Things 2009 has brought thus far...

[kschap]

My car's original factory-installed battery all but bit the dust. (Well, I guess this was technically in '08 but I got a new one put in on December 31st so that's close enough for me.)

I fell on my laptop while it was open, cracking the entire LCD screen from side to side, and bending the whole top lid a little bit. The computer part of it still works fine, but the screen is a mess of seeped liquid crystals and lines. That's extremely disappointing and I'm still not sure what I'm doing about it yet.

We got cable, along with a DVR, which has been fun... but also makes me feel a bit like a spoiled, over-entitled child of the 21st century.

Tonight we went and saw Jason Webley in Portland. After driving around the block several times and wondering whether this place called The Dooryard actually existed, we deduced that it was this nearly-hidden location that didn't look very wheelchair-friendly. We sat in the car for a little bit, pressed up against a loosely-plowed snowbank (I'm amazed that Portland's DPW isn't better about clearing the roads! then again, it *was* Sunday, and perhaps they can't afford a huge enough fleet of snowplows to make the roads more easily passable?), both of us about to give up and go to the mall or something, when a few people came walking down what was passing for a sidewalk. So we yelled out to them and they went to try to find someone to help us up the stairs, only to find a sign posted on the door directing the five of us to the Meg Perry Center around the corner. We also learned that the Meg Perry Center was on ground level, yippee.

Drove around the corner, found some (snowy) parking, got out, and were helped through the also-snowy curb cuts and sidewalk by this rather drunk middle-aged guy. He kind of took off with Matt and his wheelchair without asking how best to help us, so when I got to the curb cut which was unnavigable for me without help, I just kind of stopped, hoping one of them would think to turn around to see if I needed anything. Eventually Drunk Guy came over to me. I told him I needed a hand, and he bent over to pick me up. "NO! I don't need you to carry me!" (He'd already slipped and fallen once while pulling Matt through the snow, lol.) So we managed through that, and I was able to walk fine the rest of the way to the venue.

We walked in and I was hit with the smell of body odor and cedar. Haha. One of the opening acts, Ben Richter, was in the middle of his set. (He has a MySpace.) This was a guy we'd seen before, that time as a fellow audience member, at the World/Inferno Friendship Society show we went to in Portland back in November, which was beyond incredible and which I have yet to really write about here. Cute guy, and nice enough, but, man, what a fucking weirdo. lol. His banjo-playing was decent, but his vocals were rather terrible--he seemed to be singing deliberately off-key to seem avant-garde, but it wasn't really working for him. I also couldn't derive much meaning from his songs because the lyrics seemed to go in a similar weird direction. At one point he had some other dude get up on stage with him to sing and "shoot flaming arrows into the sun" (which the audience was invited to participate in), and this other dude was crouched over in his chair during one song, holding his gut like he was either severely constipated, severely diarrheal, or having menstrual cramps. He was also rubbing his face against the mic. *shrug* I'm all for weird shit, but that didn't even seem to have much point to it and the both of them came off as pretentious douchebags.

Jason Webley, on the other hand, was great. His musical style and personality were both right up my alley. I got a really nice vibe from him--he seemed like a very open, accepting, gracious kind of guy. You can find his stuff on iTunes (I recommend "Captain, Where Are We Going Now?" in particular--can't get it out of my head!), or some samples through his website which I linked above.

(I also saw at least a couple--maybe three even, I'm not sure--girls there with armpit hair, which pleased me immensely! The place was full of scenester-types that generally make me a bit uncomfortable in their non-conformist conformity, but eh, whatever. Public armpit hair sighting! Woo!)

So... yeah. Some bad, some good so far this year. I don't feel particularly optimistic about 2009--I'm not feeling terribly energetic or ambitious, for one thing--but I suppose I'm confident that I'll make it through okay. :)

I'm also going to try to work on updating this thing more, even despite my current lack of laptop.