In which I get out of town for the weekend and it’s totally restorative.
I had a great weekend. (It looked like this.)
Kaje informs me that he’s making falafel pita for dinner and that we have some episodes of Doctor Who on tap. Life is good, peeps.
Category Archives: Play
I don't post much 'cause I'm too busy doin' stuff
In which I tell you somethin’ really gross!
My brother rolled into town last weekend so Kaje and I have been busy dragging him ’round with us, getting him acclimated and introducing him to everyone. We took him out for drinks on Monday, and again on Wednesday, and again on Friday.
My employer had me switch desks again – this is my fourth desk in ten months – and work felt all new and different last week. Now I’m directly across from Kaje so I can throw things at him. We’re thinking of buying Nerf guns so we can shoot each other, or maybe an R/C Dahlek so we can use it to pass notes. Hell, maybe both! We’re at opposite ends of a hallway, in niches that weren’t really designed to be workspaces but into which desks fit. And since Kaje has the highest close rate in his department and I have the highest call numbers in mine, we can probably have the occasional brief Nerf war without getting into too much trouble.
Last night we had a super fun night: I fed Kaje his First Sushi Ever (from here, which is an okay but not brilliant sushi bar), and then we all went to a big party out in the country. Dogs, kids, bonfires, roasted corn, and live music! In the country! My brother and I played with RB and two other guys I didn’t know as soon as we arrived at the party around nine. A woman walked up to me between songs and offered to be my stalker. (I agreed, natch.)
Kaje used to work at this particular farm, so he dragged me around all the outbuildings and told me stories. We ended up having s’mores and wine with the property owners, and when we got back to the party proper Jayrob was playing with Feedback. I sang a little more. We hung out with all kinds of musicians. Jayrob found a bass player he really grooves with. I kissed on Les S. and Mikey because those boys are adorable. There was lots of stumbling around in the dark and laughing.
Ironically, both Feedback and quite possibly my own band suddenly find themselves looking for a drummer the self same week my brother rolls into town. Jayrob might be stuck here in Wallyworld if he doesn’t watch hisself.
After the party, we – Kaje, myself, Jayrob – went to Shari’s for breakfast with Becca and D. Here’s the gross part I promised you: after we’d all finished eating and were just sitting around making small talk, I built a ‘sandwich‘ of leftover food. In order: slice of marbled rye, a leftover piece of vegetable omelet, Tabasco sauce, grape jelly, a slice of onion, a slice of tomato, lettuce, yellow mustard, an entire packet of Sweet’n’low, another slice of rye, and a serving of half & half creamer. We stuck a frilled toothpick in the thing, and then I sliced it in half. D, for no apparent reason whatsoever, decided to pick one of the halves up and bite into it. We were all totally freaked out; there was no dare, no money on the table! He just did it all on his own!
And he swallowed. Boys are crazy. Srsly.
Kaje and I crawled into The Taco around three in the morning, and slept until noon.
Today’s Sunday drive involved buying two dozen ears of corn from a farm in Milton-Freewater, and then heading south to a nice little park. I got stung by a bee, which sucked; but I didn’t go into shock, which means I’m still not allergic to them. After the drive I bought a floor lamp at Walmart to put next to my desk at work next week. The fluorescents over my desk may ‘mysteriously’ quit working sometime after everyone else goes home for the night.
Tomorrow, three new employees start at my place of work. I expect management to be so preoccupied with them that all hell will break loose, and I will probably be overworked and mildly aggravated. Doubly so for Kaje, since he has to do some of their training because they’re all in his department. It’s been hella busy around there lately, and taking people off the phones to deal with the new recruits probably means I’ll be buried.
Good thing I prefer being busy to being bored!
Right now I’m eating chocolate peanut butter ice cream.
Next weekend my aunt Peggy is coming to visit, and my band will be playing the Pepsi stage at the county fair on Sunday. Oh, and I bought myself a new (well, refurbished) PPC last week, so it should be waiting for me when I get home from work on Tuesday. Yay!
Stuff
My Laptop is Back
In which the AC adapter has arrived!
Kaje and I watched an episode of Doctor Who last night while eating tostadas on his couch. I love Doctor Who. I love tostadas. (Couches are pretty cool too. Pretty much a win/win scenario, if you ask me.)
