Happy Montues!

I am so glad that it is Monday afternoon. I have had every second of my time spoken for this past week, and it was so awesome to get home from work today, heat up some soup, write in my journal, fuck around on the guitar, take an impromtu nap, and come to Gallery Cafe to shoot the shit with the guy behind the counter over coffee and a scone. It feels great.

Yesterday was a super-long day. I left Wauwatosa at 6:45, drove straight to work, clocked in 9 hours, went home and showered and put on a dress and makeup, drove up to Rogers Park, rehearsed over half a sandwich with Michael and Kris, went to Dukes and did our gig. It went will. Tony was there on violin-- for me the highlight of the whole hour was his solo on Somewhere Over the Rainbow. Improvising three string chords with the "someday I'll wish upon a star..." trill over them. He is amazing! We also had Mike on snare and brushes for a little extra rhythm. Michael took a solo or two and Kris also played the lead line on her bass for a song or two. We hadn't had a chance to rehearse much all together so our last minute arrangements sometimes failed when we weren't on the same page, and I started Bye Bye Blues in the wrong key and basically blew the entire first verse. But overall our performance was strong and people really dug our energy. We were opening for this band called Sons of Susan which is a West coast swing group, and they especially dug our performance and were dancing around. They were really nice and I'm excited to play with them again on the 25th.

After the show I was totally wiped and I came into the living room, plunged my forehead into Ben's shoulder and slept there for an hour on the couch before we finally went to bed. When I got to the top of the stairs I found a huge box wrapped in newspaper that said Happy Birthday Lindsay (a little bit early). I was too tired to open it so I thought I'd put it off for the morning. This morning I asked Ben if I should open it and he said yes.... Then he asked if I knew what it was, because I was acting so laissez faire about the whole thing. I had no idea; the reason I wasn't making a big deal about it was because I thought it was going to be a fake present, like a souvenir from the Domes or somewhere he had been in Milwaukee with his parents, all small and cheesy and wrapped in a big box. We had made an agreement not to get big birthday presents for each other because we are saving money for our trip to London (leaving in one week!) and throwing a big party on Friday. I got him just a cookbook for his birthday.

I opened up the present and it is a brand new fancy travel backpack for our trip. Holy shit. He broke the agreement. Big time. He wanted to get me something nice for future travel together, and also thought if I had a nice new pack maybe I wouldn't dread packing with all of my being like usual. His plan worked because I am especially excited to go on our trip! Anybody have any suggestions for London?