Seizure Salad

It's harder to post, to keep up in the summer. Not sure why? Less introspective with all of this daylight?

The little band is finally done our debut e.p., and it's just about ready to be shown to the world. We are quite proud, the kind of proud that only comes from a lot of hard work. The promotion of the thing seems daunting - in this city (Toronto) it's such an uphill battle to get noticed. Especially when your band is a bit long of tooth and grey of hair...in this magical land of young punks with band names that sound like something you might shout at your friend across a parking lot rather than a descriptive... ah well. We're going with the 'seasoned veterans' angle, hopefully it works in our favour.

Spinning, hardly any. Knitting - pretty behind on 2 baby gifts for 2 of my best friends. My ADD brain is finding it very hard to do anything, anything at all right now for longer than 5 minutes. The only thing I seem to be able to concentrate on for any length of time is bread making.

I've gotten hooked on a silly TV show - True Blood. Romance and vampires, so of the moment - but I can't stop watching 4 episodes in a row on the internet. We seem a little culturally preoccupied with vampires at the moment. I myself remember getting a Scholastic book as a kid from school about movie monsters, and I was pretty obsessed with ol' Dracula after that. Maybe every het woman secretly wants a romantic, blank slate kind of guy to drain them of their life essence after glamouring them into lack of will...damn, put that way it sounds rather horrible.

Speaking of romance, I have been thinking about pitching a few e-book publishers of romance fiction for some stories. Once I found out there was a SF romance genre, I was all over it - thinking of things I can do to drum up some extra money to save up to buy a condo. It's just not happening with my ultra high rent...can't save a fucking dime it seems. Maybe I could get my shit together and write a few romance in space stories for bucks? Does this seem crazy? I started my research here and found it to be...pornographic! Holy doodle. The genre has changed since my mother's Harlequins my friends...wish me luck. Maybe if I ascend the ranks and get really well known, they can do a book cover for me with Fabio is a space-suit.

Cool cool kitty

I have been absolutely plagued lately by a particularly disturbing brain-worm: random songs of the 80s. Now, I love a good Knack or Police tune, maybe some Flock of Seagulls even. But the brain-worm that has burrowed its way into my amygdala seems to want to recycle the cheesier side of 80s AM radio. Case in point: Manhattan Transfer.

This one showed up very suddenly, fully formed, three days ago and has been on constant repeat since:

Ooh wah ooh wah cool cool kitty
Tell us about the boy from New York City
Ooh wah ooh wah come on kitty
Tell us about the boy from New York City...

I wake up to a talk radio station in the morning, so I can’t blame the subliminal alarm clock music phenomenon, nor can I think of a single instance where I have heard this song since it was popular in 1981. Why. WHY?? It’s actually happening right now, as I write this

And he’s cute
In his mohair suit
And he keeps his pockets full of spending loot
ooh ooh ohh wee, you ought to come and see
How he walks (ya ya)
And how he talks (ya ya).

THIS IS FROM MEMORY PEOPLE. I did not google the song to find the lyrics somewhere, apparently they exist in full glory inside some 27 year old song lyric repository in my head. And they are rattling around in there usurping things like…stuff I am supposed to remember for work and the location of my housekeys.

Other bizarre stuff comes and goes, like you put the boom boom into my heart, you send my soul sky high when the lovin starts  or on a boat and on a plane, they're coming to America (both of which, when I think about it are kind of similar to Boy From New York City. Hm, must reflect upon this further. It’s like some kind of weird 80s version of showtunes are haunting me).

....

....and as I made that intuitive leap just now, my mind went to other 80s showtunes stylings, and now I'm afraid for my sanity when Puttin' On The Ritz and Just a Gigilo enter the fray. Jesus H. Christ.

In other news...this past week at work was one of the stupidest, most stressful ever. A big event that I organized happened mid-week, luckily everything went off without a hitch. However, in the months leading up to it there were several hitches a day, right up until the morning of. A lot could have gone wrong but didn’t, which I’m thankful for.

