monday, monday

Just an average Monday for the most part. Went to work and they told me I was going on second shift from 5:30pm to 2:00am for the next two weeks. Screw them, I told them I had class on Tues and Thurs nights (which is true). So they don’t really ‘have’ to work around me but they will. Serves them right. They think people have no life outside of the job. I am laughing at them. They deserve to be laughed at. Morons.

We are heading into the best time of year. Autumn.

Autumn officially started Saturday. And today was really, really nice. I am typing this on the back porch and man, it’s really nice out. Clear, in the 70’s and just perfect. Not hot, not cold.. just right. And soon the colors will be here. The sun starts going down around 6pm.. I guess it gets dark around 7pm. Soon, in October it will start getting dark very early.

rock and roll

Yes, rock and roll is back. I may have mentioned in a previous blog (I don’t read them back) that I got my les paul (black, 1976 les paul custom guitar) re-fretted. Well, I played it today in a jam session and it rocks. Today (Sun Sept 24) Johnny stopped over and we brought my amps upstairs (to join my drums). We had a jam session and my les paul sounds great through my Fender deluxe reverb amp. I am looking forward to many more jams and recording sessions. I am in the process of setting up my studio again. I will set up upstairs since I am not renting the space at the moment. This will create more space downstairs for the work I am doing also. So Johnny and I jammed on all improvised stuff. I played guitar for a while, then we switched and I played drums for a while. We both had some good ideas and it rocked! It was the first jam I have had in a while (too long). I played ‘Stay Free’ by The Clash also, with the ending leading into ‘Kiss Me Deadly’ by Generation X. The les paul is loud, it really puts out. It is louder than the telecaster. Maybe I will have some work done on the tele also, or maybe get another tele.

Spent a lot of time at the libraries this weekend. Got cd’s of George Strait, Japanese language stuff, A book on Jim Henson, a book on George Harrison.. tons of DVD stuff (got some Sat, dubbed it, returned it Sun and got more).. etc.. really hit the library hard. I love the library.

Much going on, too much to write about. Just trying to get a few points in. . .

Thursday at class we had a ‘critique’ of our thumbnails. We drew thumbnails for our second project in Illustrator. It was kind of fun. Friday I had no energy after work so I drank a beer and watched ‘Wedding Crashers’ and then fell asleep.

Saturday I was out all day (Library, Panera, etc. .). Then Sara and Genie came over and we got a pizza and watched some classic disney (celebrated shorts) and Simpsons (Treehouse of Horror vol. 2). Sara was happy to play pinball again.

Sunday night Sara and Genie came over again and we ate Chinese and watched more Simpsons and played more pinball. Yes, it was the same as Sat night. Only different food (hehe). We watched the episode where Bart and Lisa enroll in military school. Sara played more pinball. She is getting better at ‘High Speed’. We also started playing with this computer game called ‘Amazing Contraptions’ or something like that. We can build our own contraptions, it’s cool.

Sara’s front tooth came out. So the tooth fairy is giving her $50. It came out Saturday when she was eating something. She now has one tooth in the front sticking out. Cute.

Got some cd’s by Polysics, Ex-Girl. Ordered some Japanese animation dvd’s for Sara’s birthday. A lot of stuff going on, but nothing really big.

mid week

Urgh! Wednesday and I feel tired. My schedule has me tired. Monday after work I had to work on my project for school. It was due Tuesday. Then after working on it I drove out to Robbinsville for Sara’s second soccer game. Her team totally smashed the other team. It was cool. They won 7 to 0. Sara did not handle the ball much but she is still getting used to playing. It was very hot and sunny during the day. It felt like mid August weather. Then at night it was beautiful. Clear and cool. Perfect weather. Tuesday it rained and I went to class after work and handed in my first assignment. It is cool to be learining Adobe Illustrator but I am just tired from running to school after working all day. And it is hard to find time and energy for homework and projects. There are some really good artists in my class that have experience with Illustrator. I am not trying to get an A, but I hope I can get a B.

