another beautiful day spent in the hole

i really need to check the weather before i agree to work auditorium gigs. best weather of the break and i'm inside. ah well.

hard to believe break is over already. did what i was supposed to do - relax - but still feels as if i should have *done* more. gone places. visited people. been productive. perhaps relaxing is what i needed to do most.

finished off wonderfalls this morning. they did a good job of wrapping up the loose ends, which helped. good to see jewel staite again, though hard to accept her as an evil, cheating ho. she's just too darn cute for that. she'll always be kaylee in my heart. i can see why wonderfalls didn't last - another show too quirky for its own good. but glad i got to experience the characters for thirteen episodes anyway. i'll take that over years and years of dreck like everyone loves raymond anyday.

really need to stop eating food that leaves me queasy. far too much of that this weekend. probably should carve out some time tomorrow to go grocery shopping so i have something to eat other than the fast food i've been living on this week. funny how during lent i had little difficulty not eating for hours at a time, but now that it's over, i can't even keep a promise to myself not to eat lunch for a day. odd.

had hoped to spend a little time this afternoon practicing the chorus numbers for tomorrow's rehearsal. but alas, the cd i have doesn't play on any of the cd players i own, not even my computers. not sure why not, but i can't even access the files that are there. must have been made on a vista machine. or perhaps some mac. who knows. going to make dance rehearsal tomorrow interesting since we're supposed to be off book. guess i could spend the time learning the lyrics at least.

jake speed show tonight at 9:00. should have time to get there after MCP are finished with the set building. i'm hoping they pull out early, but i get there feeling they'll be here for the duration. good for my pocketbook, not good for my state of mind. of course, i may talk myself out of going - have the fear it will be very crowded in a very little space. will have to see how i feel in four hours or so. not sure what i'll do if i decide not to go. probably nothing. could go to the bird and see kim nixon perform, but it has the same drawbacks that going to arnolds has.

be so much easier if i actually liked people.

seems most of my week was spent shopping at half price books. my purchases:

Cyrano de Bergerac (Signet Classic)
Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons (Buechner)
The Beatrice Letters (A Series of Unfortunate Events) (Snicket)
The Eyre Affair: A Thursday Next Novel (Fforde)
Thursday Next: First Among Sequels (Fforde)
Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto
Dream Theater - Live at Budokan

and hopefully tomorrow i'll pick up (with a 50% off coupon)

The Personal Best of Monty Python's Flying Circus

ah, the joys of consumption. i also picked up Through a Screen Darkly by Jeffrey Overstreet. found it for 75% off at cokesbury. enjoying it so far. i became aware of jeff through my association with OTR mailing list. or was it the DADL? i can't remember now.

this is long enough. more later perhaps - thought about doing a posting in honor of jeremy's passing. we'll see. you are missed, my friend.
Æ

rainy lazy days make me malaisey

ooh, assonance.

laaaaaazzzzeeeeee to day. i mean, i did stuff, but little productive, unless you count finding buechner's secrets in the dark productive, which i guess i do. spent the early part of the morning meeting with kevin then hanging out at the speckled bird, putting some ordination stuff together. yes, believe it or not, i'm still looking into it. one of the reasons i wanted to talk to kevin. the pastoral council has been going through transition, which explains part of the delay. kevin suggested typing up my story, which i did. hopefully my email got through - my last one didn't make it far enough. good to talk to kevin, get a little perspective, a little better grasp on the swirling chaos in my head.

so break is over tomorrow, if we don't count the weekend. and as i just signed up to do a shift at the auditorium on saturday, it really is over after tomorrow. guess i'm glad i didn't make plans to head up to columbus like i toyed with. and i think it will allow me to do what i had hoped to do on saturday, which is go to the jake speed and the freddies red's opening day concert at arnolds. i'm supposed to be done at the auditorium at 8:00, which should give me time to get down to the show. never been to arnolds, though, so i'm a bit concerned it might be packed. but i'm willing to give it a shot.

speaking of concerts, went to the pomegranates show at the southgate house last night. another great performance. such joy and energy. last show for a while in the cincy area, so glad i was able to get my fix in. sadly the seedy seeds were not there - instead it was a band from dayton. i wasn't too impressed - music was uninteresting and lacked any sense of melody (though many in the crowd did not agree with my take). didn't help that the lead singer was openly hostile toward the venue and the audience. did nothing to endear them to me even if they are from my home town.

finally chatting with my friend kat - we've been missing each other for months. having a good time catching up - enough that i'm going to stop this now.
Æ

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Now playing: King's X - Lover
via FoxyTunes

attempting to be social

so i've taken the blog on the road again, to the bird to take in the open mike night. i had thought about participating, but i forgot about it until i was walking by before prayers and didn't have any of my poems with me and yada yada blah blah blah. maybe next month, though i'll be knee deep in final rehearsals so i kind of doubt it. someday i'll get the courage up to share my stuff in public - well, more than the virtual public of this blog.

