Tag Archives: Music

What I did this weekend!

In which a picture is worth a thousand wo- …oh screw it. Here’s some pix of Ritzville.

On Saturday, the Kings and I played the main stage from 1.30 to 2.30:

Ritzville Main Stage

And then we played a 2-hour set in the Pastime, a wonderfully reesty little bar across the street from the main stage packed with the Best Audience Evar™, from 4 to 6:

Pastime

It was mad wicked fun, and I signed posters and a guitar and posed for photos with fans (“Because you’re gonna be REALLY famous someday!”) and now I’m thinking I might just wanna play music for a living… if I can do it at venues with roadies and stage managers and sound engineers and complimentary bottled water by the case and a musicians’ hospitality lounge serving food and free beer.

Because that kind of gig? IS WAY FUN.

For more pics, visit Kaje’s Flickr set.

My Beloved, My Dork

In which I *do* go on about my cute BF.

Yesterday my dorky boyfriend informed me that it was our “two-month anniversary.” (Two months. SIXTY ONE DAYS. Who counts shit like that? Six months, maybe, or a year, but two months?!)

We almost went out to dinner after work, but I was unbathed and wearing less-than-perfectly-clean clothes, and it was hot, and we still hadn’t met Becca’s new boyfriend, and we wanted drinks, so we went straight to the P&E to meet Becca and her Boy. (We liked him; he was personable and made direct eye contact and appeared to get our jokes.) (We don’t know if we totally approve, of course, because she used to be our girl, but he seemed nice enough and she looked happy.) (The heartbreaking slut! She used to be our girl! We used to take her out!)

We left after two rounds of drinks and went through the Taco Bell drive-thru, because apparently I AM A BLOATED RETARD WHO LOVES SODIUM MORE THAN ANYTHING IN THE EXTANT UNIVERSE AND WON’T STOP EATING IT AND I’LL ALWAYS HAVE CANKLES AND FOR FUCK’S SAKE WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?!?!?

*Ahem.*

Meanwhile-back-at-the-ranch, we sat on K’s bitchin’ 50’s couch in our underwear and ate our delicious salty quasi-foodz and yelled gleefully at each other in the way that we do, and then we went outside and hollered more in the shed, and then we went inside and wrecked the bed. We’re so in love it’s just stupid.

Oh: and if you drove by and happened to see some nekkid people smoking on the driveway porch? That totally wasn’t us. Srsly.

In other news, I’m playing the Ritzville Blues Festival with the Coyote Kings next weekend. TWICE! Come see me!

In other other news, happy 4th. Go blow something up!

Random stuff!

In which I check in briefly.

Today is payday! I bought an AC adapter for my laptop off of eBay! Yay!

I upgraded my eyeOS* installation and have been playing with it all day long. You can play with it too by going here; login with guest/guest, or just sign yourself up for an account!

Keep documents there! Surf for porn at work with its built-in browser without letting your IT dorks see your traffic!

Don’t blame me if you spend all day playing chess or Prince Of Persia, though.

During today’s company meeting, RB projected this onto the wall for everyone to see. (I nearly peed myself FOR THE FOURTH TIME, Keef. Thx ever so much for the link!) The Website Is Down is some of the funniest shit I have ever seen, EVAR. OMG it just totally makes me giggle OUT LOUD.

Tomorrow, my band’s doing a leukemia benefit in the Tri-cities, which is good. But we go on at 5pm and it’s an outdoor gig with no cover and the weather’s supposed to be 102 degrees, which is bad.

Yeah, one hundred and two degrees. Triple digit weather, bitches! …Um, does anybody have a white parasol I can borrow?

~+~+~+~
*eyeOS is a web-based desktop replacement. It does everything your desktop computer does, including run applications and store documents, except it’s on a web server, accessible – through a browser – from any ‘net-connected machine. It essentially represents a move back to dumb terminals, with the Internet as the mother of all mainframes.

I totally *heart* it.

Ceilings and moonshine.

In which I’m a domestic goddess AND a rock star IN THE SAME DAY!

Cleaning

Not too terribly long ago I was standing in the shower and saw something on the wall. I reached up above the edge of the shower shell and smeared it with my finger, and it turned out to be dust. I left a big ol’ streak on the wall (because dust storms and condensation leave streaks on your latex paint, and that’s just that) and the next time I showered I stared at it I realized that it was driving me ape-nuts-batshit-crazy. I therefore determined to use my next day off for good, and vowed to wipe the walls down.

