beautiful, funny, sad & true

I have to hand it to Tossed In for coming up with the best opening line of a blog that I’ve read in quite a while.

“Considering it was Hitler’s birthday, today was so-so.”

Cracked me up. And silly me for missing such a special occasion. How should someone celebrate that, anyway? What do you get for someone who’s responsible for the deaths of eleven million people? I ask you.

Anyway.

The mixing with Andrea went great, and we’re really satisfied with the results. Special kudos once again to DrummerAdam, who completely ruled on those songs, and every time I listen to them, I’m reminded of that fact.

Saturday I was awakened by a strange knocking sound. I got up and walked into the studio, to find a robin sitting in the tree outside the window, staring in at me.

I also couldn’t help but notice how much snow had fallen overnight, so I walked out front to find this tranquil scene:

I must’ve been quite a sight, in my long-sleeved T-shirt, pajama pants, and Doc Martens with no socks. Well, sometimes looking ridiculous is a small price to pay for the sake of Great Art.

I was the first one awake, since I’d slept (or should I say NOT slept?) in my sleeping bag on the floor in the drum room, so I dinked around online for a while, until everyone else woke up. Once they did, Andrea and I went for a walk through the golf course, to take pictures and just get some fresh air for a while, after being cooped up inside all the day before.

We both took about a million pictures, and good thing we did, too, because all the snow had melted by mid-afternoon.

After we were done with mixing, I drove the hour back to Portland, showered, changed my clothes, and then went on a really great date. We were lucky enough to get two rainbows; one in its actual form, in the sky - “Hey, that’s a good omen!” she said - and the other in sushi form; a rainbow roll. It was a wonderful evening - “Let’s do that a whole bunch more times,” I said - and here’s to a ‘whole bunch more’ weekends just like this one.

I just now found out I was in Ohio a couple of weeks ago.

Not in person, unfortunately, but certainly in spirit. That’s where Dori’s bachelorette party was, and Alyssa thought it would be fun to make a ‘miniature me’ so that I could be there too. These pictures Dori sent me just instantly put a huge smile on my face.

How I miss that conspiratorial smile! Portland just ain’t the same without you.

Can I just say how touching and awesome that is? Because it is. THANK YOU!

OneYearAgo

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

Tonight is the play!

Very exciting! Last night I went straight from work to rehearsal, by way of home to grab the cello, accordion and toy piano. Rehearsal was scheduled for 6:00, but since I went the ’smart’ way this time, instead of the rush-hour freeways, I actually made it there by 5:30. So many people were late or stuck in traffic, however, that we ended up starting at 7:00 instead.

We ran through the entire program twice, stopping occasionally to work out a blocking issue or a scene transition. I’m set up behind the curtain at the back of the stage, and I’m hanging out there pretty much the entire time, rearranging instruments and figuring out what I’m going to play for the upcoming scene. I’m pretty much improvising the music between scenes, but not for the plays that I’m actually in. Those two are pretty loose, but I do tend to play the same thing, because we needed to have everything match.

So we got through with the second run-through at 11:20, and the theater’s alarm goes off at 11:30, so we had to scramble to get clothes changed and get out of there before that happened. I got home about midnight, completely exhausted. Woke up early this morning and instantly had to do two loads of laundry, because all of my good black clothes were dirty.

It’s a sunny and beautiful day in Portland today, so I took the opportunity to wash my poor, dirty little car. It’s actually red again now. If I had more time I’d vacuum it too, but I need to relax, get cleaned up and head out to get set up for the show. I’m really looking forward to it, on its own, but there will also be a ton of friends coming, some of whom I haven’t seen for quite a while, so it promises to be an extra-super-mega-wonderful evening.

Oh yeah. . .there have been lots of people taking pictures throughout the process, so I imagine that I’ll be able to get my hands on some and post them on here before too long.

OneYearAgo

Life may imitate art, but dreams also imitate life sometimes too.

Last night, I dreamt that I was rehearsing for the play, and that it was completely chaotic, and nobody–myself included–seemed to know what was happening. So it was pretty much like last night’s tech rehearsal.

From there, the dream changed its location to a dusty basement, full of Tossed In and all the other actors. It seems we had thrown a party recently, but not cleaned up after it, so we were walking around in this basement looking at all of the stuff we’d left behind. Barbecue with the charred remains of animal of undetermined species, various dishes, cooking pots, wine bottles, everything was all over the place. Tossed In told me that if I could make a list of all the stuff that was down there, that would be great “because then we can delegate” people to clean it all up. “Okay,” I said, “but I won’t have any time to do it until after Saturday [when the play is over].”

Then I had an almost completely unrelated dream, in which I’m lying on the sofa in the same basement (the relation to the other dream stops there) cuddling with an ex-girlfriend who will remain nameless here. (It’s probably not who you think.) We’re not really doing anything, but my hand is underneath her shirt. We’re lying there silently for quite a while, when she gets up abruptly and says, “I don’t think so.” I make apologies, but she leaves. I stay on the sofa alone for a long time after that, feeling uncomfortable and remorseful.

It’s safe to say that last night wasn’t the most restful night I’ve ever had.