turnmusician

I haven't updated this in forever. But I have been reading other blogs so it's only fair i update once.

1. My sister had a baby today. I went and held a 10 hour old infant. It was cute.

2. I am applying to law schools. I already applied to UofManitoba, which is both realistic and my first choice as well as UofSask, which is kinda realistic and not my first choice. Today I jumped through some of the ontario university hoops. I am also throwing out applications to UofOttawa (would be awesome, probably won't get int) and Western (saftey school) which means registering for OLSAS which is a big pain in the ass. Those applications are due on Nov 3rd, which is find but i have to get letters of reference which is a hastle and pay registartion ($320!!) which sucks because i don't really have any good contacts at the UofA. And i'm ass-fucking broke. Which brings me to:

3. WHY CAN'T I FIND A JOB?!? It's really unbelievable. I know that i have no expereince, and that i'm leaving in september. BUT I've applied for a millions jobs, most of them shitty, and i'm still unemployed. this sucks. Even temping places don't seem to want to give me jobs. I AM SICK OF THIS. am i actually just a big loser?

4. My computer is broken, which compounds the not having a job thing. i'm glad jessica doesn't hate me for using her computer all the time. Litteraly all the time.

5. go oilers. and linda duncan. woo.

For posterity, i'm going to note right now that despite the fact that it is april 20th, there are a few inches of snow on the ground and it is still falling with a vengeance.

SO! As of last week there are weekly bicycle races on saturday nights. Last week was gorgeous. This week, only five people showed up for obvious reasons. it was really fun. it was super pretty out, and not tooooo cold, but a little. We decided to just kind of cruse around as a group rather than race, which was a good idea. At one intersection, I was skidding and kind of lost my balance and fell, not a big deal by my wheel got knocked a little so it wasn't sitting quite straight and it made my bike ride a little funny, and a few more intersections down i actually fell again- which would have been embarrassing except that as i fell, everyone in the group kind of turned and looked at me and in so doing fell themselves. It was actually very very halarious.

Also- i got new cranks which are make my bike a millllion times better.

a million.

that is all. i never update livejournal anymore. sorry team.

and it was crazy!

I was playing a show, and i left my drums there and had to pick them up, but in the morning my mom's car got stolen (i guess i was living at my parents house again). So! I had to borrow someones car (maybe matt robert's?) and i spent the whole day driving around. At some point in the dream i got news that my brother had died. I was pretty choked and i kept going around being all upset and no one really understood why i was upset... like on degrassi when wheels is all like "My parents died!" and people are like "pfft, yeah we know. two years ago". (Maybe this is somehow related to the fact that my brother used to look exactly like wheels). Also, at some point in the dream i ran into brian thurgood and he asked me to come play at an ESO rehersal. They were playing Frenergy by malcom forsyth. I was excited. But the whole dream i was just driving around, trying to find my mom's car and trying to figure out how i was going to get my drums back.

I slept in pretty late. It was nice.

Also, i have no gigs at all this month. guh.

I'm on Day 3 of "the cleanse". I've never felt like such a hippie in my life. It's kind of fun.

I am in High Level playing country music at a strip club. High level is like fort mac, only worse. The stripper here is pretty hot, for a 50 year old, but she's still 50 years old- so it's gross. And gross. Also, i just realized that I'm broke beyond broke. This sucks. I don't get home until sunday. That's still 5 more days until i get to leave. gah.

I had all kinds of weird dreams last night.
at some point i was trying to ride my sisters unicycle (it was looked more like snare drum in a bag with two places to put your feet, but they were both on the same side so it didn't really work) and kept falling off. Also, someone gave me a copy of 'hail to the theif' as re-recorded by cat stevens.

1. My cross country adventure is almost done. I am in Regina right now, and i'll be in Edmonton tomorow. It was really fun, although i'm terribly homesick- and a little sick of driving.

2. In regina i am hanging out with my sister and neice. It is cool.

3. Emily is in waterloo. Her new place is kinda sweet... the old people left a big mess and even left their cat for a couple of days. That cat was such a bastard. It was totally swiping at me and even took a small chunk out of my chin. I'm exaggerating, but the thought is right.

4. This year is going to be sooo weird. I'm not going to school. I'm employed pretty randomly (music store, teaching drums, playing country music. Living the dream- really) and well, emily is in waterloo. Weird. I am having some major grad school envy. Which is silly. I really am going to be "living the dream"- playing every weekend and teaching every week. However, i'm playing country music and teaching little kids. I'm not sure if i'm stoked on that or not. Also- i really do want to go back to school... life is hard. i hate grown-up-ey decisions.

