i've already got a solid percussion section
so we played Napper Tandy's on Friday, and it was a really great show, one of our best. someone i haven't seen since sophomore year of high school was in town for his sister's graduation and came out to see the show, which was really cool. it was nice catching up with what he's been up to in the years between (short story: class clown goes into finance) and dishing about what little we knew of the people what we went to school with. not to brag, but i've gotten considerably hotter since high school (and believe me when i say that's not bragging, i was really scraping the bottom of the barrel back in the day) and it makes me happy when someone who knew me then sees me now. if that's petty, then i'm petty. oh well.
i finally got to bed around 3am and woke up four hours later, 7am, to get back on the road for a wedding. we had to catch a ferry because the wedding was on Bald Head Island, and i started out the day pretty pumped about this. Bald Head Island, all right, i've been there before as a kid, it was awesome!!
but the day took a pretty quick turn once we got there. it's days like that Saturday for which the word "heinous" was invented.
okay, so, we have a lot of equipment. it fills up our practice space and just barely fits into a fifteen passenger van with the five of us in there, and that's after an intense bout of three dimensional tetris to get everything in. here's how a wedding usually goes:
- unload the equipment from the van to the venue
- set up
- eat
- play
- break down
- go home.
so here, in contrast, was our day at Bald Head.
- arrive at the ferry, 11am.
- unpack all of the equipment in the hot sun into three carts
- load the carts onto the ferry, ride it to the island
- take the carts off the ferry
- move all of the equipment from the carts to a vehicle
- ride the vehicle across the island to the wedding
- load all of the equipment out of the vehicle and up a bunch of stairs, setting everything up outside (still in the hot sun).
- sound check. the sun is hot.
- take about an hour to rest, eat, spend some time by the pool. we just now realize sun screen would be a good idea.
- go on an Indiana Jones-type journey down a quarter mile of boardwalk, carting a bunch of sound equipment so they could have music for the ceremony
- wait through gale-force winds for the ceremony to end, walk the quarter mile back with equipment.
okay, so finally, we get to actually do our job and play the wedding. this part is easy, except for the wind that keeps whipping mine and kat's dresses up. and i should mention at this point that bryan's nose is bright red, my shoulders are purple, paul's got raccoon eyes and kat is a lobster. of course mani is unscathed (fun fact: black people don't burn. i didn't know this, but mani told me. they can get darker but never really burn. he was shocked that kat's skin was hot to the touch. he had no idea that sunburns were actually painful).
so we have to end at a certain time to catch the last ferry off the island at 10:30. the bride begs us to go longer and hey, she's the customer, she's dropped the big bucks, so hey-presto, we play later. and scramble--and i mean scramble, literally running with equipment to the truck parked out back. we load everything in, trundle across the island, and pile everything into carts just in time to watch the last ferry pull away.
FUUUUUUCK.
we were literally seconds late. it was terrible. it turned out that there was an unscheduled ferry that was coming back for the staff, but because this one didn't adhere to the strict time schedule, we had to wait an hour and a half, just sitting around nursing our varying degrees of burn, all exhausted after a day of hard labor on four hours of sleep, and finally piled onto the ferry just before midnight. we got our carts, shoved everything one last time into the van like zombies, and left, swearing that we'd never ever return.
i drove through a sleep-deprivation fuzz to the hotel, over an hour away, and we finally got inside and passed out around 2am. what a fucking day, dude.
that night i had a dream that a man had to have his arm amputated after an accident and somehow, over a series of months, grew it back. scientists were studying him to find out what kind of enzyme or whatever he had that would produce such extreme regeneration. i call dibs on the idea, JJ Abrams.
um, so, personal stuff. broke it off with ryan awhile ago. he's a great guy and i really enjoy being around him but it wasn't going anywhere. we went out for four months and neither of us really wanted anything more serious, so, there you go. we've hung out successfully a couple times since the breakup. i'm still attracted to him, which kind of sucks, but if i can get past that i think we could be good friends. also he has a 2-year-old daughter i don't think i've mentioned yet, so between her and his two jobs (three if you count the freelance video editing he does) he doesn't have any time, so it would be pretty impossible to get more serious even if we wanted to. he is starting a Beastie Boys cover band (citing me as his inspiration, a-thank you), so hopefully that will take off.
i came to the conclusion about another dude that i was fostering irrational feelings for that some people are just congenital flakes and should neither be depended upon or blamed for their flakiness. we're good now and i'm more than happy to just be his friend.
chris and i have been hanging out with kevo a bunch lately, which has been awesome because he's a good person to have around. i'm glad he lives so close (just a block away). the three of us went and saw Star Trek at the Imax yesterday, which was very cool and only made chris a little motion-sicky.
my love life has been reduced to the way-too-young boys that Kat thinks are cute and ushers my way. i have no interest in dating a guy in his early 20s. but they're nice to look at. like whoever played Kirk in last night's movie. gah, that movie could have been horrible and i would have enjoyed it as long as he got plenty of screen time.
