My glasses are six years old so I finally broke down and ordered a new pair. They’ll be ready in 3-5 business days, I can’t wait! They’re more square-ish than the old ones and come with neat-o magnetic clip-on sunglasses. Just so I won’t lose it, my new prescription is as follows:

It’s pretty much the same as it always was: I’m still far-sighted, and my left eye’s perfect but the right one’s really fucked-up with astigmatism. Which is why my glasses usually tilt to the right and make me look like a tard.

Published in the Austin American-Statesman on Monday…

Dan R. Toomey
Dec. 16, 1911 — April 17, 2005

Dan R. Toomey, who died Sunday in Austin at age 93, led a colorful life and leaves as his legacy a grove of pecan trees he helped plant off Barton Springs Road. A jack-of-all-trades, Dan was a machinist, truck driver, shrimp boat captain, dam builder, farmer and newspaper photographer. In World War II, he was a gunnery instructor in the Army Air Corps and recalled that his main task was training recruits to "shoot behind their planes and not in front of them."

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I finished demo’ing that new tune today.  Well… "finished" for now.  I let a few people hear it, John being one of them, and he dug it a lot — he used the word "Hot!" — but kindly pointed out its melodic similarity to a certain other very famous old song which I’m not going to name here.  I sure wasn’t intending to copy any other song — it’s not the same melody verbatim, but it’s a little too close for comfort especially since the similarity isn’t just in the verses but in the chorus too.  Yikes.  So I’m going to redo the demo, making slight alterations to that damn melody and hopefully once y’all hear it, you’ll never be able to name that tune.  :-) It is a good song otherwise though.  But like always when I finish a song, I’m all wrung out physically and emotionally.  Just exhausted.  It’s been a rough bunch of days for me and this song pretty much sums it all up: heaviness, confusion and the slight whiff of desperation, crossed with knowing that no matter what happens it’ll all work out okay ‘cuz it always does.  I’m wanting everything to be alright and for love to save the day in the end.  I don’t know for sure that it will but I might as well keep that attitude, better than being an ol’ grumpopotamus about it.  Things will either get better or they won’t, but either way, at least I got a few good songs out of the deal.  Heh.

Life is so complicated all the time, why can’t things be easier?  There are good things and bad things going on, always, and I just wish it would all be a little more… bloggable.  Certain pillars in my life are super important to me: my creativity, family, friends, matters of the heart… and whatever’s happening on All My Children, you know… important things.  Nothing I can really elaborate too much on here but yeah, some things have been moving forward quite nicely while others have been dragging me down quite a bit lately.  I wish things would automatically take care of themselves and everything would run a little more smoothly but it’s not always that simple.

Betsy has the right idea though.  Let’s all be crafty and make more stuff!  Me, I have a new song I’m about to demo, that’s always a good thing.  It’s very… personal and bittersweet.  What did you expect?  I’m so damn predictable!!  Music in general is definitely moving forward; I’m going to be recording my new album real soon.  Can’t talk about the particulars yet though.  Nope, nope, nope.  But when I can, you’ll know it.  Yessie yes!!

My great-uncle Dan Toomey died this morning in Austin.  I think he was 94 years old or thereabouts, and he was feeling real poorly the past few months so I guess it was time.  I’m glad I got to see him when I went down there last month.  He was a real character, we’ll all miss him.

Car shopper, 81, hits husband, salesman, car, tree, wall

Friday, April 15, 2005 Posted: 12:00 PM EDT (1600 GMT)

FORT MYERS, Florida (AP) — An 81-year-old woman preparing to take a test drive at a car dealership hit her husband, a salesman, a car and a tree before running into a wall.

"She must have panicked," said Joe Sica, sales manager at Honda of Fort Myers.

The new Honda Accord shot backward after Dorothy Byrum got behind the wheel and apparently stepped on the wrong pedal Wednesday.

The open car door hit her 88-year-old husband, Robert, and the salesman. Then the car struck the parked car, the tree and the wall. The air bag deployed, and Byrum was not injured.

Her husband was knocked down but was in good condition the following day. The salesman was released after treatment and is expected to be out of work for about a week, Sica said.

The car was written off.

(courtesy of AP / CNN)

I’ve been a very good girl this tax season; I thought I was going to owe lots of money but as it turns out I paid way WAY too much on my estimated’s, so I’m getting a big fat refund.  So with that in mind, I decided to splurge on something I’ve been wanting for awhile.  Got my hands on a used Playstation 2 today (=yesterday), and the only reason I got it was because I’ve been dying to play this one game called Katamari Damacy.  Really, that’s all I want to play; once I’m done with this game, that’s it, I won’t buy any more, I swear!!  (heheh!) But if I were to buy another one, I now know that GameStop is where it’s at, man.  Those nerdboys were so nice to me!  I needed a lot of schoolin’ too, ‘cuz the last gaming system I had was a Super Nintendo, circa 1992 or so.  I even got my mom addicted to that thing, back in the day.