5. On my way back from waterloo i decided to take the tobermory ferry. I looked at the schedule for june 31- sept 4. and obviously, got there on sept 5. So i missed the ferry- which wasn't such a big deal, it just meant that i would have to have to camp near the ferry place overnight. it was a pretty cool campground, if not a litle pricey. So i decided to go for a bit of a hike, and, in typical fashion i left too late, took an overly hard hike, and got lost. So i basically found my way onto this backpacking trail which kind of goes on forever and deicded to turn around- but i didn't turn around until about 8 and i had allready been hiking for two hours. Shortly after that it got really really dark. I was searching through the woods using my cell phone as a flashlight. It was great. I went in circles for quite a while, but eventually found the clearing where i was suppose to have turned to get back to the trail head. I wandered around and didn't find the place where it should have turned back- instead i found the lake that the trail was suppose to go around. In the dark, incidentally, the lake looked exactly like the rocks around it and I was expecting to keep walking on dry land, but nope! i walked clear into a lake. So now, i was soaking wet and my cellphone was broken. I had no way to find the trail back so i found a spot that would block the wind and huddle up and tried to sleep until morning when i could find my way back. It was awful... and this brings me to my next point...

6. What kind of a cell phone should i buy? I think that i am eligable for the "technology upgrade" from bell which means i get 100 bucks off a new phone. This means that i'd have to renew my contract with bell, which i'm not super stoked on. Or i could buy a phone off ebay. This would be cheeper and probably a better phone- but it might take awhile and i'm kind of desperate for a new phone.

7. I am going to try to organize a pot luck dinner at my house for one week from today. I hope it pans out and i hope that you come.

there is something wrong with me.
I keep not going to work, which is actually sort of okay, although i feel like/am a jackass for not just quiting. I can get away with not going to work- there was no one doing the job that i was doing before i did it, and probably there will be noone doing it after i quit and it's super casual and whatever- but still. I keep planning on going, staying up late doing dick all, then sleeping in 'till 2. I guess i just really like sleeping all day.

my bike is broken again. The high-zoot bottom bracket that i had to bring my bike to a number of shops to get installed just kind of crapped out after maybe a month. This is pretty stupid.

i've been being a vegetarian for a while now. it's pretty fun. I'm not doing a very good job- not that i'm eating meat (allthough, i have a few times) but more just that i haven't really been eating much. I haven't felt full since i started. I think that's probably bad. i'm also having bouts of sleeping until 2... iron deficiency?

Jazz fight night the other night was super super fun. I can't believe how great august is for gigs for me. Even with being gone for a good portion of it, it's still probably going to be my best month ever.

I went to a practice pad party at thom bennetts house today. it was pretty sweet. I need to start practicing again. I like music more than i like work.

10 points to whomever names the song quote at the beginning of this entry.

1. I am hanging around in st.albert a little bit because my parents are on a crazy road trip to the north pole. Well, not quite the north pole- but they are aiming for inukivuk. it's pretty crazy. I'm kinda impressed.

2. St.albert is funny. there is a 'sledding at own risk' sign on the hill in front of my house. Someone spray painted "1337" on it and changed it to 'sledding at pwn risk'. Mildly humorous.

3. My bike is finally fixed. the new cranks are damn good looking... allthough i must admit that my bike is only a tiny bit lighter and they don't really run any better than the old ones... very pretty.

4. The other day when it was too hot to sleep at like 12:30 i went biking around st.albert. it was really great. i did the same thing yesterday in edmonton, found a parking lot and tried to ride backwards. it was really fun.

5. A few months ago, me and emily decided that we should go to europe at the end of this summer. since she is moving to waterloo we decided it would be better to go to newyork and then hang out in waterloo for a bit. we scrapped this (rediculously exepensive) idea to go on a road trip across the country. Origonally, i though that i would maybe buy a car and drive us then spend forever coming back, but the more i think about it, the more i hate driving and the less i want to spend all my time working to pay for a car, so i think i might just opt for borrowing em's moms car. this will still be fun, allthought i won't have quite so much freedom in taking lots of time driving back. that's allright though- as romantic and sweet as that idea is, i don't know how long i could actually keep myself occupied for doing that. Either way- i've already started saving up for a car and i'm working 4 jobs- working seven days a week and stuff. it kinda sucks a lot. i think i might go crazy. but it will be nice to get to september and not be really broke. also, i am really looking forward to driving across the country. i like this country and stuff.

