Category Archives: Love

Recording Has Begun

Music

Last night I went to TB’s house with J and the rest of the band to record. We didn’t finish until 11:30, and I was so wired afterward that I didn’t get to sleep ’til 12:30. And then Mr. Bread woke me up about nine times during the night.

I am so sleepy this morning.

When Bread finally came up to bed he flashed the overhead light on (I hate when he does that because it always wakes me up), then he woke me up a bunch more times between 4:30 and seven because he’s a cuddle freak who CANNOT HOLD STILL. He likes to move every 15 seconds or so, which drives me nuts. I startle awake when he puts his hand on my hip because I’m ticklish, and then I drift back off, and then he moves again, and I drift back off, and then he moves again… It’s a total pain. I wish I still slept like a corpse; it was so nice back then, sleeping through fire alarms. *sigh*

I’m thinking of trying that amino acid that’s supposed to help you sleep – I need to be able to sleep all night, and Bread’d probably throw a fit if I tried to sleep in another bed most of the time. I just sleep so lightly these days! I hate thirty-something; twenty-something was SO much better.

Anyway: recording. When I got to TB’s house around seven last night he was still setting up; he hadn’t known he’d be hosting the recording until about three hours prior and was busy untangling cords and plugging things in. I sat on the floor for awhile, studying a really strange-looking speaker made out of round tubs and solid state electronics (audiophiles and their crazy speakers!), until J and K showed up, then I waited around doing nothing until finally Snow showed up.
Continue reading Recording Has Begun →

Dear Local Hospital

Soapbox

You had your lawyers send a letter to LISCO Internet telling them that my blog post is in violation of LISCO’s appropriate use policy and Iowa defamantion law both, and you gave them five days to have the offending post removed.

However:

1. This web site is not hosted at LISCO. You (or your lawyers) would know this if you’d actually read through the whois results. Contacting LISCO directly has done your cause no good. It has only succeeded in causing most of Admin to read my blog (so now they all know waaaay more about When Miscarriages Go Wrong than they ever wanted to) and if you persist it may end up costing them money – like if they have to have their own counsel look into any of this. They’re my employer, incidentally, and if you make them spend money on this when they’re utterly uninvolved I will feel really bad.

2. I removed your name from the ‘offending post’ LAST FRIDAY. Apparently you didn’t even bother to check to post for compliance before emailing LISCO, who is not the site’s host.

3. I have added a meta tag to the post in question so that the next time it’s crawled by search engine spiders, it will drop off their search results. YOU WOULD KNOW THIS ALREADY if you’d checked the post or contacted me directly.

4. You’re a big dork, Local Hospital. Not only is your care substandard, but apparently you’re a bully, too.

P2P

Soapbox

This crap makes me crazy:

Movie studios want the US Supreme Court to rule that the developers of the Grokster and Morpheus P2P software should be held responsible for the illegal trading of copyrighted software using their technologies.

I realize that when you (believe that you have or will) lose money due to new technologies, you get pissed off. But holding the developers responsible is fucking nuts. Let’s step back, folks: could, say, RCA have sued reel-to-reel manufacturers in the 60’s when people started recording songs off the radio for the first time?

Ahem.

Judges expressed concern that making P2P software illegal could have a major detrimental effect on future software innovation and asked where the entertainment industry would stop in its pursuit of file sharers. Would they consider suing Apple because iPod users may be carrying around illegally acquired music, they asked.

Bless those clever judges. Those movie industry lawyers are grasping at straws.
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Sing, Sang, Sung

Music

After work yesterday, I drove home and made a huge platter of nachos for dinner, which Brett and I ate – as usual – in front of the TV. (Brett won’t eat at the table, which is why our dining table is pushed against a wall in the kitchen and doesn’t even have chairs in front of it, and serves mainly as a place to put the microwave and pet the cat.)

After dinner I read for awhile, then left for rehearsal. Since I’d left too early, I pulled into the 1-Stop parking lot, parked behind a U-Haul, and warmed up by singing along with my iPod for fifteen minutes. I haven’t fully warmed up vocally in YEARS. Amazing how rusty the instrument can get. I have very little resonance in my head anymore; keeping a warm tone in the sinuses is not really a natural thing to do and takes a lot of, well, practice. Fortunately I have a big ol’ resonant NOSE so my tone’s still warm enough. (Snort!)