Holy shit! That’ll teach me to NEVER TOUCH A DAMP WALL AGAIN! I spent 3 hours Saturday morning cleaning the front bathroom! I scrubbed the walls, the ceiling, the fixtures, washed the valance, cleaned the mirror, washed the windows both inside and out… When I was done you could not only eat off any surface in there, you could have safely eaten the bathroom itself.

But at least there are no longer any streaks on the walls.

Or the ceiling.

Or anything else, by God! That bitch is spotless.

G’ma said, “You’re a good kid.”

Gigging

KJ left work early Saturday afternoon and picked me up at home. We stopped at the Taj on 2nd for gas then headed for Roosevelt, WA. The Gorge was all moody and foggy, and we got rained on a few times. We talked our faces off.

After two hours in the car, we rolled into a town that looked like this and went into a ‘venue’ that looked like this. We sat around crowd-watching (if you can call 32 persons ‘a crowd’) in the beer garden, listening to Junkyard Jane finish their set.

Investigation revealed that the only food within a 50-mile radius was the pork, beans, and coleslaw laid out on the bar… a bar that only served beer and no hard alcohol.

It should be noted here that I don’t really drink beer.

So, to recap: no food, no cocktails, 35 rednecks in attendance TOTAL, and a rainstorm coming up. The scene had Hell Gig written all over it. I was reduced to drinking Coors Light, of all things, and wondering why the bar couldn’t at least sell me a freakin’ bag of potato chips. KJ, the doll, worked his charm and managed to make the bar’s kitchen open up just long enough to produce a salad for me while we were setting up our gear, but that joy was short-lived because then it started to rain.

The band was under a shell, but I was all bummed because I was in BFE and I figured that the few people who were there were going to leave and we’d be playing in the rain for no one, but the folks from Roosevelt totally surprised me and stayed ’til the bitter end – half of them even danced in the rain!

Some biker dude got KJ half-crocked on moonshine out in the parking lot, and Syl befriended the town’s lesbian couple. The bartender brought me a free beer. No one requested any Janice Joplin. It turned out to be one of the best crowds ever! I ended up having a really good time, and would have counted it a lucrative gig if gas wasn’t freakin’ four bucks a gallon!

In Other News

The AC adapter for my laptop is bad, but I can buy a brand new one off of eBay for $20. I may be laptopping again soon!

My dog really thinks running water is cool.

I actually broke into my knitting bag for the first time in half a year and worked on the Big Brown Sweater. Superfine alpaca, bitches!

Sunday I made a falafel feast for G’ma and KJ and ate myself into a very happy stupor. Yum!

Failwhale, damn it.

In which I’m your geek, baby.

After several months of letting it sit there and collect dust, I installed that new 120Gb HDD into my A30 laptop. Then a few days went by – days during which the laptop was in its carrying case – and then I decided it was time to set the bitch up and copy my files off of my original drive, format it, and then get my iTunes library off of that failing external drive (it fails to spin up sometimes, which is uber spooky) and get my data organized.

So I set up the laptop, and plugged it in (because the battery only holds a charge for 4 minutes – I need to replace it) and…

…no power. None. Won’t light up. Damn.

So either the AC adapter has failed, or there’s a connection problem inside the laptop itself.

Fuck!

I have no laptop. I need to get the adapter on a multitester and see if it’s putting power through, and if not take the laptop itself apart and see if I can fix it.

Not having a home computer is upsetting me mightily.

It’s as if the universe doesn’t want me to have my freakin’ data in one place! I’ve been trying to get my shit organized for over two years, and can’t seem to pull it off. You have no idea how hard it is to get content off of CDs and onto my iPod! And my play stats are hosed! And no scrobbling!

In other news, I’m playing the Roosevelt Wine & Wheels Festival with the Coyote Kings tomorrow.

Playing the Ice Harbor Brewing Co.

In which there’s a trip to the Tri-cities.

I went and saw my stylist Saturday afternoon for a cut and color. I said I was doing a lot of gigs this summer and that I needed hair I could scrunch up into curls easily… so bitch chopped all my hair off! I have a totally asymmetrical, VERY SHORT razor bob and I’m still a little weird about it, but Curtis & Syl said it was hawt and teh BF likes it, so I guess it’s okay. Color’s good, at least, even if I don’t have bright enough highlights.

My new hair and I played a brewery Saturday night with the boys. (K’s pics of the event are here, because he’s even more of a cell phone camera whore than I am.) People in Walla Walla talk about the Tri-cities in rather the same way that people in Fairfield talk about Ottumwa, so I was surprised at how awesome the crowd was at Saturday night’s gig in Kennewick (which happens to be the town I was born in). They were enthusiastic, friendly, and they clapped after solos. They danced. They followed us outside during breaks and told us we were awesome. We got an ovation, even. The room sounded good and the vibe was great.

