How many others that read this know the joy that is Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas?

I haven't really blogged for a bit, so here I go. I'll separate it, so everyone can comment on the individual bits (hint hint)

1) It's snowing here. It's been ndoing a variation of snowing/raining/sleeting all day. It seems to have settled on snowing for now.

2) I feel like such an overly emotional moron. We had our department meeting this morning. I filled out a time-off sheet for Monday and Tuesday before Christmas. Technically, we have a policy that no one can take any days off before a holiday, but it's usually ignored. I gave my boss my time-off sheet, and he states the rule. I begin to try to explain to him why I need it off (because my mom's sick, and she can't do the preparatory Christmas stuff by herself, and I need to help her). Then I started crying. I just felt stupid. I had no control over it. It's just all been so stressful, with her being sick, and I worry about how many normal Christmases we have left (0, I guess, since this one will be abnormal.) I hold it all in, and take everything in stride for the most part, but sometimes I just can't anymore. They hugged me and told me it'd be ok. I feel like the line Tom Hanks says in A League of their Own applies to me. "There's no crying in baseball!" Luckily, only a few people were in there, and no one seemed too freaked out. Everyone here is having a bad day today, for some reason.

3) I made a lot of chocolate chip cookies last night. About 3 dozen. I don't know that I'd ever made chocolate chip cookies on my own. They turned out ok. A little flat. I think next time I'll use half butter and have butter flavored Crisco. I suppose a new cookie sheet wouldn't hurt either, so I have a spare. I ate waaaaaay too much dough. But it was SO good. I forget how much better homemade cookie dough is, compared to store bought. So much softer. Mmm. Cookiedough. Tonight I'm making sweet potato casserole for the potluck at work tomorrow. I'm in a baking mood. It must be seasonal. On a related holiday note: I just bought a spindle of 50 blank cds. If you want a Christmas cd from me, let me know.

4) The Tori show on Saturday. Shawn, his friend Aaron, and I drove up to Columbus at about 3 pm. My cousin Emily couldn't come. She had the flu and a lack of transportation to Lexington. Anyhow, once we got to Columbus we met up with another Shawn, and Shawn's girlfriend Jessica (which I like a million times better than his old one.) Note: There's nothing in downtown Columbus at 5:30 on a Saturday. Nada. Zilch. We managed to find a steakhouse. We walk in. It looks swanky. We talk to the hostess. "We'd like a table for five." "What name is the reservation under?" "Oh, we don't have reservations." "I'm sorry, the earliest I could seat you is 11:45." Wow. I'm not used to real restaurants that require reservations. I asked her if she could recommend us somewhere else, and she points us to a Hyatt down the street. We find it, and ask to be seated. Then we open the menu. $25 for a steak (about 6 oz.) and a crab cake. Jesus. However, we didn't have much choice, so we ordered. The service was terribly slow. The crabcake was good, but the steak was too rare (I ordered it medium rare, not bloody.) I had a size of "roasted fingerling potatoes" for $4, that weren't even done. It kinda sucked. We finish our two billion dollar meal, and head down to the theatre. I saw Aleks and his girlfriend, Rachel in line at the bar (but didn't get a chance to talk to them later. :(). Our seats weren't horrible, even though they were 26 rows back. The theatre was raked just enough that you didn't have to peer over someone's head, as long as everyone sat. The opener was Howie Day. On about his third song, I turned to Aaron and said "This guy thinks he's Bono [of U2]." The next song, Howie Day busts into "Love is a temple, love's a higher law", from U2's song One. It freaked me out a bit. Tori's show was solid. I really liked hearing "Never Seen Blue". I don't have too much to say about it. I guess being so far back left me a bit emotionally removed from everything. Afterwards, we drove straight back, and I got home at about 3 am.

Blah. Yesterday I downloaded the new version of AOL Instant Messenger, only to find out that it listed my entire buddylist in my address book in Outlook Express (much like Microsoft Messenger attempts to do.) I don't need redundancy like that. heh. If anyone else has that problem and wants all that crap out of your Address Book, click here.

April's comment below (about my musical fanaticism) made me realize that that's all I've been talking about on here lately. I've just gone to so many concerts in the past month. After the Tori Amos show tomorrow, the rest of the year is pretty barren. I have nothing scheduled. My cousin Emily was supposed to be going with us (Shawn and I), but she has fallen ill and is without aride. That's ok, I had the ticket sold in about five minutes.

Who is this mysterious "April" I speak of? She's a friend from high school. She only went to my school for a year, but we kept in touch when she left (she was only one town over.) When I met her in 11th grade, I thought she was one of the coolest people ever. St. Albans is a bit stifling at times, and April was weird, in a good creatively happy way. She had a hermit crab named Malvolio (I think it was a hermit crab, and I think that was it's name. hehe.) Now she's married and expecting her first kid in January, and living in Italy with her husband, who's in the armed forces (I'm not sure which one, exactly.) She'll be a good mom.