6. Speaking of country, i am now playing in a country band. Apparently it will be like every weekend pretty soon. i'm allready scheduled to play in mornville on the 28th and edson the weekend after. it's going to be prettty fun.

7. peaches are deeeelicious.

1. Today, after a hung over ride home from st.albert (which was very lovely) i ate breakfast on whyte ave- after i unlocked my bike and began riding on the sidewalk until i could get on the road some jerk whyte ave cops (not real cops- the ones that just walk up and down whyte ave) quickly told me that i wasn't allowed to bike on the sidewalk- even if i was just going on to the road. So, apparently i have to find a safe place in traffic to get onto my bike. I'm all for not biking on sidewalks- but seriously; i wasn't going anywhere but the road and this guy was super condescending and very like 'your lucky i'm such a nice guy...' it made me mental.

2. I got my new cranks and bottom bracket in the mail today. They are real purdy. I went to the edmonton bike co-op to put them on- and that place is also sweet. There was this dorky bike guy who helped me out. However, it turns out that the bottom bracket that i got isn't going to fit on my frame. I think i need like an italian thredding or something- it's too small. Sucks ass. I even screwed the old one up putting it back on so now everything wobbles and crap. It sucks. But i trued my own back wheel! which is kinda cool. i've always wanted to learn how to do that.

3. (the best part!) As i was biking home from the bike thing, and after stoping for groceries and stuff- i was heading to my house and had to stop to turn left and wait behind some car that had stopped in front of me and i sat there for a little while and some old asshole in a bmw pulls up behind then like, taps my back wheel with his car! He did it again right after and i kinda yelled at him and he just shruged and looked really proud of himself. He totally rear-ended me intentionally. Now first off- who the fuck does that? I wasn't doing anything that would make his life unpleasant. And moreover- where the fuck am i suppose to go? I got threated to be ticketed by a cop after 10 seconds on a sidewalk- and this guy was basically saying don't be on the road either. ANGER COCK!

(otherwise my day was very lovely, thank you very much)

you know those thinggers in construction sites that tell you what speed your going and tell you to slow down? It's always been kinda one of my goals to get my speed while biking from one of those. And now, while i acknowledge that 43kph isn't even close to any sort of land speed record on a bicycle, i am pretty happy about having just gotten that reading from the construction thinggie outside my house.

This sucks.
Maybe i should just take up smoking and go to law school.
...
1. Myinto new place is fun- however, amber is not stoked on my being here- and while she didn't make any real objections to my moving in until the day before i moved in- she is not happy with my being here now since it makes it less of a girl house and she can't eat breakfast in her pajamas anymore. I'm sure that there is more to it than this, either way, it's a little bit frustrating and i don't really know how it's going to work out- like i'll probably just have to actually live in the basement unlike my current basement living situation where i'm usually upstairs... either way it's generally uncomfortable and i kind of feel like a guest who has to pay rent. which is lame.

2. I was feeling pretty great about how awesome i am at drums the other day, then later the same day i was at work and bill george and thom bennet were talking about who they should get to fill in on some gig while i was standing right there. They were going through names of people who could do it- people younger and less experienced than me (like efa) and didn't even really consider that i could probably do it... So i guess i'm not in the club yet. Maybe this bugs me more than it should, but damn.

...

3. Yesterday i jammed with Him Head which was sweet and tomorrow i have a lesson with Jamie Cooper which is also sweet.

4. I kinda wonder if i could get into law school... i don't have super marks, but they aren't terrible. And i could probably do pretty good on the lsat. If i did- i would totally take up smoking.

I was briefly back on the practice wagon, but then i sort of fell off again, but i'm pretty confident that i can get back on it. I'm pretty sure that i'll spend a few solid hours practicing today. I'm excited for that.

Yesterday, i subbed in for the drummer in the gateway big band. It was kind fun, although I'm basically terrible at reading big band charts. The deallie was at archbishop macdonald donald high school, kind of west endish. I rode my bike there with my cymbals on my back. it was really fun, i gave myself an hour to get there and made it in under half an hour. On my way back, i ditched my cymbals at Brandenburg music so that i wouldn't destroy my back. the ride home was fun, and i decided to take a "scenic route" which involved me getting pretty lost and doing a giant circle then riding home- and just as i was like a block from where i was going, i realized that i had moved recently and i was going to my old place rather than my new one.

So:
Today, jam with some people at school, meeting with cruise ship band, sub in for the gmcc outreach big band
tomorow; rehersal with the festival city singers. Need to find some way to get my drums out to sherwood park. Also, need to bail on teaching.
Thursday; jam with jim head.
friday, gig with keith and chris.

Seriously, this summer is awesome.

