Man, here I was all lounging around this morning and playing some music and getting ready to record a hornpipe... and I just went to check if I needed to charge up the camera battery, and realized that Dirk took the camera to Chicago with him.  Humph.  No hornpipes this week.  Which is especially annoyoing since there were no hornpipes last week ( Read more... )

December has been such a weird month. We're at the midpoint (15th) and it seems simultaneously life it's been holiday season" forever, and like there's been no time at all. We spent all last weekend sleeping and watching TV (well, okay Dirk went out and did a 1-day comics show, and I did a bit of cooking) and getting boxes of christmas stuff ( Read more... )

I have discovered that getting up at 6:30 is very difficult if one doesn't go to bed until 12:30 ( Read more... )

A couple of years ago, if you'd asked me what the scourge of the semi-literate internet masses was, I would say that the lack of distinction between "your" and "you're" was going to drive me to mental breakdown.  Oddly enough, I don't notice that nearly so much now as I did before.  Either a large percentage of the world has improved their spelling ( Read more... )

For non-Irish-musicians, this will make no sense, so you can just skip it.

I was at a great session last night.  Ended the evening with me, 2 fiddle players and 2 guitar players, all of whom are at least semi- if not entirely professional musicians and are damn good players.  Seriously good. 
Once again, it was made clear to me that the really ( Read more... )

In Mexico you can go to a pharmacy and buy antibiotics.  Without a prescription, just because you want some.    Yeah, yeah, I know that people taking antibiotics all the time is bad since it doesn't fight viruses and makes bacteria stronger.  But sometimes, you know you have an infection and you know you need antibiotics, and it's such a pain in ( Read more... )

As all my fellow Chicagoans know, June is the magic month of city-stickers.  On June 1, you can buy the 2007-2008 parking permit, and by July 1, you'll be in deep trouble, and eligible for $120 tickets ( Read more... )

For being a free car, this Mercury Sable is pretty darn expensive.  I'm getting another $700 of work done on it today - but a lot of things will get fixed.  In its previous state, it's not what you'd call sellable - someone responds to my ad, gets in the car for a little test-drive... crank it up, and the belts go whishiwhishiwhishiwhishi... and ( Read more... )