I got my C414, the microphone I ordered a long time ago, today. When I placed the order, they told me they were back-ordered for three weeks, and when I checked on it about five weeks later, they said it wouldn't be in until the end of june. I was pretty much resigned to never seeing it, and then it just randomly showed up today. I still had to pay the shipping on it with my own money, since I already finished off the gift cards from work, but even so it was pretty satisfying to get a thousand dollar piece of gear for thirteen dollars.

It's a pretty swanky package, too...it comes in basically a big padded lunchbox with a shockmount and a pop filter and a little velvety bag to put on it if you leave it on a stand. You can tell it's good, because the first language in the owner's manual is German. I was pretty floored that they also put in a frequency response chart for it. Most manufacturers will put in pre-printed one that's close to what it's supposed to sound like, but this one is specific to the microphone I got...it's got my serial number and a date on it, and somebody wrote their initials on the chart. For all I know, they could have drawn in the lines with a sharpie, but I'm sold. It's a nice touch. One of the big changes on this one from the previous models is that instead of physical switches for the polar patters and pad and rolloff, they put in buttons and LED indicators. So...it lights up. I'm pretty excited about that. I expect it sounds pretty good, too, but seriously, it lights up.

In other news about how I rule, we went to Indianapolis to see the Twilight Singers on Sunday night. That was pretty awesome. Some guy named Jeff Kline opened, and he just stood up there with an acoustic guitar and a bunch pedals and made irritating loops and sang about beating people up and about people making him come or something. He wasn't very good. But then Afterhours, who are like, Greg Dulli's favorite band from Italy, played, and they were pretty tough. In addition to three guys on guitar, bass, and drums, they had one guy one extra guitar and electric violin, and another guy on keys, melodica, tambourine, and...wait for it...bass clarinet. They did at least one song that involved 80% of the band letting go of their instruments and clapping in unison.

The Twilight Singers were really good. It was a pretty tight set and they didn't talk that much, but Greg Dulli was still pretty funny. We were standing right in front of him, and Erin got me their setlist, and Afterhours'. There was a lot of stuff they didn't play that I would have liked to hear, but liked a lot of the stuff from the new album that I hadn't been that into before. They did one Afghan Whigs song, "Fountain & Fairfax," and "Early Today" from Amber Headlights. We were pretty excited to see a song called "Crazy" on the setlist for the encore, but it wasn't the Whigs song. We figured out yesterday that it was by Gnarls Barkley, because it was on the radio. I might have to buy that album now. I got the Afterhours album they had for sale at the show...it was produced by Greg Dulli, and you can kind of tell. I think I liked them better live, but it's not bad. And I got a legitimate copy of the new Twilight Singers album. I figured if I was actually going to pay for it, they would get the most out of it if I got it at the show. I thought about buying it online, because apparently every download service that it's on has a different exclusive track with it, and I want those songs, but I don't really want to support that. That just makes me want to go back to stealing all my music. Either way, the show was really good. And Greg Dulli really is a little chubby, but not so much that I would make a magazine about it.

In honor of my birthday, the Meat Puppets got back together. Thanks, guys!

Well that sucks.

I got a library card last weekend. That's been pretty exciting. We went last Saturday and earlier today and I pretty much just loaded up on a bunch of country music both times, and some books about country music the first time that I'm still working on. They seem to have a pretty good collection. I found a bunch of stuff that I've either been eyeing up or unable to find at Borders. It makes me spend a lot less money, but I have to be careful that I don't get so flush with power that I check out more than I can digest; sometimes I miss working in the warehouse or even washing dishes...it's cool to be trapped in one place with nothing to really occupy your mind but some records. It's kind of like school, in that there's a lot of stuff that I'd probably like to read, but i'll never do it unless somebody assigns it to me and holds me accountable for it.

Anyhow, I found some good stuff. A couple of Doc Watson collections that are pretty good, and a nice chunk of the Flatt & Scruggs catalog. Some other banjo stuff, Bela fleck and Tony Trischka. This time around I got a Buck Owens box set and a live Townes Van Zandt album that I haven't played yet, but I'm sure will be good. I have more live albums by him than studio stuff...I think it's 3:2 now. We also got Be Here To Love Me, a documentary about him at Borders. He was pretty messed up. Like...bad. Parts of it were uncomfortable to even watch, although it was really good. The best part was the blurb on the cover by Steve Earle: "Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the world, and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that."

