Home again

We're back.

Mucho thanks to the Schluetermetz family for putting us up last night. It was great to see you. Wish it could have been longer.

On a related note, today marks the death of old Dan and the birth of new Dan. Which means that for awhile I'm going to go on a diet and get regular exercise until my belly goes away a little bit. This is because I'm tired of having a belly.

I went to the gym tonight and ran 3 miles, which is the longest I've run in about 15 years. Perhaps the longest I've ever run non-stop. Tom Waits is surprisingly good music to work out to. I don't know that other people would agree with me (especially Jeannie, who prefers ultra-pumped workout music), but for me, I like music that is interesting enough that I pay attention to it so much that I forget that I'm in tremendous discomfort.

On a non-related note, there are some pictures that have popped up lately, and since I haven't posted any pictures recently, I thought I'd put them up. A feast for the eyes!


This one is a picture that Jeannie found before we left town, stuck in with all of her college portfolio cases. It's me on my 18th birthday, and I'm sweaty because the band that I was playing drums for
(The Quintessential Pine Tree Brothers) just finished playing a party called MegaBash, which was a kind of block party thrown by 2 friends of ours who lived near each other. The big yellow foam tophat was a birthday gift given to me by the Jeanners.




This one was taken at our wedding (duh) by our good friend Gena Allen, photographer extraordinaire. I've always liked her photos, I'll have to find out if she has a website to see if I can link to it.








Also, I was finally able to find a link to a very accurate review of The Imaginary Invalid. Find it here.

Travelogue #3

We have completed the 2nd-to-last leg of our journey. At the moment, we are at Jen Schlueter and Brad Steinmetz' (collectively known as the Schluetermetz') home in Bellefountaine, Ohio. We have enjoyed a lovely dinner and some quality playtime with young Henry, who is the cutest 4 year old in the world. We're waiting for Schlueter to get home from work, and I'm guessing that she and I might do some initial planning for a summer lake rendezvous.

Last night the Jeanners and I had a good time meeting up with Gena and Robin, we went to Mocabees (sp?) coffee house and had a few hours of nice relaxing conversation over various flavors of tea. As a possible historical sidenote, last night the phrase "can I smell your packet?" entered the vernacular.

Right now Jeannie and Brad Steinmetz are geek-talking about AutoCAD.

Tomorrow, the final journey. Then after that, I seriously have to start going to the gym.

Travelogue #2

The last couple of days have been a blur, in the best possible way. Here's some things that are poking out of the blur:

Had some great visits with my folks. Went to see them Thursday morning and had a nice time sitting around catching up. Then Friday night Jeannie and I went up for dinner and my brother and his wife and daughter came out, too. Was good to see everyone.

Also, once again have really enjoyed staying with Jeannie's parents. I'm beginning to feel very comfortable around her mom and dad. What a nice change.

Got to poke my head in and say hello to Eric Elz. It's nice to know where someone will be even when they're not at home. Also nice to not have to say hello to anyone else at SLUH. I hope that someone signed the bathroom sign-in sheet after me so that I don't have to clean it up if it's trashed. I swear I left it nice and urine-free.

I started and finished my Tom Waits Reader. It made me think a lot about music, how I feel about music, and about what kind of music I want to make. I love Tom Waits, I wish I could be like Tom Waits, but I just don't think I have music like Tom Waits' inside of me. That being said, I would like to make sure that some of my songs are a little rough around the edges. Also maybe one day really playing with my voice when I'm not worried about disturbing the neighbors.

Something else that made me think about music: the band at the wedding tonight was pretty damned awful, mostly the singer. It's like he took every wedding band cliche and decided that that's exactly the kind of wedding singer he wanted to be, and he did it without irony or self-awareness. Or tact. Or talent. But anyway, the thing that I was thinking about was that the guitar was turned way down, so I could really just hear the bass and drums and the singer. It made me realize how important a good rhythm section is to most pop music, and how most of my songs don't have a good rhythm section. But I also think that I'm more interested in the guitar sounds than I am about the rhythm section. It's just who I am. So I'm going to be conscious of what my 'bottom end' is doing, but I'm not going to stress out too much about it. I would like to play around more with my drum sounds (something I've picked up from the Tom Waits book, I think) and the guitar sounds (something I'm always trying to do.)

Rich, I was so sorry to hear about your grandpa. I hope that you have a good (probably not the right word, but you know what I mean) trip to Decatur.

On a different note, my wife looked very hot in her bridesmaid dress. I also like her haircut. And I love her very much, and not just because she's hot.

I can't wait to hang with the Schluetermetz'. We have much to discuss. That sentence would be more fun if it was, "We have much to discus." Like the thing they throw at the summer olympics. Goodnight.