• Deanna’s early birthday party at the Hungry Brain
• Palaxy Tracks and Zapruder Point at the Beat Kitchen
• The New Leaf Theatre Company‘s production of As It Is In Heaven at the Lincoln Park Cultural Center
• The Live Action Cartoonists production of Performance of Sleep In One Long Act Without Intermission at the Athenaeum
• Reading The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem (I get mentioned on page 311)
• Walking around with Eric, sitting in Lincoln Square watching the kids running around, pigging out at the Flat Top, etc. etc.

I got my tickets to see Kraftwerk at the Riviera on June 4th… better hurry up if you want to go!  TicketBastard is charging fifty bucks with their fees and everything, but I still think it’s worth it.

Google has satellite images in its maps now.  I think I found Guadalajara!  I used to live there when I was a kid.  You can’t zoom in very far but it’s weird nonetheless.

I just joined 43 Things, a website that’ll help me keep track of my goals and share them with others, kind of like I’m doing on Flickr with my photos.  I think anybody who knows me at all would agree that I’m one of the least motivated, least goal-oriented people on earth.  It’s something I really ought to work on, so if this is something that could possibly help, I should try it, right?  My first goal is quite modest: "Try out 43 Things", which is a goal that 1093 other people currently share with me.  Hopefully I’ll reach that goal soon, add 43 more and reach those as well, and so on.

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To catch up a little with my blogging, here are just a few highlights from the past few weeks:

• Playing a really fun show with Eric @ Mother Fool’s in Madison
• Seeing the Wisconsin Dells for the first time driving around at two in the morning during off-season
• Bottle of wine at the top of the Hyatt in downtown Dallas (the one with the big ball on top)
• SXSW — seeing Michelle Shocked, Harvey Sid Fisher and the Ditty Bops, among others
• Seeing Mama, Lucie, Marshall, Lilly, Lindy, Mimo, Uncle Dan, Lee & Lisa… anybody else I forgot?
• My own SXSW showcase
• Feasting w/ Eric @ Golden Corral in Texarkana
• Back in Chicago, seeing Blackbird‘s Patty Red Pants at the Chopin
• A wonderful lazy Easter weekend with you-know-who, starting with an off-the-cuff dinner at Mi Tierra

Low point of our Austin trip: Taking Eric to the top of Mount Bonnell and finding a BUILDING under construction up there, WTF!?!?

Tonight (=last night) we saw the movie Heat at the Gene Siskel Center. Fuckin’ awesome — almost three hours long but I never thought about the time.

Are you bored ‘cuz I haven’t blogged in so long?  I’ll get around to it, presently.  In the meantime read a little Succinct News, it’s pretty hilarious.

Hey y’all!  We’re in Minneapolis about to head to Kansas City, I haven’t had a chance to blog until now.  I’m feeling pretty good thank god, yaayyyyy.  We had a great show in Madison at Mother Fool’s, I love that place.  They were so welcoming and the audience was so great, we felt right at home.  Last night at the Bryant Lake Bowl was fun too, though we didn’t draw enough people to make any money.  I think pretty much everybody there but maybe two people were there to see Eric, since he’s from here.  Lucky for me they all stuck around for my set — or maybe some left and I didn’t see them, and for that I’m glad.  The lights were REALLY harsh and bright, I couldn’t see jack out there!  That’s kind of a drag because as much as I like to pretend they’re not there and close my eyes while I play, in reality I do like to have at least some kind of rapport with the audience if I can.  Hard to do that if you can’t even see ‘em.  So anyway, tonight is K.C. and then it’s a straight shot down 35 to Austin.  Can’t wait to see my mom.  It’s so fun traveling with Eric, this is our first trip together.  I knew it would be fun, we get along so great.  :-) Okay, gotta run, we have a long drive today!!

I’m getting ready to get outta here tomorrow.  By "getting ready" I mean I’m eating ice cream and watching TV of course.  Eric and I are renting a car, we’re picking it up in the morning.  I picked up the merchandise today at Drag City, two big boxes.  I’m always shocked when I see the size of those boxes, but I usually end up running out of stuff, so whatever, long as we can fit everything in the car!  I’m pretty excited about the trip.  I’m not exactly at 100% yet but you know what?  That’s right, I don’t give a fuck.  I’m gettin’ there and it’ll do me a lot of good to go back home and see my folks a little.  And if I’m not feeling up to the music show-hopping I can always just veg out at my mom’s house until the day of my show.  I can handle that!  Last night I had a great dinner with Sarah at Smokin’ Woody’s, I pigged out on beef brisket.  There’s no way I would’ve been able to say that a week ago so I must be getting better!