I've been emailing my dad lately. We've kind of found a comfortable common ground talking about music and songwriters, so that's pretty cool. I got some recommendations from him, so that's a lot of what I'm looking for at the library. He's sending me a guitar, too. I told him about getting the banjo and we started talking about some of the old instruments he had around, and he offered to send me one of the resonator guitars he has. It's apparently sort of a mysterious off-brand from the 30's. He hasn't been able to track down any information about it anywhere...and according tom him, he traded some guy a .22 pistol for it. So that's pretty cool...I've thought about getting one before, but nobody seems to make them in beginner-pack form. He's also sending a couple of microphones, I think.

In sadder news, I found out yesterday that my aunt has breast cancer. She's a nurse...she spent pretty much her whole career helping build the Arkansas Cancer Research Center, and then retired from there to do consulting for other places like that...so that's ironic. She's having some kind of preliminary surgery in the next week or two. She said that if she had to pick, she'd rather have that kind of cancer than any other (or, you know, not having cancer...) because she knows the most about it, so she feels more in control. She called me last night a while after my mom told me about it, and they (my mom and aunts) were all hanging out and cackling about stuff like usual, so things are fine for the moment.

It looks like we're definitely going to get to see Neko Case and Alkaline Trio next month. I'm pretty much looking forward to both of those shows.

You are Levon Helm! The Band's only real Southerner, whose tales of medicine shows and moonshine inpired many of Robbie Robertson's songs. A straight talking, no nonsense kind of guy who's effortlessly funky drumming and gritty southern twang anchored The Band's sound, which ever genre they crossed into.


Which member of The Band are you?
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I think I'm pretty much just going to blog exclusively about going to Borders from now on. It's pretty much all I do anyway. I got the new Spin Doctors and Cracker records yesterday.

The Cracker one, the band-endorsed greatest hits, is okay, but it pretty much sounds like Cracker's greatest hits. The track list isn't exactly the same as the one from Virgin records...there's nothing from Forever on the band version, and nothing from Countrysides (e.g., "Ain't Gonna Suck Itself") on the label version. The re-recorded stuff isn't really that exciting...I mean, it's okay, but there's no reinterpretation or anything. They're pretty much the same as the originals with a different instrument here and there. I don't think the stuff from Countrysides was re-recorded, either. They wouldn't really have any reason to, since it's fairly new and it wasn't on Virgin Records, but still. It would have been cool. And there's one new song, but I was listening to the record when we went to bed, and I think I fell asleep before I heard it. So overall, the concept is a lot more entertaining than the record, but I feel like a good fan for buying it.

I think I like the Spin Doctors record. It's with full original line-up. gravymonster says that's the lineup we saw in 2002, but the band claims they hadn't worked together for like seven years. So one of them is lying. It pretty much sounds like the Spin Doctors, but to paraphrase what gravymonster said about the new Depeche Mode, it sounds like they're all really into the Spin Doctors right now. There was a little interview piece on the DVD that came with it where they were all talking about how great it was to work together again, and how much they all respect each other as musicians. Turns out they're as big dorks as you think they are. And the first thing they played together after seven years apart was "What Time is It?" A lot of the lyrics on this one are on par with their best cleverly goofy stuff, I think. "Margarita" and "Happily Ever After" are pretty good, and "My Problem Now" is probably my favorite so far. My only complaint is that if Mark White's going to be back in the band, I want to hear some serious slap bass. Come on, dude. As the only Spin Doctor whose autograph I have, I expected a little more from you. Also, I could probably do without Eric Schenkman's vocals on track 8.

I went back today and wandered around for a while and eventually settled on the new P.O.S., Audition. It's probably the most exciting of this round. It sounds a lot like Ipecac Neat, but a little more polished, which kind of suits his weird, dense, indie-rap-punk-electro-hollering thing pretty well. I really like his kind of abstract cut and paste sort of lyrics. He reminds me of Aesop Rock, but with more of Atmosphere's sense of melody, such as it is. Speaking of, there area couple of guest spots by Slug from Atmosphere, as well as a guy from the Hold Steady and a guy from the Bouncing Souls, but I don't know who they are. Both of those songs are really good, though. He kind of toned down the political stuff, too, which is cool. He's clever and all, but the last album waxed a little too topical in places, and I wonder if it's going to end up sounding dated before too long. Also, I don't really care about his politics, and his stuff about being a sad rapper is way more interesting. He's like a more agressive Fatlip. The random stuff that he says in the studio that they didn't edit off the album is pretty entertaining, too. My favorite line on the album so far is, "I think the best threat in the world is to say 'I'm going to put tacks in your cereal...in two years.'" I think that's probably true.

