beautiful, funny, sad & true

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

This is a really busy week. . .not that I haven’t had plenty to talk about, just haven’t had time to tell about it. Saturday I went and had an awesome breakfast with my friend, and then went to KBOO to record an episode of JBJ’s radio show, which will be aired next week.

Tuesday night I made a nice, improvised dinner for my friend of tofu, bell peppers, tomatoes, garlic, and basil leaves, in a blackberry teriyaki sauce, stir-fried and served with rice. It didn’t come out like I expected, but it was really good nonetheless. Then I went downtown to see a show that featured many of my actor friends. It was very entertaining, and quite the combination of elements. I took lots of pictures; when I have more time I’ll post a few. After the show, a handful of us went around the corner to Ground Kontrol, where we played Rock Band for the first time. I played drums. It was really fun, but a bit weird, too, if you already know how to play the instrument in question. A few guys came up after our song and said, “You’re a real drummer, aren’t you? I could tell. You were using the pedal and everything!” Hilarious.

Last night my friend and I went to sushi and then went looking for a raincoat for her, and then the rest of the time I spent cleaning up after the cooking extraganza the night before. I also watched the movie DIG! after that, which is excellent. I’m definitely planning to watch it again before I return it.

Tonight after work, I’m driving down to Salem for a cello recording session, doing the session (as long as it takes) and then driving home. Tomorrow after work, I’m driving to Yakima for the weekend, to play a gig, and to see a couple of friends. Again, I’ll write more about all of this when I have some more time, and after I have some pictures to show for it.

Why ‘ouroboros’? Because I’ve been so busy lately that the feeling of chasing my own tail isn’t quite enough. . .by the time this weekend is over, I will have caught up with myself, and I may actually find myself able to eat my own tail.

Ew.

Anyway.

Carl Jung is rolling over in his grave right now.

OneYearAgo

Okay, so that good story I was promising.

I’m not quite sure how to tell it, but it involves two accordions and a member of the Decemberists.

So at the show on Friday, there were three groups. The first was a group from Alaska, the second was Susie and the band, and the headlining band was the person whose CD release party it was. I was quite happily surprised to find out that DecemberistsAccordionist was playing in the headlining band, because I think she’s really great, and finally I’d get the chance to meet her and tell her so. It’s also gratifying, in a different way, because I get the chance to be on par with lots of the people who I’ve looked up to for a long time, as a participant instead of merely an observer. Making good connections and new friendships like that is always a great feeling.

Accordions are like cellos, in that they’re fairly uncommon, and people tend to use only their own for years on end. Whenever you get the opportunity to play someone else’s, you tend to take it. She wanted to try my accordion, and I wanted to try hers too, so we did, and it was really fun. She’s got a really nice one too; very small and light and easy to play, and sounds very much like a musette. Mine’s huge and heavy, but it has a wider variety of sound possibilities.

There was an impromptu bluegrass jam session happening backstage in the green room, involving DecemberistsGuitarist, DecemberistsAccordionist, MississippiStudiosJim and a really amazing girl fiddle player. I could have listened to that all night. CellistSkip joined them too, and then they asked for different songs. I was sitting and listening–not playing, because there was already an accordionist involved–and then Skip started playing “Comfortably Numb” by HugelyFamousPinkEnglishBand. I grabbed my accordion then, and started to play the really high violin part, in harmony with what Skip was doing. Super fun and hilarious. The real show always takes place backstage.

By then the first band had finished, and it was Susie’s turn to play, so we went out onstage. Sounded great and felt great, but on about the third song, one of my accordion straps broke. I ran off stage and grabbed a chair to sit on, but it was still pretty much impossible to play. The song came to an end, and I told Susie what was up, and ran offstage again. She started to tell a story, I think. I don’t really remember, to tell you the truth. I was too busy freaking out.

Jim took a look and said, “Maybe we can fix it,” but we couldn’t. It had snapped in the fatal spot. I asked for DecemberistsAccordionist, but she was nowhere to be seen. Someone went and found her, and she very generously allowed me to use her instrument for the remainder of the show. Extra special mega-thanks to her for saving the day.

Tonight I’m taking it to the repair shop for some new straps. Can’t live without the accordion at all; it’s my bread and butter instrument, and yes, I do know which side the butter goes on.

Saturday I drove up to EmeraldCity to play guitar with Brandon and the band. It was really fun, as usual. His mom happened to be in town. I didn’t recognize her at first–it HAS been fifteen years, after all–but she refreshed my memory, and she’s a really sweet lady. So our first two sets were flawless, but by the third set, my pedalboard started acting up and losing power. Sheesh! Two weeks ago, the metal screw that tightens the hair on the cello bow broke. Friday it was the accordion strap. Saturday, the pedalboard was freaking out. What’s next?? Never mind, GearGoblins, I don’t want to know.

After the show, the three of us went to FamousRestaurantThatRhymesWithPennies. I got back to LittleBrothersHouse at 3:30 a.m. It was a really great time all around.

My mom was also at LittleBrothersHouse this weekend, and I haven’t seen her for a few months. It was a really good–if short–visit, and you’ll be glad to know that on Sunday we made Mister T sandwiches. I swear those things are going to catch on.

CatZooey is back with her owner now. It was great to have her staying here, but it’s also nice to have my place back. I spent last night cleaning like a maniac. I still have more to do, but it’s quite an improvement over the way this place has been lately.

So yeah; quite a weekend, indeed. Here’s to plenty more just like it.