Working for a government agency is tough, it’s like I have three masters: our stakeholders/clients, other departments here, and the Ministry we are attached to. All three of them have competing interests and among our client group there are six very distinct sectors, with six different sets of needs and priorities. The piece of the pie that we have to give out is pretty small and our own internal resources are scarce too – not enough people, no administrative help, no HR department. Resource scarcity is tough, it can produce conflicts even within an organization. Sometimes the politics are so complex…I have worked here for two years and yet I constantly feel like I have no idea how this place works and what the implicit rules are. People are hesitant to just come right out and explain the subtleties of some of these relationships because they don’t want to say it out loud (out of fear of some kind?) or they figure everyone knows the deal already. Does that make sense? It’s exhausting, and worse than that – it's STUPID.

And on that note, I'm off to go where fashion sits...(DANG).

*Oh, and I'd like to say a special 'hello' to all of the people who arrived here by Googl'ing "gigantic nipples". I'm not sure if the fact that I was talking about my dog will disappoint you or provide just that special something that you were looking for all along.

'Cause you can't get what you want, til you know what you want

I saw two concerts last week, making 2007-08 the triumverate of '70s / 80s nostalgia shows (Police, Joe Jackson, Ray Davies). Soon I will be swilling $12 beers at Casino Rama singing along to "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" and saying "gosh, she puts on a real nice show, and we still got home to bed by 10:00!"

Ray Davies was a great show, although it did veer into cheese at times. It was good to hear some of the Kinks material being played by a crackerjack band ("gosh, he had a crackerjack band with him at Casino Rama, and we had a twofer one coupon for dinner!") and for a 63 year old, he still rocked and had a lovely, flamboyant charisma. I get what Chrissie Hynde was thinking, finally...but I digress.

It was the Joe Jackson show that I want to tell you about. I saw him around 1990 at Roy Thompson Hall, he had a pretty big ensemble with him then. This time it was Joe on piano and original band members Graham Maby on bass and Dave Houghton on drums. Fuck me, they were good. Joe's voice is in better shape than ever and the interplay between the three of them was so tight it seemed telepathic. He played some newer arrangements of songs like Stepping Out and Another World that took my breath away. I can't think of another performer except Neil Young who has managed to sustain a musical career over 30 years and is still making vital music.

I'll share with you a little post that I wrote before this blog went up, about my first JJ experience. It's edited slightly from the original post I wrote last year.

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For years and years, when the subject of cool tv shows from the 70s/80s came up, I would see if anyone remembered a show called Hot Hero Sandwich. I was starting to doubt my memory and sanity, because I have never encountered a single person who remembered it. Not one. I remember it vividly, because it had ROCK BANDS on it. I do believe I encountered Joe Jackson for the first time there, and by way of Joe, also had my mind opened to music that was outside of mainstream-radio rock. Joe is not a good looking guy, but it didn't matter in 1979. I remember looking at his skinny, slouchy countenance and his slightly fishy looking face, belting out Is She Really Going Out With Him in an ill fitting suit, with a hint of impudence. He looked both anxious and swaggering, like he knew what he looked and sounded like and didn't care if you liked it or not. I remember thinking (in my limited little kid way) that this was interesting, better - THAT I COULD DO THIS. At the time my favorite band was probably KISS and even though the sight of Peter Kriss's biceps on the cover of Hotter Than Hell produced all sorts of, ah, feelings in me, "I could do this" was not one of them.  Remember, this was well before music videos so there wasn't much of a chance for a kid to see a band in action.

Maybe my penchant for nervous, jittery musicians at that tender age set me up for a lifetime of David Byrne worship too?

In some way, even though Joe is a man, his music and countenance always seemed somewhat feminine to me. Not feminine in an overtly gay or campy way, just sort of faraway from the souped-up masculinity present all over the place at the time. Hearing him was like a window opening.

