Utah - Salt Lake City Mission

Wooo Wee!! The call finally came. Faye and I can now sleep again knowing that our Matt is going to serve the Lord in Salt Lake City. I just hope the locals treata him nice and don't try to cook him in a stew. I know the local customs are odd and he will have to get used to not staring at the strange customs. I know the plane trip from Provo willbe long and arduous but I feel, with the Lord's help, he will be up to the challenge.

I am mostly happy that he is excited. Out local folks here, ever the ones to be retards, have reacted as if we would be upset he is "only" going to Salt Lake. We know many people who have served there and each and every one has told us how happy they were to serve there. Jesse Fox (yes I will single him out because he is a tool) asked us if," seriously, was Matt OK with the call?" What a cosmic dillhole! No Jesse, MAtt was upset the Lord chose him to be in that mission. I hope he has chronic crotch itch for the entire two years Matt is out. At any rate, we are excited and will be in Utah to drop him off which means we get to hang out with all of you folks (non-Utah folks excluded) for a few days. We will need to be picked up at the airport and stuff so watch your phones.

I posited the possibility of messing with Kevin in out weekly e-mail. I suggested we label our individual e-mails to say "Read this one first" etc. until he reads Matt's last. In each of the e-mails we mention how excited we all are about Matt's call to - enter a faux mission assignment - and see if Kevin reacts in any special way. It will only be five e-mails before he gets the real news and he can then relax. Or perhaps he will stil think it is a joke and wonder for another week. Oh well. I didn't have a brother who got a mission call when I was on my mission so I don't know how I would have reacted. We'll see how Kevin does.

Enough for now. The Blazers keep winning. Wahoo!

I am afraid of my new gadget

Ok - so I admit I can record in multiple tracks now and that is pretty cool. I just feel like I have purchased a device that can do 1257 things and I have figured out how to do three of them. I know there are only so many things my tiny brain can do and I am so happy to know how to do those three things I am caught up in my temporary euphoria. I know I need to keep learning so I can yell "I need more cowbell" someday and really mean it. I have my old Loop Station, which is still very cool, and I use it for the rhythm track now. I have a new machine that can customize drum solos and match tempos and I am using another devise to keep time on my recordings. I am comfortable with my ancient technology. It's like my rotary dial phone, 8-track and bell-bottom jeans. I love to get in my comfort zone and never get out. I promise I will learn. It may be in a few years but I will learn how to do this. What I need is a friend who knows how to record to come to my house and just show me. I do not like to read manuals and follow directions. That is why I still have a bag of spare pieces and doodads from when I assembled my barbeque. Every time I turn it on I still run away fearing my assemblage may be defective. At least I have insurance, eh?

So there. I just feel like a botard every time I turn on the device and try to learn a new task. I have bifocal glasses too so when I look at the instructions I have to lean my head back and look down my nose at the book. It makes me look like a botard. I don't mind being a botard, I just hate looking like one as well. I can't wait until I try to record vocals. That part of the book is really long and detailed. I fear it.

In response to Amelia's suggestion, I agree that having you, Lisa and Diane as my backup vocals is a positively bitchin' idea. Like I said, let me figure out how to record you all first, then we can act ike rock n' roll divas. I'll try to get better glasses in the meantime.

Puppies all around.

Old Dog - New recording studio

It turns out I can record stuff. I sat down on Sunday and figured out how to record different tracks and actuall recorded a 5 track ditty that was 39 seconds of recorded bliss. I am sending it to the Smithsonian - I hear they like stuff like this. Two rhtym tracks, two different overlaying guitar solos and a bass track. As soon as I learn how to work the drums I will be dangerous. I found myself yelling "More cowbell" to no one in particular. I am so hard to work with.

So next time you hear (blog) from me I will be a recording genius and can Ghandi really say that about himself? I think not.

Long time eh?

So I get an e-mail from Diane asking me to blog. I explain that I have been very busy. Her response was - "Was Ghandi too busy? How about Mr. Rogers?" So I really don't have any reason to delay any further. I am not that busy, I just think I am. I find muyself feeling overwhelmed and then at the end of the day, as I lay in bed reading Harry Potter, again, I realize I spent at least two hours that evening watching TV. And not even TV that is really all the interesting or elightening. It's like I feel Tom Bergeron will miss me if I don't purposefully watch every minute of an episode of America's Funnies Videos that I have already seen. I find myself not listening to Faye because I have to see if that kid gets his nuts whanged by the handrail as he tries to skateboard over it. Like they would she me the video if he successfully zipped right over it. My brain goes like this:
Me: "I wonder if he will get whanged this time?"
TV sound: "Whang!!!"
Me: Phew, that was a close one. I wonder if he was OK or if he found his nuts ever?"

And I do this night after night - yet I can't spend a few minutes to update my BLOG with interesting news like this.

