Note: This is a journal entry — it was written on paper or on my computer, then transferred to my website, maybe years later.

We’re somewhere out in the country in Italy, about 40 minutes outside of Modena, staying at Tiziano’s house, the promoter from the show last night at the Montechristo club.  The show was weird.  I guess every OTHER show is turning out well in this country!  Which is pretty normal for anywhere I guess.

The Montechristo is a private members-only "cultural center", but really it’s a wine bar.  The stage was just a little 4-inch triangular riser in the corner, only big enough to hold our amps, so we stood in front of it.  No soundman, no monitors.  We weren’t sure how the show was going to go, were the people going to talk or listen?  The patrons were mostly a bit older than the usual indie crowd, a bit better dressed and seemingly educated and genteel.  So we thought maybe they’d pay attention to the music, but it wasn’t to be.  Most of them were there to talk to each other, as loudly as possible.  I tried, I really tried to cut through the noise but it was no use.  At least they clapped though!  Tiziano said after the show that maybe if we’d been "a little louder" we might have caught their attention… to that I could only say, "Sorry…!!" I sang as best I could but how am I supposed to change people’s minds about what they want to do?  If they went out to have some wine and talk to each other, and weren’t interested in listening quietly to music, who am I to try to stop them from chattering?  Anyway… at least the bartenders liked it.  I didn’t think they had, but they came up to us after the show and spoke to us enthusiastically about the show.  One of them said he was a puppeteer.  Ryan told him he should take his act to Chicago ‘cuz we have about five different groups doing performances with puppets or marionettes. 

I’ve been fighting a cold for the past few days… it’s getting worse rather than better.  We’re not eating very well; yesterday I had a little pasta with pesto for lunch and a few pieces of cold lunchmeat for dinner.  Makes me really appreciate the shows I’ve played in France where the promoters go to such great efforts to serve you a really good hot meal, with meat and soup and everything!  I’m taking my Flintstones every day but I’ve encountered a lot of people with colds along the way, and I guess the germs are trying to get to me now too.  Tiziano has a room for us to sleep in with three beds in it, it looks like a youth hostel in there!  Very nice, but I sure hope I didn’t keep the boys up with my snoring.  I was totally stuffed up when I went to sleep.  We had stayed up really late (4:30) talking and smoking and drinking wine.  It’s pretty cold here compared to the other places we’ve been; seems like about 35 or 40 degrees.  Of course I don’t have the clothes for it because we didn’t have room to bring all our luggage.

How do I feel NOW about the girl who booked our tour?  Well… maybe I just chose her as my scapegoat because she’s a bit of a sour person.  The tour itself isn’t bad.  The shows make sense geographically speaking, and we are playing every night, with the exception of the two days off we spent in Rome.  So there’s not much I can complain about there.  But still, we really could have used a bigger vehicle.  Maybe if we had more space Ryan and I could take turns sleeping whilst on the road.  And we’d have room to bring all the clothes we needed to deal with all these different environments.  And maybe if we had hotel rooms I’d be getting my nappy-naps every day, getting enough rest to avoid illness.  And maybe if we were being fed a little better by the promoters, I wouldn’t be getting sick right now.  But fuck it, what are you going to do.  There are only a few shows left until we go back to Rome, and then we’re off to Sweden and Norway.  Then we get to go home.  Back home to my sweet precious Johnny.  I miss him so much.  I’m not crying over it or anything; this is a job like any other and it’s no huge problem for me to be away from home.  But I do miss him and I will be sooooo glad when I get to go home.  I’m glad I’m doing this though.  I don’t see any other way that I’d ever be able to see a bit of Italy, with my meager income and my tendencies to want to stay home all the time.  Home sweet home.

I tried to call John a couple of times last night from the club, using the phone card we bought in Rome.  It didn’t work, it was either giving me a busy signal or giving me a message that I couldn’t understand.  I tried to repeat it to Giovanna, Tiziano’s friend, and she translated the message as "the number you’re trying to call is a disaster." Hahaha!!!  Later at Tiziano’s house I gave the card to Paolo and he tried it, but said it was telling him the circuits were busy or something.  Maybe I should have bought a different phone card.  Now that we’re out in the country there’s no way to get on the internet and no way to find a new phone card.  Fuck!!  Well… John knows the drill.  I told him that if I don’t call him or contact him in some way every day, it’s because I simply can’t.  That’s what’s going on now, but I hope it doesn’t last much longer.  Maybe at our next show I’ll be able to find a way to get online, or figure out how to call him somehow.