I also bought another banjo book while I was there today. It felt weird buying stuff like that not at work, but we don't really have much banjo stuff. I'm sure I could have ordered it but...I had a coupon. I think it's a good one. The ones I have right now are either too basic and vague or too advanced. I don't want to stagnate and lose interest in playing it, and I think this one might help.

I'm running out of stuff to buy now. That Neko Case album comes out next week, so I'll get that, but then there's not much else that I really want. I lost interest in that John Stirratt album after I put it down, and I'm not quite ready to commit to the whole Merle Haggard catalog yet. Suggestions?

I did sign up for the Borders rewards thing, and it's pretty much the most exciting thing ever. I want to go to Borders every day now. It's cool, though, because it makes it easier to just buy one thing when I go, so I can spread out what I spend and take more time to digest what I get. Only now there are like four albums I want to get right away. I got my state tax return yesterday, though, so I might just go get them all tomorrow. There are apparently two greatest hits albums from Cracker out right now...their label was going to release one that the band didn't approve of, so the band re-recorded all the songs from it and released theirs on the same day. I kind of want the new Spin Doctors album, and I keep forgetting to see if the new Neko Case is already out. And John Stirratt has an album out that I didn't know about, but I don't know if that will be any good. And Merle Haggard just reissued, like, his entire life. And there are Depeche Mode remasters coming out, but I don't know that those will really be worth it. I don't need the 5.1 mixes, and their bonus tracks tend to be shitty remixes. The new Curt Kirkwood album sounds kind of interesting, too.

Our neighbor with a good internet connection moved out a few days ago, so the internet is pretty hit or miss lately. It's really fast when it connects, but it doesn't connect that often or for very long. We may break down and actually pay for some kind of high-speed connection, if we ever get around to calling cable and phone companies about it.

Erin's friend John came to visit over the weekend, and brought us 54 bottles of beer, which was pretty cool. We went to see Nine Inch Nails while he was here...that was less cool. I was willing to cut Trent some slack for not putting out a good album in 12 years, but it was really kind of a snooze. The worst part was Trent's little film school project in the middle. They put down a curtain while the played the slow songs and projected a movie on it...I'm sure it was supposed to be some kind of statement about human nature and how Trent doesn't like George Bush, but it was full of footage of people being threatened by soldiers with guns and crying in war zones and stuff like that, but the only thing really thought-provoking about it was that only the American soldiers had their faces blurred out. Not the war-torn civilians who probably also weren't asked permission to use their likenesses, but who probably aren't going to take any legal action, either. It was just pretty facile and weak, and made the rest of the show feel kind of hollow. Although it was funny when the whole crowd cheered whenever things in the film got blown up.

I went out and bought the new Depeche Mode to atone for that whole business, and it's really good. It pretty much sounds like if they got around to listening to Exciter and were like, "Oh...our bad," and made a good record instead. Which is apparently more or less what they're saying in the interviews about it, too. I actually remembered to use my Border's coupon for it, too (actually, I made everyone drive all the way home first, so I could get it), so it was way cheap. Those things are awesome, and I'm totally going to sell out and sign up for their rewards program next time we're in there. Which will probably be soon, to buy the new Neko Case album that I think is out now, and that has a guest appearance by Garth Hudson.

In other music news, I think we're going to try to see Alkaline Trio in some city in Ohio in April. That should be fun. And I think Dinosaur Jr. is playing in Indy in April, too. John Prine is also playing, which I'd really like to see, but I think he's already sold out. I saw him once before, when I was too young to know what I was seeing...saw him with my dad at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway, on a double-bill with Arlo Guthrie. What the fuck?

gravymonster and I have been been working on the mad music lately, too. At this rate we'll have another album for you all not to buy this summer. The mbox is working out pretty well. In theory I should have my gift cards from work any day, too, so I can get my C414. And then I will be unstoppable.

So apparently at work today I won $750 pretty much just for being awesome. There was a drawing that I didn't really even know about for shrink and I think general store performance for fourth quarter of last year. Since that basically encompasses my entire job description, it's kind of just a drawing for how good you do your job. I don't know what the exact numbers involved were, but apparently you could get put in the drawing multiple times for doing extra good or something. Which means I rule.

