The Dave Matthews Band
Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a band. Specifically, the Dave Matthews Band.
I got my first DMB CD (Under the Table and Dreaming) when I was in high school, sight unseen (unheard?) based on the recommendation of my best friend. Who knew that it would spark a love affair that would last for more than a decade?
Everybody was a DMB fan back then, but it’s not an exaggeration to say that I lived, breathed, ate, and slept in their music. Most of the time, literally. Certainly there are super-fans who had more “cred” to their name, but I did alright. I have something like 20 DMB CDs. I had shirts, hats and stickers. I saw them in concert more times than I can count, including one magical tour when I saw them three consecutive nights in a row. I listened to CDs in the car, in my room, and on my discman in between classes (that’s right you youngsters, a discman). I learned how to play the guitar because of Dave Matthews. It seems ridiculous now, but I used to wear a hemp necklace. A hemp necklace people!
Considering all of this, I felt like I must have tons and tons of old blog entries about the Dave Matthews Band, but surprisingly I didn’t. However, I did find a pretty good excerpt from a blog post as recent as February 2008 that sums things up quickly:
One final note, Live at Radio City Music Hall by Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds is really good! Dave and I used to have a pretty good relationship. We hit a rocky patch during the whole Lillywhite Sessions debacle, but Busted Stuff and Some Devil were better than a dozen roses. Still, the endless live compilations began to wear on me (see Live Trax vols 1 – 10). How many CDs can I own with the same songs on them? Finally, Stand Up did our relationship in. But here comes Live at Radio City to make me remember all those romantic weekends at Deer Creek. Of course it is good! Did we forget that Live at Luther College inspired me to learn how to play the guitar? And that Tim Reynolds still can play the hell out of a guitar. Dave’s voice is a little more raspy, the song selection is decidedly spiritual and I’ve never heard acoustic guitar sound so…sinister. They really work that low E! But it certainly brings back memories and I’ve spent more than a few trips in the car singing my lungs out.
Although I rarely listen to DMB these days, there’s no denying that a large portion of my life is inexorably tied to that music. It was the unceasing soundtrack of my life for a large, important chuck of time, spanning from high school, throughout college, throughout my time in Philadelphia, and into my life in Chicago.
Which is probably why, when I pulled out some old DMB CDs for a road trip a couple of weeks ago, I startled Sara by weeping openly several times.
It would be impossible to hear a DMB song that didn’t have some associated memory with it. I know them all by heart, but it’s like they know *me* by heart as well. I can’t hear Under the Table without thinking about driving around Fort Wayne in Chris’ red S10. I can’t hear Crash or Recently without thinking about playing Magic the Gathering in Casey’s basement. Live at Luther College reminds me of the guys that lived in my hallway at the dorm my freshman year. Before These Crowded Streets reminds me of playing guitar in Hillenbrand with Casey and Jeremy. Rody and I listed to Live at Red Rocks in the car on the way Deer Creek for concerts (ha, I just remembered, Rody won DMB tickets once by calling in to a radio show and singing Ants Marching!). Reid and Casey performed #41 at an open mike in the basement of the Union. I think about ex-girlfriends, friends half way around the world, and now I think about the DMB songs I sang to my kids when they were babies and wouldn’t go to sleep (and still occasionally now).
Everybody has a particular band or particular style of music that really defines them, or reminds them of their childhood. For me, that is and always will be the Dave Matthews Band.
Accordion vs. Guitar
I remember one time my friends Jeremy and Chris were arguing about which is harder to learn how to play, the piano or the guitar. The argument basically went like this:
- The piano is easier, because someone with no knowledge whatsoever of the piano can sit down and pick out a tune. You can’t do that on guitar.
- The guitar is easier, because after you learn a few basic chords, you can play the vast majority of most songs.
Now that I am making some meager attempt to learn the accordion, I have discovered that they were both right! They are two totally different instruments, that both have their own advantages as far as ease of learning go. Keep in mind that I am less than a beginner when it comes to the accordion, so take my opinions with a grain of salt!
