beautiful, funny, sad & true

Today I stayed home sick.

Called in at 8:00 and said I was going to be home today, got up at 9:00 and had a bowl of cereal. I still could barely keep my eyes open, so naturally I thought about coffee. My very next thought was, ‘What I really want is sleep, not coffee.’ so as soon as I finished my cereal, I went right back to bed. Slept until 1:30 in the afternoon, and I feel much better for it.

Then I got up for real and made French toast. And I’d like to take a minute to say that a day in which you get to have breakfast twice is like an evening that has two completely separate and beautiful sunsets.

After that, I spent the day working on a new MySpace site, doing three loads of laundry and cleaning my apartment. I did the dishes and vacuumed and seriously cleaned the living room. I even took apart, cleaned and vacuumed the heater vents. (The heater vents!) They were pretty nasty and full of dust and gawd-knows-what else. Quite an improvement, I must say, but it made me realize that I’ll need to get a new vacuum soon. Mine’s kinda starting to show its age.

Tonight is the first time my friend Susan (who’s an amazing flutist) and I are having a rehearsal for this tango band we’ve been talking about starting for ages. Neither of us is in a hurry, and we’re both super busy, but we both love tango so much that we want to do something with that love. So she’s going to play flute, and the occasional baritone sax, and I’m going to play accordion, and the occasional cello. We’re looking around for arrangements, and creating a few of our own, and it’s going to be a blast.

Since it was the last working day pre-Easter, we all chipped in and had a potluck. Which was fine, but the real fun came when one lady brought in Peep candles. We suddenly regressed to being a bunch of five-year-olds, and this was the result.

Oh, and today was my Yearly Performance Review. It consisted of my former supervisor, my new supervisor, the head honcho boss, and me. It went well. We all agreed that I’m intelligent, resourceful, resilient, open-minded, likeable, communicative, slightly unmotivated, and I could use my time more efficiently. And considering the changes I’ve been put through this year (three new positions in the last five months), everyone agreed that I’ve handled things surprisingly well, all things considered.

It was a really nice weekend, but really super busy at the same time.

I took my cello in for Part One of a two-part major overhaul. It’s getting lots of little things fixed and upgraded, and it’s going to get its body re-glued, because the glue’s so old that the thing is barely able to hold itself together anymore. Having that fixed will make a huge improvement in the sound of the instrument, and all the other little fixes will help with its playability. It will sit at the correct height and stay in tune better now; both very important things. Part Two of the overhaul will require major surgery on the fingerboard and neck, and will be much more expensive, so I’ll have to save up a bit for it.

We did more Susie Blue recording with Jason Roark last Saturday. We tracked drums, accordion, and hand claps. After I got home and unloaded my car, Kelly and I went to Urban Outfitters, and I got a cool new pair of pants. Very exciting. I was supposed to go to a show that night, but I was pretty beat after working hard in the studio, so I went back over to Kelly’s, intending to crash, but instead we stayed up really late, drinking chardonnay and watching “Young Frankenstein.” (That’s FRAHNK-en-shteen. . .)

When I got home on Sunday morning, I spent the next two or three hours washing, vacuuming, and detailing my car. Afterwards, I sat in the sun on the front steps of my building to eat lunch, when Kelly arrived. She walked over to Lloyd Center to look for some new clothes, and I met her after my laundry was done and I’d taken a shower. We walked around for a long time, and were both exhausted by the time we got home, so we took a nap while listening to the jazz trio rehearse next door. Pretty dang nice way to spend an afternoon. Then she went home and I went over to rehearse with Stephanie.

Came home all jazzed after having two cups of tea over at Steph’s, so I watched the first episode of the new This American Life TV show. What an amazing program. As a long-time devotee of the radio show, I’m glad they’re doing the television version the ‘right’ way. It has everything I like about the radio version, plus some other elements that just aren’t possible to achieve on the radio. Well done. And as a hopefully interesting aside, did you notice the show’s tag line? ‘Funny, real, surprising, unscripted, true.’ Don’t forget ‘beautiful’ and ‘sad’!

This week is getting a little crazy. (So crazy, in fact, that I can’t seem to keep up with my blog entries!) Rehearsal with Crystin Byrd, CD release with the Young Immortals for the Starbucks compilation, gig with Stephanie Schneiderman, cello back from the repair shop, and rehearsal with Jaime and Becky.

Next week should be a little less crazy. . .

Next time you’re at Starbucks, and you happen to be looking at CD’s, be sure to check out Off The Clock. Cause I’m on it!

No, I don’t work at Starbucks, but the drummer for the Young Immortals does, and when they were taking submissions, he sent in the song “The Fever”. Naturally they loved it, cause it’s an amazing and incredibly catchy song. Jake (the band’s songwriter) and I played all the instruments on the recording. He wrote the song, sang, played drums and most of the rhythm guitar parts, and I played bass, keyboards, piano, organ, and a couple of electric guitar parts, including the solo. It was recorded at my old apartment. When Jake wrote the song, I knew it was golden, because I couldn’t sit still or stop thinking about it from the moment I heard it.

All the guys in the band and I are very excited about this opportunity. It’s huge exposure, for sure, because this CD will be heard all over the world, and help take the Young Immortals to new and greater heights.

It’ll be available on Tuesday, April 3rd. Heck yeah!

Spent a few hours on Saturday playing drums on a couple of songs for the next Susie Blue CD. Total blast. We’re recording with Jason Roark, at his newly completed home studio. Great guy, who’s doing a great job. (Incidentally, that’s the same place where the Pete Krebs Trio is in the process of recording their CD as well. To refresh your memory, go here.) I’m really excited to hear how it all turns out. The most exciting thing of all is that there’s finally going to be new stuff from Susie! This album is going to sound very different from her last one, but I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.