At a quarter after seven I pulled up at Jonas’ and went inside. Kevin was playing hand drums but other than that it was just Greg and Jonas as before. We practiced until about twenty after ten, and I had a really good time. Jonas is a leeeeeeeettle bit controlling but not too horribly so, and I’ve worked with Greg before so he makes sense to me musically. By the time we were finished I was more warmed up than I’d been in ages and remembered that I love singing, dammit. There’s a portion of my head range that’s really thin and tinny, and there are still some places between ranges where I don’t have a smooth transition, but hope is not lost. I could be back in vocal shape if I just kept at it. The voice is, after all, just a muscle. Maybe I’ll start taking lessons or something.

We practiced four songs, and I really like two of them. The other two are okay, but since I don’t write myself I rarely spend much energy not liking songs someone’s actually bothered to bring into the world. We spent about twenty minutes jamming on a part of one of the songs with the keyboard’s built-in drum track going and that was a wee bit cheesy, but all in all I had a really great time and am looking forward to hearing the finished project on CD in a couple weeks. Hopefully they’ll let me post a couple MP3s here on goblinbox.com.
Continue reading Sing, Sang, Sung →

Friday

Music

Friday morning I went to Jonas’ house and auditioned for him and Greg. They liked me, so now I’m busy for the next three weeks: I’ll be rehearsing Tues-Thurs. nights next week, then recording Tues-Thurs. the next two weeks.

It’ll be a nice little project. Not hugely challanging musically, which is good since I’m totally chopless in my old age. It’ll be interesting to record again after, what, ten years?

I’ve got holes in my range that didn’t used to be there. It’s weird to reach for a note and not have it.

After the audition/rehearsal at Jonas’, I went up the street with Greg to see Christina. Brett called so I had lunch with him, then went back to chez Wadsworth and worked on the seva laptop for a few hours. Christina made me decaf chai that turned out pretty cool.

After that I tried to hook up with Chloe – she lives across the street from Jonas and I’d seen her that morning and said I’d drop by – but she was out. I played phone tag with her for hours. Then I hit the grocery store and drove home.

One of Chloe’s messages informed me she was having a housewarming party that night, and Brett and I decided to go. But after dinner I was having some panic symptoms so I went upstairs to meditate…

…and woke up at midnight. Brett was asleep on the couch. FUCK. We missed the party.

I got a month’s worth of Paxil for my anxiety symptoms. Then I went to the website and read the entire prescribing information PDF and decided not to take it. I’ll stick with yoga, hydration, meditation, caffiene-avoidance, and St. John’s Wort. Thank you very much.

Holy cow. Fuck Paxil. First of all, it takes weeks to begin to work, secondly they really have no idea what it does or how, and third of all the list of possible side effects include – at a statistically low .03%, BUT STILL – death by horrible physical dysfunction. Not to mention what happens when you go off of the shit. Not to mention they gave me the wrong dose anyway: I should have gotten 12.5mg, not 25mg. 25mg is for depression, not anxiety.

I haven’t had an actual panic attack since I did this program J. loaned to me (it comes with a cool audio track of a nifty 23-minute ‘visualization exercise’ that always puts me RIGHT to sleep), but I still sporadically have all the symptoms: racing heart, skipped beats, sweating, tension, EXTREME DISCOMFORT, insomnia, blah blah blah. In my case, the overwhelming feeling of panic is a reaction to the pre-existing physical sensations. So I’ve stopped having to feel like that, but it’s still a royal pain in the ass to feel like I’m on bad speed. Waah.

Now it’s Easter Sunday and I’m blogging from a computer at 1-Stop Rental. Joe called me this morning and begged for coffee and something delicious to eat, so I came into town and got him two cans of Starbucks espresso and a raspberry croissant (and myself a DECAF Radiance Dairy latte) (*sigh*). Then his mom and her boyfriend showed up with his lunch, so I sat my ass in front of the goblinbox and started typing.