Griffin called me while I was out on the floor and was like, "Congratulations, bitch-ass," and I had no idea what he was talking about. My first thought was actually, "Oh shit, they promoted me and forgot to tell me about it," but then I went back and checked my email and saw what it was, and then we couldn't figure out what I'd actually won. There was some speculation that it was a trip to hawaii, but I finally just called my boss and he told me what it was, which is a $750 amex gift card. So I'll have to while to get it, I think, but when I do, it will be tax-free, and that's awesome.

I hate to keep fawning over my job in my blog, but I don't really have anything else to talk about, and it is a pretty rad job. The only thing I've really been able to find to complain about is that the fact that the operations side of the company (that's me) doesn't have as many opportunities to win contests and stuff, and I guess I can pretty much shut up about that for a while.

It's a pretty good scam on the company's part, though, I have to admit...I wonder how much they bank on all the award money they give out coming right back in. I know mine's as good as spent. I might buy Erin a pair of shoes, too.

I bought a mandolin today, and it seems like everything's pretty much cool with existence now. It's not solely because of the mandolin, but it definitely doesn't hurt. It's a cheap one from Fender, and it's in pack form, like the banjo was, so it comes with treats, like a little lesson book, some extra strings, picks and a strap. And a tuner. If anybody needs a simple electronic tuner, we've got like twelve floating around the apartment, and it really seems unlikely that we'd use more than, say, two at any given time.

The mandolin's cool, though. It's an A-style with just a round body, no scroll on the shoulder or anything, with f-holes instead of a central soundhole, which makes it brighter-sounding, according to the book. It's pretty plain, but it looks nice. The tuning keys are kind of stiff, but I can live with that for what I paid for it, which was about a hundred bucks. It made some unnerving creaky sounds while I was tuning it up, but nothing broke, so I think it was just because it had never had any pressure on it. It seems to be fine now, so it's actually off to a better start than the banjo, which was mildly broken when I got it home.

I actually opened this one up before I took it home. As soon as it came in, really. I totally didn't expect to ever get one in the store; I heard about it as part of the Christmas promo stuff we were supposed to have, and then they never came during Christmas, so I pretty much forgot about it. But then one just showed up at random today. I felt a little bad about not even giving anybody else a chance to buy it, but not very much, and really, I figure if stuff like that keeps getting sold as soon as it comes in, we'll get more of it, which I think is good. I'd certainly rather have an instrument that's worth three hundred or five hundred or a couple thousand dollars, but I would never drop that kind of money on something that I didn't know for sure I'd be dedicated to. So stuff like this gives people like me a chance to try out different stuff on an instrument that's inexpensive enough to go out on a limb for, but quality enough that it's not discouraging to play. At this point, I figure I'd pretty much buy any non-guitar pack that Fender put out. I don't know what else they'd do, though. They do make a lap steel, an electric violin, and a bouzouki. I'd probably go for any of those in pack form. Or maybe like a balailaika pack, or a koto pack. Carter makes a beginner's pedal steel package, but that's still like eight hundred dollars.

I had a good-ass day at work today, even aside from getting the mandolin pack. I haven't felt like I got this much done in a single day in weeks. Things are just good in general right now.

I talked to my mom the other day...she happened to ask what I'd been listening to lately, and I told her that I had bought a lot of Waylon Jennings. She told me that she really liked Waylon, which I sort of already knew, and then in a moment of slightly weird candor, she told me that the album Dreaming My Dreams probably reminded her more than anything else of when she was happy with my dad. I hadn't known that, but it's not like, a terribly outlandish concept or anything. But then she was like, "You know I met Waylon Jennings, right?" Didn't know that either. Apparently, one time she and my stepdad were at a hotel in Little Rock for a school convention thing, and Waylon happened to be playing in Little Rock the same night, and was staying in the same hotel. So mom's having dinner in the hotel restaurant, and who should stroll in for a quick meal before the show but Waylon and Jessi. Some of you guys have met my mom...she got up and walked over to their table and introduced herself and got an autograph. Apparently he and Jessi were very nice and friendly, even upon having a total stranger interrupt their dinner. So that was pretty cool. That might even trump my dad doing a song with Ben Harper for coolness, although not for sheer weirdness.

We have a new EP out, too. Erin co-wrote a song on it. It's $3 on the website. It's a cheap and easy way to see if you'll like the whole album (you will...trust me). In fact, it's like the banjo pack of music purchases. The single is Jeff Ament's favorite song on the new record.