Travelogue

This is being written from a Super 8 in Cambridge, Ohio. It's 1:36 am. It's actually not a bad place. The room is nice, and it's somewhat comforting being back in a place where people use words like "y'alls".

Driving at night on empty interstates is one of the greatest things in the world.

egg-cited

Here's why I'm so excited right now:

1. I'm off work for at least the next 168 hours.
2. I get to drive with my ladyfriend as long as we want tonight, then shack up in a seedy roadside motel.
3. The Willie Nelson cd is good and I'm looking forward to listening to it as we drive.
4. I bought Innocent When You Dream: the Tom Waits Reader today, and I'm looking forward to reading it on the trip.

I'll try to write from St. Lou.

Darn you, John Lennon, you were right! Instant karma did indeed get me!

Well, I guess because I called out sick yesterday when I felt a little bit less than sick Jesus decided to punish me and make me feel like shite today. My back's been hurting all day, and I don't think that 15 hours of driving over the next couple of days is going to help it much. I have broken down and bought an old-man back support pillow for the car, which helps but because of it's thickness I have to cram myself in the front seat and adopt the driving posture of a 110-year-old. I guess it's the price I'm paying for all those years of hard living.

I bought a Willie Nelson cd tonight that I've wanted for awhile, Spirit.

Everybody wish Jeannie luck for her interviews tomorrow. And for her tonight as she works on putting together her portfolio. Since I've been home, she's been working with all her shtuff spread out on the kitchen floor, cursing up a storm. She also threatened to explode earlier in the evening. We're both looking forward to getting the hell out of here tomorrow night.

Today at work, Elizabeth said that I'm more sensitive in this blog than I am at work. That can only mean one of two things: I haven't been writing enough about my poop. Or, I haven't been crying enough at work.

My poop has been looking pretty textbook lately, which is nice.

Had an idea for a cd title that might stick. It comes from one of the song's lyrics, which I like, and I think it's an idea that I had before and forgot about which has come back, which I also like. Also, found a place that seems to offer cheap web hosting, so once the cd is finished I hope to have a site back up where folks can download it.

Anyhoo. that be all.

Sick?

I am faced with a bit of a moral quandry...

On the one hand, I feel an absolute need to be honest and open in this here blog, but as more and more people at work find out about it and read it, it becomes difficult for me to report about a day such as today when I called out sick but may, in fact, be a little bit less sick than I stated on the phone with the manager.

I feel, however, that those co-workers who are reading this blog are understanding enough to dig the fact that I only call out sick in cases of extreme emergency, such as today when I double-booked myself and I have to go strike the damned set for the show.

So, in short, I'm sorry, Jeremy, if my calling out caused any unnecessary headaches or stress at work today. If it's any consolation, my nose is a little runny.

I'm off in a few minutes to go help strike the set. Hopefully it won't take too long. Not too much else has been going on. Jeannie's been working on her portfolio stuff for her interviews, then we go babysit tonight. We're both very much looking forward to leaving town in a few days. We're considering leaving Tuesday night and finding a cheap hotel somewhere along the way so we don't have to drive the whole shot in one day.

I've been kicking around different cd titles in my head, haven't come across anything enlightening. Any suggestions are welcome...

Licensed to ill.

I'm sick, dammit!

I hate being sick. I never get sick and I'm not good at it and it turns me into a whiney little bitch.

This is when my wife earns her stripes. Which reminds me, Jeannie is going to have an interview on Tuesday with an architecture firm that she's pretty interested in working for. She put a lot of work into putting together a mini-portfolio, and apparently the guy liked what he saw, so now she has to gather together a lot of the stuff she's worked on over the last few years--art stuff, design stuff, architecture stuff. She's pretty pumped, and I'm pretty pumped for her.

God Bless the US of mofo' A.

Today I bought 36 hotdog buns for one dollar.

St. Valentine's Day

The song of the moment is "Baby Britain." I like Elliott Smith a whole lot better when he's less mopey/whiney.

I spent a good portion of last night going through old papers that I've saved from college, looking for some letters of recommendation so Jeannie could get some pointers from them (she has to write a letter for a former coworker). Going through all that old stuff made me a little nostalgic for Kirksville, but it also made me quite glad that I'm not in school anymore. I was so much smarter then. My brain can't work like that anymore. I think part of it has to do with laziness, but I think also that part of it has to do with focusing my energy only on the things that truly and deeply matter to me. I think I wasted a lot of energy in college, and I don't think I have as much energy to spare as I used to.

A funny thing I found among my college stuff: a piece of paper that had the typed beginning of a drunken story on one side, and on the other side was handwritten--

"Story Ideas:

1. huge sea creature
2. Huck Finn movie
Mickey Rooney (huck)
Matt Dillon (Tom)
Andy Kaufman (pap)"

Also found in the papers were my two manifestos and the transcription of my interview with Natalie DeLuca from Senior Sem.