Today is Wednesday and Johnny A stopped over tonight to check out my pins. He did not know about them until he got here. He is sick so I hope I don’t catch his cold. I am tired but I have homework to do still as well as phone calls to make, and various other stuff to do around here.

New music is always coming in: Super Junky Monkey, Parasitic People (rocks). Cheap Trick, Rockville. Plus lots of stuff on order. (Polysics, ExGirl.. etc). Was watching some youtube today of Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her. Great stuff, I will order one of their cd’s.

Anyway.. I need to do homework now, and other stuff. Oh, today is perfect weather. Very cool and breezy. Not hot at all and a very cool wind blowing but sunny. Wow Sept 20, 2006. A perfect weather day. Too tired to really enjoy it fully but.. I hope next year will be different.

Till next time..

pinball wizard

Sun Sept 17: Today we went to my Aunt Annette’s surprise 60th birthday party. It was nice to see my uncles. Sara had fun. Sara got hit with a football and it made her front tooth loose. It is due to come out anyway (still a baby tooth) so, this helped it along. Sara was afraid of the dog at first (‘Stitch’). It is my uncles new dog. Then eventually Sara got into the dog and she was having fun with it. Sara was very well behaved and perfect as always. The weather was very nice and a bit hot in the sun. It is going to be getting colder soon I think. I took pictures of Sara in my uncles back yard. It is nice to see the family (cousins, uncles, etc.. ) but it is all very surface level and we don’t get too deep. I love my uncles very much.

Saturday: I got two pinballs in the morning. Mark delivered them and set them up. It took a while. Mark is a cool guy. We talked about a bunch of stuff while he was setting up. I got ‘Flash’ and ‘High Speed’. They are fun. I went to Sara’s first soccer game (field near Sharon School in Robbinsville). It was fun. Her team won. She played in the first and third quarters. I videotaped it. Later on we watched it in my living room and we were slowing down some parts. After the game Sara drove with me back to Ewing and we got Chinese food and she got a Hollywood video (All Dogs Go To Heaven). Then she was surprised by the pinball machines. She said “I love them!” and “You are turning your house into a fun place”. We watched some of the DVD in the living room while eating. When Sara was playing pinball I put the Japanese doll on the machine. She was happy to get it. Later we went to the dollar store and she got a big Dora the Explorer balloon. We stopped at Dunkin for our large coffee. Another great day with my girl.

Thursday after school Mike Esposito came over and helped my move furniture. We moved the big TV and some other stuff (effects rack upstairs) to make room for the pins in the back room.

The rest of the week was a blur of work, school, home stuff like cutting the grass and painting, spackling, home depot. I also got new tires put on the Nissan. It was expensive. $750 for all four. I got the wrong size too. But it may not be a big deal. I need to see. I will check into it. It was my fault. I ordered 50/R17 and my car takes 55/R17 from the factory. I may try to get them changed, not sure yet.

During this week I took the time to check out Polysics on youtube. Very cool. I ordered two cd’s from Amazon. Also an ex-girl cd. I am very into ‘Screw Up’ by Super Junky Monkey. It rocks, I love it. They play real well and they take no prisoners. I also checked out ‘the tubes’ on youtube. Some cool stuff on there.

I am not sleeping much this weekend. Too busy. I have goals. Sleep can wait. Tonight I am typing this as fast as possible so I can get back to working on my first project for DMA 105 (computer art). It is due Tuesday so I need to get on it.

I will try to blog more next week. I have not kept on it as well in recent weeks.

Now listening to: Robert Fripp, The Jam. mp3’s..

les paul power and 4th grade

Got my les paul back from Jeff. I had a fret job done on it. It plays nicely now. He replaced the jack plug also. I have not plugged it in yet.
I moved my drum set upstairs and set it up. It was nice to play drums again. I have not played since the beginning of the year. The only time I was playing is when I was giving drum lessons during the early part of this summer .

Sara started 4th grade. She was afraid of ‘bullys’. She was not really afraid. But I think kids hear a lot about bullys from the cartoons and the media when they go into a new school or around this age bracket.