I'm sick and it's gay. I'm not like incapacitated or anything, just sick enough to be cranky about it and not really want to do anything. It's crappy. I've been drinking orange juice and Erin got me some dayquil yesterday, and I think at least one of those is helping. I did have a brief but disturbing nosebleed this evening, though. That was exciting.

I got the first two seasons of Pete & Pete on DVD last week. We've been watching them for the past few days and that's making me pretty happy. It really was pretty much my favorite show of all time, as it turns out. We're almost through with season two already, but I haven't listened to any of the commentary or anything yet, so I'll probably do that next week.

I have a few episodes dubbed from tv somewhere, and they're apparently all from the third season, because none of them were on the dvd's. I hope season three comes out soon. I think the later epsisodes are the ones I remember most. The music was pretty consistently good throughout, though. The Magnetic Fields, Apples in Stereo, Drop Nineteens, and like every side project Steven Merritt ever had.

We cleaned the house pretty good this weekend, too, even though I had to go into work for a while on Saturday. It's pretty nice.

So, tonight I have staring me in the face the first two-day weekend I've had since I moved here, which, if you haven't been paying attention, was a hell of a long time ago. I don't know if you guys have ever worked at least six days a week for six months, but I'm pretty excited about the weekend. I was going to say "...but it sucks," at first, but that's not really even accurate. It's been pretty tiring, and it's been stressful at times, but, like, today I had to think about my goals for this year and email my boss about them. Erin's probably thinking, "That's so gay," as soon as she reads that, but I actually sat down and thought about it and did it properly, and instead of thinking that it was gay, it mostly just made me think about how much I really like my job. I don't really ever not want to go to work in the morning. I may not want to get up in the first place, but work's not bad. So...that's pretty cool. I was pretty worried that moving and taking on a lot more responsibility was going to make me end up hating my job, but I really don't.

At recording school, where I work was always kind of stigmatized as the last resort for failed engineers. And, to be fair, that's how I ended up there in the first place. But really, the fact is that it's been nothing but good for me. So, I don't know, I know it's cool to bitch about hating your job in your blog, but mine's pretty good.

Also work continues to enable me to buy cool stuff, which is why I work in the first place. I broke my humidifier a while back...I'd filled up the tank and it slipped out of my hand into the bathtub and shattered, and I was very sad, but I finally got around to getting a new and better one. This one you can set to maintain a constant humidity level instead of just high, low, and off, so I can fill up the tank once a day and just leave it alone and it keeps things nice and doesn't burn out from running all the time.

I also got a new guitar amp. It's a Fender Blues Jr., a cute little tweed guy. It's all-tube, but it's only 15 watts and it has a master volume control, so I can overdrive the preamp and it will break up really nicely without getting me evicted. I would love to have a Bassman or a Twin Reverb or something like that, but they have so much headroom that they'd be unbearably loud before they started to sound the way this does at apartment friendly volumes. I read pretty good article about the guy who patented the master volume for guitar amps the other day...I think it was Randall Smith from Mesa Boogie. Apparently he finally figured out that you can use cascading gain stages to overdrive one and make it sound distorted like an amp that's turned way up, and use the other to actually control the volume (well, sure, it seems obvious now...) He finished up his design and took it to the patent office and the patent officer looked it over, frowned, and said, "Son, this is a nice design you've got here, but there's one problem. It's going to distort."

I'm listening to the expanded edition of Waylon Live, a live album that was apparently recorded not long after Waylon got creative control of his records from RCA, and was delivered to my apartment by UPS at around 8:30 this evening. It's pretty good. He's pretty funny, as it turns out. The stage banter is every bit as good as the music. He's a regular John Mayer. Still sounds like my dad, though.

I joined last.fm a little while back at Jeff's urging. It's kind of cool...you install a plugin that tracks what you listen to on your media player of choice, and the site keeps track of what you listen to, and tracks your most played artists and songs. You can also listen to internet radio that's based on what you listen to or what you say you like, I think, but I haven't really used any of that...I just like to look at what I'm listening to. And not like every couple of days...I pretty much check it at least once every song or two, when the internet connection is good. I don't know why, but I'm fascinated by it. Itunes already has a play count feature and most played list and all that, but I like this way better for no apparent reason, except that it's possibly the same reason that my favorite thing about moving is taking all my CDs off the shelf and then putting them back on in order when I get there. You should join, if you have OCD.