I am developing a plan. This summer, after Rich moves to Ohio, the Schlueterileymetz' and Jeannie and I rendezvous at a big Thousand-Hills type lake somewhere near Wheeling, West Virginia (3 hrs. from Bellefountaine, 4 from B-more), and spend the weekend water-skiing and cavorting.

Of course, the other plan is that they all come out here for a visit and we go to the beach, possibly camping.

I enjoyed Rich's blog today, and not just because he complimented me. I will always associate 'The Peculiar Pub,' with my first real experience of New York at night. Loved it!

Jeannie and I don't really celebrate Valentine's day, but damned if we didn't just make a tasty dinner of ravioli and salad. Lots of errands planned for tomorrow's day off...

Back to Normal

Since the show has been open a little while, I've been able to go back to having some nice free time, and I've been able to enjoy doing my normal little things, like reading
in the bathtub. I'm re-reading a book of Jack Kerouac's letters, which is very interesting. I enjoy reading the real thoughts and feelings of someone that I at least partially admire.

Also, last night I enjoyed taking a very short walk in the deep snow. It was dark and quiet, everything muffled by the snow, and there were only a few people out and about. It was very nice, peaceful, and for a minute felt kind of like walking through Kirksville, which I still believe to be the best place in the world to walk around and think.

On my mind lately, for no apparent reason, have been thoughts about people in grade school. It all started when I had a thought about this girl that I haven't seen or thought about in around 15 years, Sarah Wight, pop into my head. She was an absolutely, incredibly quiet, nice girl in grade school who I talked to a little bit but not much. So then I started thinking about some of the very nice, very quiet people I've known through the years, a lot of them in grade school when shynesses hadn't been overcome yet, and I pulled out the grade school yearbooks and started looking through them. I wonder what all those little kids are up to these days.

I don't want to go to work anymore.

I think Jeannie had a good birthday yesterday. We did go sledding and it was fun. And I think the final tally of how much snow we got was around 15 inches.

12 inches is deep!

Well, we're digging out from somewhere between 12 and 15 inches of snow. We spent the morning getting a car free, and Jeannie opened her birthday presents, enjoyed her birthday breakfast of bacon and eggs, and ate a birthday brownie.

We're going to go do some sledding. We've gotten word that there's a good hill at Loch Raven High School, so we might check that out. It's a little distance away, though. We might try looking for something a little closer to home. Samuel and Kate may come with us.

Happy Birthday J-Dog!

B-Day Eve

Right now, the song playing is 'Tess' by Ivy. The song might actually be called 'Tess, Don't Tell.' It's a nice little pop song.

Tomorrow is Jeannie's birthday. The presents are wrapped, the birthday dessert is baking, and we both have the day off work with no babysitting. Woo-Hoo! We're expecting 6-8 inches of snow, so I'm thinking that if it really does snow, maybe me and the Jeanners could go sledding. There was a scene in Brokeback Mountain where they were sledding and it looked really fun.

Went to see Imaginary Invalid last night with Jeannie, Dan Calloway, and a friend of his. The show was ok. Nothing great, but nothing deathly, either. Well, maybe a little bit of it was deathly. But Pat was very funny.

There are rumours that a very special visitor might be spending the summer in Baltimore. I hope that the rumours are true. It would make for, perhaps, the long-awaited "most-kick-ass-summer ever."

I don't want to go to work today. I screwed up my back the other night when Kate and Samuel came over for a visit, and I picked up Samuel by his feet and I was twisted in a strange way and I felt something go 'boing' in my back. It's been bothering me ever since. Jeez, for such a strong, handsome dude I sure have a weak back. Seriously, though, I am pretty strong.

Smokeback Mt.

Went and saw 'Brokeback Mountain' with the Jeanners and Aimee last night. it was very good to see Aimee, as I haven't seen her in awhile.

The movie wasn't as good as I had hoped it would be, although it did make me crave a cigarette like nobody's business. Movies make smoking look so GOOD! Mmmm. Smoking. Yum.

The movie did not, however, make me want to partake in any gay sex. It seems not fun. Even with Heath Ledger.

It did, however, make me want to become a rodeo clown. Or at least read up on rodeo clowns. In my opinion, this movie could have benefitted from a few more scenes involving rodeo clowns. Maybe they're saving it for "BBMT2: The Man from Snowy River meets Brokeback Mountain."

I have some dookie cramps today. Probably from the inferior 'movie house grade' popcorn. Just thought you should know.

Off to work!

The Over 30 Club is Full of Cool People

It was a decent day off, although I've been working on recording the vocals for a new-ish song and every day I think I've got them right, and then throughout the day I keep listening to it, and by the end of the day I realize that I don't like them. So it feels like a bit of a wasted day, and it's this type of frustration that makes me want to quit the whole damn thing, which apparently doesn't seem to be happening.