But, being a brewery the place only served beer – which I don’t really drink – so I had Pepsi and water all night and made K take me out for cocktails THE VERY INSTANT we rolled into W2 at 12:30a. He took me to the Stone, where we listened to three adorable twenty-year-old skater boys tell us all about their various broken bones and trips to hospitals. The bartender gave me a glass of merlot because he didn’t have a cork for the bottle and couldn’t save it. We rolled out of there about an hour later and went to K’s, where we stayed up late. Really late. Ahem.

On Sunday, we lazed around a lot and accomplished nothing of interest to anyone but ourselves. Monday, we bought groceries and vodka. K mowed his lawn. I made portabella capellini for dinner – a culinary triumph! – and we ate in the shed because the weather was being almost decent. I crashed at K’s again last night and caught a ride to work with him this morning.

I haven’t seen my own house since Saturday afternoon ’round 4:30, and I feel vaguely guilty about it.

In other news, my dress arrived today! Maybe it’ll warm up enough for me to actually wear it this summer.

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.

ET phone home! And buy me some clothes!

In which there are both aliens and my ass in the same entry, but I totally wasn’t abducted or anything.

SETI@home sent me a lovely email today reminding me that I’ve been a member since 1999 (!!!)… and that I haven’t returned a work unit in 153 days. The last unit I returned was from my work machine, but my employer made me remove BOINC about a week after I installed it – the bastards – and I just never got around to installing it on my laptop.

Until now! Let the data crunching begin!

New topic. Ready for the segue? Too bad, ’cause there isn’t one! Dieting is, in its fifth week, suddenly getting difficult. My caloric intake has been inching up steadily for the past week, and now I’m closer to 1500 calories – on a typical day – than 1200. I’ve just been hungry lately. (It’s probably the damned curse messing with my hormones.) I seem to have my hideous water retention problem under control though; restricting calories and exercising (well, a little) has the unintended benefit of reducing my overall sodium intake and keeping me from bloating up like a waterlogged corpse.

After losing 8 pounds right off the bat my weight has remained the same for the past two weekly weigh-ins, but I’m still losing inches: there’s just no reason for someone of my height to be walking around with 40″ hips, just none at all, and I’m safely back into the 30’s now and boy does my ass look better. Yay! (Note: If you know me IRL and tell me I don’t need to lose any weight, I’ll smack you, swear to God, right in your face.) (I mean, the whole weight-loss process and the necessity of it just irritates me, but one does what one must.) Long story short, both my dog and myself should be utterly svelte by late summer.

Speaking of summer (ta-dah! a segue!), I’ve got gigs coming up all over the place. (RB is a gig-booking fiend, especially considering that the band he’s booking has never done a show before and is therefore entirely imaginary thus far.) What I don’t have is gig clothes. I have got to go shopping, but I keep giving my money to dentists and veterinarians instead. Maybe I’ll get Becca to use some of her second-hand store fu to help me find a few cool pieces of clothing, before I start showing up to paying gigs in my fucking pajamas. Or maybe I can just get a t-shirt with an alien on it, and wear it to every single gig we ever do, and become known as “that singer with the one alien shirt she always wears.” A gimmick’s a gimmick, right?

Another Chichi Wine Event! (It's like I'm in wine country or something!)

In which I get money for nothin’. (But no chicks for free.)

First of all, I haven’t washed my hair in 3 days, and I just want to get that out of the way before we go any further. Full disclosure and all that.

Yesterday afternoon RB left me a voicemail message at work saying that Sapolil Cellars‘ musicians had canceled and did I want to sing for money? I said hell yeah, and walked over there after I clocked out of work at eight. I stood next to the grand piano and sang totally unrehearsed songs with a piano player I’ve never played with and RB on electric. Eventually I got a mic, but I did the first several songs totally unplugged. The audience was gracious and attentive, because wine is a very social kind of drunk.

The vintner gave me two glasses of really good 2006 Syrah wine, told me I was a great singer, and then gave me fifty bucks! Who could ask for anything more?

After the gig – if I can even call such an impromptu setting that – we mingled a bit, and then RB gave me a ride home. I had a bowl of lentil soup and an awesome baby spinach salad and went to bed.

I’m gonna put the cash toward a gig clothes fund. I have no cute gig clothes.