beautiful, funny, sad & true

Today is the one-year anniversary of BFS&T. Actually, to be more accurate, it’s the one-year anniversary of this incarnation of it, because I’ve had a MySpace blog of the same name for two and a half years longer than that. I still use it for a few things, but this one has definitely taken over and become the main one.

Lots has happened in the last year. I learned how to take much better pictures, for one thing. This year’s ‘best pictures of the year’ entry will be quite a step up from last year’s.

This year’s musical accomplishments have been a step up, too. The Young Immortals–whose CD I produced and played on–have had a song picked up by WorldFamousCoffeeCompany, and radio play all over the country. There are even some radio stations in France and Ireland who love and play TYI. There are teenage girls who make videos of themselves singing TYI songs and posting them on WebSiteThat’sLikeTV. This past spring, summer and fall, I made enough money at music-related endeavors that I could have quite easily lived without my day job. Too bad about the whole winter season, though. There’s always a huge drop-off then, and I’m still trying to figure out how to make things happen in that time.

Cello-ness has been steadily improving as well. This year has seen the cello become one of the primary instruments I’ve been called to play, both live and on various recordings. That has caused a certain amount of anxiety for me, since some of my friends are among the best cellists in this town, but I’m also not stupid enough to turn down great opportunities that come my way, either. If it’s something I can play, I play it, and I appreciate every gradual step up.

Romantic relationships continue to be a bit troublesome for me. The one this past year was one of the ones that really changed both of our lives, though, so I suppose I shouldn’t complain too much. As one of my friends likes to say, “You’re just making room for the one that’s the right one.”

Overall, I’d say that things are going really well. Goals? Yes, I have a few. Keep improving myself as a person and as a musician, take more ‘chances’ in my life, TRAVEL MORE, reach out more and be a better friend, take my music career to the next level (and figure out what I want that next level to be), and also to take better care of myself.

Oh yes. . .and of course, to keep blogging steadily. I expect you to help keep me accountable in these endeavors.

Here’s to the next year!

J: Are you at a zoo, surrounded by chimpanzees?

me: No, I’m at Lloyd Center [mall in NE Portland], and there are a bunch of screaming kids everywhere. It’s pretty much the same thing.

J: (laughs) That’s hilarious. You should put it in your blog.

You have to love cell phones.

One time I was hiking in the Columbia river gorge, along a dirt road that was covered with leaves. I called my brother to say hello. A couple of minutes into the conversation, my brother asked me, “What are you doing? Are you crunching potato chips right into the phone?”

“No, why?”

“Because it sounds like you’re doing that.”

“No, I’m hiking. Those are leaves.”

“Oh man, that was so loud I couldn’t even hear what you were saying.”

The moral of the story is that I’m not going to buy another Motorola phone. Mine isn’t even a cheap one, but the sound quality is terrible. I don’t recommend them; in fact, I recommend against them. They also make this buzzing sound that never goes away. Almost every single conversation I have goes like this, at some point:

them: “Hey, do you hear that noise?”

me: “Yeah, it’s my phone.”

them: “It’s really annoying. And loud.”

me: “Yeah, I know; everybody tells me that. I hear it too.”

them: “It’s kind of a buzzing sound.”

me: “Yeah, I know. It’s my phone.”

them: “Man, that’s loud. You should go get a new one.”

me: “I know. This one sucks. It was expensive, but it still sucks.”

them: “Wow, that’s really lou–”

me: “Yeah, I know. Can we talk about something else now?”

Here are some pictures from the geocaching trip that Todd and I took the other day.

rock from Lake Tai in Suzhou, China

Vista Street Bridge (a.k.a “Suicide Bridge”)

Todd

Does this T-shirt/long-sleeved T-shirt/hoodie/jacket combination make me look fat?

very tricky and ingenious

Todd likes blondes, no matter how small or how plastic.