At the current moment, I'm craving some of the lemon opera creme cookies. Mmm. I have the urge to bake, now that my oven is back in working order. Maybe something with amaretto.

Once again, DaVinci's Notebook put on an excellent show. Well worth the $10 admission price. Run.. don't walk! to a DaVinci's Notebook show in your area!

Last night I went to the library, to return some books, get some new ones, and pay my fine.

The librarian at the counter kept referring to me in third person. I think he was trying to sound as if it was Old English without the accent. "Here's the lady's library card back." "I'll get the lady her change." "I hope the lady has a nice night." At first I thought he thought I was checking out books for someone else ("the lady".) hehe.

In severe Ani withdrawal.

Must. Listen. To. Live. CDs.

I'm back from my weekend of Ani Difranco.

I'm very tired.

We left Saturday at about 8:30 am, after picking up the rental. I think I'm getting old... we had the choice of a Mercury Sable, a Ford Taurus, or a Ford Mustang (sporty!). What'd we pick? The Sable. The weather was nasty, I wasn't sure of where I was going, and it didn't seem the time to play with a sports car. The Sable was nice, though. We have one almost exactly like it at work, so I'd driven it before. Roomy, drives well, had a neat compass on the rearview mirror. It was a true Adult Car (we'd only paid for a compact, but we got upgraded because they didn't have any compact ready.)

So we left for Chicago. The drive was uneventful, and we found our hotel pretty easy. It was a Marriott Renaissance, the top-end Marriott brand (they even have Bath and Body Works toiletries, which I think is nice.) The room was nice enough. Since Aimee works at the Marriott, we had it at a significant discount. Before the show, we went to find food. It turned out the hotel was in a huge mall complex. It was very odd. More like an old-style shopping center than a mall, because it was all open air (but yet, two levels.) Basically, a mall without a ceiling. We went to Sbarro's for lack of any better ideas. They had ran out of baked ziti, which saddened me. I had a very pepperoni-laden stromboli. We walked around the mall a bit (in the snow. Brr.) We went into Saks Fifth Avenue for the heck of it. Jesus, I can't imagine paying $200+ for a sweater. We went back to the room for a few minutes, then left for the show at about 7. We had very straight-forward directions, so we thought it'd all be ok. HA HA HA!

First, we started the wrong way on the interstate. Ok, we turned around. Next, we hit a huge traffic jam. The drivers in Chicago were absolutely crazy. No signals, nothing. We find our exit, and start following the directions from the venue website. Then we discover two of the roads we need to follow are closed. Argh! We drove up and down various downtown Chicago streets for about an hour. We must have passed the Sears tower 4 times. Finally, we found a gas station. We tried to ask the guy behind the bullet-proof glass, but he had no clue, so some nice guy pumping gas gave us vague (yet helpful) directions. We finally found the theatre, and then found somewhere to park (valet. I was scared it was going to be so so so expensive. It ended up being $.50 more than the theatre's self-park.) We quickly walked to venue, right after the opening act got off stage. I really had to pee, so I went downstairs to the bathroom. The line was HUGE. The line to the men's room? Non-existant. Grr. Anyhow, I waited, and then went back up to our loge (front balcony). They were neat seats. You had a full view of everything that went on. I like.

The show was really good. Unfortunately, Ani has a broken bone in her foot. She walked on crutches to a seat on the stage, and sat there until the encore, when she propped herself up long eneough to do "Self Evident". The whole thing was just Ani, solo. The setlist was kind of angry, though. Her husband is also her sound guy. You have to wonder what transpires between them offstage, with her showing so much emotional stress onstage, and knowing it's over him (when it is, that is.) It's a freaky dynamic.

It didn't take us too long to find our way out of downtown Chicago. It was about 11 pm. You couldn't see the top of the Sears Tower for the fog and snow. Finally, the most horrendous part of the evening, after finding the entrance to the interstate: Merging in a left-hand lane. Ok, I'm sure I've done this before at some point in my life, but not with some car coming up on me at 75mph. I almost had a panic attack. Scary scary scary.

We got back to the hotel, and went to sleep. We slept in, and then Aims went to the gym at the hotel, while I took a shower, etc. We went to the uncovered mall, and went to Houlihan's (generic chain restaurant. It wasn't bad, though.) We got back in the car and drove to our hotel in Indianapolis. It wasn't very hard to find, but we had to park in an underground cavernous scary-place. Our room, however, was most swank. Nicely decorated (not hotel-decorated) in browns and blacks, with decent artwork. We hung around there for a few hours, and headed over to the Indianapolis venue. Gah. It took us 20 minutes longer to find it than it should have. I really really really wish my best friend knew how to read a map. It'd make my life so much easier, at least when we're traveling.