This morning I woke up and the very first thing I thought of was the fact that I am not playing and singing. I am not doing any music at all. I don’t know why this was the first thought of my day. Maybe I was dreaming something about it, I don’t remember.
It was the very first thing that I thought of, even before I was fully awake and got out of bed. I don’t think I can hold out much longer. I may go into a phase were I really get back into music (and photography also). I hope I do. It must be killing me inside to be away from it.
But I think I put it out of my mind and so it doesn’t seem that way to me. But subconsiously it must be getting to me, even though I am not consiously aware of it. I am feeling like I am missing something but I have been more focused on Sara and making money and some other things that seem more important right now.
I am dealing with so much on my mind right now. I am not sure what direction to go in after this job. So I am spending a lot of time trying to figure it all out.

Monday I spent some time shopping for tires. I called everywhere. I decided on Bridgestone ‘Turanza’ tires and I bargained for the best price at STS tires in Ewing. I cut my lawn, I did some work around the house and went to home depot (spackle, sandpaper, etc..). I spackled some spots in the living room.
It was a long day but I got a lot done.

Tuesday I got a lot done also. I made a lot of important phone calls during the day. I met Sara at the Washington library after work and we played some soccer with her blue soccer ball (behind the library, behind the skateboard cage). Then we played wiffle ball for a little while. We then went to Wendys on RT130 and ate before I had to go to class. Sara looked cute in a matching ‘Hello Kitty’ top and plaid skirt (brown and blue). She loves her Hello Kitty for sure. I got out of class a bit early and talked to Sara on the phone and she was asking if ‘you get breaks during college’. It was cute. I told her we get a break if the class is longer than two hours. She freaked out ‘Oh.. I don’t want to go..!!’. She was shocked to find out how long college classes can be.

i love the weekend

Tomorrow will be the fith anniversary of the twin tower attack. Wow, it is fresh in my mind like it happened yesterday. Today is Sunday, I am sitting at Panera RT1. Sara and Genie just left, they met me at ‘Halloween Adventure’ then we came over here and had hung out for a little while. Sara had hot chocolate and a ‘very chocolatey brownie’. Genie and I had coffee and shared a cheese danish. We watched The Simpsons ‘The Itchie and Scatchie and Poochie Show’ episode from season 8. I love that episode, it’s really a great one. Sara and I were also looking at a Simpsons comic which I got at the library today (Bart Simpsons Heebie-Jeebie Halluballo). Sara is happy. We were joking about sharing quality moments together before she left. Genie was saying ‘We have to go’ and I was saying ‘Wait, we are sharing a quality moment’ while looking through the Simpsons comic. Sara and Genie said ‘No, it’s not a quality moment’ and then we hugged in the doorway and Sara said ‘Yes, this is a quality moment’. Today was spent going all over the place on errands. I went to get a new phone charger for my cell phone, and a dvd hat at comp usa, and a gift certificate at borders for my Aunt Annette’s party next week. I went to Micheals to get a frame for my Shonen Knife and Nausicaa posters. I went to Triangle Art to get an inside border for the posters. I went to the Lawrence library and took out two books on Pinball. I also got some good used books at the book sale they are having there. I got six books. I also borrowed three dvd’s. I am going to dub a lot of dvd for later when I have more time to watch. I want a good backlog of stuff to watch. I also went to the bookstore in the Lawrence shopping center and got Sara a Japanese doll that she liked as well as a ‘My First Thousand Words In Japanese’ picture book which she might like. I might save them for her birthday. I got the book wrapped. The owner of the bookstore is a nice lady and she was showing me a poetry book by a woman named ‘Demi’ which looked quite nice, very colorful.
Yesterday (Saturday) I was working hard on the house in the morning. Then Genie and Sara came over and we went to my cousin’s sons 8th birthday party at a place called ‘Rockville’. It is an indoor rock climbing place. It was nice to see some family again. I don’t get to see them much. Before we went we stopped at the dollar store and Sara got two Spongebob balloons (one for Matthew’s present and one for herself). She had gotten Matthew a present and card the night before at Hallmark. We wanted to get him something else so we stopped at Lawrence Shopping center and we found a small bookstore. It was a nice little store with some Japanese stuff in there and a Japanese doll that Sara wanted to get but I told her we would come back for it. She was fine with that, she does not whine about getting stuff. She is so cool about that kind of thing. We got Matthew a word find book which was nice. We went to Rockville after that and Sara tried climbing about four times. She did not get to the top, but she made it about halfway once. She was a good sport about everything. She had fun in the party room afterward with the other kids, mostly boys. She said she had fun. Afterward we stopped at Hollywood video and she rented All Dogs Go To Heaven Christmas Special. I worked on my Illustrator project while she watched it and we all ate popcorn. We also took a walk to Dunkin and got ice cream (Sara got vanilla and Genie and I shared a large coffee.