Anyway, thank the gods that this show happened early enough to save my soul...I was nine years old when this show was on the air in 1979. According to the notes on a You Tube clip I found it was taped at the same studio as SNL and was thought of as a kind of Saturday Night Live for kids. How cool is that?! In the comments a few other folks remember the Joe Jackson performance as well. I think the show lasted a season and was then cancelled.
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And that was the week that was...oh! except for this:

 

Sleeveface

sleeveface

Thanks Kathy for pointing this one out, it's my favorite right now. Who needs photoshop?

Fan Letter to Dave Bidini

Dear Dave,

This is the second fan letter I’ve ever written. The first was 28 years ago, to Helix, a band from my hometown of Kitchener.

My older brother had their 1979 debut Breaking Loose, and I would sit on the living room floor in front of the hi-fi listening to it and some of the other records in his collection - Machine Head, Hotter Than Hell,  Zeppelin IV, Motörhead. I simultaneously worshipped the records, and my brother for having them. (Just a few years ago I discovered that they weren’t his records at all, they belonged to an old roommate of his who left them behind. This did explain the fact that all of the covers had the name “Keith” written prominently in black marker on them. My brother’s name is Dan.)

Although I don’t remember my ten-year old logic, I must have begun noticing around that time that certain bands were Canadian, and started asking about their whereabouts. Anne Murray, The Guess Who, Neil Young…where did they live? The likely answer from my brother or Mom - oh, probably Hollywood or something. But then there was that Helix record … I knew they were from the same city I lived in. I likely probed my brother to find out if they were as famous as Anne Murray or the Guess Who, and was told that this was their first album and they weren’t too well known yet (this was well before the days of their hair-metal singalong hit “Gimme an R, O, C, K…”). I ruminated over the whole situation for a few weeks, and then decided to write them a letter.

I'm sure I don't have to tell you that I wish I had that letter now, or the handwritten response which came fairly promptly in the mail from the band’s singer Brian Vollmer. I had told the band I liked their album, especially the song Billy Oxygen. I asked them why Canadian bands had to move to the United States once they became popular, and if Helix was going to move there if it happened to them. If I try to think back to my pre-teen self, I can imagine the letter was probably pretty precocious and not a little incensed about the general state of things in the Canadian music industry (the more things change, the more they stay the same. I've made a permanent hobby and on-again off-again career of following, glorying in and being incensed about the general state of things in the Canadian music industry).

Brian was really good about it. I recall that he actually tried to explain the dynamics of the small size of the Canadian entertainment market in ten-year old language, and promised never to forget their fans at home if they did relocate to the U.S. I ran all the way to school the next day to show my friends the letter, and not one of them believed it was real. Bummer. I don’t recall what I ever did with it, I likely burned it in a spate of teenaged punk nihilism.

Anyway Dave, that’s a really roundabout way of framing what I want to say; that I laughed and cried while reading your latest book, Around the World in 57 ½ Gigs and for the second time in my 38 years, felt compelled enough to go beyond just having a conversation with the artist in my head and actually write a letter (I did come close with Alice Munro once, but close doesn’t count). I in no way expect a reply, these are just things I’d like you to know – that the Rheostatics meant so much to me, as they did to countless others. I got the chance to meet your band a few times at Kitchener/Waterloo community radio stations over the years. I was always struck not only by the Rheos talent, but by the undeniable magical something that existed between you men, and spilled out and over to the fans, and back. I saw the last Massey Hall show and felt the same undeniable something fizzing around the room like ginger ale bubbles. Love, is it?

Some wise individual gave me your book for my birthday and from front to back I was hooked – mesmerized by the artfulness and honesty of your writing. Somehow you manage to hold all of these different things in your palm at the same time and not drop any balls: your fierce passion for music, your desire to connect with music fans and musicians in a real and engaged way, the general state of things in the Canadian music industry, - hell, even the general STATE of things, period. The long sentence detailing different snapshots of rock history that ends with “in my life, rock and roll has meant everything” just about killed me. I was standing up and yelling YES! by the end. That bit Dave, that’s me too – and surely heaps of other people who are writing you letters right now, or at least having a good conversation with you in their heads as they read. Thank you for the Rheostatics, and thank you for deciding to do this writing gig. Reading your book was such a pleasure, and I just can’t wait for the next one.