Onto the show. We got there, and went into the venue to find our spots. We didn't want to be in the middle of the throng, so we found an area to the side of the stage, and claimed that. I went to go to the bathroom. The lines were exactly as the night before. The line to the men's room: non-existant. And they'd even posted a security guy at the door, so women wouldn't try to enter. How stupid! Gah! I was tempted to go and tell him I was a guy, and challenge him to a DNA test. hehe. There were definitely some some chicks in line who could have pulled that off. I saw many more butch lesbians at this show than at Chicago. Anyhow. So when the show starts, this little group of teenagers (18-20 year olds, I guess) decides to stand in front of us and do everything but enjoy the freaking concert. And the chick had her hair all spiked up. Ok. You're going to a gen admin show. At least be kind enough to NOT TEASE YOUR HAIR to further block someone's view. I was ready to smack all of them. To their right was a group of fem-lesbians behind a group of butch lesbians, randomly making out with each other. I'm all for freedom of expression and all, but I don't want to see anyone make out in public, gay or straight. Why pay $40 for tickets to a show you're not going to watch? Just because your gay doesn't mean you have to like Ani Difranco. It's optional. They don't kick you out if you don't.

The music was great, again. A lot less angry. The opening act, Hammell on Trial, was pretty good. The audience was into him. Ani hobbled on stage again on the crutches, and sat down (which I'll admit, did kind of suck. She's short in the first place, and it was harder to see her on the chair.) She was great. You could see her wiggling in the chair, trying to dance. She stated up front before the last song that there wouldn't be an encore, since it was so hard for her to get around. Understandable. Both shows were pretty short by healthy-Ani standards, but that's ok.

How she broke her foot:
She went out to the corner store for rolling papers. (Aimee said, "Wow, I didn't know she smoked pot." She sounded surprised. I was not.) She got caught in a rainstorm, and wanted to jump over part of the driveway that was messed up. Fell, and broke a bone in her foot. Ouch.

It was a good weekend. I would have liked to have seen more of Chicago and Indianapolis. Time did not allow that, however. I really need to visit random cities with no concerts to attend, at some point. Crazy-talk, I know.

I hope everyone had a good weekend. Wednesday is a DaVinci's Notebook show at the Blue Moon Saloon, and Saturday is Tori in Columbus. That will be all.

Happy Birthday to Beth!

Tomorrow Aimee and I leave for our weekend of Ani Difranco. Chicago and Indianapolis, here we come!

I heard "Any Little Town" by the The Push Stars on the PA system at Kroger last night. That made me very happy. I was singing along (softly.) I bet I was the only person in the store that knew that song. hehe.

Download it here. You'll like it. Afterwards, buy stuff by and from the Push Stars.

(And to bring it all back around to yesterday's entry, it was The Push Stars that opened for Great Big Sea when I saw them a few years ago.)

Beth's comment below:

"You know, the first time I ever heard of Great Big Sea was the day I bought my first TMBG and Mono Puff albums. They gave me a free cassette single (cassingle?) and said that if I liked the other two bands, I'd like that one, too."

Jay and I were discussing this phenomenom last night. What is it with bands that sound absolutely nothing alike being considered "related"? Great Big Sea sounds nothing like TMBG, but I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that a TMBG (or especially a Fruvous) fan would also like Great Big Sea.

This makes me think of an argument I had last spring sometime. I was talking to a friend, and asked him if he'd heard of Great Big Sea. I said, "You like Dar Williams, are you sure you haven't heard of them?" I sent him an mp3. He scoffed at me. "This sounds nothing like Dar Williams." I said, "No, but they share a fanbase." He thought I was crazy. However, a few weeks later he had to concede to me. "I just saw that Great Big Sea opened for Dar Williams in Boston." HA!

I think there's also an assumption that any music from a female "alternative" artist sounds the same. Ani Difranco and Tori Amos might both be girls that write emotionally driven songs, but those songs sound nothing like one another. Nor do the Indigo Girls sound particularly like Jill Sobule. Having a few qualities in common does not make you interchangable. Having female reproductive organs do not a musical genre make.

I'm preaching to the choir here, though. Most of the people that read this blog eschewed most traditional popular music long ago. Sometimes, I feel sad for those people that never venture outside of the offerings of Top 40 radio. They don't know what they're missing.

Wow, Emusic sucks.

I'm on a Great Big Sea kick. I really wish they would come south sometime soon. Blame Canada!