I ran after the van with Sara as usual. When she leaves in the van I chase it down the street waving. It’s fun and my neighbors probably think I’m nuts.

Rocked out Friday after work with some beer, GBV and Replacements.

Sara is getting into ‘Let’s Knife by Shonen Knife’. And I played her ‘Buckin’ the Bolts’ by SJM.

labor day

A very nice Labor Day weekend. Friday I went straight home from work, I was tired. I caught up on this blog among other things.
Friday night Sara stayed up late, so they got up late Saturday. I was working on the house molding Saturday morning and then Mike Esposito came over with his girlfriend and we worked on his music (I edited a four song sampler demo for him with one minute clips of his songs). I saved his work as .wav for making cd copies and also .mp3 for emailing as an attachment.
Later Saturday Sara came over and we got Chinese food and watched dvd. We got popcorn at Shoprite. We went to Hollywood video and got Hello Kitty and the movie ‘RV’ with Robin Williams. Genie and I watched RV on the laptop in the living room. (it was just ok, nothing special). The daughter in the movie was singing the Shonen Knife song ‘Cherry Bomb’ in her headphones.. that was kind of cool (she was referencing the joan jett version, no doubt.. but I hope Naoko gets some money for that usage of the song).
We all had a nice time. It was raining out for the most part but it stopped Saturday night. It rained all Friday and Saturday mostly.

Sunday Sara and Genie came over around 11am. I was working on the molding before that. It was a nice day, sunny and cool. It got hot during the afternoon. We walked to the dollar stores. First, Family Dollar where Sara got an American eagle kite. Then at the Jersey Dollar store Sara got a Spongebob balloon (shaped like Spongebob). We took a ride to get pizza (We got a good pie at Special Pizza City). We were watching ‘Braveheart’ on the pizza shop TV while waiting for the pie.
We went home and we were watching The Simpsons season 8 disc one.. Treehouse Of Horror, and ‘Bart After Dark’ which is a great episode. We also watched’Lisa’s date with destiny . .’.
We ended up going back to Hollywood video and Sara got another Hello Kitty DVD and I got ‘Caddyshack’ and ‘Control Room’. We took the kite to the Ewing High School parking lot and tried to fly it. We did not have good luck. It was not windy enough and the kite was cheap. We had fun running around though. At first we had to return home because
Genie tied the string wrong and we could not untie it without breaking the string. We took some pictures during the day also. Sara showed up wearing a ‘My Dad Rocks’ shirt which she got at ‘Justice’ (her favorite store). She looked cool. She had a zebra skirt and zebra arm bands plus jewelry she got at justice. I took pictures of her.
She was also playing my guitar a lot. I was trying to show her how to put her fingers on the frets. She mostly wants to just bang on the strings. We were listening all weekend to ‘Puffy AmiYumi – Splurge’. The Puffy album has some good songs on it. ‘Missing You Baby’ is produced like a Phil Spector girl group track. And it works, big time. A very nice song.
Radio Tokyo and ‘Tokyo I’m On My Way’ are very catchy. ‘Radio Tokyo’ and ‘If you Call Me What You Like If You Like Rock and Roll’ both remind me of Cheap Trick. Robin Zander could be singing them. At around 6 or 6:30 we set up the TV in the backyard for an ‘outdoor movie’. Then I set up my laptop outside. I was watching ‘Caddyshack’ while Sara and Genie were watching ‘Hello Kitty’. Genie wanted to watch ‘Caddyshack’ but Sara wanted her to watch Kitty with her.
We were humming the Hello Kitty theme song all weekend and making up funny lyrics to it. I kept telling Sara that I wanted the Kitty ‘In my belly’. Sara and Genie got bit by misquitos pretty bad, which we realized the next day after it was too late. But it was nice and peaceful and we got to chill out in the backyard which we rarely do. Sara looked so cute in her jacket outside with beach towels around her to guard against the bugs.

