confirmation

funny, music, Portland 1 Comment »

Riding my bike home from work at night:  check.
Riding without lights of any kind:  check.
Riding without a helmet:  check.
Riding home at night, without lights or helmet, while wearing a black hoodie:  check.
Riding home at night, no lights or helmet, with said black hoodie, carrying a bag of groceries:  check.

Yup, I’m officially an idiot.

In other news, IrishBand is doing a write-in interview for MessengerGodAlternativeNewspaper.  I need to somehow get enough energy tonight to whip up some compelling, insightful, and hopefully witty and intelligent answers to their questions, many of which are political in nature, rather than just musical, so they’re not ones I can just answer automatically.

First of all, dinner.  I’m going to attempt stuffed bell peppers, but I only have energy for chips and salsa.  Perhaps some chips and salsa while I’m making the stuffed peppers.  Hmmm. . .I like the sound of that.

best pics of 2008, BFST style

beautiful, blogging, funny, pictures, sad, true No Comments »

As I promised, here are my favorite pictures from this past year, in no particular order.

utahidaho2
The landscape between Utah and Idaho is vast, and seems quintessentially American somehow.

snowpath
This picture was taken outside the studio when we were mixing Andrea’s CD.  There had been a freak snowstorm overnight, and we all woke up to this beautiful scene. Amazingly, the snow was all gone by the afternoon.  We finished mixing the songs, and then I drove back to Portland and went on a great first date.  That was a good day.

reed3
Andrea had just read and been inspired by the book Blue Like Jazz, and she wanted to take a little hike around the campus of the college here in town in which the book is set. Though it has changed in the decades since the book was written, this was and still is a beautiful place to hike and explore.

shoreline6
This is one of my favorite locations to take pictures.  It’s an abandoned cannery town along the Columbia river. Sorry about the small size.

postcard
When Breanna and Justin and I were on tour in Reno, Justin was getting his CD mixed in Portland, and the guy would send Justin mixes via e-mail, for him either to approve or to request some small changes. After our show, he and Bre were listening to the final mixes, so I left and walked around for an hour, and took about a million pictures of the city at night.  Came back and listened for a while, and when they went to bed, our host and I stayed up talking for another hour and a half afterwards. That was my favorite day (and night) of the tour.

ktbj2
ViolinistKarlee, me, Breanna and Justin on our tour, after our show in Redding.  This picture just puts a smile on my face every time I see it.  Karlee is such a lil thug.

fullcar
This is my car, all loaded up with instruments to go to the studio and record my parts for Andrea’s CD.  I’m always amazed at just how much stuff this car can carry, despite its diminutive size.

daveknife
ChefDave, in an instantly classic pose.  I love the way the light is gleaming off the knife.  Incidentally, you owe to it yourself to eat at the Sego Lily Cafe in Bountiful, Utah, by the way, next time you’re there.  Dave’s food is phenomenal.

bw2
There are lots of abandoned military bunkers outside Port Townsend, Washington, and I could easily spend a weekend just taking pictures of them. I love the way the light interacts and contrasts from room to room.

astoria1
Ah, beautiful Astoria, Oregon, seen from the highest point in town.  That’s another place that provides an almost endless supply of photographic opportunities.

1
This picture I didn’t take, but it’s such a classic that it warranted inclusion on the best pictures of the year.  It’s the Cinemagic theater here in Portland, when they were in transition from the movie Hancock to the Dark Knight, and this was the sign change, in progress.

I love looking back over the year in this way. Even though this was a particularly difficult, painful, and challenging year, there were certainly plenty of good times too.

Here’s to a better 2009, though.

snowed in

beautiful, pictures, Portland, recording, sad No Comments »

This weekend we’ve had quite the snowstorm, which is extremely unusual for Portland.  I’ve lived here for almost thirteen years, and I haven’t seen snow like this before.

Yesterday I was supposed to go to a Christmas party in an eastern suburb of Portland, so I got my car all scraped off and warmed up, and it drove fine (six inches is not a lot of snow), but the air was so cold, and there was so much blowing snow that the windows kept freezing over, and I kept having to stop and scrape them off every few blocks.  That got old really quickly, so I called my friends and said, “I’m gonna have to veto this trip.”  They actually persevered and drove out, but ended up staying overnight (which RockShowGirl and I weren’t prepared to do; luckily we stayed home), and I just got a call from them saying that their car was stuck and that they were waiting for a bus.  Luckily, they just now caught one.