Then we slept for ten hours.
This morning when I got home to shower and change, I found that my new AC adapter had arrived. W00t! I immediately ran upstairs and plugged it into the ol’ IBM A30… and damn if it didn’t just boot right up! I’m so glad to have my laptop back again.
Maybe now I can get my iTunes library off of that damn failing IDE-drive-in-a-USB-enclosure and onto my laptop, where it fucking belongs.
In other news, payday has come and gone. After paying all my bills I have $147 to live on until the 15th. I usually pay only half of my bills per paycheck, but this month I paid everything with this check so I can buy a ticket to Vegas with my next one.
Yay! Ticket to Vegas!
Fun with hormones! …Not.
In which I snivel, bitch, and moan.
I am so waterlogged today that I can barely stand being in my own body.
I gained upwards of 15 lbs. this month (guess who totally wasn’t watching her sodium intake in the past month?) and I literally cannot wait for it to go away. I’m grossly bloated and uncomfortable, my feet feel like sausages, and I’m tired and crampy. The Curse will be here any minute.
Old age sucks. I love sodium, damn it, and vodka too, and I used to be able to indulge in both with no side effects! But now? Oh hell no: a few late-night drunken trips to Shari’s and come cycle end I’m bloated up like a corpse left out in the sun.
My wrists, fingers, face, belly, legs, and feet are swollen. My fingers tingle if I hang my hands by my sides for more than a minute. I’m tired. It’s 100 degrees outside and walking over to Main street and back for a sandwich was like hanging out in an oven.
And to add insult to injury, I went to the dentist this morning and my gums are kinda sore, which is really wimpy of me but hey – I’m feeling sorry for myself so might as well be thorough with my litany of misery!
Heh.
The gig Saturday night was fun, but hot. Really hot. Really, really, really hot.
Like, 103 freaking degrees. And the stage? Was a black flatbed semi trailer in a parking lot under no cover whatsoever. KJ forced me to take a bottle of SPF 45 that probably saved my life (and the necks and ears of the rest of the band as well).
We traded sets with another band for five hours. Curtis nearly went into heat shock but was saved by a cold towel, a generous application of ice cubes to his wrists and earlobes, and an ibuprofen. I drank a lot of water and a quite possibly more vodka than one would generally drink under such conditions. My cute boyfriend and Curtis’ cute girlfriend got pretty trashed and danced with me during the other band’s sets.
Sunday I made KJ drive me around in the relentless heat so I could spend all my gig money at Walmart and Andy’s. I bought food and a floor fan and HABA items. We spent much of the day in Kaje’s basement, where it was coolest, lounging on the couch in front of the new fan. I read. He blogged. We ate chips & salsa. I napped.
For dinner, he made portabello burgers. Then I read. He blogged. Later we gossiped about people. Then I bitched about being bloated (he poked my ankles and knees and said “Oh, weird! gross! cool! your skin’s full of water!” noises). I made him take me home at midnight, because I had a dental appointment at the ass crack of dawn (9:20 am) today.
Twitter, Plurk. Zing. Pow.
In which there are links.
A new Twitter-like site was launched recently. It’s called, for no apparent reason, Plurk. It’s basically Twitter with a cuter GUI, and doesn’t, as far as I can tell, do anything new. I signed up for an account (because I’m a whore and have to try all the new junk on the ‘net) but won’t switch entirely to Plurk until there’s a WordPress plugin for it and/or it proves to be more stable than Twitter.
Feeling conflicted about cheating on Twitter, I started using Ping.fm (per Vuboq‘s advice) to update all my services simultaneously, and now I’m running totally redundant content all over the damn web.
I really hope all this shit is useful to my beloved future AI, who will mine it all to use in personality modeling. (Other people have children or build monuments. My beloved future AI will immortalize me by basing part of itself on all the shit I’ll leave on the ‘net when I die. Blog posts, book lists, tracks listened to, purchases, blah blah blah. I’m so well-documented!) Because there really can’t be any other good use for all this meaningless chatter.
Although I do love reading my friends’ Twitters on my cell phone (when Twitter’s actually working, that is) as I go about my day. Keeps me feeling close to people who live on the other side of the country, or even on other continents, and that’s really the most hopeful application of technology, innit? Community!