1. On thursday, i get to jam with Jim Head. I'm pretty much really, really, really excited.

2. Brandenberg music is a little crazy. Trevor (the owner/operator) joined the army band and just moved to ottawa for four years. I don't know how the store is going to get operated, frankly i think it's just going to get owned. Or maybe pwned.

3. In continuing with my trend of spending money way to much, i just bought a slightly rediculous metronome. I'm excited.

4. I'm getting back on the practicing drums wagon. It's exciting. I'm going to get a few lessons with jamie cooper. that too is exciting.

5. Our basment flooded. it was pretty crappy. Also, when i came home today, i was the only person here and the landlord was kinda chillin' out back- they did some taking care of the flooding and he had the doors open and was more or less just watching that no random strangers walked in and walked out with stuff. And i just kinda walked in. It was funny. Either way, i think things are better now.

1. I am more or less moved into my new place with Emily, Jessica and Amber. I'm more or less excited- I think that everything about this new place will lend itself to this summer being really fun. I haven't really moved in yet so much as I've just put all my stuff in the downstairs room. At this point, the door doesn't quite close.

2. I am officially moved out of my old place now too. I did a pretty bad job of moving out; mostly taking stuff away in small bunches in the middle of the night; and i did an embarrassingly little amount of the cleaning at the end of our stay. I biked back there to pick up what i thought was going to be the last of my stuff- just the old bike frame that i am going to build into a sweet fixie- and realized that i had a bunch of more stuff; mainly the carpet that i put under my drums. So i had to haul, on a bike; a giant carpet and a bike frame and a full messenger bag. It was really fun.

3. This weekend; me and emily and chris and heather went on a camping trip. I was more or less planning this trip to go to the cadomin caves; but a few hours before we left emily noticed on a caving website that the caves are closed until april 1st; so our caving trip just turned into a normal camping trip. It was pretty fun, even thought it was stupid cold.

4. I'm not exactly sure what is going to happen to the me-playing-on-a-cruise ship thinggie. I really want that to not happen until after the summer. I'm going to talk to the rest of the team, but i'm not sure if that will pan out or not. Either way, i'm pretty stoked on this summer.

1. I am basically done school. I feel like i have spent the past two years doing nothing but music- and i certainly have gotten way better at the drums and made some good friends and such. However, i am a little frustrated with my solid 'B' average. Actually, really frustrated with that. As well with the fact that it seems like Brian Thurgood doesn't seem to like me. That's a little bit silly. Either way, I'm done school. woo.

2. My feet smell like urine. I'm a little bit worried about them. My dad has really gross messed up feet, and mine seem to be going in the same direction. I wish i had less of an aversion to doctors and stuff.

3. I think i'm moving into emily's basement for a little while at the end of the month. I really with i had slightly more concrete plans about my future. I am a little bit depressed right now and i find that when i'm in a depressive phase I need to have a little bit more order to my life to be happy. Maybe it won't last, usually I'm pretty up for the first month or two of summer.

4. At school today me 'n Chris made ourselves special slurpee's, got drunk at school and watched juries. Landon's and Lyndsays were both like, amazing. They both made me want to have more fun playing music. I think i'm going to make a point of doing that. But not right now- right now i'm going to go to catherine's house and drink more.

5. I need to start owning a car. I also need to have a bike. I'm fucking sick of the bus.

6. Why do i get so sucked into facebook? It doesn't make any sense.

it's 10 to 5 in the morning and i'm working on a snare drum thing that i'm suppose to have learned for tomorrow, er, today. I've had it forever, but no time to work on it. I planned to do it this weekend but both yesterday and today kind of fell through, so i decided to try to make the all-nighter happen. it's kind of a hedge more than anything else- when i do shitty, i'll blame the fact that i'm really tired, not the fact that i started working on it the night before it was due.

I auditioned with a band to play on a cruise ship. Apparently the audition guy phoned our bass player and told him that he sent our info onto the next level or something so this might pan out. I'm pretty stoked.

I saw do make say think the other night. It was amazing. I really liked it.

1. I am really terrible at getting up from my computer when i sit down to it. I sat down to check my e-mail before doing laundry/making food/getting a shower/starting a transcription assignment. That was almost 2 hours ago, and the only thing on that list that i have accomplished has been getting a shower. You know there is something wrong when you have to use the word accomplish to describe getting a shower.