Advantage Guitar
- Usually with guitar, you only play the rhythm part. You might learn a couple of little tidbits of picking here or there, particularly intros to songs, but during the song you usually only play the part that is sort of background, and then sing the melody. On accordion, you have to play both, simultaneously.
- For guitar, any song you can ever think of is available online, for free. I assumed it would be the same for the accordion. Not so! It is very, very difficult to find free music for songs. Usually you have to purchase a book containing sheet music. The other downside to this is that I usually check out 2 or 3 guitar versions of a song and pick and choose what I like about each (there are always many different ways to play any song). I don’t think I will be getting 2 or 3 versions of a song if I have to pay for each one.
- Guitar has a special, condensed way of designating how to play, called tab (or tablature) which is very easy to learn. For the accordion, you more or less have to learn to read sheet music. I haven’t looked at sheet music since 4th grade band. I am literally starting at square 1.
- On a guitar, you have two actions to perform: playing the chords with one hand, and strumming with the other hand. On the accordion, you also have to play with two hands, but in addition you need to work the bellows. 2 is easier than 3.
Advantage Accordion
- Like my friend said, with the piano you can sit down and pick out a song. The first time I picked up the accordion, I could play *something* (even if it was Three Blind Mice). There’s no way you could sit down and figure out a tune on guitar.
- With the accordion, there are no hurt fingers! To really practice the guitar, you have to expect painful finger tips until you build up your callouses. If you play infrequently, like I do, your callouses go away, and your playing time is usually limited by how much pain you can handle in your fingers. It seems kind of crazy when I say it like that, but it’s true.
- On the accordion, there are no sour notes. Nobody will believe me on this, but it’s true! The only sounds you can make are coming through tuned reeds. When you hit the G-chord button, you get a G-chord. On the guitar, you get rattling strings, badly formed chords, misplaced fingers. All sorts of hazards.
- Any piano training is useful. I didn’t happen to have any, but if you already know how to play the piano, you could probably just start playing an accordion. I suppose there are other stringed instruments that you could know which would translate over into guitar, but the knowledge of these instruments is a lot less common than knowledge of piano.
Weekend Wrap-up
We had a weekend at home, and it felt like we got so much done! We’ve been away from home so much for the past few months, that it feels like we are always doing catchup whenever we are home. So it was nice to get some time just to sort of kick around the house for once.
Evie and I had a little baking project. We made “candy chestnuts” (a.k.a. buckeyes to everyone else). I had a stroke of brilliance combining her love of the peanut butter cups she got when trick-or-treating with the chestnuts she collected all over Paris. This ended up being the perfect recipe since A) you have to mix all the dough by hand, B) you then have to make little balls out of the dough, Play-Doh style, and C) she had fun dipping them in chocolate as well. Oh, and eating them of course. The only problem is, she figured the entire batch was for her, since she made it.
On Saturday we went to a Family Jam at music class, which is always fun because the entire family can go (usually they go when I’m at work, unless I take them for a make-up). We had a good time, as usual, but this time they were doing something different – encouraging people to bring their instruments. They started a beginner guitar class, so I figured all of those folks would go, and the Family Jam would be a pretty easy thing to do. They would probably select easy songs for the beginners, and they’d probably sound terrible, two things that would work in my favor! 
However, none of them showed up. So somehow I ended up being the main guitar person (besides the teacher of course). I’ve been playing for about 8 years or so, but I very rarely play for anyone except Sara, Evie and Oliver. Also, I usually like to play songs a time or two to get everything down, especially if anybody else is going to hear me play. Of course at home I usually play the same songs all the time, so those ones I’ve got down. So anyway, I winged it and it worked out okay. I sounded good when it counted and only messed up when it was too loud for anybody to notice anyway! It was fun. Eventually though it was a little too crazy with all the kids and stuff, so I was needed to kid-wrangle instead of play guitar.
