rah rah sis boom bah

i visited my family this weekend. my mom kindly washed a large pile of
laundry for me and also shared some lottery winnings. my sister did a
scary impression of the creepy girl from the ring. my brother took me on a
shopping trip to walmart. my other brother tried to watch a pokemon movie
with me in spanish. my dad fixed my car door so it would open again. my
gramma made me tacos and gave me money.

my family was so nice to me. :)

...

you can still comment, you can just put "anonymous" but put yr name in the
comment.

i love you all.

i hate winter. i'm a lazy sack.

here are some blurry photos:






taken by my friend jess

the cathy whotonies?

melissa emailed me to ask how the cathy santonies very first show ever world premiere went, and this is what i wrote:


weds night we had practice and we were taking a break and in a whirl of genius mike
and melissa decided to switch instruments and play california uber alles by the dead
kennedys. i was upstairs getting some tea. i came back just in time to see a wire get
wrapped around mike's leg and pulled the amp off the top of the speaker cabinet on
which it was sitting. we just bought this amp and it sounds really great and
blaahblah etc. but it was broken after that. we could tape a cord into the back of it
but it was cutting in and out.

so we asked mike's brother to bring his amp to the show in case we couldn't rig up
the broken vox.

which when we got there we couldn't.

oh did i mention we have a lot of heavy equipment and it rained every single time we
were carrying anything. and we had to move all these heavy tables (see)--we were playing right
under "who's that dumb bastard?--oh john d rockefeller"...in that painting back
there. it was kind of surreal.

anyway so we rig up mike's brother's amp, we start to play and about 10 seconds into
the song, the amp cuts out...then we turn it back off and on and fiddle around and
start to play again with a "heh heh sorry um let's try again" from me--we were all
three nervous as shit. and it cuts out AGAIN! then mike's brother comes over and
notices that it "smells funny". we fried his amp! after 10 seconds of our
song....melissa looked like she was aboutt to cry. luckily another band had just
arrived and they very kindly let us use their amp.

but that whole stuff took up about ten minutes. so we cut two songs out of our
setlist. so we only played 5 songs, but they were our best ones anyway. the other
band we were playing with waas really really nice and they cheered so loud for us
after every song and said "rock n roll" and stuff like that . it was just really
weird because that room was so immense and we're used to practicing in a tiny
basement bedroom. so the sound was hard to hear, we didn't have any monitors, etc.
and mike's bass drum pedal fell off the drum right before our last song which
requires several strings of seven-beats-on-the-bass-drum. yuck!

so yeah well it was weird and a lot of dumb shit happened but we made it and didn't
cry. or shit our pants. or vomit. and people were pleasantly surprised that we
sounded like a real band. i couldn't hear it very well and i messed up more than i
ever have ever. but it's OVER.

so yeah long story short
ha

hey remember that nasty plastic hamper you found? can i use it for
plungers and toilet brushes?

yesterday my brother and cousin and their friend visited me. it was fun.
we got to eat pizza and i showed them my awesomest apartment.

then mike and i saw the chronicles of narnia. *finally*. it was great,
seriously i loved it. the little girl who plays lucy has really funny
facial expressions though.

then we went to bennigans where we used to play that trivia game. they
don't have that anymore. but they do have an interesting concoction called
a "margatini".

8000 birds crapped on my car. yucky.

We will make it or die ROCKIN xo mike

don't.

just don't.

has been an eventful one. i don't really feel like going into details, but
let's just say it involved the following:

-finally unpacking the rest of our stuff

-leading a team of people to handpaint and distribute over 500 t shirts

-working on a paper that was due a year ago

-submitting something to a conference to be held in vancouver, before I
checked to see how much it costs to get to vancouver. let's hope they
reject my submission.

-recording 4 new songs with the santonies

-getting ready for our show in 2 weeks

-getting invited to play another show the day right after that one
(leading me to fall into this self-debate about whether we are
overexposing ourselves, only to realize that playing two shows is not
really overexposure. it's a lot different from, say, your video being on
mtv 100 times a day.)

-having a class be cancelled because the teacher was sick.

-handing out free hot chocolate outside for two hours. stirring was a
pain. and it was cold.

-usual homework, reading, experiment crap.

-wondering why the hell i'm in grad school, and, more importantly, what
the hell i'm going to do with myself when i get out.

-thinking maybe, just maybe, it's time to get my crap together and be an
actual real adult with a clean apartment and a goal in life.

-quickly squashing previous concerns with half hour hello kitty koma.

-washing my seriously dirty pants.