'Long' Weekend

Hey what's up inter-frammers? I know... Site content around here has been a little sparse lately... The long weekend kicked my ass and not in a party party party way either.

Friday I took the day off from work and my wife and I brought the kids to a place called Southwick's Zoo. It was a lot of fun and the kids seemed to have a good time.

My son was running all over the place looking at all the different animals they had. We could hardly keep up with him. My wife and I ended up just kind of 'herding' him and his sister around the zoo as we took turns trying to keep up with the kids and at the same time push the baby carriage. The kids had fun and that's all that counts so it was a good day.

Saturday I pretty much spent the whole day working on my basement. Anyone sick of hearing about my basement yet? With the help of my father-in-law, I got the drop ceiling framework installed. That was huge. It feels like I can see the light at the end of the tunnel on this project now. I will be so glad when it's finished... The electrician is going to come in tomorrow to finish up the outlets [he was supposed to come today but we won't go there...] and put in the lighting and then once that's done, I'll put in the ceiling tiles.

After that, I think the next thing to do is to tackle the floor and that is going to be a task, let me tell you. I am actually going to try and take a class at Home Depot on how to install it... Have I mentioned how happy I'll be when this thing is done?

Sunday and Monday were dedicated to getting outside chores done. With all the rain we've had around here lately, my grass was very high once again. It was so tall, I had to go over some areas twice... I don't really mind mowing the lawn but it sure takes out a chunk of the day. I spent the rest of the day Sunday getting a bunch of outdoor stuff done at home and then Monday I went over to the in-laws and helped them out with their work. I'll spare you the oh-so-thrilling recap. There was a cook-out in there somewhere involving beer and brats (as in bratwurst).

Sunday night, I actually went out to meet up with some musicians that I had gotten in contact with through Craigslist. I had put in a new ad a few weeks ago looking to try and hook up with, or start up, a new band and I got a response from a band who was looking for a guitar player.

I was very up front right from the beginning that I could only do one night a week and they were cool with that. One night was all they were looking to do as well so it worked out good.

The second stipulation I had was that I did not want to get locked into doing one 'style' of music. I don't mind playing covers of songs that I'm not really into, as long as the others in the band are open to doing songs that I like to play as well.

The last band that I was in, all they wanted to do was pop songs and any suggestion of a punk or metal tune was completely out of the question as far as they were concerned. I told them I was interested in trying to do a Danzig song [Do you wear the Mark] and they looked at me like I was nuts. I did not really like that, but at the time I was just happy to be in a band so I put up with it.

This time around I decided I was not going to do that again. Like I said, I don't mind playing stuff that I'm not into, but if you're going to ask me to play a bunch of damn Beatles tunes, then you're going to play something from The Clash or Social D along with it.

The good news was that, thankfully, these guys seemed to have no problem with that. Of course, it's only been one meeting, so we'll see how it goes. I am optimistic though. At least they knew who Social Distortion was and had heard some of their songs, so that's a good start.

The really cool thing is that this band wants to do originals. They are actually more interested in the originals than the covers, which I think is great. They played me some of their songs and they were very cool. I actually liked the originals better than the covers, so that aspect of this whole thing has me pretty psyched.

I am hoping this will work out because it seems like a good situation, but they were up front with me too and told me they still had some other players that might come in and try out as well, so I was not 'in' yet. Hey you never know, the next Eddie Van Halen might show up to one of their practices, and if that happens and they tell me thanks for your time, but we've got the next Fast Eddie V here and we're going with him instead of you, that is completely understandable.

I appreciate having all this stuff brought out right in the beginning so everybody knows where people stand. I would much rather know the whole deal up front than go along a few weeks thinking I'm in and then all of a sudden, it turns out differently. That would not be fun.

For now, they liked me enough to give me some songs to learn and told me to come back next week, so I'll just take it from there. If it lasts a few weeks, I'll start to try and figure out how I can get some Misfits tunes worked into their list of covers... I gotta offset those damn Beatles tunes somehow.

Comments

[pril]

wow you actually found a group of grown-ups to hopefully play with?! Man, i WISH!

hehe

[Me]

I'm trying not to get my hopes up but, so far so good!