Tales from the Preconstruction

I do -

Work was a morning show at Oldies 100. Came home, fell asleep, because hey, I was up before 5 to go to work, and I didn't have any classes on monday that semester. Woken by a urgent phone call from my mother, bringing news of a tornado that had struck the College Park campus. I dressed fairly quickly, and then made my way towards campus. You see, I put on my gold pants and shiny shirt, because being a monday, it was a Rocky meeting, and more importantly, the one immediately after the First Look Fair, so there would be lots of new folks looking for our club's meeting tonight.

Getting on campus was a bit of a challenge - every gate was closed except a wrong-way one way road by the dairy that I managed to get my Escort Wagon into to get to the Armory on time. Met up with a few other members of SM, just enough to have quorom for a sprout-greeting-meeting. In the basement of the armory, setting up with the others, I was stepping out of the room to get something from my car.

As I entered the hall, I nearly ran into a girl, wearing a long dark coat and a cute rain hat, brunette, pretty, looking at room numbers. I don't remember her saying anything, but I said (based on garb, location the day of tornado, and the fact that there were no other groups actually meeting) "Hey! You want to be in there," gesturing at the door I had just left.

Little did I know that would be the most important part of the day. First an acquaintance through the club, then a close friend, and much later, my girlfriend, partner... wife. Today marks 8 years of learning about her, seeing her work and succeed, seeing her grow and change, and liking more and more about her the whole time - I love the life we have discovered together. I do my best for her, to deserve her, and every morning and night now I have a smile on my face to be next to her.


I love you, Toria.

p.s. for everyone else:
fun facts about 8 years ago:
I had not yet started a livejournal.
I had just moved into the basement apartment with Sarah K., Deb, and Talia.
I had not yet purchased the domain name paradoxysm.net.
As mentioned, I drove a '92 ford escort wagon.
I was trying to record a techno album.

Probably most of you have seen this already, or aren't going to see it today...

But my band (petal blight) is playing Tonight! at the Caton Tavern in Catonsville, MD - the show runs 10 til midnight, and we go on about 10:40. We have a pretty long set, and we pretty much rock - we have a theremin player, kit drummer and hand drummer, and then me, a bass player (often upright) and singer. If you got no plans, you got them now, cause it's no cover, fairly cheap alcohol, and good music.

anyhoo, off to pack up the PA. see you there!

It's taken a bit for me to write another entry in livejournal -

I was having the odd observation today that I've had this online outlet almost as long as I've known Tori. In the past few months, I've been posting much less often, and largely using it as a newsfeed to keep up with friends. I'm likely to keep doing that for the most part, but I don't feel the need to post my life here all the time as I once did. Maybe I'm finally growing up, maybe the archive here belongs to someone very different and I have nothing to add... maybe I'm just less interesting lately.

So I guess the message is I prefer catching up in real life. I've pretty much dropped off of myspace, I suck at twitter, and facebook's redesign rubs me the wrong way. On the flip side, after Sweeney Todd, got to hang out at paper moon with a crew of people and enjoyed myself much. Walking in the woods with my dog is more fun than staring at the screen. Playing guitar and bass more and out more is very rewarding.... and the house demands spring cleaning and spring yardwork et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.


Anyway, I've got a birthday coming up again - I have no idea what I'm doing besides playing in sweeney friday and saturday nights. Best of times to everyone I need to catch up with, and I'll see you AFK sometime.

Eeesh it's been weeks. I suppose my life has been fairly interesting, but I haven't felt the need to write about it much.

I'm going to the Cacao Lane open mic on Wednesday - an acquaintance through work runs it, and I've been meaning to for some time. I hope to see as many former perk OM folks and people whose music and company I enjoy there as possible, cause damn I miss you all. I'm getting more details if y'all want them.

