Three Words Back...

The Best Laid Plans

It's raining in Kentucky tonight.  The red and green neon sign across the street is framed perfectly by the break in the curtains.  It's a quiet night here in Room 420, so it would seem that Room 418 will go unused tonight.

And in the past few minutes, while figuring out exactly how to spell out the mood I'm in, the air conditioner took a break and I could faintly hear someone down the hall raising their voice.  A few more moments, and sirens hurry down the street.  There are voices in the hallway, then a door rattles shut.  A few songs have come and gone since I started this entry, and whatever fleeting thought that first led to this entry has slipped out through the space under the door.  I am reminded how much I like Jars of Clay, but that's about it.

And now we're at paragraph #3.  There were several different versions of it.  None of them took.  So I checked my myspace, checked a few blogs I keep up with, and linked through to the blog of a professional marketer.  It was an interesting read.  My best guess is that Room 418 now has a minimum of four young males who are now competing at something which prompted one to excitedly shout, "He shoots.....HE SCORES!"  My air conditioner turned off again, and now I could transcribe the story that one of them is telling verbatim, if I so chose.  Which I do not.  All the same, thanks for filling up paragraph #3 for me, Loud Guys In Room 418.

Nights like tonight are necessary, or the nights when everything turns out rightside-up wouldn't mean so much.

Sunday Comes To Gather Me...

So....the new Counting Crows disc came out on Tuesday.  I watched it slowly download to my itunes library one song at a time, and it felt like waking up on Christmas Eve morning as a kid all over again.  I played it from start to finish and loved it from the first note to the last.  Not because it's perfect, but because it felt like hearing from old friends again.  In that way that old friends might be doing new things these days, but something about them doesn't seem to have aged at all.  At any rate, there have been some great articles come out this week that helped frame my understanding of the record, so I'm passing along a few links (Paste Magazine and Rolling Stone) to go with my personal recommendation to download or buy Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings in its entirety.

(Watch for more on the record the next time I'm cooped up in my room and crawling out of my skin.)

It's Opening Night for Major League Baseball, with the Braves and the Nationals playing tonight on ESPN.  And though I will be taking tomorrow off, it is not, unfortunately, to catch a game somewhere on Opening Day - which my friend Bethe and I both agree should be an official national holiday.

And speaking of baseball, I have to plug my favorite baseball site: FIRE JOE MORGAN.  More accurately stated, it's a site devoted to skewering the many, many examples of egregiously bad baseball journalism from noted baseball writers and analysts - including ESPN's own Joe Morgan.  It's hilarious, well-written, and spot on in its critiques of shallow, poorly researched "analysis" of America's pastime. 

According to the email I received ten minutes ago, I am currently in first place in the NCAA Tournament Bracket Pool that I entered.  This is, quite simply, amazing.  I bet I watched twenty minutes of college basketball all season.  I may have watched another ten since it started.  My bracket is usually shot by the end of the second round, and always by the Elite Eight.  The fact that I am a Kansas - UCLA final away from winning the whole thing might just be a sign of the pending Apocalypse.  Then again, probably not.        But it could be.  Either way, Rock-Chalk-Jayhawk and Go Bruins, because first place is a nice little prize.

Ok, boys and girls...I've got the urge to pull my new camera out of my suitcase.  Cross your fingers for an extremely productive Sunday night to come.

Soooooooo Tired...

Going to bed by 10 pm for the third time this week...on a Friday, no less.

Reason #206 why I am officially old now.

Waiting On A Pizza, Waiting On A Change...

Domino's has ten minutes left on the clock...

I've got about ten days left in this town.  Then I drive to Columbus, Ohio, for two days of meetings.

Then I drive to somewhere in Pennsylvania or New York to help out up there.  But that's not "official" yet, so don't tell anyone I work with.  Or mention it on myspace.  Lots of details about it are still up in the air...so, it's hard to call it news when I can't answer any questions about it.  But still, trading Ohio / Indiana / Kentucky for Pennsylvania / Maryland / New York in the spring time is probably going to be nice.  Except that I'll be leaving my work friends here behind, not that I see them in person all that often.  But still, it is even more change...which I'm processing.  A great opportunity though, which I am very excited about.....not complaining, I promise.

Domino's says that my "pizza delivery expert, Chris" left the store with my pizza 8 minutes ago.  This would be promising, if I actually believed that someone was updating my pizza order down to the minute.  Oh, wait, there's the door.

After dinner plans include doing laundry and checking my work email: just another exciting night in room 420.

Sting 'Em Jackets

Undefeated Howard Payne Wins Division III Women's Basketball Championship!

Full story here.

Awesome.

More Letters

Dear Guy In The Stall,

Really?  You're taking that call now?  And not just to say, "Can you give me a few minutes?" but to actually hold court and discuss the events of your day?  For one thing - ewww.  For another, aren't you worried about echo problems in such a confined space?  And lastly - just, ewwww.  I can't imagine that the other end of the line wants to hear a symphony of Public Restroom noises in the background...but that's just me.

Dear Guy In Room 418,

I can tell you think something is very funny.  I'm guessing it's the George Carlin special on HBO.  Either way, hearing you laugh every few minutes is getting very annoying.  Which reminds me...

Dear Drury Inn,

Why does my TV emit a high pitched whine the first ten minutes that it's turned on?  It even changes pitch when I change channels sometimes.  That bugs even more than the paper-thin walls.  I've had the deli slice lunch meat thicker than these walls.

Dear Derriere,

More time in the gym, less time in the car?  No promises, but I'll do my best.  Oh, and no more french fries....oh, and yes, fine, more salads.  Thanks for being a trooper for that whole "driving 500 miles over the last two days" thing.

