Wow, it really has been a while…
Things are finally getting back to normal around here at work. Normal meaning I sit here and do nothing… I rather enjoyed being busy for a while. It let me feel useful. Things are slowing back down and Bunny is back from Puerto Rico so now there’s 3 of us to split the (non)work again. Now I have to explain who Bunny is. Bunny is the new guy (7 months). His name is Chris Heffner and because of the confusion of having 2 people named Chris, we were trying to figure out what to call ourselves. He offers up “Heff” and says that would be cool because of the Playboy reference. Well, one of the first “guy” rules is that you can’t pick your own nickname if it’s a cool one. So, using the Playboy train of thought, we’ve decided to call him Bunny.
On the job frontier, I had a few prospects crop up in the last few weeks. I’m hoping one of them comes together, it would be the perfect job for me. If not, I’m pretty sure I’ll just start packing up and plan on being in Pennsylvania by next fall.
Becca started 4th grade a week ago. She likes it but we have already fallen back into the standard routine of her getting frustrated over her homework. Things have come so easy to her in the past that when she comes across something she has to think about, she gets frustrated. She gets weepy and just says, “I don’t know”. Then I get upset at her acting like that and it turns into a circus. I have NO IDEA where she gets this from… really… OK, I was just like that too. Damn perfectionists.
Speaking of my perfectionist traits, it looks like I am no longer playing with Tracy. He has other ideas of how a band should come together and I don’t agree. Instead of trying to get together and practice, he’s opted to keep hitting the open-mic nights at clubs trying to find someone to play with and THEN try to practice. I think we should do both. Going out every week and playing in front of people without practicing together only makes us look bad. We’ll never get it together without a little synchronizing. For example;
One song we played was “Killing In The Name Of”. As usual, he didn’t want to get together so we practiced on our own and came together to play it at the club. After hearing the train wreck I tried figure out how we screwed it up SOOO bad. I know I played it right and he’s a good bass player, so how did this happen? Because I practiced all week to the song from the album and he practiced all week to the radio edited version! Huge difference! After that I insisted that we get together to practice before we play out again and haven’t heard from him since… Oh well, another adventure in people.
I did go out to see Tempest Reign last week though. It was good to hear some solid local metal. The drummer is a guy I knew back in school and was part of a local metal band with a big following back in the early 90′s. He went on to play for “Iced Earth” for a while and now he’s back in town. The band sounded great although the club’s sound system could have used some tweaking. I’m glad I went out to see them, they really blew it out and kicked ass.
I have gone through the whole deal with the insurance adjustor. He looked at all the damaged equipment and said only the computer was worth repair. He needed an affidavit from a repair shop proclaiming it as lightning strike damage. I had to shell out $120 for CompUSA to even look at it. They took 4 days and finally told me it would be $90 for the power supply and $660 for the motherboard. I bought the whole thing brand new including a monitor and all for just $500. Why would I pay $750 to repair it? Computers are now (for me at least) disposable. I have 4 computer carcasses in my den and bits and pieces all over the place. I plan on making a Frankenputer with them and now I have a shiny new tower to put it in.
We’re expecting to have the insurance statement this week and I’m going to order the new computer as soon as I see the amount. Maybe I’ll even upgrade a little…
Looking ahead, we’re busy for the next month and a half. This weekend is booked with camping (in August?) at Hannah Park for Phoenix Staff Camp. Next weekend we’re driving to Atlanta to visit Jerry Jr, Scott and Jeremy. I am going to do some basic electrical work for them. The week after that is Labor Day. Fred and I are renting a moving van and driving all of Jerry Sr. stuff to Pennsylvania and flying back. All expenses paid road trip! Cool. The week after that is back to Atlanta to complete the electrical work. And so on and so on. Somewhere in all of this, I’ll try to find my sanity.
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