Todd also likes counting bricks in elephants.
Don’t ask me why; it’s his way.

wild goose chase, but at least it was
a pretty wild goose chase

This week has been very strange and emotional. Been to visit MostRecentExGirlfriend in the hospital a couple of times, and I’m planning to go again today. Suffice it to say that I feel very churned up by all of this. She’ll be out in another day or two, and we’ll see how she fares. I have all my fingers crossed, my legs crossed, even my eyes are crossed hoping that she’ll be okay once she’s out and on her own again.

In other and better news, TossedIn and I did more geocaching yesterday afternoon. There are lots of good pictures to come. Mine are ready, but T also took a bunch, and I want to be able to include them too. Well, okay, here’s one:

Portland has a whole bunch of water storage reservoirs scattered throughout the parks in the city. There are two or three in Mount Tabor Park, and then there are others in Washington Park too. This one is in Washington Park, and it’s empty. I’ve lived here for twelve years, and this was the first time I’ve ever seen one empty. I don’t know if that means we’re having some sort of water shortage, or if the tank is just being cleaned or something. The angles and shading caught my eye, so I took a bunch of similar shots.

Came home, ate dinner and laid low for a while, then T and I met up again to go see the movie The King of Kong. Totally brilliant and hilarious; I recommend it whole-heartedly. You don’t even have to be a video-game geek to enjoy it, but it will certainly help if you are one. It’s more about the nature of competition, and the sacrifices people make, and the lengths to which they will go to be on top. Classic line, that won’t ruin it for you: “Some people waste their whole life trying to get in [to the Guinness Book of World Records].” Yup, great movie. Loved it.

Gotta clean up and make another hospital visit now.

Like I wrote about the other day, there’s this new thing called geocaching. Okay, maybe it’s not that new, but it was new to me, at least. Todd was telling us on the way that people who don’t know about geocaching are called ‘muggles’, which I think is lame. Why can’t this game have its own separate lexicon of terms instead of borrowing from Harry Potter? I mean, I like HP and everything, but it seems kinda cheesy to trivialize this game by associating it with something that it has no need to associate with. But that’s neither here nor there.

The short description of the game is that it’s a scavenger hunt. You use the GPS to find the pre-arranged destinations that are posted on the web site. It’s easy to get kinda geeked out on the technology, but the best sites will take you to interesting and amazing places where you normally would never go, and you never know what they’re going to be like. All you know is the set of coordinates, and maybe a few hints from the web site, but that’s about it.

So on Sunday, Todd, Ben (another actor/theater director from the play-reading group) and I headed out. We met Hunt (yet another actor/theater director) and he joined us for a search too. He had his daughter with him, so he could only join us for one, and this was the one.

This is Ben, by the way. The panda thingy was hidden inside the rock wall you can see in the background. It’s actually a little box with a notebook inside, where you log your visit and then take a trinket from inside the box (leaving something in return, of course).

So we went from there to a couple others down in Lake Oswego. Really beautiful place, and there were several different ‘caches’ in the park. The first one was up the hill a bit, buried in some shrubbery. The newly-fallen leaves and pouring rain made this one particularly challenging.

After that, we followed the trail down into the main part of the park. I love this picture.

Todd said it reminds him of the end of the movie Being There, which I remember hearing about, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen.

From there, the game took us to a bridge (but the hint said ‘don’t cross the bridge’). So we found that one, and then headed over to the best and most challenging one of the day, by far.

This park apparently is the site of the oldest iron smelter in Oregon, and it’s now the oldest surviving one in the western United States. This particular ‘hunt’ required us to read the informational signs in order to work out the next clue. Todd’s classic comment of the day was, “Oh shit. . .we have to do math.” So we worked it all out, and it took us to this amazing place.

Left to right, is me, Todd, and Ben. I love our ‘vini vedi vici’ pose in this picture. We were thrilled to have succeeded after all that scrounging, and we were exhausted, freezing, and soaking wet, but with a bunch of great memories, excited to head out again very soon.

I know I’ll be going back to that particular park again sometime, just for fun, because it’s so beautiful and interesting.