2. Lately i've been finding myself really frustrated with things that aren't even that bad. Like, you know when you type your password into myspace and you type one letter wrong, but you've allready also typed your password in and the whole thing accidentally gets saved as your new password, and it's annoying- but the whole mess takes less than 45seconds to really resolve itself? whenever that happens lately i seem to fly into a brief unjustified rage. It's kind of annoying, and the worst part is that i realize that it's silly. Last friday, i played a song in drum class that tanked a little bit, and at the time i was really pissed off at the piano player for allowing the song to tank (since.. uh, it wasn't my fault?) and i think i was a bit of a jerk about being really angry and stuff.

3. Right now, i am more or less working four jobs (teaching/brandenberg/cleaning/drum tech) and despite this fact, and the fact that i need a new bus pass and rent is due tomorrow- i am flat broke. I was suppose to get a bunch of money in the mail from the drum tech gig, and it hasn't gotten here yet. This sucks.

4. I don't practice drums enough. I don't mean that in the 'no matter how much you practice, it will never be enough' bullshit kinda way- i mean that i actually am not practicing as much as i ought to. This also sucks. This relates quite directly to point #1. I think it could also be a contributing factor to point #2, and all of these might stem from point #4.

5. Sometimes i'm really frustrated with teaching drums. I really wish i had some gauge of if i am a good teacher or a bad teacher. I'm sure that i'm not terrible at it because i have been teaching like forever, and some on my students have stuck with me for like, forever. But at the same token- alot of my students that i have had forever don't really seem to be much better than they used to be- allthought it's not my fault that they don't fucking practice and don't even really seem to like music very much. Then again, some of them do seem to be improving. I actually think that most of them are better than i was when i was their age (...not saying much) at least as far as reading and technique and stuff go. I think this summer i might try to put together a book to sell to my students with all of the stuff that i always teach them. It would be nice to not have to write the same stuff down all the time, as well as to have a reliable guide to what they have an haven't done AND to be able to sucker each one of them out of an extra 8 bucks or whatever i'd charge them and to be able to pretend that i'm a published author.

6. Sometimes i feel like music school is stupid. I can't tell if i think this now because i'm not super-winning at it, or if i only managed to convince myself that it wasn't before because i was super-winning at it before.

7. Sometimes i wonder what the blogs of successful people look like. Do they even have blogs? Do they look like mine? Is there some chance that i'm actually really successful, and i'm just convincing myself otherwise to maintain my level of success?

8. I should update my journal more often. I really like long posts. Although, i think i feel much worse than i did when i started this.

1. This weekend was pretty sweet.
Instead of working yesterday, me 'n court played marimba all day.
Instead of working today- i went for lunch with my parents then went to the symphony for free. There was this percussion guy who was siiiiiick. There were two jerks who sat in front of us and talked throught the whole thing and made fun of the conductor. i wanted to kill them, but didn't.

2. I came home hoping to do some practicing, but trevor tchir and his band are jamming in the basment. It's a little annoying.

3. The other day i made chicken caccatore, just like my mom used to make. It's amazing.

4. i'm trying to pick tunes to play on my graduation recital. I don't really know what to do for a samba or an afrocuban. Other than that, it's going to be suite.

5. I ordered that drum kit that i mentioned. I have no idea how i'm going to pay for it. But it's going to be amazing. Amazing.

on monday i jammed with keith remple, brennan cameron, chris finlay, ashley clellan and callee burgess at st.johns music where brennan cameron works. At st.johns music, they have a bunch of crappy drumsets- and a set of epek drums in jazz-ey sizes. They are amazing. All i have been able to think about since is "I want new drums".

Today i played a gig with chris and keith, and all i could think about was "man... these drums suck", since they are a little bit funny for jazz, they have old heads, haven't been really tuned recently and the snare drum decided to get all messed up- and while we were playing i got a phone call from the people who do jason lang scholorships who i e-mailed only a few hours prior saying "wheres my scholorship?" and they basically said "uh... oh. right. yeah. on it's way" So, i'm pretty sure it's a sign. I'm going to get new drums. Maybe. probably.

yeah.

Last night, it was kind of weird, because at the begging of the dream there were alienships like everywhere and they were abducting like some hudge number of people every night- but this had all happend so gradually that i was the only one freaking out about it (since i had just found out, being the begginging of the dream an all). Anyways, at some point, they abducted my dad- which isn't so weird, since they were abducting people all the time and they would always come back more or less allright, and it was pretty much just kinda okay... But, when my dad came back, he like hugged me or something (...now that's weird!) and in doing so he spread like the alien seed and somehow this created like little alien babies which were then took over the world. It was a pretty awesome dream. I usually don't have such surreal dreams. I think their suppose to mean something... like high levels of tryptophin or something, but i can't remember what.