spent the afternoon at aveda getting my haircut and the other various amenities that come with it. had the same stylist as last time, which was great since i really like my haircut from last time. i always assume they can just look at the last cut and match it, but i guess it doesn't always work that way. i ought to have them write it down so i know what to say when i go in. but alas, i never do that. always seems like a bad idea for some reason. silly, i know.

haven't really done enough relaxing so far this break. part of that is because i had things planned for the last couple of days. i am hoping tomorrow is a little looser. i have the pomegranates show to go to tomorrow night, but other than that, nothing. i probably ought to start by going to bed earlier so i'm not so tired when i get up. but that would take discipline and it's not something i want to be practicing on my break.

so what does the end of my break look like? i've toyed with several different ideas, but nothing is calling to me at the moment. of course, when it costs $40 to fill your tank, it makes you a bit reticent to go anywhere. i should try to take advantage of the weekend to head up to columbus, but i haven't talked to anyone up there and who knows if anyone is around. procrastination, thy name is thurman.

i think we might have figured out the whole house church vs beauty and the beast showdown. gina's going to check with the havens and see if they can move their dinner to wednesday night. so i might not have to miss hc after all. which is good. finally chose a study to use as we look into i corinthians. glad i'll get to be there for it - lots of good stuff in there.

ok, the time swiftly passes and if i hope to actually try and go to bed before 1:30AM for once, i need to head toward sleep. night.
Æ

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Now playing: Ol' Dirty Bastard - Shimmy Shimmy Ya
via FoxyTunes

joy unleashed

saturday night i ambled down to the gypsy hut for the pomegranates' cd release party. as usual i got there way too early - you'd think by now i would add an hour to whatever the advertised time was. anyway, chris saw me as i entered and proceeded to introduce me to everyone that walked in. perhaps i exaggerate a bit. but it definitely seemed like he knew everyone. i'd never been to the gypsy hut - turns out to be quite the venue. i especially enjoyed the porch area with a couple of fire pits. and i was there early enough that it wasn't overwhelmed with cigarette smoke.

ran into a couple of my former students there - paul and jayme. this happens occasionally when i go to shows, especially the pomegranates given their large under 21 following. i sometimes wonder what they think of seeing me there, if they think that's cool or if it makes me seem desperate to hang onto my youth. doesn't ultimately matter, but i can't imagine how i would have reacted in high school if i'd seen any of my teachers at a concert.

as for this concert, it was fantastic. i stayed toward the back for the first band, the read. they're good, though not my favorite genre of music. their bassist is amazing, but most of the songs fell into a similar vein. but i moved toward the front once the seedy seeds came on. they put on their typical energetic set and the crowd loved them. definitely primed the pump for pomegranates. then as the clock move close to 1:00AM, pomegranates took the stage. this was one of the first times i saw them toward the front of the crowd. completely different experience. if i could boil down their appeal, it would come down to joy. joy in the way they perform, joy in the attitude of the audience. it's such a rare commodity in today's music and one that is difficult to capture honestly. they do it with amazing ease. it was a great way to start celebrating Easter, surrounded by a delirious crowd singing and dancing with joy. i've said it before and i'll continue to say it: these young men deserve to bring their brand of joy to a huge audience. i only hope the music industry can pull itself away from persecuting fans and looking for the next bland new thing to let them.

so break is already beginning to slip away. met the 'rents at ikea - they called around eleven and said it wasn't terribly crowded. by the time i got there around noon, the exit was backed up onto the highway and i had to park in mason and walk to the entrance (ooh, that might be exaggerating again). we ate lunch there and then i looked at their beds. looks like to get what i need it's going to cost me close to $300, but that's cheaper than most of the other options i've looked at. still not ready to pull the trigger, but this seems like a good use of my tax return after paying off a couple of credit cards.

ok, time to catch up on a little tv and head to bed. here's hoping someone's at prayers tomorrow so we can get into st. e's. night.
Æ

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Now playing: Pomegranates - In The Kitchen
via FoxyTunes

Christ is risen

He is risen indeed.

easter has arrived, which means i don't have to blog if i don't want to anymore.

i kid, i kid.

missed two days total - not bad all things considered. now we'll see if i can continue being consistent beyond lent.

much to share, but not feeling it at the moment. i will say i had a marvelous easter - my parents came down for the day and the celebration at st. e's was wonderful and dinner at the cheesecake factory was scrumptious and i finally saw enchanted, which made me fall in love with amy adams even more and then i talked myself out of going to the stephen malkmus show, mostly because i wouldn't have known many of the songs and i'd rather spend $15 on a cd than on a show. and i ripped a bunch of brian's mix cds to my ipod, which makes me happy, along with the new pomegranates cd and the seedy seeds cd. so yeah, a great easter.

more tomorrow. may be meeting the 'rents at ikea before i head over to mason for paula's going away bash and then back to norwood for dance rehearsal. am thinking i should use some of my tax money for a real bed frame and headboard. we'll see if they have anything. will probably check big lots as well. haven't thought about the rest of the week yet. probably ought to do that.

looking forward to prayers in the morning. later.
Æ

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Now playing: Pomegranates - Late Night Television
via FoxyTunes