Love,
seizuresalad

Lust for Literacy

Time has been woefully short for posting, or doing any knitting or spinning worth posting about. My band Leonids is playing this Sunday at the Theatre Centre in Toronto along with many other performers for a benefit - Lust for Literacy in support of Parkdale Project Read! I've attended for the last 3 or 4 years, and it's always an excellent night, so come out and support literacy work in Toronto.

Cabaret to feature Toronto’s liveliest new voices in words and music
Featuring:
Zoe Whittall, Reading from Bottle Rocket Hearts
         “Toronto’s Best Emerging Author” NOW's “Best Of” Poll, 2007.
Literacy Through Hip-Hop – Dance
Brandy Leary of anandam – Performance
Awkward Silence –  Comedy Duo

Live Music with:

Related – Traditional and Country
Waleed – Traditional / World
The Holy Fathers – Country Rock
Leonids – Rock

And Introducing the Dare to Read Challenge and many more...

DRAWS! SNACKS! CASH BAR.

Parkdale Project Read offers adults free help with reading and writing in a supportive atmosphere.  This is its 20th year.

$10.00 per ticket.
For more information call 416-531-6308 or visit
www.nald.ca/ppr

Love Letter to Stewart, Andy and Gordon

Friday night, for the second time this year I saw my most favorite, inspirational and longest-loved band live. The Police played at the Air Canada Centre four times in 2007, two shows in July and two in November. They broke up when I was 14, too young to think much about concert-going. I never thought I would see them live, and when rumours started percolating and the official announcement happened at the Grammys I was just buzzing. Buzzing with hope and fear, people. I feared that it could really, really suck. Suck like that terrible version of Don't Stand So Close To Me '86... (shudder).

It's hard to write about, this feeling I have for those three men. It's hokey. It intersects with my identity and my growing-up and my musicianship in ways that I can't separate from the music. I know every note, every drum, guitar and bass lick, every word, every vocalization on every album. I learned to play drums in my basement with my Walkman on, listening so intently to Stewart Copeland's fills, trying to figure out how it was that he turned the whole meter sideways.  Even though I really can't play it right, I understand the 3 because of Stewart. (Reggae music accents the 3 out of the 4-beat bar, while Western "rock" accents the 2 and 4. A little thing when you write it down, a big thing when you hear the difference between reggae and rock).

I have had mad crushes on all of them at different times and still do, even though Sting is a lute-playing wanker who in my opinion lost  most of his appeal along with his Geordie accent. Stewart is my favorite, not just because of the drummer thing - he comes from a CIA/British Intelligence family, grew up partly in the Middle East and is a loquacious eccentric of the highest order.  Andy, the  sly one who paid his dues with The Animals, Soft Machine and Neil Sedaka (!) before finding his way to The Police. Sting, a.k.a.Gordon - extraordinary songwriter, egotistical asshole, golden god, Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, a damn fine and underrated bass player.

They were great live. Just - unbelievably good. In July the show had more of a "oh-wow, I can't believe it's really them" factor, Friday night they were looser and joked around much more. They can still play, boy can they play. Never having seen them in their heyday I can't compare, but I believe Stewart when he says they have never been better. Three guys with no pre-recorded tracked vocals, enthralling a stadium full of people. Sure, I had some criticisms of the show - there was an extended low-energy period in the early middle of the set, both times, that left the audience similarly lagging in energy. And I don't know why Sting can't leave Don't Stand So Close To Me alone,  and  they could have figured out a way to play more from Ghost In The Machine and didn't, and ... it was perfect.