Dear Guy In Room 418 (again),

Seriously...put it on a CSI re-run or something.  Unless you're like me and you get tempted to laugh at that Grissom guy's smugness.  In that case, maybe try TNT (they know drama!) or even some HGTV.  Anything to cut down on the guffaws, please.

Dear Laundry,

.....sigh....so soon?

Nice To Meet You All

In honor of Tara's birthday today (er, yesterday...writing this pretty late Sunday night), I'm finally getting around to mentioning Delurking Day.  I missed this a while back, but apparently in mid-January someone somewhere decreed it to be (quasi) Official Delurking Day for all the blog readers that never leave comments.

So anyway, thanks a lot for reading...shameless plug for ego boosts aside, I appreciate that anyone besides my family checks this thing at all, and I'd love to hear from those of you that don't normally comment.  So if you only make one person's day today, make mine. 

And I don't think this whole sabbatical thing will last much longer......I needed this break, but some/part/most of that old itch is kicking up again.  And there's some news on the horizon that I can't write about YET, but soon.  And there's a backlog of music stuff to write about.  And one of my good friends keeps bringing up this really interesting idea.....every direction I turn these days is filled with more than I can fit inside my head.

10,000 Z's

True or False: I literally fell asleep three times while watching 10,000 BC.

Answer:  False.  It was four times.  At least.

Sabbatical

Vacation ended well.  Flew back to Ohio in time to get caught in an actual blizzard for a few days.  Now I'm finally able to leave for small town, Kentucky.  Seven hour drive ahead of me today.

At some point I'll post some pictures from my trip, but I don't plan on writing anything else anytime soon.

But who knows...sometimes I change my mind a lot.

A Catalyst of Panacea

The view from this balcony, which sits on the cliffs above Pismo Beach, is nothing short of stunning.  And truth be known, every other adjective in the book was fighting for a spot in that first sentence.  Beautiful, breath-taking, gorgeous...I could string them together in any order...no matter, they'll just serve as placeholders until I can also post some more photos.

It's a two-tone blue sky, underlined just above the horizon by one long slender cloud.  The shoreline to the north carves a little farther out into the ocean.  I watched the early rays of sunlight paint the water and the rocks while waiting on the coffee maker to do its thing.  It's been almost two hours since sunlight reached this coast and I have yet to grab my camera today.  Before I try another photograph, I want to try and commemorate this scene to memory.  The whimsical flight patterns of the birds, the sound of the tides rolling in, and most captivating of all - California sky and the Pacific Ocean as far as I can see.

If I wrote poetry, I'd be spilling ink all over a lined leather journal.  If I played guitar I'd be strumming away on the balcony and singing a few bars.  But I get my kicks doing this, so between sips of coffee I'm casting a wide net for all the best words, sizing them up, and calling out their marching orders.  It's not an easy assignment, though.  All these words existed yesterday and the day before that,  but I'm pretty sure that all the elements before me improvise fresh collaborations on a minute-by-minute basis every day.  Such is the challenge for any writer though, trying to pin such a big world down with only the help of a few overmatched words.

I came to California to feel small again.  To feel inconsequential - and yet, also a little invincible - with every whiff of ocean spray.  To watch as the moon sends wave after wave rolling onto the beach, only to have them all fall back and retreat time and time again.  It's even a little inspiring, if you think about it.  Tides alternate high and low, but the water never covers all of the sand.  But it keeps trying.  And maybe it's not trying to conquer the shore so much as it is simply rushing towards land to meet it.  Waves crest, then settle down to mingle with the coastline and it's like creation is having its own private party for all to see.

Yesterday I wondered about the life of the billion water particles making up a single wave.  Do they spend their entire life cycle working towards reaching the shore just once?  Or do they all regroup and take turns with each other in advancing on the land - returning again and again, the way we all go to work every day?  My little reverie was broken up when I saw some kids hard at work, digging a moat for their new sand castle.  I smiled, remembering how my own sand castles always had to have at least one tunnel.  Whatever we are on most days, the beach seems to transform us all into something new - architects, poets, dreamers....I'm sure the list goes on.  These days I'm happy as a dreamer.

It's been almost three hours now since I sat down at this table.  The coffee is now long gone, and my stomach promises that I could be even wordier if I went and got some breakfast.  And there's a new camera sitting on my bed, just begging to get a look at what it's been hearing about all morning.  So for now I will drag myself away from this window view, but not before listening to a favorite song of mine that perfectly captures both the melancholy and the "sticky optimism hardening in me."

PCH One by the Pernice Brothers

Let's leave on Saturday, let's leave Friday night
I can't promise I'm not really sure we'll be alright
I don't know much but I'm not too messed up to see
Baby you're the only thing I know I hate to leave
Now I guess we never will, pull the trigger I dont care which myth we kill

Struggle through the S's, through the talents in the trees
Through the sticky optimism hardending in me
It might do some good just to wake up by the sea
to the smell of breath and greasy hair and car seats
Now I guess we never will, pull the trigger I don't care which myth I kill

Play the one that works out for the best
and the best is always yet to come
PCH One might be a catalyst of panacea...
Play the one where no one's really gone, every answer's buried in a song
PCH One might send a mending kit, I need some mending...

Let's leave on Saturday, let's leave Friday night
I can't promise I'm not really sure we'll be alright
Now I guess we never will, pull the trigger I don't care which myth I kill
Play the one that works out for the best
and the best is always yet to come

PCH One might be a catalyst of panacea...
Play the one where no one's really gone, every answer's buried in a song
PCH One might send a mending kit, I need somr mending...
Play the one that works out for the best
and the best is always yet to come
PCH One might be a catalyst of panacea
PCH One might be a, PCH One might be a, PCH One might be a catalyst of panacea...

PCH One might be, PCH One might be a, PCH One might be a catalyst...