speaking of my love life, all three of the dudes mentioned above (not Kirk, but, you know, the other three) have been guys i dated at least for a couple of months. and i'm friends with all of them. and two other exes of mine, guys i dated years apart and know each other through another mutual acquaintance, are thinking about starting a band together. seriously. i swear to God, if my life could stop being a romantic comedy / setup for a sitcom, that would be greeeat. eventually i'll date enough dudes and they can start up a goddamn orchestra.
i finally got to bed around 3am and woke up four hours later, 7am, to get back on the road for a wedding. we had to catch a ferry because the wedding was on Bald Head Island, and i started out the day pretty pumped about this. Bald Head Island, all right, i've been there before as a kid, it was awesome!!
but the day took a pretty quick turn once we got there. it's days like that Saturday for which the word "heinous" was invented.
okay, so, we have a lot of equipment. it fills up our practice space and just barely fits into a fifteen passenger van with the five of us in there, and that's after an intense bout of three dimensional tetris to get everything in. here's how a wedding usually goes:
- unload the equipment from the van to the venue
- set up
- eat
- play
- break down
- go home.
so here, in contrast, was our day at Bald Head.
- arrive at the ferry, 11am.
- unpack all of the equipment in the hot sun into three carts
- load the carts onto the ferry, ride it to the island
- take the carts off the ferry
- move all of the equipment from the carts to a vehicle
- ride the vehicle across the island to the wedding
- load all of the equipment out of the vehicle and up a bunch of stairs, setting everything up outside (still in the hot sun).
- sound check. the sun is hot.
- take about an hour to rest, eat, spend some time by the pool. we just now realize sun screen would be a good idea.
- go on an Indiana Jones-type journey down a quarter mile of boardwalk, carting a bunch of sound equipment so they could have music for the ceremony
- wait through gale-force winds for the ceremony to end, walk the quarter mile back with equipment.
okay, so finally, we get to actually do our job and play the wedding. this part is easy, except for the wind that keeps whipping mine and kat's dresses up. and i should mention at this point that bryan's nose is bright red, my shoulders are purple, paul's got raccoon eyes and kat is a lobster. of course mani is unscathed (fun fact: black people don't burn. i didn't know this, but mani told me. they can get darker but never really burn. he was shocked that kat's skin was hot to the touch. he had no idea that sunburns were actually painful).
so we have to end at a certain time to catch the last ferry off the island at 10:30. the bride begs us to go longer and hey, she's the customer, she's dropped the big bucks, so hey-presto, we play later. and scramble--and i mean scramble, literally running with equipment to the truck parked out back. we load everything in, trundle across the island, and pile everything into carts just in time to watch the last ferry pull away.
FUUUUUUCK.
we were literally seconds late. it was terrible. it turned out that there was an unscheduled ferry that was coming back for the staff, but because this one didn't adhere to the strict time schedule, we had to wait an hour and a half, just sitting around nursing our varying degrees of burn, all exhausted after a day of hard labor on four hours of sleep, and finally piled onto the ferry just before midnight. we got our carts, shoved everything one last time into the van like zombies, and left, swearing that we'd never ever return.
i drove through a sleep-deprivation fuzz to the hotel, over an hour away, and we finally got inside and passed out around 2am. what a fucking day, dude.
that night i had a dream that a man had to have his arm amputated after an accident and somehow, over a series of months, grew it back. scientists were studying him to find out what kind of enzyme or whatever he had that would produce such extreme regeneration. i call dibs on the idea, JJ Abrams.
um, so, personal stuff. broke it off with ryan awhile ago. he's a great guy and i really enjoy being around him but it wasn't going anywhere. we went out for four months and neither of us really wanted anything more serious, so, there you go. we've hung out successfully a couple times since the breakup. i'm still attracted to him, which kind of sucks, but if i can get past that i think we could be good friends. also he has a 2-year-old daughter i don't think i've mentioned yet, so between her and his two jobs (three if you count the freelance video editing he does) he doesn't have any time, so it would be pretty impossible to get more serious even if we wanted to. he is starting a Beastie Boys cover band (citing me as his inspiration, a-thank you), so hopefully that will take off.
i came to the conclusion about another dude that i was fostering irrational feelings for that some people are just congenital flakes and should neither be depended upon or blamed for their flakiness. we're good now and i'm more than happy to just be his friend.
chris and i have been hanging out with kevo a bunch lately, which has been awesome because he's a good person to have around. i'm glad he lives so close (just a block away). the three of us went and saw Star Trek at the Imax yesterday, which was very cool and only made chris a little motion-sicky.
my love life has been reduced to the way-too-young boys that Kat thinks are cute and ushers my way. i have no interest in dating a guy in his early 20s. but they're nice to look at. like whoever played Kirk in last night's movie. gah, that movie could have been horrible and i would have enjoyed it as long as he got plenty of screen time.
speaking of my love life, all three of the dudes mentioned above (not Kirk, but, you know, the other three) have been guys i dated at least for a couple of months. and i'm friends with all of them. and two other exes of mine, guys i dated years apart and know each other through another mutual acquaintance, are thinking about starting a band together. seriously. i swear to God, if my life could stop being a romantic comedy / setup for a sitcom, that would be greeeat. eventually i'll date enough dudes and they can start up a goddamn orchestra.