I have never for a second gotten even a whiff of greed or laziness about this tour, a la Stones. This feels to me like a gift, a great gift to me and all sorts of other people like me who never got

ahem,

closure about The Police. (There, I said it).

I wish I could thank them (aside from the stupendously expensive tickets, and the fan club membership fee that helped procure said tickets) you know, personally. I really wish I could. For thrilling me in concert, for waiting until the time was right to do it, for pumping out genre-bending music in my most impressionable pre-and pubescent years, for breaking up when they were at their peak instead of rotting away in hedonistic sloth. For making me want to join a band, and for being blonde and cute and funny and different. All at just the right time.

Don't think me unkind
words are hard to find
they're only cheques I've left unsigned
from the banks of chaos in my mind

Rock the rock-rock, and, spinning

Short post today, because I can't stop spinning long enough to type. So mesmerizing! My brain goes into some kind of fugue state or something, all else is forgotten. I'm in serious trouble.

My little rock and roll combo, leonids, has a few dates coming up that you may enjoy if you leave near the Toronto area. The last two aren't confirmed so I won't post them yet, but we are fersure fersure playing at the Smiling Buddha on November 14th. Two more dates in December too, I'll post them shortly. If you care to hear a few songs (albiet really, really homemade recorded-in-Matt's-bedroom ones) go here. Like everyone in a band ever says, we're even better live.

Ta-da - my first passable singles!

Neat, huh? There have been many attempts in the last week, this is the first stuff I will actually ply and skein. They are not as even as I'd like but I know I will get better. This is some nice Corriedale from the very good folks at Gemini Fibres in Mount Albert, about 45 minutes north/east of the GTA. I  *love* their shop, and I want to spin everything there. Their prices are good and they have a good selection of fibres.

Tonight for dinner, it's Mexican Lasagna. Sounds like crap, right? No, no - it's actually really good and really easy, and I'll tell ya how to do it.

1 pkd corn tortillas
1 lb cooked chicken meat (you can buy a small cooked chicken and take the meat off, or cook a few boneless chicken breasts) chopped
2 cans enchillada sauce (look in the "Old Elpaso" aisle)
1 small can green chillies
1 can chopped tomatoes or tomato sauce
2 cups shredded Monterey Jack or Cheddar cheese
1 small container sour cream, light sour cream or plain yogurt
1 can black beans
2 cups frozen corn.

Preheat oven to 350. Mix the enchillada sauce and tomato sauce in a bowl.  Put a little sauce in the bottom of a casserole dish, and just start layering. I do a layer of tortillas, then chicken, beans, corn, chillies, sour cream and cheese. End with tortillas, sauce and cheese. Bake until bubbling and hot, about 30-45 min. You can certainly go more authentic or upscale with this, but this version is really really fast, and very good. The tortillas kind of disintegrate but in a good way. We buy our corn tortillas at a sweet Columbian bakery, they are sometimes hard to find in the regular grocery store. If your grocery store has a health food section, check the freezer there. I've made it with flour tortillas as well, but they totally turn to nothing. Still yummy.

If Patience is the Companion of Wisdom, Then I Am A Dumbass

People, I'm telling you - I am a sick woman. I am not right in the head. The proof is in the pudding as they say and there is photo documentation ahead, read on.

Anyhoo, before we get to that - I have starting spinning. With a spindle. I am getting lessons one-on-one from a very nice woman named Noel. But all I want people, is to spin on the WHEEL. And Noel will not LET me until I master the spindle. This little exercise in proving to me that I have no patience whatsoever reminds me so much of my two months of drum lessons back in grade eight... (cue flashback music and the screen goes all wiggly and shit).

The grade school I attended offered various music lessons and to their credit, percussion was one of the classes you could take. How neat is that for a pre-teen! It was just a rubber practice bad, but you got to hold actual drum sticks!!! Man, that was so cool. I took lessons with my best friends Kelly and Rosie, we had a blast pretending to be Famous Rock Drummers. Eventually my teacher recommended me for private lessons. Awwww, sweet - someone thought I was good at something! At the time I was (who am I kidding, I still am) obsessed with The Police and specifically Stewart Copeland's amazing drum skills, so to be told I had talent in that department was pretty great. I asked the parents and they agreed to pay for the lessons, which in retrospect is amazing because we were poor as dirt farmers at the time. Thanks Mom and Dad.