Earlier this afternoon, I wanted to take a walk and get some pictures of my neighborhood, on my way to ApparentlySafestGrocery, since this much snow is so uncommon.   The pictures I took didn’t end up being very compelling, but here’s what the neighborhood looks like.

snowyneighborhood victoriansnow

Some good Samaritan took the liberty of pulling lots of the wipers off of the windshields of cars, so that they won’t get frozen when the freezing rain starts.  Wait a minute. . .what am I saying?  It’s already started.

icedhonda icedcars

Most people are heeding the advice of the weather forecasts and not driving.  In fact, I saw lots of people who appeared to be out walking in the snow just for fun.  One family had a young son who decided to ski, and I thought that would make a nice picture, so I grabbed my camera, and as soon as I did, the kid fell face first into the snow.  I’m not gonna lie; it was hilarious.

eatsnow

So I ran my errand, bought my ingredients, and came back to make dinner, which consisted of mushrooms, red peppers, onions and garlic cooked in red wine, butter, salt and pepper.  The vegetables were then served over a bed of linguine.  (I’ve always wanted to say ‘bed of linguine’, can’t you tell?)  It may very well have been the best dinner ever.  You should totally try to make it yourself; it’s easy, delicious, sexy, and totally improvised.  You just start adding ingredients and seasonings to your own taste, and it’s perfectly acceptable to taste it while you’re cooking to see how it’s coming along.

So now I’m in for the night, but I’ll leave you with a short video to show you what it was like today outside my apartment.   The snow was falling, and the wind was blowing, and it was all very pretty.

The Plan for this evening is to get all bundled up and walk out to Broadway, to take some pictures of the snow and the Christmas lights.  Wish me luck!

OneYearAgo

multiple visitations

blogging, cello, music, pictures, recording No Comments »

Given the title of this entry, you might think that paranormal forces have been making their presence known to me, but unfortunately that’s not the case.  Sorry for my busy-ness and un-bloggishness lately.  Between DoctorLove being in town and Mom ‘n’ Stepdad staying with me, I’ve had precious little time for anything writing-related.  Suffice it to say that the weekend went well in every respect.

DoctorLove and I met on Thursday and walked around all the little shops on Hawthorne, talking and looking for gifts for her family and for her guy, after which we came back here for dinner.  J came over as well, and I cooked dinner for the three of us. . .tomato and avocado salad, with a main course of those mushrooms cooked in garlic and red wine that are absolutely to die for.  And some good bread on the side.  Nice.  We talked and laughed and caught up.

Mom ‘n’ Stepdad were good.  As you know, my mom occasionally reads my blog, but the visit was really nice.  Once they were settled in, and getting ready for bed and everything, I grabbed my cello and drove over to the party in DoctorLove’s honor.  A handful of the partygoers were musicians, one of whom is an excellent flamenco guitarist, so we had fun playing tricky flamenco songs (tricky for me, anyway!) until a second acoustic guitarist arrived, and then we bashed our way through a bunch of old Metallica songs, which sounded hilarious and incredibly good simultaneously, particularly the song Welcome Home (Sanitarium).  Here are some pictures from the night.  If only there were recordings too.  Le Sigh.

A good time was had by all, and I didn’t go home until around 1:30 a.m.

The next day was spent in pretty much constant motion, from making breakfast, to driving my parents around, to shopping at multiple places, to cleaning up and fixing some broken or leaky or clogged things in my apartment (extra super ultra-mega-thanks to them for that!). . .it was just completely exhausting.  I think I went to bed at 9:30 or something ridiculous like that.

Sunday came bright and early, and my mom had some specific presents she wanted to buy, so we headed to Hawthorne (my second time in three days) and got what we needed.  Came back, ate lunch, and then they hit the road.  I collapsed on my bed for a while, and was supposed to meet RockShowGirl, but I was beat and she was sick, so we talked on the phone instead, and planned to have dinner the next day, which, incidentally, we did.  That was yesterday.

Tonight Breanna and I are starting the recording process for her second CD.  This is very exciting, because I’m actually producing this one, instead of just playing on it like I did on her first one.

