I spent far more money today than I planned...

I went record shopping with my friend Sam, which we have been planning for about a week now, however we only went to about half of the places we had planned on going to. That was my fault. You see, I found four Tom Waits records on vinyl at the first place we stopped. The Heart of Saturday Night, Foreign Affairs, Nighthawks at the Diner, and, what is one of my favorite Waits records, Rain Dogs. All of these were in two adjoining rows. Music by Tom Waits, especially on vinyl, tends to be far too expensive for my tastes (usually running about thirty dollars, at the cheapest), so when I found Rain Dogs and the Heart of Saturday Night for fifteen dollars each, I jumped on them. Then Foreign Affairs turned up for ten, and shortly after that Sam found Nighthawks for five dollars and I nearly wet myself.

Of course I didn't stop there. I picked up a stack of other records. Most of that was less than five dollars each, and most of them were just a dollar. Still, I spent a ton of money. Oops.

While we were out, Sam and I stopped by to see our friend Ben at his place of work, Choo Choo Bob's Train Store and while we were there saw Dave King, one of the best drummers in Minnesota, and possibly one of the best in the nation. I thought it was him but I couldn't tell until he took off his sunglasses. He was in buying a toy for his son who loves trains. It was adorable. And fucking awesome. He was super chill about being recognized and thanked us for listening to his many bands (Happy Apple, Halloween, Alaska, the Bad Plus, and the Gang Font featuring Interloper) and asked us what we were up to. When we told him we had been out record shopping he got excited and asked us if we'd been to the new Eclipse Records location, where we had just come from. He started telling us stories about when Happy Apple used to play at the old location but his son was getting restless so he took off with a final, "Thanks. Nice to meet you guys!" It sort of felt like that really cute guy or gal you've had a crush on stopped you to say they like your outfit. Except it was a jazz drummer and he told us to have a good afternoon.

This weekend in general has been really great. Gringo and Grinaldo as well as our friend Ali came over last night and we just sat passing around a bottle of wine on my patio. It was wonderful. Then I slept outside. No joke. I decided it was a nice night and the moon was a nice nightlight, so I dragged a couple of pillows and my sleeping bag out onto our upstairs balcony/deck. The sun woke me up early and I spent the next few hours drifting in and out of sleep until I decided it was probably time for breakfast. I haven't had breakfast all summer due to monetary constraints. (Here's where you tell me that food is more important than music, and I reply "Screw you.") The weekend will continue to be stellar when I attend a birthday/going away party for and hosted by my friend Adam. Formal attire is required and all of my closest friends who remain in town will be in attendance. I can not even begin to explain how excited I am.

half blind we wrote ... on sheets of salty wood

I just finished reading the play The Seafarer by Conor McPherson and I was blown away. It is brilliantly written and packed with wonderful themes of redemption and belief. I don't want to give anything away, but the end is stunning, and the second act, especially, is thrilling simply because of the dialogue. I imagine that if I saw it performed I would be on the edge of my seat the entire time. Do yourself a favor and read it as soon as you can.

I'm also reading the book The World Without Us by Alan Weisman. I'm only a third of the way through with it, but already it's one of the most important and easy to read books on our impact, as humans, on the environment that's been written recently. It's terrifying and humbling, but also strangely comforting. The narrative style in which it's written subtly drives the hard to fathom points Weisman is making, while making it a fairly easy read. It's scholarly in the sense that he did a huge amount of research, but it is not written in a dense "scholarly" way. Again, I reccomend it highly. I'll write more about it when I actually finish reading it.

The play I was acting in ended this past weekend and the past two evenings that I've had to myself have been marvelous. I didn't want to be in the production, but did it as a favor both to the director and her husband, my boss. I had fun, but I didn't feel like I gained anything from it because the director was forced to work on basic acting techniques with the inexperienced actors. I've been thankful to have my evenings to myself again. They've been emmensely productive, to the point that it's actually rather sickening. I love it.

the misguided insects crowned me their grasshopper king with a dance of celebration

Summer is almost over and I don't quite know how I feel about it. It's been nice to be relatively cut off from everyone. I feel like I've settled down into my own comfortable pace and all too soon I'll have to speed up again or get left behind. In an ideal world, my comfortable pace would mean that I do my thing, and when everyone else comes speeding around the track I'll spend a few lovely moments with them.

I am excited to have people back on campus, I just don't want to feel like this summer of sitting back and slowing down has been a waste. I've resolved to not over commit this year. There are a few things that I haven't really been involved in on campus that I'd like to be involved with. I love theatre and being involved in it, but I don't want to get burned out on it. I'll be designing lights for two shows this year: one in the fall and one in the spring. At this point, I don't plan on auditioning for anything, so the extent of my theatre work will be on the lighting crew.

I also want to get involved with the concert crew. I've been encouraged, even asked, to be a part of it, but I've always been too involved in the theatre and haven't been able to. This year I'm going to make an effort to get more bands from the Twin Cities down to campus. Not to sound arrogant, but my tastes in music are eclectic enough that I think I would be a good fit for the committee. In addition to being on the concert committee, I'm planning on having my drums on campus (finally!) and making some music again (finally!). I've missed playing regularly. In high school drumming, especially with others, was therapy and meditation for me, so being cut off from that was hard. Finally, I'm going to have a radio show again. I had two different ones this past year; one each semester. The new one is going to be devoted Minnesota musicians (so, as one of my friends joked, my own version of the Current).

So that's what's been on my mind lately. Gringo and I are thinking of starting a music blog. We had the idea separately, but almost at the same time, which was strange. I'm not sure what it would consist of, but, then again, we haven't actually talked about it yet.

In other news, I've been renewing my love affair with the band mewithoutYou. I absolutely adore their sound and their lyrics. Lovely. Here's the first song I ever heard by them. Incidentally, it was because I saw this very video.