I showed up for my first lesson and immediately saw the gleaming drum set in the corner of the room, and I coveted it. Cov et ed. Big time. Sparkly blue, shiny drum kit - you will be mine. But oh, no - Mr. Drum Lesson would not let me touch that thing in the entire time I took lessons, he made me practice this specific type of bullshit on the snare drum called "rudiments": paradiddle, paradiddle, it's a triple paradiddle. There is even such a thing as a flamadiddle. Jesus wept. Weeks of mind-numbing paradiddles and flamadiddles ensued, and Mr. Drum Lesson yelling "wrists up! Wrists up!" and then learning sight reading and drum notation (another specific kind of bullshit) and then onto the xylophone. WHAT?! Yes, that's right, I was forced to practice the freaking xylophone when a gleaming drum kit was calling my name not three feet away. Those drum heads tilted just so, at that angle just waiting to be struck. Made to be struck. By me.

Those lessons lasted a painful two months before I quit. I begged my father to buy me a drum kit, he found some old piece of crap in the newspaper and he actually went out and bought it for me and *let me practice in the rec room*. If you knew my father...this was a feat of total uncharacteristic coolness on his part. I still can't believe my curmudgeonly, selfish (not to forget poverty stricken) father bought and let me play a drum kit, in the house. I spent the next year practicing to The Police with my Walkman on, but never joined a band because none of my 13 year old friends played any instruments, and so I lost interest. I was also so shy that I could not play if anyone was watching me, even my parents. A friend of my brother eventually borrowed the kit ... for a few years, and his wife absconded with it in their eventual divorce. It wasn't until more than ten years later that I picked up the instrument again (not literally people, a drum kit is HEAVY - I make my boyfriend do that ) in a serious way.

Stay with me now, there is a point to this. I am doing the same thing with this spinning business. I am **this** close to buying a Louet S17 wheel, telling Noel so long and thanks for all the fish, but I have to move on. I came for the wheel and I am being denied. DO NOT DENY ME THE WHEEL. I have the patience of a flea, a gnat, a micro-nano-gnat. I am weak.

In Ravelry news...I swear to you Jesus that I will not amass an unbelievably huge stash of spinning fibre, overflowing Rubbermaid bins and hiding in the bookcase and the freezer - I will NOT. I will also not put sixty-four thousand knitting patterns in my queue and freak myself out with anxiety over the stuff I have not knit yet. I will limit myself to memberships in the Ravelry groups that I have already joined, those being Battlestar Galactica knitters, Drunken Toronto knitters, Motherless knitters, Knittin' Musician and Delores Devotees. I will also not spend more than ... one hour a day ON Ravelry (OK, two hours if it's a really slow day at work, that is if I still have a job in two weeks, dear tiny infant Jesus in your golden fleece diapers -  please let me keep my job).

She's a Girl With a Problem and There Ain't No Cure

Two posts ago I cleared my conscience about my unfinished knitting projects by dragging them all out and photographing them. I am telling you, that felt pretty good. I frogged two things and made progress on two others. I started thinking about what else I could drag out and  photograph in this same magical way in order to, um, get over some possible very slight hoarding OCD kind of issues.

If I'm being honest with myself people, it absolutely has to be these two things. These two things are weird. One of them nobody makes fun of me for, because my boyfriend is too nice and my friends do not look in my sock drawer. The other one my friends do make fun of me for. (There is also a third slight hoarding OCD thing that I get made fun of for quite a bit, but you cannot drag out and photograph the encyclopedic amount of trivial information you have memorized about Neil Young and happen to spout in public at inappropriate times. Ahem.)

