my niecy with the pipes

She didn't win, but I think she should have. She did a truly incredible job on this song.

out and around

Our festival was a smash. It was great!

I went out to boooze bay to see my neecy compete in the Teen Idol singing competition. She placed second, but I do firmly believe, all bias aside, that she was the better singer. The audience knew it, too. I listened to her practice "At Last" by Etta James and it made me cry. That's really something. I came back home with a flu-ey kind of ick.

Our jam spot had a fire, but we're back up and running at the local Legion hall for now, starting tonight. I hadn't even had a chance to piss the neighbors off with the drums, yet. I'm devastated. laff.

Smart Half will be going back to school with me! I'm totally excited about it.

Scootypuff blew out another CV boot. Time to park it for a while and bus it around til I can have these replaced. Three boots are bad, and at least one actual CV joint. This in addition to the front end just being trashed. I was thinking of busing it for most of the winter anyway.

Holy crap its tomorrow

the blues festival that is. It's goin to be AWESOME!

hehe woot!

Got one back

Lizard prince sent me an unedited sound file from Saturday. It was three songs long with some conversation. One of them was pretty damn good, if I do say so myself. One of my favorite songs of all time, "Diane", originally done by Husker Du and then covered in about five different ways by one of my favorite bands of all time, Therapy?. It was just me singing and playing Puddin. I got a great sound, even, out of my dinky little 15w amp, too.

It's always exciting to hear a recording of myself. I'm an egomaniac that way. Part of it is that I still can't believe I can play an instrument, so it's cool to hear myself doing it.

So I guess in a couple of days I'll have the edited one and I will upload it to the Butcher page.

tuneage

Saturday the lizard prince and I sat down at his hidey hole (which happens to be catty-corner from the house the Smart Half and I were trying to buy when we moved here) and I thrashed out about 10 songs on the geetar. Some are mine. Some Cracker, New Model Army, Jesse Colin Young, Dwight Yoakum, Therapy? It was mostly just to get some stuff recorded finally. By thrashed out I mean I just sat down and got as far as I could through some of these and then kept going even after losing it. There may be a couple that are worth sharing. If that's the case, I'll put it on ye old Butcher page. It felt pretty good, though. He didn't realize I knew as many songs as I do. Well, when I'm stuck in the back of the stage playing blues bass for three years, I guess it's hard to tell I can play anything else.

mommy can I go out and kill

I don't care what anyone says. Glenn Danzing had one hell of a voice for a punk band. I think Lee Ving did, too.

(The Misfits)


(Lee Ving)

Thank you, pb!

Paul has quit maintaining OrBlogs

Thank you for running such a great resource for as long as you did!

GPA

Did I mention that coming into the fall term at school I have a 3.43 GPA? Those three numbers and a dot just make me smile from one ear to the other.

It's the small things, you know.

breadfan

I love jamming this guitar intro on my bass. Djeef and I used to play it a lot together. Metallica's version. It's only been in the last few years that I was able to find a taped copy of the original Budgie song. And here it is. Rad.

Gutted

The place where we hold our jams was in a fire early this morning. One side is a restaurant and one side is the bar. The restaurant caught fire in the kitchen. The entire building didn't burn down, but the restaurant is closed now, as is the bar. I guess the ceiling in the bathroom and poker area of the bar collapsed. All of the blues society's equipment was safe, and so were the bartenders who were working at the end of their shifts. All the bartenders there are so super cool, I'm really happy none of them were hurt. I could deal with busted and burned equipment, but would be absolutely bummed if one of them had gotten hurt. But I'm bummed anyway, as now we have no jam place and the world is poorer for the loss of that place. Great owners at the bar. I don't know the restaurant owners, but they had a bustling little place going there with pretty good food and a friendly wait staff, who are now out their jobs, as well.

yay

the Fo is fine. Whew. Came this --> <-- close to a very expensive repair. I added TWO GALLONS of coolant to it (8 quarts. Capacity is 9.6 quarts). Started it. Got it warmed up. Turned it off. Went looking for leaks. Found the culprit at the block inlet pipe. No other fluids in places they shouldn't be. (ie no coolant in the oil. No oil in the coolant. No coolant burning in the cylinders. No exhaust coming out the radiator fill up hole. Etc). Everything smelled right.

I have an irrational fear of blown head gaskets and warped heads. Have dealt with both just one too many times in other cars. The Fo was running extremely poorly, very hot, with a lot of pinging, and getting hot in less than a mile's worth of driving. All of these are symptoms of stuff getting into where it isn't.

I had reminded the Smart Half when we got it to check everything on it once a week, just because of the problems these had. This is HIS vehicle. He did not. I should have just let it go to fucked up so he could have the joy of dealing with it, but then I got smart myself and realized it wouldn't be him dealing with, but me. As usual.

He admitted to not checking a single thing on it in four months. I could have slapped him.