Springtime in Seattle: Day 1

Quick bit of background: Lacuna Coil & The Gathering are playing together on the Hottest Chicks in Metal tour, Seattle is the closest location that I can see them at, same day my sister has an interview at the Naval Shipyards in Seattle, so I take an extended Memorial Day weekend.

Debby and I arrive in Seattle on time, and it takes no more than 20 minutes from landing until we have our luggage off the carousel. It then takes us 40 minutes to get our rental car, because, on a holiday weekend, there is exactly one person at the rental agency. When we got to the line, there were 5 groups in front of us, by the time we got through to the counter there were about 20 groups behind us. And, of course, about 1/3 of the people have special needs, like "I've never rented a vehicle before in my life, and I just learned English last month", or "I reserved a minivan because there's 7 of us. No, a Ford Escort will not work."

I was also supposed to call my friend Kristin when we got in to arrange dinner, but I forgot to put her # in my phone, meaning that I had to get to the hotel and get Internet connectivity to look it up before I could reach her. Fortunately, she was really close to the hotel when I called her an hour late, and we were able to get some food and drinks at a small restaurant with really good seafood.

Her friend Bill also joined us for dinner. Apparently, Bill had been on some of the same newsgroups that I was on back in the olden days before HTML took over. For you whippersnappers out there, "newsgroups" were text-based message boards that we used on the Internet back before social networking sites (or any other web site, for that matter) existed. Somehow, Bill managed to metaphorically paint a target on his forehead very early in the evening. Maybe it was when he mentioned that he was going to meet up with his ex-girlfriend in Las Vegas (and share a room), maybe it was when he mentioned that he had no idea why the gay waiters at the restaurant always hit on him.

After dinner, we visited a small neighborhood used-book store that had about 10 cats living in it. Fortunately, the owners kept it clean and free of that "lived in by cats" smell. While not terribly large, it still managed to have an impressive collection of books of all sorts. What interested me most about this store is how difficult it would be for a store like that to exist in Phoenix. Not just because it's a weird store, but mainly because the typical layout there is a 1 mile X 1 mile grid of primarily single-family homes, with commercial areas limited to the edges of these grids, which prevents both the population density and the ambulatory lifestyle that contribute to the viability of smaller retail outlets. Since we have to drive anywhere to do anything in Phoenix, this also means that we spend a considerable amount of resources on transportation ($3/gallon of gas!) instead of more useful (or at least indulgent) pursuits. This also explains why the number of DUI's is so high: very few drinkers live within walking distance of the bars, or at least of bars that they want to go to.

Reflections

This past Saturday, I got to see a friend of mine who I hadn't seen in several years because he moved out of town (John). While there, I caught up with a lot of people who I very rarely see. What interested me the most was how much I had grown apart from them in the meantime. For the most part, they all were exactly the same, just older, but still doing the same things. When you talk to someone almost all the time, it becomes easy to run out of things to say. If you talk to them less frequently, getting together allows you to catch up on the interesting experiences. If you talk to them even less frequently, you lose a lot of common ground, and with the gulf of years, it becomes very difficult to know where to start.

In the time since I've talked to most of them, I've changed jobs, changed (or at least stopped seeing) girlfriends, been in two active bands, briefly got involved in the movie industry, and got a pilot's license. However, when talking to them, a lot of this doesn't come up, even though it's new to them, it's old to me. How much have they gone through in that time that I'd love to hear about, but they've grown weary of, or forgotten?

Sunday, at the coffee shop, I ran into some other friends. I was wearing my "Don't try new things, it may change your boring life" t-shirt, and one of them asked me what new things I'd done recently. The last significant thing I've done is get my license, and that was a couple months ago. Which means that it's time for something new. Suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Also, I haven't heard anything about the drummer & guitarist we jammed with last Thursday. At this point I'm incredibly skeptical, since it generally doesn't take this long to hear back from someone if they want to be in a band with you. I'm not sure how much more of this I can take, really. So maybe I'll try something new, and see what happens.

In vacation news, I'm still planning to go to Seattle at the end of May, and it wouldn't hurt to have travel companions.

A milestone

Today, for the first time in my life, I had to fire someone. I can't go into the details of who or why, but suffice it to say, the reason was stupid. On the one hand, if it were actually my decision and not a serious matter of corporate policy, I would have let things slide. On the other hand, a lot of people's time was wasted because what happened was entirely preventable, so the irresponsibility of the whole thing makes it hard for me to feel sorry. What angers me the most is that I thought I was done with interviews for a while (I hate interviews with a mad, irrational passion).

The band is supposed to be trying out a drummer and guitarist tomorrow, so we'll see how that goes. A couple weeks ago, we were supposed to try out a different drummer/guitar combo, but that fell through before we even had a chance to get starting. I hate musicians.

In happier news, I am planning a trip to Seattle over Memorial Day weekend (leaving either Friday or Saturday before, and coming back the Wednesday after) to see two of my favorite recent bands, Lacuna Coil and The Gathering. If you know me, and are interested in taking the trip, let me know soon, as time is running short. Other than the show, I would like to take a tour of the wineries in the area, but I don't have any other specific plans.