I LOVE MAROON 5. I DO NOT CARE HOW GAY THIS IS. And yes, I know their band name is awful. They’re just SO fucking adorable. (One of the reviews at Amazon.com said ‘every song on the album is about sex, which I don’t really like.’ WTF? Isn’t all pop music about sex?!) It’s just so hooky and tasty and funky and yummy. And I no longer give a shit about liking cheese – remember my Hall & Oates post?! After THAT, I’m not ashamed to admit anything.

Sans Miles

Music

I downloaded this track off the Internet.

It’s a bootleg.

It says it’s “Prince with Miles Davis – Live at Paisley Park.”

Now, it’s definitely Prince. And it’s definitely live. But where’s Miles Davis? The hook in the beginning of the track is probably a keyboard, and the horn scat at the end is a tenor sax, not a trumpet.

I complained here once about downloading Al Green songs, only to discover that out of three tracks, not one of them was the Reverend Al Green. Two were Bill Withers, and one was some horrid community college choir covering a Gladys Knight & The Pips tune (which really freaked me out when it came up on my iPod one evening)!

We’re all familiar with memes – and how they grow. I just can’t help wondering what the impact of badly tagged MP3s will have on people’s understanding of music in general. Imagine: what if you had an MP3 on your computer that you thought was Miles Davis playing with Prince, and you believed that it was exactly that for years? I mean, in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t matter, but the idea of people walking around thinking Bill Withers is Al Green drives me nuts. Seriously. It’s just… wrong.

Believe you me: my freakin’ ID3 tags are CORRECT. ALL THE TIME.
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Saturday Afternoon

Love & Marriage

Right now I’m sitting at the computer catching up on my blogroll, and obsessively refreshing a hot tub forum page to see if anyone’s responded to my query about our new hot tub.

Yes, I said “new hot tub.” My adorable-but-totally-redneck husband went out and bought a spa that hasn’t worked in a couple years and which has been allowed to freeze with water in it. I don’t doubt his ability to make the thing work… just his desire to actually do it.

I find I have some form of spring fever that makes me TOTALLY AGRO LATELY whenever he brings home more junk… This is the time of year I want to be getting rid of junk! I am so horny to get the dumptruck back from whatever job site it’s parked at and FILL THAT BASTARD UP with crap and drive it off to some innocent landfill!

The shit we’ve (okay: HE’S) accumulated out here is simply astounding. ASS. TOUND. ING.

Do you know that there are (and have been for two weeks) a DEEP FREEZE and a filing cabinet in my parking space? Brett dragged ’em home one afternoon and they haven’t moved since. They’re both free, old, heavy, and rusting. And he probably won’t even acknowledge that they’re even really there until I pitch a fit of sufficient decibels that he feels some form of activity would be the best way to get me to shut the hell up. Argh!

The test to tell the difference between optimism and pessimism has always been the glass test: is it half full, or half empty? I think a better test is this: do you really think that everyone is stupid or don’t you? I’ve been spending a lot of time surfing blogs (generally by clicking something at random from Recently Updated Sites at movabletype.org and seeing where it takes me) and there are a lot of interesting humans out there. (Like this one. This kid is so funny I snorted tea on my monitor.)

I went to Tahmi’s house to play yesterday. She and the ever-gorgeous Mr J have a rescue living in one of their Broncos; he’s a less-than-a-year-old, emaciated, stunningly handsome and shy white German Shepherd. (Note: if you google “german sheppard” you get two hundred thousand hits. Can NO ONE spell?) He had some kind of food poisoning and is on meds and a four-meal-a-day weight gain regimen. If you want a really beautiful rescue, call them up – rescues are the best dogs to have IMO because they’re so abjectly grateful. (Bindu’s basically a rescue.)

Tahmi and I had a fun afternoon, talking AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE (even to the extent of leaving the bathroom door open whenever either of us went so the conversation could continue uninterrupted) and looking at fiber catalogues. And she gave me some shelves. And she told me that according to her recent feng shui class, I need to move my bed because I’ve got my head pointing a foul direction.