Tomorrow should be fun, I think. It's cool enough that I just don't have to work, but we're also going to do fun stuff because Erin's birthday is on Sunday and we have to go to my work holiday party that night. I think we're going to go to the science center and have dinner at Red Robin, and she keeps threatening to buy a grill, so we'll see how that goes.

Hey, it's christmas!

We got up early and opened presents this morning. Erin got me the new Band box set, along with the Last Waltz box set that she gave me in time for Thanksgiving, so I've got pretty much their entire boxed output, even though I'm still missing most of their regular albums. Isn't that weird? And I got her a guitar. It was a good deal for everybody. Also I got a bunch of chapstick.

We got some stuff from other people, too, but we already opened all that. My mom sent us some Barnes & Noble gift cards, and money for me and some books and stuff for Erin. And she gave Erin a copy of Bob Seger's Brave Strangers, because nobody's better than Bob Seger. My mom kicks your mom's ass.

In other news about my weird parents, I forgot to mention this in talking about talking to my dad the other day. You guys might remember that he had an album come out a while back with one song co-written by some guy named Ben Harper. Turns out it's Ben Harper. He's apparently one of Willie Nelson's favorite musicians, and dad met him at a festival. Isn't that messed up?

So, it's almost christmas. That means work is pretty much gay every day. My boss was in town yesterday and today, which was okay. I was afraid he was going to lay into me about some stuff, but apparently none of it was as bad as I thought, and we spent most of the day looking into some fraudulent money orders that we took, anyway. I'm looking forward to christmas being over. I should be able to start having a real weekend in January, but I almost can't even comprehend it. I've been doing six days a week for almost six months, I think. I don't really recommend it. It's not bad, really, I'm just kind of tired a lot. I like it, though. The job, I mean, not six days a week. There's got to be something to be said for that, I figure. And now that I have money to buy stuff, the discount is way cooler.

I bought an M-box a couple of days ago. For the low-tech folk, that means I can record stuff onto my computer now. That's pretty awesome. I haven't had much time to mess with it yet, but I like it. I wish I had more desk space to put it on and a bigger room to use it in, but I like it. It'll be cool when I have a chance to rearrange things in here a little and get it set up in a more permanent fashion.

In other news, Waylon Jennings made me talk to my dad the other day. A couple weeks or so ago, I decided it was about time to get into Waylon Jennings, so I bought three of his albums in a few days, and damned if he doesn't sound just like my dad. Or vice versa, I guess, but still, it's eerie. So it made me think about dad, and I emailed him and he emailed me back pretty fast and it wasn't bad. Today's his birthday. Also, the Waylon Jennings stuff is really, really good.
You should listen to it.

I managed to get out of the parking lot without much incident this morning. It took a while to clean the snow off my car, and I was afraid the dunes of snow behind it were going to be a problem, but I pretty much just backed up until my car stopped moving and then I was able to pull out. It was a little terrifying to drive to work with peolpe flying down down the still-slush and ice-covered roads like they were a racetrack.

I stopped at Walmart after work and got cool stuff, like a new snow brush and some pants. And a humidifier. It's pretty dry in here and I feel kind of dessicated. I'm sure it hasn't helped that I've been handling boxes in the warehouse. It's cool, though...I pretty much stopped helping back there. Anyway, I think the humidifier will help, and even if it doesn't, it makes a nice noise. I might get one for the other bedroom, too, so the instruments don't dry out. A lot of the stuff at the store is in kin dof rough shape because it's been so dry. We had a couple cracked guitars in the acoustic room, even, but we finally got some humidifiers in there, too.

Today was free magazine day at work. I assume this is something that happens at every place that has magazines, but every month we have to tear the covers off the old ones and send them back for credit, and the bulk of the magazine gets thrown away, or put in my car. It's an admittedly small perk, but I save a lot on magazines. Or I get to read magazines that I would never pay for, depending on your perspective. I also remembered to bring home some of the other free stuff I got at work. A lot of times when vendor reps come through, they give us free crap, and I usually take it, because most of them are assholes, and I deserve a t-shirt for having to talk to them. I got a couple of Monster Cable t-shirts and a Remo drum-head t-shirt. The coolest one, though is a nice work-shirt that says I am Ampeg certified that you're only supposed to get if you take a test and are, in fact, Ampeg certified. I can probably even get away with not tucking it in, which makes me pretty happy. It's the simple things in life, you know?

On that note, the highlight of yesterday was when I came home to pick up Erin at lunch so we could get my car, and after all her complaining about how I listened to them for a month straight (which, in fairness, is true...), I totally busted her listening to Coheed & Cambria.