Finally, on Sunday we went to pick up the meat order from the farm. We’re in a little buying group that buys organic meat and eggs from a farm downstate. You put in your order once a month and pick it up at someone’s house. As part of being in the group, you agree to go pick up the shipment, maybe once a year or so. This happened to be our turn.
We planned it so that we could pick it up at the farm, so that Evie could see the animals. During farmer’s market season, they’ll drop it off at the market in Chicago, although not the one by our house. Still, it’s a little closer than going to the actual farm. But someone has to take the trips during the winter, and that someone might as well be us. They had chickens, turkeys, sheep and lambs, calves, and pigs and piglets. I have to say, it was amazing the amount of room the chickens had to run around in. In chicken-selling standards, it was ridiculous! Made me feel a lot better about getting food there.
Evie liked to see the animals, but she was disappointed because she was under the impression that they would be killing the animals for our order right then and there. (Maybe she was hoping to see a guillotine in action?) She was really grilling the people who worked there on how they killed the animals, and they were obviously very reluctant to tell her. I got the impression they didn’t feel like they should tell her, either because we wouldn’t want them to, or because they just didn’t think a little girl aught to know.
This got me thinking. Obviously back in the day, when everybody was in charge of their own food, (as opposed to getting it from the grocery store) kids were around animals that they later ate, and it wasn’t weird. (Yes, my friends that live in the country, maybe you’re STILL around animals that you later eat for food (Lisa), but Evie’s not, and neither are the majority of kids). Kids are sort of a blank slate about it, until we TEACH them it’s weird to kill the animals and eat them. We’ve discussed with Evie how the sausage patties we got used to be pigs on that farm, and she couldn’t have cared less. If anything, she was MORE excited to eat the sausage.
So I guess I’ll try to do my best not to instill this disgust in her. I myself throw my hands up and shriek like a little girl when presented with any evidence that my chicken was ever anything other than a tasteless, boneless, marinated 7 pound monster-breast. So wouldn’t it be great if Evie never learned that from me? Yeah, yeah, things were better in the old days. My curmudgeony is starting to be a major theme around here.
And now for something completely different
That’s some pretty amazing guitar playing, if a little unconventional.
Link via Roger Ebert, way down at the bottom of a pretty good article about actual changes in the human brain as a result of the way we use the Internet.
John Denver fan
This one goes out to any Habitat for Humanity people from high school who read this blog and also Carl Loesch, should he ever find it:
She really kicks it in during the “I belongs”. Allow me to explain that one.
After Evie spent an entire day singing, “I will make you hurt!” I realized I needed to revise my list of songs I played on the guitar. Since I don’t have anything in my repertoire that is kid related except for maybe Tree Hugger from the Juno soundtrack, I’ve been playing some of the simpler songs I first learned on guitar, hence the John Denver. Evie’s favorites are “mountain mama”, a phrase that she finds endlessly hilarious, and “dawn is breaking, it’s early morn” a.k.a Leaving on a Jet Plane:
(I changed the word “die” to “cry” to make it a little more kid friendly)
She also enjoys “baby song” or “baby riding in the car” a.k.a. Last Kiss, as covered by Pearl Jam.
And just for bonus cuteness, here’s quick one of Evie saying a mouthful of a book title:
Update
And thus fulfills my obligation to make an update.
J/k. Look, I’m getting sick and tired of you folks (you know who you are) bothering me about an update! None of you* have a blog and / or a 6 month old baby, so I don’t think you realize how much work it is to keep up such a thing!
*With the exception of InteractiveReader of course, who puts my posting to shame. However, she is not bothering me for updates, I assume because she knows what a burden constant blogging is!
Evie suddenly decided she wants to roll over and now she can’t be stopped. She has been able to for awhile, but it took a lot of coaxing. Now she just automatically does it whenever she is on her back. She still can only drive in reverse though.
I’m going somewhere this blog doesn’t go very often…economic stimulus packages. Read this really exceptionally fantastic idea about how they should be implemented. I personally don’t agree with economic stimulus packages in general, but neither does he.