In other news, teh BF is still hawt and I’m having way better sex than you. Srsly. WAY better. Like, omfgwtfbbq better it’s freaking ASTONISHING I am so totally not kidding!
Six Blocks from Seattle Center
In which I take the longest bus ride EVAR.
Woke up at K’s this morning. He may have tried to let me sleep in, but he tends to look at me while I’m sleeping [the utter weirdo] and the attention wakes me up. (At least he has the grace to make the coffee.) We lounged around, talked, took showers, dressed, got in the car.
I walked into the airport just as they were announcing my flight. We kissed, he left, I went through security. (This time, they did not go through MY ENTIRE SUITCASE: yay.)
Sat at the gate for awhile. Boarded at 10:50, flew to Seattle. Arrived on time, went downstairs, called my devotee roommate Leela (we met on the Travel Exchange, not IRL). I was at baggage claim 16. She was at baggage claim 1 – of course. So I hoofed halfway across the airport to meet her. Thank God for rolley cases!
After several phone calls we finally found one another and met properly. I pulled out the stuff I’d printed off the ‘net and we discovered we were only fifty yards from the Gray Line bus counter. We got in line to buy tickets, but when we got to the desk a big Russian dude came and said, “If you pay cash, I help you. Come. You pay cash.” We followed him. He took our luggage and walked us to the bus. (Turns out the counter dude hadn’t had a break in six hours and really needed to pee.) The Russian bus driver stowed our luggage and escorted us on board.
Forty minutes later, the bus was full and Leela and I had met another Amma devotee who lives in Mother’s ashram and we were all three having a lovely chat.
Not only does the Gray Line stop constantly, but it doesn’t even go to the Travelodge. We had to catch a commuter to go the rest of the way, and much hilarity ensued as the driver stowed a metric ton of luggage in the ass end of that little short bus. (A woman next to me let out an involuntary groan watching the driver stow suitcases. When I raised an eyebrow at her, she shrugged and said, “There’s three bottles of booze in that suitcase at the bottom.” LOL!) The short bus was fun because everyone chatted and laughed, but fast it was not: we didn’t check into our motel until 3:11.
After check-in, we walked over to Whole Paycheck and ate, and I bought some green plasti-shoes. (I *heart* them. They’re very springy!) We walked over to Seattle Center and found the program hall, but no one was setting up yet. We laid in the grass because the weather is drop-dead gorgeous today. Leela gave a beggar some change; I gave him a cigarette.
We idled back to our motel. I got all comfy on the bed with my laptop. Leela went back out. I chatted with K on the phone because we’re über-dorks who can’t go eight hours without speaking to each other.
The program doesn’t start until 10 tomorrow morning, so I’ve got quite a bit of time on my hands. Am wondering if I care enough to find a pub within walking distance… we seem to be in gaytown (everyone, from the motel desk clerk to the Whole Foods checker to the barrista at Starbucks, not to mention half the boys on the street in this neighborhood, is utterly flaming), so it might be worth going out to find a drink.
Stoked to be in Seattle! Super stoked to see Mother tomorrow!
Oh, and the Flickr set is here.
This week, my Friday really is a Friday.
In which I give you a preview of the exciting weekend to come!
Work ends in 40 minutes. I’ll be hanging out with K and seeing Becca. There will probably be cocktails.
I have tomorrow off. I will be sleeping. A lot.
Tomorrow night, I’m playing at Woody’s for Dayton Days. It’ll be a good old-fashioned bar gig, and I’m looking forward to it.
Sunday I will be at band practice.
Monday I’ll probably be toning inside wiring for my cousin’s stand-alone DSL.
Twitter’s outages these past couple days are buggin’ me.
In other news, my mother was not killed in yesterday’s tornado.
In Vino Veritas
In which I do a gig I feel good about… and drink WAY too much wine.
Yesterday I came home on my lunch break and took a shower and put on jeans and cute shoes. After work I came home to drop Bindu off and smear on some mascara. By seven I was at the Sapolil Cellars tasting room on Main street. The joint was packed.