I need to get back to work now, but I did want to let you know that I’m alive, and well.  Just super busy, that’s all.  I know, I know. . .the thing about having one’s own blog is that one needs to write in it more than once every five days.  Heh.  Thanks for sticking around.

OneYearAgo

an ellipsis

blogging, music, recording No Comments »

Boy, has this week gotten away from me.  Sorry it’s been such a long time between posts, but this week turned out to be as busy as last week was, but I left off at the Ray LaMontagne show.  The next night, Thursday, I took the train downtown to see a poet who shall remain nameless, because while my two friends and I were very interested in him as a person, we found his poetry to be distant and unapproachable.  In fact, my two companions fell asleep for a while during one of his longer stories.  From there, Tossed In gave me a ride to my next engagement, which was Allanah’s birthday party.  Total blast, but I heard later from Mike that it ended in vomitous tragedy.

Friday night was a slightly odd IrishBand show, which took place at a firemens’ local union hall thingy.  Something like that.  A couple of the members play a sport called hurling, and their team of guys was getting together at the end of the season to have a party and give themselves prizes and awards.  One of the guys is a musician, and is a friend of our band, so he told the guys that since it’s an Irish sport, they should invite an Irish band to play.  So they did, and we did.  My favorite part was watching how Mike would change (or mumble) the more adult lyrics to some of the songs, since there were children present.  In fact, a few of the kids came right up and sat on the steps at the edge of the stage.  A girl who looked like she was about eleven sat right in front of me and watched the cello like a hawk.  (Hawkette?  Hawkess?)  She even made cello motions with her arm at one point.  After we were done with our set, I said,  “Do you play too?  You must.”  She said that she used to, and she’d played for about a year, bu then her cello got broken when it fell over or something, and it was never replaced.  I invited her to play mine, and she accepted.  She sat down and started making sound with the thing right away.  It was very fun to watch.

I actually had the weekend completely free, so I spent the majority of it sleeping, doing laundry, and watching episodes of Six Feet Under.  I hadn’t ever seen it until J loaned me the DVD’s, and now I’m completely hooked on the show.  In fact, we watched a couple of episodes together on Saturday night.  After she left, I watched two more, and then two more the next afternoon.

Monday was supposed to be a recording session with Breanna, but she had to re-schedule because she and Justin weren’t feeling well.  I offered the time slot to IrishBand’s singer instead, because we have a few high-profile gigs coming up, and we’re trying to get some music and promotional material posted on SpaceBelongingToMe by then.  We had dinner first, of pasta with alfredo sauce and smoked salmon, and then Mike recorded a new acoustic guitar track.  I then showed him how to run the recording software, and he manned the computer while I recorded a cello track, an accordion track, and a glockenspiel track.  We still need to add vocals, violin and percussion, but it sounds really great so far.

Last night was the Breeders show here in town, which JBJ and I went to for free, thanks to the tickets provided by the radio station that airs his music show.  We arrived during the second band, and were lucky enough to find a seat in the balcony.  There are only two rows of seats in the entire place, so we were very fortunate.  We weren’t impressed with the band that was playing when we arrived, which is to say that we talked with each other rather than listening to them.  They were called PaperCut or something, or maybe they were the PenguinSomethings band whose name I never knew.  I dunno.  Then the Breeders came out, and they sounded good, but I’m not gonna lie; we found our attention waning during their set as well.  We did get to hear them play “Cannonball”, though, which was really cool, then we decided to leave after listening to a couple more songs.

Tonight I’m home for a bit before meeting RockShowGirl, whose name may sound like one of those clever pseudonymic blogisms that I love so much, but it’s actually a variation on her name from SocialNetworkingSite, so it seemed apropos.  Anyway, she just went through a very strange and sudden break-up last weekend, which she’s still reeling from, so I want to go talk to her and cheer her up.  It seems like a movie might be in order.

Tomorrow’s a Breanna and Justin gig, and then Saturday is an IrishBand gig, so there’s still plenty on my schedule.  Next week may very well be even busier, because CincinnatiFriend is coming for a visit, and then Mom and Stepdad will be staying here the following weekend.

Phew.

Sorry for these many days of absence, and thank you again for reading all of this.  Now it’s time to eat something and figure out what RockShowGirl and I are doing tonight.