One final note, Live at Radio City Music Hall by Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds is really good! Dave and I used to have a pretty good relationship. We hit a rocky patch during the whole Lillywhite Sessions debacle, but Busted Stuff and Some Devil were better than a dozen roses. Still, the endless live compilations began to wear on me (see Live Trax vols 1 – 10). How many CDs can I own with the same songs on them? Finally, Stand Up did our relationship in. But here comes Live at Radio City to make me remember all those romantic weekends at Deer Creek. Of course it is good! Did we forget that Live at Luther College inspired me to learn how to play the guitar? And that Tim Reynolds still can play the hell out of a guitar. Dave’s voice is a little more raspy, the song selection is decidedly spiritual and I’ve never heard acoustic guitar sound so…sinister. They really work that low E! But it certainly brings back memories and I’ve spent more than a few trips in the car singing my lungs out.
That is all.
Hey, remember this thing?
I was just catching up on some friend’s blogs and I remembered this thing here. I really would like to get back to writing in here. For awhile it just became too much of a chore.
So I’ve been married a year, so far so good! Everything’s going really well and married life is even better than I thought.
Work has been a handful. About 5 months ago or so I kind of got a promotion to where I’m a team lead and I’m managing 3 or so people. I say “kind of got a promotion” because it was a promotion in responsibility but not a promotion in money or anything. It’s been really good so far, but it makes me work a lot more than I used to.
On top of that school was really kicking my ass. I just got done with my capstone class, which is like the “end-of-your-masters-wrap-up-the-program” class. Between all the extra hours at work and all the extra hours for school, I’ve literally had no time to do anything. I can’t wait until I graduate in December!
Now that class is over and our delivery is about to go out the door at work, I find myself without anything to do. I’m still kind of in hurry up mode so I feel like I should be doing something. T.V. just seems boring now. (Hence me picking the LJ back up…)
I’m trying to actually DO some of my hobbies now that I have time, particularly picking the guitar back up. Unfortunately my callouses are completly gone now and I’m not able to play for very long.
Somewhere in there we also took a trip to England to see Sara’s sister who was doing study abroad. It was a great trip (although we prefered Italy) except for on the first day when someone broke the rental car window and stole Sara’s purse. Kind of put a damper on the trip…
Okay, I started this too late and now it’s time to go to bed. Who knows, maybe I’ll have some extra time now that school is out and I’ll update this thing!
51
I feel like there’s not much to do now that I don’t have school!
I came home from work and made a bunch of phone calls. First I called the guy in charge of the place where we’re having our reception. Sara gave me a list of questions to ask him. You know, it’s quite amazing, every time we have something we want to do, he says yes. No matter what it is, he makes it happen. Maybe I shouldn’t be so amazed because that’s the way people should be when you’re giving them lots of money, but frankly they aren’t. This guy though…he’s awesome.
Next I called 7 apartment complexes. I have 3 appointments set up but most of the places either didn’t answer or I left a message on an answering machine. I’ve decided that I’m going to make my decision after the places I see on Thursday. If I don’t hear from anybody else before then, so be it. I’ve looked at about 7 places, I’ve got 3 more for sure to look at and another 6 or so that I’ve called but haven’t seen. Nobody can say I wasn’t thorough!
Other than that I’ve just played guitar and watched T.V. tonight. I feel like there are things I should be doing, but I really don’t think there is. Oh, I was going to put a little extra in my final but the info I found didn’t really change anything, so I didn’t resubmit it.
Oh, one more thing, I weighed myself today. I was expecting something really bad since 1) I’m not working out AT ALL, 2) I’ve been eating easter candy like crazy, and 3) I’ve been eating bad things and going out to eat. I think I forgot to mention it in here, but on Friday night I had a full cheesesteak from both Pats and Ginos!! NOT on the diet plan. But you know what? I was down 4 pounds from the last time I weighed myself! I was 208, which was only 1 pound heavier than at the end of the contest.
