excellent fun times

Last Thursday I was supposed to meet up with Tom after work to play some tunes. He called and asked if we could meet at his house instead of at the school, and I responded that I hadn't brought my guitar along, since I had been planning to just use one of the school's loaner guitars..... I mean, yes, sure. See you at your place.

So I bought a new guitar.

It is a Little Martin. It is about a 3/4 size, spruce top, big sound, easy to play, feels good, smells good, nice backpack case, easy to bike with, highly lovable. With all my gigs lately, and supposed government money coming, and 3 paydays this month, I decided to go ahead and buy this little baby that I've been eyeing for some time. Plus I got a sweet deal in the store. Great for teaching! I can bike to WW now in half the time instead of driving the mile and a half in crappy Lincoln Park traffic! It will be my summer guitar. One day I will also get an electric; that will be winter guitar. It was a highly exciting impulse purchase.

So Thursday: worky work, new guitar, good times Fat Tirin' and playing with Tom, then bus rides with Finn, then biking to Indiana Jones downtown. Excellent.

Friday: Little Martin'd WW, afternoon nap, dinner at Feed, The Strangerer at the Chopin, beers and 90's vampire movies at Gold Star. Excellent.

Saturday: Early morning outside seating brunch at Lula, wrapping bike handlebars (grannysmith-green for Roxy, Bianchi-teal for Lu), bday party in the suburbs, dinner at Spacca Napoli, early bedtime. Excellent.

Sunday: Biked the Drive. Gorgeous sunny breezy cool morning. With Saud and Megan. Clocked in 38 miles before 10am. Grocery shopped. Cleaned. Made a strawberry rhubarb pie. Ben worked on the rubbing and marinating of pork and brisket.

Monday: Memorial Day! Baked mango upside-down cake. Finished cleaning, arranging, and sprucing up. Put on a pretty dress. The rain stayed away, a ton of folks showed up, the food was great. Some OTS folks brought a banjo and a fiddle, and somebody even played my oboe, and I played my new little baby geetar. Everyone enjoyed the tunes, including the neighbor who came over and sat down with a Miller Lite in hand. Well, we were hit by a rotten robin's egg, but whether that was the fault of gravity, our frat-boy neighbors, or an old-time-music-hating robin remains a mystery. Pulled pork. Brisket. Homemade BBQ sauce. Pie. Cake. Salads. Chocolate toffee cookies. Egg olive mint fancy tart. Spicy cornbread. A hamburger cake. (Which Adeline mistook for a giant can of Fancy Feast after her dinnertime passed unnoticed.) We were left at the end of the night with the sign of a successful party: one beer left in the fridge.

Pictures here. Note: the topless guitar playing is an illusion.

It was a huge success but since the party I've been feeling down. Back to work, and picking up lots of extra subbing classes to cover for the money I didn't get to earn from the many classes I didn't get to teach on Monday. Hopefully skies will clear up... Ben and I are going to see a friend's play tonight, and this weekend I've got plans to hang with my Redheaded Ms (Molly & Meredith).

Hosting a party, eating and drinking, playing music, beautiful day, good people... Hard to make me happier than that.

OMG!

Adeline is a celebrity!!! Chris posted her photo on cutewithchris.com! Scroll down to May 20! Look at the blender pet! Yessss! Cutewithchris.com is part of my daily website browsing. I love it and I cannot tell you how excited I was to see my bean on his site! I jumped and jumped and yelled, and Adeline's ears shot back in delight as she bolted down the stairs, presumably to do a victory lap around the kitchen floor that made her a star.

Adeline is a little bean. She is the best and my heart grew bigger with all of my love for her and she purrs and loves us and we all snuggle and rub our cheeks against each other and it is the greatest ever.

Her cuteness has been deemed official. Thank you Chris. OMG.

In other news, spring is awesome. And it brings on vices, like wanting to kiss beautiful strangers and celebrating each jean-jacketed day with a beer. Or 4. After several weeknights in a row of drinking to various reasons (Kevin's back on the Tuesday night shift! Tom and I are playing at an open mic and we don't go on for two hours! Taavo's in town and this place has great margaritas!) my stomach went on strike. Both from the rumbly inside and the squishy outside. I appeased the inside with many veggie-packed, healthy meals and homemade granola with yogurt. As for the outside... I realized that although in my head I believed I was in great shape, in reality it had been a while since I'd gotten any kind of regular cardio exercise. For a little while over the winter I joined a crappy gym in a park fieldhouse, where I learned that I hate going to the gym. I haven't been biking as much, due to picking up Finn after work, working less shifts up north, and having lots of days when I have to bring my guitar with me. So I bought some running shoes.

When we went shopping for the running shoes, Ben first encouraged me to seek out good quality, so we went to a fancy running store. There were no prices on any of the shoes. A nice salesguy came to help me, bringing me shoes to try on and then watching me jog on the treadmill to see if they made my foot line up right. When I found some Nikes that worked well he was like, "Awesome! You're getting your first running shoes! You must be psyched!" They were $95. I felt really pressured and embarrassed; everyone in there felt rich, and I was really uncomfortable that it had gone from browsing some shoes to an assumed hundred dollar purchase in 15 minutes. So I thanked him and told him maybe I'd be back later. We went to Kohls instead and I got some New Balance shoes for half the price. The reason I like the idea of running is that you don't need anything, and I was freaked out by the folks who were way into the fancy running gear. If I decide one day that I'm way into it and want to get the fancy shoes, I'll be back to visit my salesman friend.

Then Ben and I went for a run and I almost died and was sore for two days.

The most fun of all is playing music with good friends. I remembered this last Wednesday, crashing my old guitar class and then playing at the Bad Dog with my banjo friend Tom. Despite my many musician friends, we rarely sit around and play together. To this I say: Bollocks! There shall be more music playing amongst friends! I play lots of music, and even make a living doing so (!!!), but it's different to teach a class or go to a gig than it is to have fun sharing a favorite thing with a favorite person. This past weekend I did 3 parties/events. They were all fun enough but drained me of my energy and almost cost me my voice. I feel weird that so much of my music playing is connected to money, and if I'm getting enough, blah blah. I don't want to be all snobby. So I need to make sure I have that balance.

Stuff I've seen lately: Taavo, Iron Man, Molly in a play, Son of Rambow, a piano student terrified of the word "ghost," Meara, guitar students getting engaged onstage after class, my cat on the internet.

rainy wednesday

My bangs are now long enough to accidentally go into my mouth while I am eating. But they are not quite long enough to go behind my ear. This is kind of gross. I need to make sure to keep a bobby pin in my pocket at all times. Miki's pasta with meat sauce is nowhere near as delicious as usual when the occasional bite includes a bunch of poky ends of hair.

Since I last posted, Ben went to New York and came back. So you pretty much know exactly what happened. I made myself breakfasts (on my new vintage waffle iron!), moped a little bit, hung out with the cat, visited lady friends, didn't eat enough. But now he's back. Yay!

I also got a new cell phone, saw Nina Simone's daughter play at the OTS, made peanut butter chocolate chip oatmeal cookies and spent lots of money on dinner and brews with Meara. I also spent lots of money on lunch with Meredith and Molly, and again on lunch with Andrea.

I never posted about Ben's rock show. He is taking a class at OTS called the "Proto Punk Ensemble," which means he is the drummer in a big band made mostly of guitar players that learns to play old songs by the Clash, Ramones, Sex Pistols, etc. They had their graduation performance right before Ben left for New York, and it was an awesome show.



More photos here. As Ben said, now he doesn't have to say "I'm learning to play the drums" anymore. He can just say, "I'm a drummer." Sweet.