Oh, and I need to move my altar a quarter of a direction.

Feng shui had nothing to say though about why my cat, Buz McFuz, is a crack-head. I keep telling him, “Dude! CRACK KILLS!” and in reply he just runs up the walls and back down and attacks the kitchen rug and gallops around the stairs and then says in his little I’m-not-on-crack kitten voice, “Mew?” Damn lying stealing crack-headed cat.

My sleep schedule is all screwed up. This is not particularly relevant to anyone but me unless you want to see me during the day and I’m napping. A nap sounds good about now, actually. Hey! My husband just drove off and didn’t tell me where he was going, the stinker.

Dog Love

Pets

Stella developed a lump on her back, last summer sometime. It didn’t seem to bother her and wasn’t growing, plus her mom has bumps all over, so we didn’t worry about it. But a couple of weeks ago it suddenly decided to double in size, so of course Mr. B elected me to take Stella to the vet so I could be the bad guy and let strange people in a smelly place poke her with sharp things.

Er, I assume the vet’s is a smelly place – if you’re a dog. It smells fine to me, but I’m only a human.

Anyway, Stella’s appointment was Friday. She loaded up in the Jeep with me and we drove to town to see Dr. Weigert at 9:30. He asked what she was in for, and I said, “She’s got a couple of cysts. I thought you could poke her with sharp things so she’ll hate me for bringing her here.” He laughed and said, “I think we can continue that tradition,” and promptly gave her a booster shot. Stella glanced at me. Argh!

Then he gave her a general overall exam (she’s still got the best teeth ever), then checked out the big cyst. He decided he wanted to empty it out, even invited me back to surgery if I wanted to go. Having already seen one of Brett’s cysts removed, I declined. When the vet tech took Stella’s lead and tried to take her out of the exam room, Stella gave me the look that BRETT SHOULD HAVE RECEIVED: “Are you seriously letting these people take me somewhere?!?!?” My heart broke a little, but I waved my hand and said, “Go on, Stella. It’s cool.” And off she went with the the vet and the tech.

I sat in the exam room feeling somewhat guilty – she’s such a good girl, and they always do such terrible shit to her at the vet because she always has the kind of ailments that require getting poked with sharp things – I balanced my checkbook to keep myself busy. Damn Brett! He should torture his OWN damn dog and not make me do it! The last time I brought MY HUSBAND’S DOG IN was a couple of years ago after Shiva’d really fucked her up in a fight; the vet had had to flush out a bunch of really deep teeth wounds with a squeeze bottle and put her on antibiotics. She *so* did not dig it and kept looking at me like, “Get me out of here!? Like, PLEASE?!?”

The door opened and Stella half-trotted, half-wiggled her way up to me, eyes saying, “You didn’t abandon me here!” And right behind her: “She was so good!” the vet tech enthused. “Dr. Weigert wants to show you – the cyst was infected. That’s probably why it changed size all of a sudden.”

She withdrew and I petted the brave Miss Stella, who now had a bald spot and a 1-inch incision on her butt instead of a lemon-sized cyst from hell. The vet came back in and showed me a specimen cup half filled with blood and infected pus. (EEWH! What is it with my having to see the contents of CYSTS?!) “It was definitely infected,” he said, “and I’ll want to put her on a five-day course of antibiotics.”

“Of course,” I said. “That is, after all, why we come to see you. You always poke her with sharp things and put her on antibiotics.” He laughed.

So Stella’s big bump is gone and all is well. Being a dog, she’s probably already forgotten about being poked with sharp things. (Whew.)

Sunday morning when Brett went to give Stella her pill, Shiva, as usual, WENT TOTALLY NUTS. “Give me a pill! Give me a pill! Give me a pill!” He has to be physically restrained so that Brett can shove the antibiotic down Stella’s throat – he’s CONVINCED she’s getting some kind of really valuable attention.