Okay, how to do this as quick as possible
Okay, here we go
Okay, first I played guitar with Tony Vegas for like 2 hours and I had a blast. I’m really getting back into the whole guitar thing and I love to play with Tony. He’s definitely better than me, but not so much better that I feel like a dumb ass. We also like the same kind of music. It’s more fun to play with someone else than to play by myself. All in all, a great time.
After that we went and got Dairy Queen. Another fantastic idea! I had a mocha chip blizzard.
After that we met Renee and her friends and saw Hellboy. Good movie (despite what Sara might think). I know it’s not Citizen Kane or anything, but what are you really expecting here? A comic book action movie? Alright then. It was actually better than I thought it would be.
As far as the circumstances, doing something with Renee might have been a very bad idea. I have no intentions of hanging out with her, as I can’t stand her, but now she thinks we’re best buds. Today (Monday) she mentioned about 5 different times she ‘wished she had my number’ so she could have called me and invited me to things between when I saw her Friday night and when I saw her Monday morning. Seriously. That’s almost psycho.
Her husband and friends were all very goth. Now normally I get along pretty well with the goth crowd. We have a lot in common. Also, in my experience, they are mostly pretty nice normal people. They’d hate me for saying that. Anyway, in this case though, I felt a little out of place. The sad thing is, the whole time I felt like I was the parent. They all acted like they were about 18 and they just got done hanging out at the mall all day (for the sake of argument, let’s say at Hot Topic) and now they were going to raise some hell across the street at the movie theater. Actually, come to think of it, they’re all unemployed so maybe that is what they did. Did I mention that they’re all about 5 years older than me?
One other thing of note, Renee’s husband and another guy were pretending they were gay for a while, just to get a few laughs. It was kind of funny, I didn’t really think twice about it. Since that time, Tony has brought it up a bunch of times. I think he’s a bit of a homophobe. That’s a shame.
Come to think of it, after spending all night playing guitar with me, Tony paid for my ice cream at Dairy Queen before we went to a movie together. For a homophobe he sure participated in a near gay date there! 
I didn’t get to bed until 2 a.m. on Friday which is probably the latest I’ve stayed up in at least 2 years.
On Saturday morning, every freaking person in the world called. I finally got up at 10:30 and checked my messages. Well it turns out my friend John had called Friday night begging me to help them move on Saturday because some people had backed out, and I had offered to help last week. Well, I felt super awful that I had just gotten the message, but they said they would be moving between 9 and 12 and it was only 10:30 so I called them really fast. Turns out they were almost done. I felt pretty bad that I didn’t help, but on the other hand, if they were almost done by 10:30 I guess they didn’t need any help.
Next I fell back asleep for 2 more hours until the phone rang yet AGAIN. This time I answered and it was Dawna. We were supposed to go look at apartments but we had never set a time. Well they were on their way to KOP so they were going to go to the mall and then come over in about an hour. I was all, “Yeah no problem.” cool as ice, as if to say “I’ve been up for hours.” Then I had to jump up, shower, clean up the apartment, eat and do dishes. Luckily they weren’t on time (what’s new) so I got all that done and Tony came over too.
We went to the apartment that looked really good on the north side of the city and the location was AWFUL. It was on all these back, twisty roads and it was probably 30 minutes from the highway (with no traffic), which would then take another 30 minutes to get to KOP from there. The apartments were really nasty on the outside too, so I didn’t even bother to look inside.
Next we were going to try to find this furniture outlet called “The Dump”. Sounds classy, I know. It took us a really long time to find it, but meanwhile we found some little Italian bakery that we stopped at. Truthfully, it wasn’t really all that great. We also found a chi-chi’s which we ended up eating at. THANK GOD FOR MEXICAN FOOD!! Chi-chi’s might not be the hight of cuisine, but it was still great. This place is devoid of mexican food, which is a crime against humanity.
So we finally went back to KOP with no apartment or funiture to show for it. We had been talking about guitar though, so Tony was like, “hey you want to come over and play?” So I did, and it was a blast again. Between Friday and Saturday we played like every song I’ve ever learned how to play. After another marathon session my fingers were ragged. In fact, I tried to play on Sunday and I couldn’t because my fingers hurt too bad.