So let's get to it. It's really just about these two teeny, tiny little things that I have a problem with:

The Endless Parade of  Lipgloss Problem

I have a little lipgloss aquisition issue, I really do. I like them slick, I like them sticky, I like them thin and sheer, I like them thick and goopy, I like a wash of dark stain, a clear shine and a frosty coral pink. I like liquid, gel, stick and wax. I like a squeezy thing with a hole in the end, like a pot, I like a wand and I like  a lipstick tube. I like all colours as long as they are not cool pinks. I like matte and I like shiny. I LIKE LIPGLOSS.

(notice not one but two Bonne Bell Dr. Pepper lipsheer thingies. One for the coat pocket and one for the purse).

This is just what was in the house ... there are at least five more at work. AND THIS IS JUST GLOSS - I couldn't bring myself to haul out and photograph the lipsticks. Seriously, I have to restrain myself from buying a new lipgloss every time I go to the drugstore. Also, I am so bloody forgetful - I keep buying more mainly because I can't find stuff most of the time. For this little shoot, I had to search the three makeup bags, two purses, two backpacks, the bowl that I keep keys and shit in, and four coat pockets.

The Hoarding of Socks with Holes Problem

Worst things first.

One pair of socks, three holes. This it how it happens - first one hole erupts over the left big toe. So that sock gets moved to right-foot only duty, cause the hole is not over the big toe on the right foot, see? It can still be worn. Toe will not poke through. Then, right foot sock will eventually erupt in a big toe hole too. And then I keep wearing them until a third hole breaks out over the middle somewhere. Because I am crazy like that. Baglady batshit holes-in-socks crazy.

Here's a little collage of the rest of the horror, and there is more than this. The sock on the bottom right is just about to go:

I never realized I have such uninspiring taste in socks until now.

To to head this question off at the pass - YES, I do cut my toenails. Religiously. This toe deformity that I no doubt have has something to do with the rubbing of the big toe, specifically the *left* big toe cause that's the one that always goes first, against the shoe. Socks only last a few weeks with me. I am where socks come to die.

But why, oh why do I save them when some pairs have hole in each sock?? Because my thrifty side, the part of me with the parents that grew up in the Depression and never, ever threw anything out believes one day I will darn these socks.

Today I am embracing reality. I am not going to darn these socks. They are going in the garbage.

The lipglosses are staying.

The Bride Wore Fuscia

Last weekend, funeral - this weekend wedding. As it should be (enter Elton John singing Circle of Life...).

I was the best (wo)man at my friends Josh and Jill's wedding and it was a riot. A charming, funny, eccentric individual married another charming, funny, eccentric individual and had a charming, funny, eccentric wedding. I could regale you dear readers with many tales from the evening, but one will really suffice to sum things up. Our esteemed DJ, Charless was spinning The Meters, Johnny Cash, New Order and  many other goodies. Dancing was at a fever pitch. At one point everyone got up to dance to AC/DC's Back in Black and a young fellow who has some very, very serious guitar chops walked up to a guitar and amp left from an earlier song performed by another fellow, and spontaneously shredded a solo during the song. Jaws dropped.  It was a beautiful moment.

Here's a nice pic from the ceremony:

Vivid.

I managed to almost-dance, pretty much kept the bad leg glued to the floor and shuffled. It was pretty hard to recreate the retro 80's skank to Papa's Got a Brand New Pigbag, and equally challenging to produce my signature dance move, "running in place to music". Overall, I did well - my goal for the evening of not re-rupturing my achilles tendon was met successfully. Everything's still attached.

In other news, my first spinning (yarn, not stationary bike) lesson is happening tomorrow night, and I'm stoked. I found someone to give me one-on-one lessons in their home which is more affordable and more useful to me than a group class. Apparently I can even rent a spinning wheel from a local guild, so that I don't go out and buy one if it turns out not to be my thing.

But I think it will be my thing. Oh, mercy - like I need another goddamned thing.