The bedroom already feels nicer with the humidifier running, but I don't think I'm enjoying it half as much as the cat. Meowie has been sitting there watching it ever since I got home.

Today it snowed here more than I have ever seen in my life. Possibly more than I have ever seen in my life combined. I'm not really used to having real snow...even St. Louis wasn't that big a deal, so when people here say it's going to snow, I'm just like, "Pfft. Whatever." As it turns out, I don't really have any concept of what 5-7 inches of snow actually means. It's a lot of snow. It took me over an hour to get home from work, a drive that takes about three minutes if I don't hit traffic lights. It's really pretty, though.

I just got my car out of the shop, too. It got so cold a couple days ago that my battery couldn't cope, after all these years of faithful service, and my car wouldn't start. Erin was off, so I took her car to work and got a new battery that night. Only when I went to put it in, the terminals and battery posts were pretty much so corroded that they were one piece of metal, and they were probably frozen, too. I got some stuff to spray on them to clean it off, but I think they were too far gone, and I'm pretty sure that also froze. So yesterday after work we jumped it and took it to the Ford place, and as of this afternoon, I have it back with shiny new terminals for the battery cables and a new battery that works. I may have to take it back and have them put some new tires on it, too. The ones I have weren't really made for snow, even when they weren't worn out and sad.

So, that's pretty much it. My car works now, but it's under a shitload of snow. Fortunately, if we get snowed in and I'm stranded with nothing to do but listen to music on my computer, I can make it for 47 days before I have to hear something twice.

So, ever since I got my computer and got the wireless stuff all set up, the internet's been pretty shifty around here. I don't know if the neighbor with the wireless router is having power outages or what, but it's lame. I keep thinking about actually posting, and then I sit down and there's no internet. It would be pretty funny if it stopped working before I finished this, too. I don't really have anything to post about anyway, so it probably doesn't matter.

It's the holidays at work, which just means longer hours and more work, so I'm kind of tired lately. We have another guy with keys now, though, so once the month is past, I should actually be able to take the whole weekend off, which would be awesome. I've been doing six days a week for so long now that I'm not even used to having an extra day off, so it'll be like a vacation every week until it wears off.

In the meantime, pretty much what I've done for fun since I got the computer is put disc after disc of mp3s that I've burned over the past few years onto the hard drive, just because I can. It's been a fairly entertaining task, if slightly obsessive. I have a lot of stuff that I haven't listened to in a long time. Or ever, in some cases. I'm almost done, though. I don't know what I'm going to do once I've finished. Go back to practicing the banjo, probably.

Whoa, dude...I just burned a CD for the first time on this computer...it was pretty fucking amazing. I wish I had access to a bunch of CDs I wanted to copy again.

Anyway, yeah, I'll probably try to spend some more time practicing the banjo. gravymonster bought a guitar while he was here, and damned if he isn't actually learning how to play it, so I have to stay at least one step ahead so I can stay in the band. Maybe I'll learn to sing and starting doing threatening side projects, like Jason Newsted. Or just join Voivod. I think one of them died, so they're probably looking for a new member.

Oh, also, it keeps snowing here. It's neat.

So, Thanksgiving was pretty cool. gravymonster flew up to hang out and we had Thanksgiving the way we've wanted to do it for a while, which was to make a big dinner and watch The Last Waltz and drink and hang out. Which, admittedly, is what we do when we hang out anyway, except that it happened to be on Thanksgiving. Also, it snowed. Thanksgiving is one of the four days a year that work is closed, so I got to sleep in and hang out without interruption for a while, which pretty nice, but then I had to go to work early as hell the day after, since it's the busiest retail day of the year. I'm still pretty tired, but I have tomorrow off, too.

Erin made a really good Thanksgiving dinner, too, pretty much all by herself. We probably would have had to go buy a grill and put the turkey on it without her. She stuffed it and everything. Unfortunately, we left it out overnight, so no turkey sandwiches. I think there's still most of a ham in the fridge, though.