The last time Stella was on pills Brett started shoving random stuff down Shiva’s throat too, just to make him feel loved: a balled-up slice of salami, a kibble, his fingers. The dog’s utterly silly. Brett got the idea Sunday that what Shiva REALLY needed was a mouth full of peanut butter, and he proceeded to smear peanut butter onto the roof of each of our dogs’ mouths. OH. MY. GOD! I’d forgotten how funny that is! All three dogs (just thinking about it now made me blow spit all over my monitor!!!) stumbling around trying to lick the roofs of their own mouths – it’s SO FUNNY! Brett and I laughed ourselves completely silly – if you’ve got a dog and never done it, DO IT. Take a glob of peanut butter and pack it into the top of your dog’s mouth. They LOVE peanut butter and go crazy trying to eat it. IT’S SO FUNNY!!!
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Politics

Soapbox

Work’s been slow, so I’ve spent a fair bit of time over the past two days surfing blogs. There seem to be two kinds. The first kind is mostly links. Links to funny stuff, weird stuff, time-wasting stuff, political stuff, or links to more links to stuff. The other kind seems to be deeply personal and somewhat put-offish: long, drawn-out posts about being fat or depressed or discovering you’re fucked up because your dad was an asshole.

I have no idea where goblinbox falls. I guess I’ve got a fair showing of both kinds of posts.

I’m not terribly political – thank the gods – so most political blogs bore me. Politics, to me, are just glorified playground games, being played with bigger toys. One memory that was painful for years: I was in third grade. I ran with a group of three girls. One of them – I don’t remember why – decided she no longer liked me, and convinced the other two not to play with me any more. The recess bell rang, and I was detained by a teacher I think. When free I ran late from the building all the way out to the back soccer field… and one of the girls told me that they were no longer my friends. And she told me, cruelly, to go away. So I did. I walked back to the toys near the building and put myself on a swing for the rest of recess, and I was shattered. Heartbroken. I no longer had any friends.

This is how little girls are. They’re mean little politicians. Fortunately, all they have to play with is other little kids, and their scheming is harmless in the sense that all they can damage are feelings. Grown men, on the other hand, play real games with real money and real weapons and real lives – but the motivations are the same. So, I don’t particularly care for politics. All I see are conflicting ‘belief’ systems, posturing, ego, hatred, ego, and petty decisions based on not much more than “we don’t like you any more, so you can’t play soccer with us at recess.”

While I realize these people can and will make decisions that affect my life, I find myself thinking that the less attention I pay the less real the game is. But I read a blog entry today by a soldier who answered the question, “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever seen?” His answer was this: he was on a reaction team in Cuba. Orders were not to let any refugees through. A group of refugees approached, having safely navigated a minefield to get that far. The soldiers, following orders, turned them back. The refugees didn’t follow their own safe path back through the minefield: they deliberately stepped away from their own footsteps in the sand, and blew themselves up rather than go back into Cuba.

This is the world that politics made.
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Visitors

Pets

Around 10:30, Stella and Bindu went nuts at something out the window. So we all went outside, and the ‘something’ turned out to be two somethings: two shorthaired yellow labs.

One was young, male, friendly, enthusiasic, and cute as hell. The other was female and I think she was older; maybe even his mom – also very cute.

They hung out around the farm all day, sniffing and peeing and sniffing and wiggling and being really friendly. Both would come when called, both were healthy and well-mannered… well, there was an incident with the puppy putting muddy footprints on my left shoulder, but he was off as soon as I hollered “Down!” at him. Then he smiled and wiggled ALL OVER… and didn’t do it again.

He did sit wagging next to the Jeep, and I had to say, “No way, boy, we ain’t goin’ anywhere!”

I wondered if I should take a digital pic of them to post at the Batavia Conoco (er, sorry, I guess it’s a BP now) when walking them down to the road didn’t get rid of them. They were both clean and healthy and wearing collars with rabies tags dangling, so I knew they were supposed to be somewhere.

I slept most of the afternoon, but went back out with the girls around four and the visiting labs were still here. When I called, “Hey, puppy! Hey, momma!” they both galloped over for a sniff.

When Brett got home at six-ish, I told him about the visitors and he said he’d seen them almost by Chicken’s, so apparently they were on their way home somewhere.

I think they’re the first all-day canine visitors sans humans of their own to visit since we’ve lived here!
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