Monday it was great to be off from work. Big Time. I finished most of the molding. I caulked and filled many other places also. It was a big project, so I am glad to be mostly finished. I moved the refridgerator back into the living room and started cleaning up my work area. Sara came over around noon and we watched some more Simpsons together before going out to Home Depot and then the dollar store near the Chinese place.
Sara wanted a balloon but they are out of the good ones. We went home and hung out for a while then we went to Washington Crossing Park. Sara must have been tired because she fell asleep on the way there and she slept in the car for about a half hour once we got to the park. It took her a while to wake up, she was groggy for about 10 minutes. We were on the PA side of the park for a change. It was cool out and the view of the water was nice.
We played soccer with Sara’s blue soccer ball and it was a good workout. We felt the humidity after running around for a while. We took some video and pictures there. We got home and Sara still wanted her balloons so we walked to the dollar store in the hood. (Jersey Dollar) and we got two balloons there (yellow and red smiley face). The guy at the dollar store was talking to Sara about her hobby (he remembered her from the day before and from other days when she gets balloons).

august becomes september

Yes, it is now September 2006. We are coming up on the 5th anniversary of 9/11/01. It makes you think.

I have not written in almost two weeks. I will catch up by briefly going through the last two weeks.

I was cutting molding during the week of August 20-27. I had to decide what type of molding to get and then get it, cut it and paint it. Oh, so much fun. Not. I was also looking online for pinball machines and made a few inquiries by email and phone. I worked some overtime. The week went by without much happening.

Last Friday, the 25th I registered for a class at Mercer County Community College. The class is ‘DMA 105 Intro to Computer Art 2D’. It involves Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. It is Mac based. I waited until the last minute and then decided to do it. I am glad I enrolled. I will see how much I like it and then probably continue taking classes in the ‘Digital Media Arts’ curriculum. I needed three books for the class. Quick Start guides for Illustrator CS2 and Photoshop CS2 and ‘Design Basics’.

Last weekend was spent doing a lot of the molding in the house. I decided to try to install the molding with ‘liquid nails’ instead of a nail gun. I am glad I did. It worked very well. There is a special ‘liquid nails for molding / paneling’ which worked much better than the regular liquid nails. I used a caulk gun and it worked great. I told Sara that if she helped me then I would get her a Hollywood video rental and a new Puffy AmiYumi cd. She helped me for a few minutes but I did not need her because the liquid nails worked so well. It turned out I could do it myself. So, Saturday I cut molding all day and then Sara and Genie came over around 5pm and we got Chinese food and a ‘Hello Kitty’ dvd at Hollywood video and then we hung out and I started to glue the molding to the baseboard in the kitchen and living room.

Sunday I worked at installing molding all day. It was a long day of installing. I was cutting and gluing all day long. I had to go to home depot also. By dinnertime I had most of it done and installed. I met Sara and Genie at Sports Authority and we got Sara some soccer cleats, shin guards and soccer socks. Then we went to JC Penney and I got Sara a bunch of clothes. I think she got a ‘happy bunny’ shirt or two. That is popular now. You see it everywhere. It’s like the new Hello Kitty. (I like Kitty better). We went to Borders at Nassau Park and then Barnes and Noble at Market Fair to find the ‘Design Basics’ book but they did not stock it. Then we went to Wendy’s to eat and I said goodbye and goodnight in the parking lot to them.

