Category: Daily Life

I woke up on Saturday morning and immediately checked the weather forecast:  60% chance of rain, thunderstorms likely from 4:00 p.m. on.

"It’s not going to rain on my party," I thought.  I may have even said it aloud.

The morning was sunny and beautiful as I ate breakfast and started gathering food and drink for the party.  It began to get more overcast as I weeded flower beds and cut down volunteer trees.

My husband was extremely wary of my plan to continue as though it wouldn’t rain.  I agreed to take things slowly.  We only set up one table at first, and just two speakers and my least valuable amp to play MP3s.

Four o’clock rolled around and we were still trying to get the grill started, copying music onto the iPod, tidying up, etc.  Half past four…quarter to five…nobody came.  I sent an e-mail to everyone who had RSVPed that said, "The party’s on!  It’s not raining, we have all the food and we’re moving forward."

Finally, the first guest arrived a little before five.  After that, people started rolling in and the party was in full swing by six.  We had musicians grouped on the deck, people with children on blankets in the yard, and islands here and there of couples who couldn’t be immediately convinced to mingle.

Some of the first wave left between seven and eight, and the second wave arrived just after nine.  We actually ran out of beer and I had to make a run up the street to buy another case.

Many of the nine o’clock crowd were just party-hopping and left after an hour or so.  Right around ten-thirty, I heard thunder.  The remaining guests helped us move all of the chairs, PA gear, food and drinks inside, and the party split between our studio and living room.

I stayed in the living room chatting with the last three guests until they left at two a.m.  The final guest (who was also the first to arrive) didn’t leave until three-thirty a.m., but I left my husband to deal with him and went to bed a good hour before that.

All in all, we had more than thirty guests.  There were enough leftover chips and cookies that I’m not quite sure where to put them all.  Everyone seemed to have a great time, I got a new business lead for my company, and my husband got to show off his studio, which always makes him happy.

And now that I know I can will it not to rain on my parties, I’m determined to throw outdoor events more often!

It is such a crapshoot to have an outdoor party in the Midwest.  Last year’s party was in October and it rained.  Our 2004 party was Labor Day weekend and the weather was beautiful.  Tomorrow, well, there’s a @#$%* 50% chance of rain.

My husband and I had a long talk yesterday about whether we wanted to just go ahead and cancel our party.  I decided that I’m too much of an optimist.  I’ve ignored the weather forecast before and had it pay off, so hope springs eternal.

The plan is to go ahead and get all the food, drinks and ice for the party.  The worst that can happen if it’s thunderstorming when the party is supposed to start is that we put the meat in the freezer, keep the drinks for later and maybe end up throwing away the hot dog and hamburger buns.

We won’t set up any sound equipment outside, just to save us the hassle of dragging it all to safety if it starts raining.  It won’t be the end of the world if we’re forced to rely on a boom box and CDs.

In other news, I moved to a new desk at work yesterday.  Now I’m in an office – with a window – instead of a cubicle, and I have one officemate.  I really liked where I sat before but I don’t mind mixing things up now and then.  The only weird thing about sitting in the same room as someone else is that it makes me hyper-aware of every time I talk to myself, sigh heavily, etc.  I guess I’m going to have to stop singing lightly under my breath when I’m listening to iTunes, too.

Have a nice weekend, everyone.  And keep your fingers crossed for me that it doesn’t rain until Sunday here!

It’s starting to sink in that I have more than 40 people coming over on Saturday and I really haven’t done much to prepare.

I always have our big parties outside because our house is way too small to accommodate more than four or five guests.  That means I need to weed my flower beds, clean off the deck and patio and hose down the outdoor furniture.  People will come into the house no matter what, so I have to at least have every publicly-viewable surface cleaned off, clear a path to the half bathroom in the junk room we call a guest room, and make our bed.

Then there’s the shopping.  I’m springing for hot dogs, hamburgers, buns, plates, charcoal, a case of soft drinks and a case of beer.  After that it’s all potluck, so let’s hope I don’t end up with 20 bags of chips and nothing more.  I’ve learned from experience that people will bring beer even when I clearly state on the invitation that I’m getting kegs, so I just don’t bother to spend a lot on it anymore.  I’ve returned too many half-full kegs and it breaks my heart.

