and then put big “NO PARKING HERE!” notes on their cars. For a second, I was tempted to take a parking ticket I had, stick it on one of their cars, and then hope they paid it for me not realizing that it wasn’t for their car. Then I realized they’d be able to find out who put it there and I quickly shelved my money-saving scheme.

So Radiohead won a Grammy last night for best alternative album. Good for them, although I didn’t watch the awards due to, well, their meaningless-ness. I doubt that’s a word, but I’m sure it’s understandable nonetheless.

I wasn’t watching the awards, instead I was at band practice trying to get my Moog to work right. I hadn’t played it since November, so it was a tad rusty and took upwards of 45 minutes to warm up. In the end, I got it sounding good. Just in time for my first show with my new band tonight. I’m pretty excited for two reasons, I haven’t played a show since November, and I’ve never played this venue before. Wish me luck.

So after practice last night I turned on the radio to listen to the hockey game and drove up to yuppie-central to score a decent burrito. I obtained my tube-food item and sat in the car outside the organic food store and watched these two indie girls stack apples up in the window. I couldn’t tell I they were an item or not, they seemed to be having a good time in there. They were very careful and precise about their apple stacking, making sure that their pyramids were perfect. I drove home and sang Belle & Sebastian songs over the bridge and felt really, really silly.

New MP3 of the week, only 1 day late. Not bad for an vacationer like myself. I have a bowl of mac n' cheese in my lap that I should finish before I watch the Sharks game tonight.

This MP3 comes from Sweden's most recent big failure in the U.S., Kent. These snotty rockers adore themselves, but also make some really great guitar pop/rock. This song is a great B-side from 1997. Enjoy.

Being back at work after holiday is pretty bad. The pharmacist filling in for the regular guy is listening to "stock talk" radio really, really loud, and I have to clean up the mess made while I was gone. Curses to temporary employment! I should really get a new job. I need to do something much more creative than, oh, say a creativity level of "0" here. You could hire hamsters to do my job if you got all the Habitrails hooked up right so that they could reach the counters.

Phew, that was some driving. It's semi-late, and we just got back from the Oregon trip. All in all, a wonderful time with some wonderful people. I tried taking some pictures with my I-Zone put I got some of that caustic paste all over my hands, so I apologize for lack of adequate documentation. I almost finished my book (Graham Greene's Brighton Rock), and I got about 7 new albums on minidisc. I was also lucky enough to get the Rally Boy demo, which is actually quite good and impressive. If I knew how, I'd MP3 of the week it. Speaking of which, I know it's a day late, but I'll put the new one up in a few. First, a few things I learned on the trip of somewhat importance:

• The new U2 record is not so much good.
• The new Madonna record is even worse.
• The smell four people make sleeping in a crowded, closed room is really nasty in the morning.
• I'm the worst poker player ever.