They were in Lexington in 2000, at the University of Kentucky. I am conflicted about this show. It was a great show, and it had the Push Stars opening, which I've since grown to love. However, I think it was organized by some Stupid Chicks from my Theatre 150 (Principles of Production) class. Liz was in that class with me. The teacher, Marie Henderson, was great, and she liked us alot (after graduation, she was going to ask me to be props master for the summer stock production she works on in Bardstown, Stephen Foster, The Musical. A real paying theatre job. But I already was working at MaxWeb, and Bardstown is over an hour away. It just wouldn't have worked out. I was still flattered by the thought.) Anyhow, there were a few complete morons in the class (mostly Arts Admin students, who really should have done better.) We had to do group projects. Our group (me, Liz, Willy the funny-gay-guy, Mike who never said much, and I think someone else. Erin, that's it. I don't remember her last name right off, but Liz knows who I'm talking about) did a really good presentation, with solid plays, real figures on prices, that kind of stuff. Then comes the Group of Morons. They propose really bad ideas, such as "Flying in Paris actors." WTF? It's not like Paris is a reknowned theatre capital or anything. There's just no sense in doing something like that. Anyhow, our group was merciless on the stupid presentations when it came to question time. We really were too hard on them (some might say "mean". heh.) Marie finally stopped us. Anyhow, I think there was a bit of resentment after that. So when the Great Big Sea concert was over, and I asked (quite politely) if I could have a setlist, the chick from the Stupid Group denied me. hehe. Damn her.

A pointless story, on a pointless day.

My ex-boyfriend Shawn played basketball with Tobey Maguire this afternoon.

He's in town filming Sea Biscuit (Tobey, not Shawn). He was at Shawn's gym, and when they asked what his name was, someone thought he said, "Tony." It was only when it was over they realized who it was.

I asked him if he elbowed him real good for Spider-Man. Dammit, I don't think he did.

I'm really really really trying to like the new(ish) Counting Crows album Hard Candy more. It just doesn't grab me as much as their others. I've been listening to August and Everything After alot lately. The songs are just so much.... better, for lack of a good adjective.

I'm very complain-y today.

Muckafurgason is breaking up. I think just by showing interest I make slightly obscure (but good) bands dissolve.

Dammit. The interest rate on my savings account dropped again. I guess because the Feds lowered interest rates again. *sigh* Maybe I should just look on the bright side of this: I'll have a lower interest rate on a mortgage when I get one next year, and I'll save a lot more money on the mortgage than I would have earned in Savings.

If you'll remember, at the end of September I designed an entry for the Jill Sobule.com web design contest (see my entry here). Well, my designs was chosen as one of the finalists! WHOO HOO! This makes me happy!

Anyhow... it sounds like they're going to pick and choose what they like from different designs to come up with a final concept, so my design(s) probably won't be used in their entirety, but it's an honor just to be considered (hehe. It's not like I've been nominated for an Oscar. Calm down, Colleen.) I offered to help them program the site. It'd be cool if they took me up on the offer. Regardless, I will most likely get a $25 gift certificate to the Jill Sobule store (currently offline, but online soon). However, I'm also entered in a drawing for a signed Vagabond guitar, which I think would be mundo cool. I don't play guitar, but maybe I'd learn a bit if I had one. Jay could teach me! Or he could play the guitar. hehe. It'd be used.

Yay me! :) hehe.

A few weeks ago (the weekend before my mom's heart surgery), Jay, his sister, his mother, and I went to Pizzeria Uno's in Cincinnati. We no longer have an Uno's in Lexington, so we like to get it where we can (as Nicole and Tara have witnessed firsthand. I'm sure you'll remember the instances of "Ohmygod, I had two drinks and I'm SOOO drunk!" Grr. hehe). Anyhow, our meal was fine up until the time they sat a party of 10 in our server's section. This was in addition to our table of four, a table of about six, and a table of two. Needless to say, our service sucked at that point. After waiting for our check for about 15 minutes, Jay's sister Lizzy finally hailed another waitress who chased down our check. We went up front to pay it, and they told us our server was supposed to take it. We told them we hadn't seen our server. Some chick comes and asks if everything's all right. I told her no, it wasn't, and explained the situation. She just said, "Ok", and walked away. Someone finally took Jay's credit card, and left with it for like five minutes. He signed it, and we left. About a week and a half later I submitted a complaint on the Uno's website.

The very next day, I had an email and a message on my answering machine from some lady calling to apologize. I didn't call her back right away, and the next day she left another message, and a few days after that another. I finally got around to calling her back, and she apologized and said that should have never happened, and said she'd send me $40 in vouchers (the meal price was $50 for all of us.) The next morning the manager of that particular Uno's called, apologized, and said he'd sent me $25 in gift certificates. So now we have over $65 in free Uno's food, but it's all up in Cincinnati. hehe. Actually, the $40 vouchers can be used anywhere, so I might take a few of them with me next time I go to WV (they put in a new Uno's there last year).

The moral of this story: If you have a bad dining experience, complain. (This at least works at a nicer restaurant.. I've complained via the web to KFC before, and got nothing.)

Mmm. Uno's.

I haven't studied French for at least seven years. How the hell do I remember that French for "goat" is "chèvre"?