Recently, I've twisted an ankle, strained a calf muscle (in my sleep), and caught some stomach thing that very emphatically ended a 15 year vomit-free streak. Given my usual invincibility, this is a confirmation of reaching the ripe old age of 29 in just short months from now. A little unnerving, and a little frustrating in certain ways - the lyric about being 19 forever - well, I don't want to be 19 ever again, certainly, and I'm very satisfied with the lion's share of my life and situation right now... but I do feel sometimes like I'm missing something somewhere. I'm sure I'll figure out what it is soon.

anyway, I evidently don't really have more to say. email me or call me if you want to talk, cause these social networking thingies don't seem to work for me these days.

For the first time in forever, I'm actually catching an episode of L&O: CI. I have seen it before, but at the time, I was playing a very gripping game of Marble Blast. So now I'm hearing it for the second time, but seeing it for the first, I suppose.

I have just given Jackson a break - he's been pretty decent all day, and we went outside in the rain. He ran madly all around the house, like he does, which is fine because on our normal walks I can't keep up with his sprinting. I figure he needs the energy outlet, but when he tires out a little, we go inside, but he does it inside too, grabbing everything possible and running around the coffee table and growling. I have the other rooms blocked off, so I can catch up to him pretty easily here, but it's the sort of "grrr hyper dog mode" that I'm not completely comfortable with.

He will be getting me back in shape with the long walks and stuff, but right now I ache so much and am so tired it's hard to even enjoy his quiet times. He can be so very sweet, but then wig out right when it is least appropriate or helpful.

By the way, we got a dog.

I need to find time to christmas shop, and there's all sorts of parties and things I have to go to in the next couple weeks. But right now all I know is my socks are wet.

Blarg on wet socks.
Be good, all.

There's a dog in our house. he's our dog. he's a sweetie, and I haven't even heard him bark once yet. He thinks the house smells funny, but I think he likes it.

Today, the invisible fence guys came and electrified the property. I'm very excited and a little nervous about Jackson moving in. I'm sure he's gonna take a lot of my attention. and Tori and I will have to pay a bit more attention to our schedules to make sure we aren't both away from the house and him for too long. I should have raked while they were working, but I was still really sleepy. I also would like to be able to listen to something while raking away.

I really want to announce my return to consciousness and create things with my friends. But the free time is clearly a myth. This weekend, for example, work all three days. Friday is the fun-with-friends night, at Bedrock. Saturday is Jackson's arrival. Sunday is fun-with-family night, and poof! here's the next week already.

The only nights that seem to open up from time to time are Tuesday and Wednesday. I would love to hit open mics and see people I know at the same time on those nights... any ideas, folkses?

Anyway, it's off to mildly frustrating work for me shortly. I'm trying to work lots of hours going into the end of the year, in part to make up for lost time in the play. plays, really, cause Bare cut into my checks a little too. Perhaps I don't have the budget to be a thespian right now... Or a Techspian?

Be good, all.

1. Reply and I will write something about you.
2. I will then tell you what song or band reminds me of you.
3. Next, I will tell you who you remind me of (actor, celebrity, etc.).
4. Last, I will try to pick a single word that I think best describes you.
5. Then you put this in your journal.

stolen from Peter (aside: do you actually go by pete, or is that something the guys in Sex Sells did?)

So thank you to everybody who came and saw the play. Those who missed it, my entreaties go double for the next one.

Now I try to return life to normal... though there's a puppy coming saturday, and we're headed into the holidays, which means not much in terms of normality.


Aaand it means more hours at work, which I'm gonna go be off to now. More later. Take care.

Of Note:

I am in a play!

(finally responding to ira's comment a ways back.)

The play is called "Sex Sells" - it's a humorous look at working retail in the Christmas season, with a bit of ludicrous insanity thrown into it as well. It takes place mainly in a record store, where my lovely wife Tori and the amazing metalcrowe are two of the employees, and I, well I get on stage periodically as well. There's also about eleventy billion other really cool people in this show, and it's a lot of fun, so you should come and see it. It's going up at Laurel Mill Playhouse (www.laurelmillplayhouse.org) for November 1st, 2nd, 6th, 7th, 8th, 14th, 15th, and 16th. I designed and am running sound, designed lights, built some of the set...

So basically, come see why the Falcon is on pause and my Spore creatures haven't been doing much new designs lately. Wheee!

There is very little other news. really, this been takin' some time from the schedule.