December!!!!

Crap. Shopping, driving, snowy December. Would it kill us to move the holiday season to the summer.... but then I guess what would we do in the winter eh?

Been a busy few weeks past. Gonna play a few original songs with Rhonda at an Amnesty International Open Mic Night on Dec 10 at the Exchange. Gonna play my "old" standard "Stargazing" at the show and if they want me to play longer, one of my new ones "First Time" and maybe the instrumentals "Daizy" or " "Munchie". But we'll take it as it comes.

Develoment in the Johnny Rockstar project is entering the polish stage before we hit some shows. We've all basically got the songs learnt, now we're tightening stuff up. I've got the most ground to cover yet since I'm the newest member by about 5 years or so. We're all starting to get excited about the work and we're developing a good band feel.

The new project with the former Linger members is progressing nicely too. We've got material enough for like 2-1/2 albums, but we'll almost certainly scrap a portion of it, combine many and there will be much more new writing before we're done. Of the dozen or so jams, we've not once left without a recording of some new ideas. We're starting to get backd on posting the ideas to our server space. One of the major difficulties has been getting everyone in the same room. Every member of the band has been at a jam and has written and participated, we're all working. But we have not all been in the same room since Craik in September, and as a result we haven't agreed on the name (we all want to do the final discussion in person).

One of my major frustrations at the moment is more creativity than time. It can be exasperated by the fact that I have alot of outlets at my disposal, they can just be hard to access. Not that I can realistically blame this on family or home ownership. I don't know that I'd be much further ahead if I were single, maybe but likely only 10% further along than I am. The presence of an encouraging family can do wonders to a persons motivation and workload. Some of the projects that I'm in beginning phases of working on and will all come in time include - Learning and using synthesisers (limited by my access to a good sound card), doing more video content for Maent Records and some of the other projects I'm involved in (limited to some extent by hard-disk space and time), at least 2 more ideas for bands (limited by the fact that that's ridiculous, they'll come when some current projects run their course), working on a project with Mark and Rob (likely 15 years in the future the way we coordinate), Developing and constructing a new/custom performance setup - guitar, amp, effects and all the details (limited by time and money). It's good to have goals and ideas - infact I should go and post them in a list on my MySpace page so I can work e'm out.

Other than that, just plugging away at life. Have some hip/back pain right now that I'm hoping is a result of improper exercise and bad posture and not a sign of something worse, gonna tough it out for a bit and maybe go see a doctor in the new year if I don't see some progress. Tylenol + Advil = Good Times.

Marrying Medical

One of the benefits of marrying someone in the medical profession is that when she's mistreating you (say tickling you or something) you can quote the classic Homer Simpson line -

"No! Please, remember your hippopotamus oath!"

It never works, thus she should have her license revoked.

Jack Grey

Jack Black and Jack White should do an album together called Jack Grey. It would be so full of ego and rock that they would likely need to invent a new kind of audio media to hold it.

Clever, I know.

An Experiment in Cooking

I've been a great lover of cooking since I was a young child. I've experimented with all sorts of recipes, but one area of the culinary world that I've left un-explored was Indian cooking.

So when my wife suggested we start meal planning, I decided to spice it up and try something new. So I found a curry sauce recipe, got some lamb, made some rice and whipped up my pathetic Canadian version of Indian food. But it turned out fairly well. I realized I need to eat more lamb.

Next up.... English food (barf!).

US Election

Well it's so historic, so I'd better blog.

The real history here isn't colour or race or age. It's the end of the Nixon era finally coming to fruition. Today will be seen as the day the United States decided to change how it runs itself and how the world sees it.

Make no mistake, the world begins to change tommorrow.

All Hallows and more

Happy belated Halloween y'all!
Had a party here on Friday night. Had a pretty good crew out, only problems we had involved smoke detectors. Played the party psychology pretty well and actually had a reasonably early night. We decorated the house up like the scene of a serial killer murder. Not the best job done, but we had some cool stuff in the basement and alot of bloody hand and footprints around. All I can say it was the best meeting of Fidel Castro, a pimp, a witch, AWESOME-O and various underwear superheroes chaperoned by a faerie I've seen. Oh and some other guys wh
Not too much else happened this weekend, groceries, tuna casserole and a purchaseless rip around Chapters were the fun we had. Such is having kids. The wife and I even tried to park for a bit, but the baby would have none of that. So we had to eat cold Wendy's at home and watch SNL. It's like being in Junior High again, can't go anywhere fun, never have any money and have to be home by 9:00.