Monday after work I went to MCCC and got the ‘Design Basics’ book at the college bookstore. I also talked to a guy named Mark Darby on the phone about some pins. After that I went to Sara’s first soccer practice. Genie and I watched Sara and it was nice. She really loved it. After practice I drove Sara to Rita’s Ice and we all got Gelatis. In the car I asked Sara if she liked soccer and she said “I don’t like soccer . . I love soccer!” I am looking forward to this season of watching her play, I hope she has a lot of fun and makes some good friends.

Tuesday I met Sara and Genie at Dunkin Doughnuts on RT 130 briefly before class. We watched some of ‘The Point’ on my macbook while in the DD. The Point is an early 70’s animation with Ringo as narrator and songs and music by Nillson.
After that I went to my first DMA 105 class. It was cool, and I like the lab/classroom. It is setup nicely and I got a good vibe from the teacher. We went over some basics but did not get too far into anything. After class I got home and painted the kitchen molding, second coat. So I am done with the baseboard molding in the kitchen. Cool.

Wednesday I went straight from work to check out some pins in Deptford, NJ. The guy, Mark, is very cool. He really took the time to explain the pins to me and we talked about a bunch of stuff. I looked at ‘Flash’, ‘Black Rose’, Judge Dredd’, ‘High Speed’ and a few more. Then Mark was telling me about another guy with some nice pins. He called ‘Pinball Pete’ on the phone and then gave me directions to his house in North Philadelphia. I drove over the Walt Whitman bridge and North on I85 to Woodhaven Road exit and Pete was not far from the exit. Pete was an older guy who is retired and only does pinball restoration now (and plays golf). He was also a very cool guy and he explained all about the pins and we talked on some other things too. I would feel good buying a pin from Mark or Pete. Pete bought his first pin from Mark 25 years ago and they really know their stuff. Pete has sold over 1000 pins and he sells to pro football players from the Eagles, etc.. He has an F-14 Tomcat pin and a Hook pin that I liked. I am leaning toward his Tomcat pin or maybe Marks Judge Dredd. I got home at 9pm and Mike Esposito came over for a photo shoot. He needed a head shot to promote himself for music bookings. He is a cool guy so I told him to come on over and we would do it. We shot from around 9pm to around 10pm and I edited his shots and we picked one. I did some more Photoshop work on the shot and put his name on it with the text tool. He was real happy with it. It was a long day. I slept well after such a long day.

Thursday I went to the library after work to get a book on the artist ‘Matisse’. Our first project is to trace one of his paintings in Illustrator with the pen tool. And then do some variations on the tracing. I got a good book on him with some good paintings to choose from. After the library I went to Sara’s soccer practice but I could not stay long because I had class at 7pm. I got to spend a few minutes with her and watch her practice for about 25 minutes. I got some nice hugs from her, so it was nice. Class was fast paced. We moved into the pen tool and working with layers. We scanned our Matisse paintings in class and we worked for a solid two hours. I got home at around 9:45 and by 10:30 I went to bed. I was very tired. All week I have left the house very early and got home late. Long days.

Friday I came home from work rather than go to Sara. It was raining and I needed to get some rest. I watched a couple of Simpsons episodes (I just got season 8 on dvd). It is Labor Day weekend so I have three days off. Genie has off also so I hope to see a lot of Sara and I also will try to get a lot done around the house (finish painting all molding, move fridge into kitchen, etc..). Well, I am off to paint..

PS.. Got some new music over the last couple weeks. Super Junky Monkey LPs – ‘Screw Up’ and ‘Super Junky Alien’. I love Screw Up.. damn, I love that album. I only heard ‘Alien’ once so I need to hear it again. It sounded cool. I also got Paul Westerberg – ‘Folker’ which I already had on mp3. You can’t go wrong with Paul. I got the new Puffy AmiYumi LP ‘Splurge’ for Sara and myself. I like it. I am always a fan of pure pop/rock if the songs are good. It reminds me of Cheap Trick in some spots (for some reason). It has some good hooks, like you might hear on the ‘Heaven Tonight’ or ‘Dream Police’ albums. I don’t take Puffy to seriously but at the same time I do many of their songs.

Well, that sort of brings the blog up to date. Rock on.