I’ve been taking a break from blogging, just keeping to myself, it’s been nice.  But it’s getting ridiculous, a whole week without saying a word?  It’s too quiet, even Matthew’s complaining.  I do the IM thing with him every damn day so if he feels outta the loop, that’s bad!  I just dig having a private life.  I like the fact that people who know me, people who are making the effort to keep in touch (or I’m keeping in touch with them) actually know more about my goings-on than the voyeurs, the lurkers who are following me on paper.  That’s always the case anyway since what I write about just scratches the surface of what’s going on in my life and in my head.  I need to encourage real human contact, I need real-life friends and I think the blog makes people lazy.  Makes me lazy too.  But I don’t want to just abandon the blog, so here I am.  Whatever!

I need to make a few more friends, it’s kinda rough being such a hermit and a loner. I need more activity pals as they say on Friendster.  If I could find more roller-skating pals I’d be so happy, oh my god!  Sarah’s gotten all involved in the roller derby — it’s a great thing, I’m all for it but since I’m not involved in it myself, I’m suddenly out of the loop skatingwise.  Not totally Sarahwise though, luckily — she called me last night out of the blue and told me she had an extra ticket to one of the films showing at the Chicago Film Festival. This particular film’s called The Machinist.  It was such a fucked-up movie!!  Sarah said it reminded her of Fight Club, which I haven’t seen.  It reminded ME of Memento, only a lot darker visually — it had some of the same plot themes goin’ on but you know how Memento was very California-lookin’, all daylight and bright colors?  This is a night movie for sure.  I liked it a lot, I had no complaints, I’d even see it again.  But I’d want to wait awhile so I won’t get too many nightmares, heheh.  It was that fucked-up.

The December tour is almost completely booked now… I’ve done three rehearsals with the band so far, thanks to the hospitality of the folks at the Hideout, bless their hearts.  We’re getting that together pretty well; Via and Jason are doing their homework learning my songs and I really appreciate that.  (Ryan of course, can play all my tunes in his sleep so that’s just a given.  :-) My playing is really strong nowadays too, with all the practice I’ve been doing (thank you Rian!) and my singing is better than it’s ever been now that I quit smoking.  I’m real pleased with that.  I think, since I’m feeling so strong on my own, for variety’s sake I’ll be mixing it up a bit on this tour, doing some stuff with the band and some stuff by myself, shooing them off the stage for a few tunes at some point during the set.  That way the people who prefer hearing the sparseness of Solo Me will get their fill, and those who prefer hearing me with the full-on band treatment will be satisfied as well.  Also, that way I can mix up my sets a lot, playing different songs to keep myself from getting bored with the same ol’ thing night after night.

I took my van into Norm’s for some work yesterday after rehearsal; just spoke to them and I only owe them eighty bucks for the oil change and checkup.  W00t!!  This was in preparation to get the emissions tested again, required by law in Illinois — I thought the van needed work on the OBD (the diagnostics computer) but apparently it doesn’t.  Last time I did the test two years ago, they told me they couldn’t get a reading, that something must be wrong with the computer or perhaps a wire had been pulled loose or somethin’.  Back then you could get away with having a faulty OBD, they’d just do the test the old-fashioned way.  Now though, if the OBD isn’t working, you fail the test.  So I had to get it checked out.  But Norm’s is telling me it works just fine!  I dunno wtf happened last time, but they gave it a good look-see and everything seems to be perfectly in order.  They recommend I go up to get the test done in Skokie rather than doing it at the Webster Place location like I did last time.  Such good news!  I had waited until I saved up enough extra bucks to get work done if I needed it, so now I can use the bucks for something else.  Give it to Verizon, or take a friend to the movies or somethin’.  :-)

Speaking of certain friends I’d like to take to the movies, heheh… Sarah loaned me a funny self-help book awhile back, called He’s Just Not That Into You.  I finally read it the week before last I guess, finished it up in a day.  She wants all her gal-pals to read it… it’s good alright, but I don’t know if I’d recommend it to everybody.  The whole premise of the book is that gals shouldn’t be wasting their energy on guys who don’t care that much about them.  We should let the GUYS do the chasing, right?  Which was an attitude I already had down pat until I read this damn book!  It had all these examples of pathetic girls and all the tricks they pull to try to get attention from guys who aren’t even right for them.  So I guess reading about it kinda reminded me of that mindset for a few days, got me obsessing again about boys who don’t give a crap, and that’s no good.  Monkey see, monkey do.  But luckily it didn’t last very long, that was two weeks ago and now I’m more or less back to the healthy attitude I had before I read it.  Which is: no chasing.  Fuck that.  If they want to spend time with me they’ll have to call me, I’m not gonna bend over backwards to prove anything to them.  I’m not even thinking along those lines at all, I can’t.  What I’m shooting for is to develop quality friendships.  Friendship is a helluva lot more important to me than romance.  I don’t want to date anyone that I’m not friends with already, because if it didn’t work out there’d be nothing left and I don’t want to waste my time on throwaway relationships!  So if I want to bring romance back into my life again (which I do, eventually) the only place to start is by building more friendships.  I don’t want to limit my friendships to just tall, geeky-looking white guys who like indie music, but I guess if that’s the kind of guy I’m attracted to, then hey!  If the shoe fits, ha ha.  Nothing to be ashamed of.  Might as well pepper my friendship-life with as many of those guys as I can so there’ll be more potential that one of ‘em will turn out to be… the one really REALLY good friend.  Heh.  I’m in no hurry anyway, I really dig living alone and being single and not feeling obligated to spend time on some relationship.  It’s so much work maintaining a good relationship, I’m not willing to do that kinda work for somebody who’s obviously not 100% worth the effort.  Screw that, I’ve got plenty of ways to waste my time already.

So anyway, this afternoon I’m going to be doing some computer-coaching over the phone for an hour or two, teaching my sister Lucie’s nanny the basics of using Word and Excel.  I’m a pretty good teacher over the phone, at least I like to think so!  After that, I’m walking up to Norm’s to pick up the van.  I walked home from there last night after dropping the van off — it’s a really long walk but since I haven’t been skating lately, I can really use the exercise.  Walking’s the only exercise I really dig other than skating.