Well, I was in Los Angeles last week, and it was for a management seminar called Managers Leadership Development. MLD for those of us at Farmers. It is essentially Farmers way of hazing suckers like me who have been chosen as leaders of the future for the company. Well, what it ended up being is an intense, sleep deprived week of craziness that had an observer the entire time. So when I was falling asleep during the last day of lecture he wrote:
"I notice that you closed your eyes for three minutes during the lecture on Coaching your Employees until they Cry. This could be construed as disrepectful for the speaker."
Now it takes a big man to take this sort of criticism in stride and just shake it off as the end of a stressful week. I am not a big man and wanted to say:
"I noticed that you sat in the back of the classroom all week making snippy remarks about the poor students in the class. In fact what I want to tell you is that you look like a penis with a hat on. " But of course I would never say that because it is rude and it would get back to my boss and I don't need the increased aggravation. However, at the end of it all we had to give a team presentation to a panel of twelve executives and I absoultely stole the show. I was witty and eloquent and I don't think I was disrespectful of anyone there. I'm sure my observer was making snotty remarks about me but, at that point, I couldn't give one hairy rip. It was a long week and I came back home and slept for two days. It is now over and they can't make me go back. At least I don't think they can.

I purchased a new thing today. I have been waiting for months to either get more money or hope theprice went way down. In fact, I got a little bit of money for being one of the best in the MLD class so, even though it was on sale and still more than I should have spent, l bought it. It is a 64 track recording studio. It is totally cool and I can't wait until I understand how to use it. I sat down with it for a few hours and I now know how to play the demo songs and separate all the tracks on the recording. I hope to be able to actually record something on it by the end of the week. Of course it came with just about everything I needed to make it work. (Batteries were not included) I had to buy a stack of blank CDs. When I got home I realized I couldn't hear what I was playing any more because I needed a cable to hook up my amp to the studio monitor. As soon as I get these I will be able to hear what I am playing. Now I have to use my headphones which works but I like the live sound better. As soon as I make some killer recordings I will share with all of you. Until then I will just try to figure out how to turn it on withour blowing it up.

I have been riding my bike quite a bit for the past few months. There is a ride from Seattle to Portland ( a two day event) that I would like to do some day. I am now up to a 15 mile ride and am told that I need to be able to at least do 60 or so in a day before I try and do the big ride. Now I can do the 15 mile ride and not feel like barfing. So I've got that going for me. I like to think of it as baby steps. I don't want to be the one guy that all of the other riders have to avoid because of the flying barf up ahead of them. I would likely be far behind them anyway. It sounds like it would be a bloast to ride so I will keep trying and eventually try to ride 50 of 60 miles on a Saturday. Steve Doxey has done it before but he has a lot nucer bike than me. He is younger than me. I have more excuses if you want me to keep going. I'll keep you informed.

I am singing in a local chorale group that is made up of mormons and more mormons singing some fairly pretty music. We are hoping to do our performance in May at a local church downtown. And it's not a mormon church either. We are singing a song in french called Dirait-on. It is very pretty and I don't have to sing much of the actual french, just a lot of Dirait-on's and lots of OOOs. However, there is one extremely snotty, full-of-herself woman in the group who continually tells us all how we are mispronouncing the french, like anyone is actually going to understand us anyway. I would like to mispronounce some french in her general direction but, again, have taken the high road like at MLD. I believe her father smelt of elderberries though. I mention this to bring up my point that I generally have a hard time dealing with "music" people. These are the ones who openly criticize your singing and posture and parentage - then say "I'm sorry for being rude; it's just how I am. The music is so important to me." I again have to hold my "penis with a hat on" remark for later. So I am dealing with the music folks and singing some pretty cool music.

Anyway,this group is generally pretty proud of themselves and trade e-mails all day long. The two ladies that set it up have a website and we communicate through that. The issue is, the only way to respond to an e-mail is "respond to all". I get at least 15 e-mails a day that I am now just deleting without reading. I have them go to my business account and it is aggravating. A typical routine is:
Karen: I think we should change the name of the group to Cantico.
Paul: What does that mean. Don't you mean cantique?
Karen: No I like Cantico. It is spanish for song.
Gary: Cancion is spanish for song. I think you got it wrong.
Karen: I really, really like cantico and I've already changed the website with the name on it so can't we just keep it.
Holly: (who has not read the last few) I like cantique - it sounds cool. Kind of French-y.
Rob: Hi - is there practice tonight or not?
Karen: Rob, what do you think about cantico?
Rob: I like in on rice with a salad. Isn't that the chicken dish with salsa on it?
Rebecca: How come no one asked my opinion? I like Cantico - the Portland Chorale Singers

Of course every person in the group (15) gets all of these inane comments. It was humorous the first few days. Then it was just stupid. Then aggravating.

So there you have it. Maybe I shouldn't write much. There really isn't much here, eh?