I'm pretty happy with my new computer. I haven't done much besides install a couple of things and delete most of the programs that came on it, like the dozen or so irritating anti-virus software that wouldn't shut up about how my computer might be at risk. I installed Reason...I haven't had much of a chance to really play with it yet, but the computer was hoss enough to play the demo songs, which are pretty much written to use as much processing power as they possibly can, so that's cool. Now I just need to get some actual recording software, and I'm set. Come tax-time, or maybe even after Christmas, I'll probably get an m-box, and then I could record stuff in a format that would make it much faster to pass stuff back and forth with gravymonster. In the meantime, I might just focus on putting my entire mp3 collection on the hard drive. It's kind of funny how fast I've gotten used to the new one...Anything slower than this is pretty irritating now, and I keep catching myself thinking stuff like, "Damn, I'm already down to 135 gigs of free space."

Maybe tonight I will hook up the new printer and print stuff just to see how fast it is.

Holy shit, I am typing this on my new computer.

I still don't have my new computer. I ordered about an hour after the last time I posted, which was roughly eleven days ago. Prior to that, the computer I was going to order (I got it through tigerdirect.com) was in stock, available, and was to ship immediately. So I go to work and I log on, and it says that now they ship in 7-21 days. I figure I can live with that, it's a pretty good deal. So I ordered it, along with some extra RAM, a new printer, and a wireless card. I really had every intention of setting up internet service here, but we've already used the neighbor's wireless service for this long, and we're probably going to move before it would be worth paying for high speed internet...so I opted for the $20 wireless card instead.

In a turn of events that I expect the universe thought was very clever, the UPS guy handed me a new printer, some RAM, and a wireless card the very next day. No computer. So I go back to the website, and it says that my stuff is partially backordered. Meanwhile, and in fact ever since, my assistant Marcus has been taunting me mercilessly. I called tigerdirect.com to check on the order and a very helpful latino person told me that they had run out of that particular model, but that a shipment of them would arrive on the following Friday, and he said, "You're in Indiana, so it should only take you a day to get it." So I was able to content myself with that, although I got nervous on Friday when there was no change in my order status. Sure enough, this morning, no computer.

I called them again, and the conversation went something like this:

Me: "I'm calling to check on the status of order number blah blah blah."

Miguel: type type type, pulls up order. "The computer you ordered sold out."

Me: "Huh. It was available when I ordered it, and I was told last week that another shipment was coming in this past Friday."

Miguel: "Yeah...we didn't get those..."

Me: "..."

Miguel: "..."

Me: "Well...?"

Miguel: "I could check and see if there's a replacement model..."
'
Me: "How about if you go ahead and do that?"

So he checked, and found one, and pretty much what I ended up with is a slightly inferior computer for twenty dollars more. By the time he tracked it down, I didn't even care. They could have sent me a Commodore 64, if that's what they had in stock. The one I wound up with is, like I said, not quite as cool as the one I actually tried to order, mostly in terms of expandability, but I think it's at least five times as cool as the one I actually have in pretty much every measurable way, so I can probably live with it. And they gave me a tracking number and charged my bank account for it, so hopefully it will be here soon.

I told the UPS delivery guy about my woes, but he didn't seem to find much humor in it. Ernie the pickup guy, on the other hand, thought it was fucking hysterical. Ernie's pretty entertaining, because he's pretty open about how UPS works. For example, they pretty much don't give a crap about your package unless it's worth at least $5,000. I figure everybody's like that, but it's funny to see it in action. We were shipping an amp out for repair today and somebody dropped a corner of it and it hit the ground...Ernie was like, "Shit, that's nothing, man. That's love. You should see what happens after you close the door." Apparently, for those of you who watch TV, Ernie is exactly like the delivery guy on the show King of Queens, and may even have the same name. This is per Marcus.

Nothing's really going on here. It's really busy at work with Christmas traffic, which is cool. gravymonster's going to be here for Thanksgiving, that's pretty cool. Erin and I went to Walmart to get Thanksgiving supplies on her lunchbreak today. We got a turkey and a ham and stuff for pies and a bunch of other stuff. I think Erin thinks ham is gross, but my family has always had it alongside turkey at the holidays. Both sides of my family, even. One year, my dad got a Christmas ham that was about as big as my torso, and we had ham sandwiches every time I went to vist him for about five months. Anyhow, we got both, so that's cool. gravymonster, if there's anything you want in particular, speak up. I don't know if there's a lot of demand for lamb chops and lobster tails around Thanksgiving, but I'd hate to be caught unawares.

In other news, I can't help but notice that none of you have purchased our new album. Honestly, it's only nine dollars. And if you're just not the CD buying type, you're in luck. We're on itunes, too. It couldn't be easier. The CD is really the better deal, though. Check it out. It makes a great Chrtistmas gift.