oscar = clunky.

[baseball games during hockey season] :: I've re-named the cat "Clunky" during his rehabilitation period, due to the fact that he bonks in to anything and everything when he tries to walk around the house. He's gotten very good at sleeping, since it doesn't involve moving.

Today we're going to head on over to the city (with my camera) to see if the Giants can win their first World Series since moving to San Francisco in 1958. Beer, burritos, and baseball await.

[sign on the door says no company allowed] :: So, after repeated listenings of The Freewheelin'... while driving around Sonoma County on Wednesday, I now hereby declare that I am in my Dylan phase. I obtained 6 (six) of his records that I didn't have already today (none of that Greatest Hits nonsense) and am prepared to overload come next Wednesday. I figure seven days of Dylan is enough harmonica for a lifetime, then I can get back to my well-established Steve Earle phase.

Oscar the cat came in limping late last night, so we took him to the vet today. After backup had to be called (it took four people to hold him down just to inspect the wound) and much yowling and complaining, he came out of the back room with a bandage covering his entire back right leg (it was cut up from an assumed fight), as well as the dreaded kitty satellite dish collar. I'm going to assume this is a rite of passage for our kitties, but it's sure hard to watch him keep walking around backwards in a circle. He really has no clue what's going on, and it doesn't help that Bunny keeps batting him in the head with his little healthy paws. Cats can be bastards too, you know.

Breathtaking.

Fucking Right On.

[it's like doing carbon dating on blocks of gold] :: So I've been trying to shake the feeling for about a month now that time is flying by, but I'm not really going forward. I think it's actually the realization that this is what your mid-20's feel like, getting so comfortable at your job that you can do it in a half sleep, but at the same time hating the feeling that you've become a rent paying machine.

That's not to say that I haven't found just about complete happiness with my life. Hanging out with the kitties, watching bad movies with MRA on the couch, playing and recording music two or three times a week, and cranking out record reviews while at my day job are all things that make me feel incredibly content and lucky to be alive. I guess it's just the feeling that I'm not being creative enough for my own good, and that's it's become harder and harder to feel that rush of excitement I used to get by simply going out of the four square blocks I called home in college. Now those four measly blocks seem to stretch across the U.S. and I wonder if I could get that travel rush by getting out of the country.

But then again, it scares me that something horrible might happen, and *that* will be what gets me out of this fog.

I wonder if those who didn't go to college feel like this sometimes, or if they just have a greater understanding of what life's really all about: paying rent and staying content on a daily basis. Happy, but curious.

A very happy birthday to my Miss Rodeo America! (Note: Photo not current, duh.)

[i missed going through the holy hay maze] :: Today's been wonderful so far. In fact, this entire weekend has been pretty good-intensive, except for my major life-threatening headache I somehow got late last night. Yesterday I went over to the new Amscray practice space over in San Francisco, and got some more four-tracking done. It was pretty satisfying to be able to lock myself in a room for three hours and come out with some new music. This is something I'll have to do more often.

After eating a burrito so big that it almost ate me, Miss Rodeo America and I spent a good four hours lounging around on the couch, reading military histories and watching the Giants play in the World Series. After their victory, we decided that a night out on the town was what we needed, so we hit up the yuppie/hipster central Mission District for a few pints of PBR. While walking from one bar to the other, we saw men pissing in the street, a woman so skinny I don't understand how she doesn't blow away, and a beefy suburbanite attack a homeless man and beat him to the ground. Sometime after that, while sitting in a cozy booth at one of our favorite out the way bars, my head began to hurt so bad that I thought I might puke. It was time to head home.

Today we took a drive up to Sonoma County and picked up some great jug wine at the Martini & Prati winery. They make this preservative/sulfite free wine that you keep in you fridge so it lasts longer. The makeup of the wine changes every couple months, and it only keeps for a couple weeks, but it's tasty stuff and good to have around the house. After that we took the small two-lane backroads home, and stopped in at a pumpkin patch way up on a hill overlooking one of the many valleys in Sonoma county. The first thing we did was head for the petting zoo where we fell in love with a calf, watched a little girl get knocked over by a huge cow turning her head, and pet a sleeping piglet. We then pulled fresh pumpkins off their vines (none of this buying them from the grocery store nonsense), purchased some homemade cheese, and jumped back into the car and sped away down the gravel road and back towards home, listening to The Shins and watching the livestock walk around in the fields outside the window.

Tonight it's more World Series action, eating pears and cheese and olive tapenade, watching a very bad movie, and hitting up the jug of wine. La vie est très, très bon.