My cleaning lady is coming over today to deal with the worst of the grime.  She was just here a week ago Tuesday, but we can’t keep our house clean for even a week with three cats and two human slobs in residence.  The studio:  too messy to bother with.  The door stays locked (unless my husband wants to tackle it).

I don’t have any free evenings between now and the party, but fortunately we scheduled it to begin at 4 p.m.  I don’t want to exhaust myself that morning and afternoon, but I should have enough cushion to shop, set up and take a break before people arrive.  I hope.

It it wrong that I’m already looking forward to sleeping in on Sunday?

I have an early meeting today, so here are a few sites I’ve run across lately that I thought were worth sharing:

• Teacher and the Rockbots – Who says kids’ music has to be boring?  This stuff rocks and it’s educational, too!  I think I know what I’m getting my niece for Christmas this year…
• Here are two blogs about creativity that I found interesting:  the martini shaker* and Creative Generalist.  Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about creativity as a discipline, and these both offer great reading on the subject.
• Ever since I worked for a birth announcement printing company in my younger days, I’ve been fascinated by the names people choose for their babies.  (That job was right in the midst of the Caitlin/Katelyn/Caitlyn/Kaitlin era.)  Here’s an interesting map of popular baby name styles in the U.S. by region that I found via Pop Culture Junk Mail.
• Affordable Views are faux windows in various styles designed, presumably, to decorate windowless rooms.  They remind me of the outdoor scene that my grandmother once painted and used to cover the real window in one of her bathrooms.

That’s all for today.  Yay!  The week’s almost half over!

I stayed at work until after 6:30 last night and I had the house to myself when I got home, so I decided it was time for a lazy evening.  First on the agenda:  surfing my blogroll.  I read and commented on blog posts until I started having trouble focusing my eyes.  Whatever did I do for entertainment before the Internets?

After that, I made myself a mini bag of Orville Redenbacher microwave kettle corn for dinner.  I meant to have a beer with it, but once I planted myself on the couch, I was too unmotivated to get back up.  Yes folks, I was too slothlike to drink beer.  Homer Simpson would be ashamed of me.

While I ate my dinner, I fended off the cats and started making my way through the TiVo’s offerings from the past several days.  I watched the last 15 minutes of the latest Lewis Black HBO special (I saw the rest the night before but started to fall asleep before it was over) and tried to watch "Margaret Cho’s Revolution," but got sidetracked by the laptop.  I kept getting e-mail and obsessively checking Evite to see who might have RSVPed for this weekend’s party.

By then it was getting close to my bedtime, but I didn’t want to pass up the chance to watch "The Daily Show."  When that was over, I didn’t feel very tired anymore, so it was on to the season premiere of "Deadwood."  Oh, how I’d missed it! 

By the time "Deadwood" wrapped up, my stomach was growling so I had some saltines with some of those little pre-cut, cracker-sized squares of sharp cheddar, and went straight to bed as soon I ran out of cheese.

I won’t have nearly so much leisure time tonight because it’s my evening to work at my dad’s office (after I put in 8+ hours at my real job).  I keep hoping my dad might retire someday, but as he’s 75 now and still keeping his business going, I’m not going to hold my breath.

So there’s my immediate past and future.  How’re things going for you?

I finally made myself sit down this weekend and get a couple more songs written.  This was one of those weekends where each day kind of got away from me, so I ended up doing all my work in the evenings.  Fortunately, morning and evening are my peak creative times anyway, so it worked out okay.

The first song I wrote ended up being about a breakup.  The guitar portion of the song is a little bit Dokken-like, but I didn’t want the vocals to be too pop-metal.  I recorded it last night and it sounds rough and angry – just as I hoped it would.  I’ll definitely work on the song with my vocal instructor this week.  I wandered away from correct positioning while I was doing the recording and burned myself out so that I couldn’t manage the next song.

The second song, which is still in the lyrics tweaking stage, is based on an apocalyptic dream I sometimes have when I’m really stressed out.  There’s nothing like writing songs for a heavy metal band to give you the chance the plumb the dark side of your psyche.  I especially enjoy it because most people I know probably wouldn’t expect me to have a dark side of my psyche.  I can tell this song is going to be a challenge to sing because it’s pretty high.  I’m always afraid I’m going to write something for myself that I can’t actually pull off, but I’m sure I’ll be able to make it work when I’m not so tired.