The owner hugged me and pointed to my co-worker, KJ, whom I’d invited to come. (He’d been sick earlier in the week so I didn’t think he’d show, but there he was.) I sat with him for a bit and then the gig started. He and I ended up hanging out all night and having a freakin’ blast, going to the sorts of events we wouldn’t normally go to. (As he said later, “I haven’t had this much fun in Walla Walla in years. It’s like we went to another town, man.”)
RB and Cookie played a couple of tunes, then I went up and joined them. We did a good, long set and then took a break. It was early enough that it was still light out. During our second set, we had a keyboardist and a harp player sit in, and people were dancing by the end. We even got called back for an encore. All in all, a good gig. And the cash money at the end didn’t hurt, either. (This band pays me. I love it.)
A., the owner’s daughter (whom I adore because she’s funny as hell), kept pouring me wine so by the time we left the joint around ten I’d probably downed at least an entire bottle if not significantly more. I prudently put my grandmother’s car in the garage and caught a ride with KJ. We followed A. to the Flying Trout tasting room. The wine there was served in beer cups instead of stemware, the crowd was younger, the decor was minimalist industrial basement, and the DJ utterly failed to impress me. I ran around drunk and friendly and probably annoyed the hell out of many innocent (read: less drunk) people.
The truth of wine being that I adore people when I’m wine drunk and love to accost them and talk to them about themselves, but I never shut up long enough for them to do so. Hah! It’s amazing nobody smacked me. Srsly. I had SO much fun!
There was a couple in the crowd dressed in snow suits. The guy had goggles on, and would push them up onto his forehead only when talking. I asked the girl why she’d decided to wear a snowsuit to a tasting room, and she said it just seemed like the thing to do. I met a skater dude in his late 40’s with tons of ink and got him to take his shirt off for me. I scattered two other conversation groups merely by approaching with my mouth running. I saw one of the chicks who works at the Starbucks I go to. I saw A., the chick we’d followed there, once.
After that it gets blurry. I bought some Cheetos at a convenience store at some point, but they were too gross to eat, and I could not now tell you what store it was. At one point I thought I’d lost my wallet but it was easily found in KJ’s car. I didn’t get to bed until the sky was beginning to pale in the east.
The first time I woke up today I didn’t dig it that much, so I went back to bed and didn’t really start my day until six in the evening! I called RB and apologized for not answering when he’d called earlier in the afternoon, checked in with Becca, tried to eat at Rosita’s (closed Sundays) and ended up with a 7-layer burrito and a huge raspberry iced tea. Went to RB’s, listened to a bunch of Wilson Pickett, and discussed our set list for next weekend at the Balloon Stampede. (We’ll be on the Pepsi stage from 5 to 6:30. Come see us.)
Now I’m home and the dogs are sleeping on the rug. I have a couple of episodes of Doctor Who to watch, and several movies to choose from. I think I’m gonna hold the couch down, lest it suddenly decide to float away, and rest up for tomorrow: I have to do laundry and mow the lawn.
My weekend was three days long!
In which I get an extra day off to play in a garage.
Saturday I took the day off work so I could do a gig. It was at a private party in a Morton building and it was cold once the sun went down and I schlepped gear and ate nothing but chips and potato salad all freakin’ day, but I still made more money than I would have if I’d spent the day at work. After the gig the drummer took me to the Milton-Freewater Supper Club, which hasn’t been remodeled since 1967 and is all red and retro and tacky and wonderful and I’m totally in love with it.
Sunday Gramma and I had a party basically so there’d be an excuse to make the “real old-fashioned two layer cake with homemade brown sugar frosting” we’ve been talking about for three months. In attendance were two aunts, two uncles, two dogs, two cousins, a second cousin, and two neighbors, and the official excuse was that it was a birthday celebration. The food was good (quiche, tossed salad, a fruit plate, cornbread, and chili) and the cake was awesome. I had a really good time.
I have decided that today will be a big fat movie fest, and I’ve been lying on my bed working my way through an entire spindle of DVDs a co-worker loaned me. It’s fuckin’ sweet.
Now I’m thinking of taking a $20 bill and walking over to Loney’s to buy delicious junk foods. Because I’m not afraid to get deep into the lazy decadence, oh no I ain’t.