Illness: Nature's way of telling you to get some damn sleep

Saturday night, a few of us were supposed to see Stephen Lynch at the Marquee. Unfortunately, it got postponed due to illness. Which is amazingly coincidental, because I wasn't feeling all that great that night either. Sunday wasn't any better. Monday was worse. And I hate wasting a sick day on actually being sick.

There was an interesting band development Saturday night. On the good side, we apparently have a drummer. On the bad side, we no longer have a singer. Bear with me here, and don't make any judgments until you've read the whole thing:

Mike has decided to give up lead singing and start playing the drums. He and Aaron decided that, since he does in fact have a pretty damn good sense of timing and rhythm, it would be better for the band if he switched sides. My initial thought was "I thought I was the designated abuser of mind-altering substances in this band", followed quickly with "Maybe these two need to start abusing some mind-altering substances." But I soon saw the rationale behind this, without the help of mind-altering substances: Not only do I not have to deal with a drummer, but, um, I, uh, don't have to ... deal with a drummer. At least, not of the stereotypical, flaky, unemployed, debt-ridden variety.

Walking to Mike's apartment from the Marquee gave me some time to reflect on this proposition, especially as we passed the Tempe Music Festival, and I was able to listen to a good deal of drumming from other bands, and noticing the almost child-like simplicity of it. And I don't mean simple in a "stripped-down, raw, intentionally uncomplicated" sort of way, I mean simple in the sense that the drummers seemed incapable of playing more than one beat between them all, and certainly were at a total loss to put any kind of passion or emotion into it.

The only thing I'm curious about, and what makes me wonder if Mike's really thought this all the way through, is that the drummer is normally at the back of the stage, where he doesn't get quite as much attention as the rest of the band. Maybe he thinks we'll let him set up his kit in front of the singer.

Night: The perfect time for dark thoughts

The dead are those with great wisdom,

we can put words in their mouths, and the living cannot argue with them

The dead are those who've done great deeds,

and no one is left to remember their humanity

The dead are those who were greatly wronged,

they cannot forgive, and no penance paid will ever be enough

The dead are those who we cannot bear

to accept that we will never see again

So we give them a home among the gods

and pray so that we may join them soon.

No more road trips

Today I made my first flight as a private pilot, taking Debby up to Show Low to visit our cousin Shannon. After lunch we only had about an hour before heading back to return the plane, so she gave us a quick tour of some houses in the area, including a few in the 7-figure range. It's amazing how much people will pay to have a house that they will live in for no more than two weeks a year. I wouldn't mind having a vacation home up there, of course, but even the small ones would run about $300k.

The trip up there was uneventful, but the trip down started around 3:30, just in time to catch the hottest part of the day, so (jargon alert) not only did we have plenty of turbulence and wind shear, but it turns out that the density altitude was about 1700 ft above actual, and since this plane has a service ceiling of 11,000 ft, I was fighting to keep this plane at 8500 ft. Of course, every once in a while I'd catch an updraft, and within a few seconds I'd be about 300 ft higher than I wanted to be. Next time I head up that way on a warm day, I think I'd prefer a plane with more than 160 hp available.

So, who's up for lunch in Sedona in a couple weeks?

I also have a Public Service Announcement:
April is Alcohol Awareness Month. For those of you who are not aware of alcohol, it is a marvelous liquid that can make you happy and self-confident, promotes morality by acting as a truth serum, and allows you to see the inner beauty of others and become much, much less concerned with superficial physical beauty. I know that I myself will become very aware of alcohol about 10 minutes after I've paid by taxes.

Guess what I did today?

If you said "woke up, went to work, had dinner, went to gym, had some drinks, went to bed", you'd be absolutely right (except you'd need to add "wrote a completely inane blog" between "drinks" and "went to bed").

Maybe you're curious what I do while having drinks. Then again, maybe you're a stroke victim. Tonight I had some drinks @ TGI Friday's with my friend Jay. We mostly talked about upcoming movies, music, and vacation plans that will probably never happen.

Movies: "300" will kick ass. It's also coming out in IMAX, which just sounds ridiculous. Also, I almost cried when I heard about the new Fantastic 4 movie, "The Rise of the Silver Surfer", because the Silver Surfer rules, and the Fantastic 4 was one of the worst movies I've ever seen.

Music: Drummers suck. The only reason to deal with them is because you need one to stop playing acoustic. For the moment, I really want to get back on stage, so I'm going to get together with Mike, who has completed his Bar exams, and try to get a few acoustic gigs underway.

Vacation plans: I really want to go to Japan. My main reasons: sake, sushi, and the culture. By "the culture", I of course mean that I'm very attracted to Japanese ladies.

To reward anyone who may have made it this far, I want to leave you with the following thought:

The more confident a person is in their knowledge of a subject, the less they actually know. This is largely because a more knowledgeable person has a much better concept of just how much they don't know. In fact, a good rule to live by is that the only people who are completely confident are the completely ignorant. This is not the actual thought, and hopefully isn't something that you are unaware of, it simply a lead-in to the important thought: The human masses are attracted to, and will always follow, the most confident available leader.