I ended up getting to bed late Saturday night because when I got home I spent a couple hours trying to find the Michael Jackson Thriller video online, because I want to memorize the zombie dance sequence. Finally, I broke down and re-installed kazaa and found it in like 5 seconds. The exhaustive online search was not for naught though, because I found Michael Jackson’s Thriller done stop action photography style with legos. Enter the site then go to filme and then Michael Jackson’s Thriller. It is literally a frame by frame duplicate of the original.
Still haven’t learned the dance though. 
Sunday was paper day. I was so unmotivated…god damn I hate this class. Only 5 more class periods! It took me all day to do maybe 2 hours worth of work because it was so awful. I did watch some pretty strange things on tv though. Couple episodes of trading spaces, monster house, a monster garage where they made a cop car that could make doughnuts, a show on discovery about how you would build a bridge from Alaska to Siberia, a biography of Andre the Giant (FANTASTIC might I add) and god knows what else.
Oh, also on Sunday we had daylight savings time!!!!!!! SUPER exciting. Hey peeps in Indiana, you just jumped out of my time zone! I’m now in the future by 1 hour!! Bow to my power.
Okay, so I’ve been sick with a cold for awhile now. Because of this I didn’t take my allergy medicine Saturday or Sunday. Because of this and because of staring at a computer screen all day Sunday, it all came down on me with a vengence, most notably the worst sinus headache I’ve ever had in my life. By about 11 on Sunday night I felt possibly the worst I ever have in my life. Ugh! Awful!
First thing I thought when I woke up Monday morning was “Wow! I feel like a million god damn bucks!” I’m actually still sick and allergy ridden, but compared to last night, I’m fantastic.
Worked part time downstairs on my new job for the first time today. Exciting! I can’t wait to get away from all the nut jobs upstairs! Probably a whole new crowd downstairs.
Worked 10 hours today since I’m planning on going to NC to see my baby this weekend! Hoo ray! It’s been like 5 or 6 weeks!
Sara and I have both been really stressed out about her getting a job. We can’t live on my salary alone (which is pathetic because I make a shit load of money…but not compared to the cost of living out here) and she just can’t find a job by me. We had some back up ideas, such as some research jobs and some retail jobs she really didn’t want, but today Sara came up with a great idea. Temporarily she could teach at a community college or something since she’ll have a masters and all. Not perfect, but better than the previous ideas!
Here’s the big event of today:
I need to get a refill on my allergy meds, but I’ve switched insurance since I got the perscription. I called the pharmacy to see if this would be a problem and they said “No.” I didn’t believe them. I went in to pick up my prescription. They said, “Problem!” What a surprise. Aparently, I need to be “pre-approved” for my Zyrtec now, so my doctor needs to call the insurance company and then its going to take them 6 days to approve me, after which I can get my medicine. The big problem is that my pills aren’t going to last that long! I’m going to call my doc tomorrow, hopefully he can give me some samples or something.
Alright, I think that’s it.
My brother just called…it sounds like his computer is royally screwed. Sounds like his hard drive went kaput. I guess there are worse things that could happen to a person. Luckily this was a few days after he turned in two big papers!
Night
Quick one
Paid a HUGE stack of bills tonight and then filled out my budget for the month. Finance wise, things are looking okay for the wedding…not great, but okay. Gave my paper a final read and emailed that to my group members. Played guitar for awhile tonight too. I was hoping to go grocery shopping and also maybe organize my guitar tabs into a binder tonight, but I didn’t get to that because I had to go have a rediculously huge (but delicious) dinner and Buca Di’Beppo’s. Mmmmm, family style italian.
No word from Schafer today about how his court date went. I tried calling him and got no answer…I hope that doesn’t mean he’s in jail already.
My brother got his birthday present today! Damn those quick bastards at Amazon, it’s too early! Whoever thought I’d be complaining about good service, but when they said it would take 2-3 weeks I believed them. It took like 1/2 a week.
Okay, bed time.
So much to talk about!