I also re-recorded the vocals for the song I wrote a few weeks ago.  I’ve been working on it with the help of my vocal coach, and the tracks sounded considerably better this time around.  My husband just sent me an MP3 of it with his drum tracks, but I haven’t been able to listen to it yet.  He describes his drum approach for it as a cross between Disturbed and Tool and he has a lot of production ideas that sound pretty cool.  Can you tell we’re having a lot of fun with this?

Other than that, my weekend activities (in no particular order):  hanging out with my sister, my aunt and her cousin and having a fabulous vegetarian lunch; catching a Found Magazine tour show; watching an exciting thunderstorm with two-inch hail; shopping for t-shirts (it’s a sickness, I know) at an actual mall; taking a consumer survey at the mall for the movie My Super Ex-Girlfriend, which actually looks pretty good; and sleeping way too much.

How was your weekend?

I cannot tell you how glad I am that it’s Friday.  This week has worn me out.

I see my neighbors across the street are having a garage sale.  I’m glad it’s this weekend instead of next weekend when we’re having our big backyard party.  The last thing we need is a battle for parking spots on our curb-less street.

This weekend I’m ready to sit down and write lyrics for at least two more songs.  I’ve figured out what the melody lines should be, so it shouldn’t be too hard to decide how many syllables will fit into each line and go from there.

Other than that, my only plan had been to continue my yard work, but with my hamstrings so sore and stiff, I’ll probably put it off a bit longer.  I may have to make an appointment with my chiropractor and get her to do that therapy that involves electrodes attached to either side of the muscle.  It feels kind of creepy, but it always helps when I’ve injured a muscle.

Other than that, I hope to sleep as much as possible, eat some lovely meals and perhaps open the bottle of Gnarly Head Zinfandel I bought this week.  I think I deserve a treat!

When I did all my yard work on Sunday, I wasn’t surprised that it left me with stiff hamstrings.  The problem is, four days have passed and the entire back of my left thigh is still sore and stiff.  I do enough yoga that I can ordinarily bend forward and put my palms on the floor.  Right now, I can barely get my fingertips past my knees.

Since one side is particularly bad, I’m trying ice.  I find that my huge, round, Pampered Chef Chillzanne platter makes a great ice pack for large muscle groups.  I’ve sat on the couch with it against my upper back many a time.  Once the gel inside thaws out, I just wash it and put it back in the freezer for the next time I overwork a lat muscle or want to serve a chilled hors d’oeuvre.

I didn’t get to the laundry over the weekend, so this morning I was down to my last pair of dark socks and one of them had a hole in the heel.  Of the many ways in which I am thrifty (or cheap, as my husband would say), sock retention probably tops the list.  I have socks in my drawer that I am certain walked my high school halls in the 1980s, and I still wear them despite their tissue-thinness in spots.

All my dark socks are of more recent vintage – probably 6 years old or less – so my natural impulse was to sew up the hole in the heel.  I think darning eggs must have gone the way of the buggy whip, so I had to use a Silly Putty egg as a substitute.  It was a little small, but it did the trick.

I know that socks and underwear are fairly inexpensive commodities, but it always seems wasteful to me to chuck them if there’s potential wear left in them.  When it comes to clothing, I’d rather splurge on cool t-shirts instead.

My Moustache May mention on Monday (alliterative, no?) made me realize that I hadn’t blogged about my own husband’s new facial hair.  At some point in May, I noticed he looked a little unshaven.  I asked if he was growing a mustache and he said, "Yeah, and a soul patch, too!"

He’s been growing his hair longer for a while and I guess he had one too many drive-thru attendants call him "ma’am," so he decided that a mustache would help butch things up.  Not that it should be necessary since he’s 6’3" and broad-shouldered, but I what’re you gonna do?

He’s made pretty good progress with the facial hair – to the extent that my new favorite teasing nickname for him is "The Dread Pirate Roberts."  He actually looks pretty cool, I must admit. 

I think it must be kind of fun to be able to grow your own face topiary.  The guitarist in my last band had his head shaved, but his facial hair was different almost every time we practiced.  He’d have muttonchops one month, a fu manchu mustache the next and be clean-shaven the time after that.  My frequent haircolor changes were nothing in comparison to that kind of variety.

What do you think of mustaches and beards?  Like ’em?  Hate ’em?  Which Moustache May guy did you vote for?