I ran good errands today, including top-secret runs for Jeannie's birthday/valentine's goodies. Mweee Ha Ha Ha.

Some good things I found this evening:

1. A liquor store near our place that sells Murphy's Irish Stout. Mmmmmm. Even better than Guinness. But unfortunately just as expensive.

2. Edy's ice cream on sale for one dollar and ninety-nine cents. Hot damn! That's a savings of $4.00 per container!

Tomorrow I'm planning on getting a lot of laundry done, folded and put away. I guess I'll also be wrestling with these vocals some more, depending on how much of the day our neighbors upstairs are around. I try not to do anything while they're home, because I have a feeling it would drive them nuts. Plus, sometimes I have to yell a little bit.

Confidential to Jennifer Schlueter:

There's lots of cool kids in the over 30 club. Let's take a look at a few:

1. The Edge. Age-- 45.
2. Jesus Christ. Age-- 2006. Or 1973. When one rises from the dead,
do they start back over at 0? We'll have to open this one up for
conversation...
3. Tom Waits. Age-- 56.
4. Rich R. Age-- unknown, but definitely over 30.
5. John B. Schmor. Age-- like 95 or something.
6. James Vertovec. Ditto.

Well, I guess that's about it. It's nice to know that there are some people who are still really cool even though they're really old.

Milk Mouth

Jeannie's cooking something with a lot of garlic in it and it smells like garlic. My mouth tastes like milk, cause I've already eaten my low-health meal of chicken, green beans, and macaroni and cheese.

I was able to coast through the day pretty nicely, and now I'm looking at two full days off, with no show to work on, which I am extremely happy about. By the way, a review for the show came out that was very positive, and mentioned nice things about the lighting. Obviously, the reviewer was on some sort of hallucinogens during the perfromance. Anyway, if anybody's interested, the review is here.

The other night (was it last night?) I was going through some mix cd's that Seanyboy gave me when he was in town for our wedding. He had given me 4 cd's worth and I was dumping a lot of the songs onto the MP3 player. I hadn't heard some of them since the wedding. It made me think a lot of Sean, and it made me remember driving through Missouri with Jeannie, on our way to the Lake of the Ozarks for our honeymoon. That makes me laugh. Who honeymoons at the Lake of the Ozarks? In November? What can we say, we're classy people.

I'm gussing I'll be running some errands tomorrow, maybe doing some laundry, maybe working on some music.

I still owe an e-mail to Brian Waters. I don't know what to write.

Long Relaxing Sigh

I'm back, and perhaps even better than ever. The show has opened, so I'm theoretically done working on the lights and set. The lights still look pretty bad, but I've done everything I can, I'm using all the dimmers and if I fix some of the problems, I'll just be creating new ones elsewhere.

Haven't had a chance to see the show yet, other than in rehearsals, I think we're going on Friday night.

My stomach is unhappy this evening.

I'm looking forward to having things to write about this week. Jeannie and I might go see the first movie we've seen in a long time--unfortunately, it's the new Harrison Ford movie that looks/sounds very bad. We have free passes. Maybe we'll make out during the film if it's bad.

I'm considering what life would be like if I stopped doing CSC stuff and if I quit working on music. I don't know if things would be more fun or less fun. I've been very happy at the B&N lately, and maybe life would be simpler if I just focus on work and home and wasting any free time I might have. Who knows. I probably wouldn't be able to quit the music entirely, but I'm definitely thinking of quitting CSC. I feel like they've outgrown the need for my services, that they're ready to get someone who actually knows what they're doing for lights and set things.

Tonight one of my least favorite customers came in the store. "Beatles Guy." I have, in the past, told him that I don't enjoy any types of music in order to avoid having a conversation with him. Anyway, tonight I thoroughly enjoyed ignoring him, and then when that didn't work, I started playing cat's cradle with rubber bands while he tried to engage me in a conversation. Nobody likes Beatles Guy. I've had conversations with people from other stores who complain about Beatles Guy. And they call him Beatles Guy, too. It's strange. I wonder what his real name is, and I wonder what his home life is like. I wonder about the home life of a lot of our B&N crazies.

Tonight I have the zactlies.

Merde.

Today turned out to be no fun, mainly because the lighting for the show looks like shit. Maybe the Howard County Center for the Arts will magically sprout some more dimmers by tomorrow morning...

Off to bed. Hope everyone is well.

On the Run

Haven't written in a few days. Been at work and rehearsals from 7am to midnight every day. I'm tired, but things aren't going too badly.

Highlight of the week so far--driving home from rehearsal last night with a tupperware container full of shredded BBQ beef on my lap, eating it with my fingers, shoving plugs of beef into my mouth like chewing tobacco.

Recieved a real nice e-mail from Brian Waters, must remember to write him back...