I’ve had this damn song in my head ever since last Thursday.
Okay, so let’s go chronologically. Went yesterday and helped sand and paint Dawna and Jeff’s living room. It went really fast and I had a pretty good time. I wish I had a house to work on. :/ I can’t wait.
After that we had our big “drink night” but I didn’t feel very good before the drinking even started, so I didn’t drink that much. Nobody got really smashed except their neighbor’s daughter Kelly, which was kind of strange because nobody even knew her. I was going to sleep over there (because I was planning on drinking lots) but I ended up going home around 1:30 since I stopped drinking around 11:30. We had such big plans for drinking, but I’m thinking maybe my best drinking days are behind me!
Saturday was a milestone though, because it was the ceremonial first day of my sandles! The left one has fallen a little bit into disrepair, but the super glue on the right one has held up really well, so I think I need to get some for the left one.
This morning I was in no hurry to get up and get ready so I was just lazing around until like noon. Then I finally was just getting ready to get to work on my paper and Dawna calls and asks me if I want to go play in the park and celebrate the nice weather. I was just about to say “no” when she said the magic word…”frisbee”. Frisbee is like homework kryptonyte! So I got to wear the sandles again AND play frisbee for the first time of the season.
Talked to my best friend today who got picked up for his second D.U.I. on Friday. This time he was in Huntington County which is aparently very tough on drunk driving because the head judge’s daughter was killed by a drunk driver. To make a long story short, it sounds like he’s going to get 45 days in jail, lose his lisense and maybe some community service, maybe even Anibuse. He knows that he deserves some punishment but he’s trying to get his jail time commuted in exchange for something else (maybe house arrest) so that he doesn’t lose his job, which he loves. The bad news is, it’s only 32 days until the bachelor party that he’s supposed to be throwing for me. What a party it will be if the best man’s in jail. He’s said a few times that he knows he has a problem and he needs help, but we’ll see if it actually changes anything. He had to go to alcohol class last time and that obviously didn’t help anything. I’m almost hoping that he does have to do a decent stretch in jail, maybe it will wake him up.
I tried to talk about this whole thing with Sara and she didn’t want to talk about it because she doesn’t really like Schafer. I was pretty upset about that because this is a pretty huge deal in my life and I tried to turn to her and talk about it (since she’s going to be my wife and all) and she didn’t want to hear about it. I just think that’s really rude because here I am trying to come to the one person I should always be able to come to and she can’t even just listen to me because her “distaste” for the subject was too much. I know that she’s not a big fan of the things Chris does, but neither am I. She’s only known him for 3 years so she only knows the bad side of him, but I’ve known him for about 20 of my 24 years. As far as I’m concerned he’s like a brother to me. (I’ve known him *almost* as long as my real brother) If your brother makes some bad decisions, you don’t just give up on him. You stick by him and hope he turns things around. I called her back and told her these things. I was just feeling so frustrated with the whole Chris thing and then she didn’t want to hear about it…if I was at home I would have cried, but since I was in the car outside my friend’s house I managed to choke it back. I haven’t talked to her since, but she thinks I’m avoiding her because she IMed me and I wasn’t here so obviously I didn’t answer back. I’m not avoiding her, I just didn’t get home until late. I’ll have to straighten that out tomorrow.
After that we went back to my apartment, but Dawna and Jeff still had a bunch of food and pop left from yesterday and I said that it’s too bad we weren’t there because I didn’t have anything for them…so then they convinced me to bring my laptop over to their place and work on my paper there. Sounded like a bad idea, but I actually managed to get it done.
Left there at like 8:20 to make it over to John and Melissa’s before Sopranos started. I ended up staying there and talking for another hour and 20 minutes after Sopranos got done. I’m very sad that they are leaving on Wed. to move into their new house in Jersey. I miss them already.
All in all, very busy weekend and I didn’t get to play the guitar as much as I’d like. I’m really wanting to get back into it some more…I’ve only played a handfull of times since Christmas.
Time for bed.
Posts
Recent Comments