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Twitter Updates for 2010-02-14

February 14th, 2010 · No Comments · Twitter

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Twitter Updates for 2010-01-30

January 30th, 2010 · No Comments · Twitter

  • Making @Rick_Bayless 's Mexican Rice Dinner. (Realized first tweet made it sound like I was cooking for him. #

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Twitter Updates for 2010-01-30

January 30th, 2010 · No Comments · Twitter

  • Making @Rick_Bayless 's Mexican Rice Dinner. (Realized first tweet made it sound like I was cooking for him. #

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Twitter Updates for 2010-01-28

January 28th, 2010 · No Comments · Twitter

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Twitter Updates for 2010-01-26

January 26th, 2010 · No Comments · Twitter

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Music Memory: Driver 8

January 26th, 2010 · No Comments · Music Memories

I am going to be trying out a new posting “series.” I have been casting around for some kind of inspiration to help drive blogging on a regular basis. After listening to “Happiest Days of our Lives” by Wil Wheaton and hearing his descriptions of specific memories centered around music, I was reminded about how certain songs that I listen to have a very specific memory attached to them. Since there are a lot of songs in my music library that are like that, I felt that there was a lot of material ripe for the picking. I will start writing down my “Music Memories” and hopefully this will become a regular feature.

Most of my adult life I have had one particular band or artist that I would classify as my “favorite.” While I have diverse musical tastes and diverse things I want to listen to from day to day and hour to hour, there is usually one band/artist that is the primary source of my musical satisfaction. My favorite band at the time usually results in certain behaviors: going to several concerts, being a musical completist (gathering all album releases from the band, and maybe some rarities/12 inch singles/etc); learning to play some songs on my guitar. By the way my spell checker insists completist isn’t spelled correctly, but I just searched the OED online and there it is, so go to hell Microsoft Word. Also by the way remember 12 inch singles? I don’t know that they necessarily went beyond a collector’s novelty, but I remember there was a very specific period of time that everyone I knew who was into “New Wave” music (before there was such a thing as “Alternative Music”) had at least several 12 inch singles. They were usually just exercises in extended musical interludes that didn’t really add an awful lot to songs. Sometimes they weren’t even worked on by the bands. My favorite 12 inch single that I ever came across was owned by my friend Karen, and was a blue vinyl 12 inch single of Bela Lugosi’s Dead . You can’t really classify “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” as your typical 12 inch single though, as the song on the album was 9:37 long – you needed a 12 inch single just to fit the song on it.

R.E.M. was the first band in my life that qualified as “favorite.” My memory is a little foggy, but I had either received “Life’s Rich Pageant” as a gift or purchased it for myself after “Superman” became a popular song on the ultra-cool radio station I listened to growing up, CFNY. For a couple years in high school they jockeyed with The Smiths and The Dead Kennedys for top position on my favorites list. They got pushed over the top when, after releasing the “Green” album, R.E.M. announced a tour and I purchased my first tickets to an arena concert (I was a little late to the concert game – I think it was due to a bad experience I had trying to buy Frankie Goes to Hollywood tickets in the 10th grade.) In preparation for that experience I decided that I needed to go out and get the rest of the R.E.M. albums that I didn’t own up to that point, one of which was “Fables of the Reconstruction.” I really enjoyed every R.E.M. album for its different characteristics, and I enjoyed “Fable’s” lushness and depth. To me it felt when the band took their writing and recording to a new level, fleshing out their sound and meshing with their producer. The songs did an excellent job of creating a story in my mind – with “Driver 8″ I had this image of a tired worker who felt like his way of life was slipping away from him forever. It seemed melancholy, defiant and celebratory all at the same time.

“Driver 8″ was one of the R.E.M. songs I taught myself to play by ear on the guitar. Back before I had regular internet access, doing this was a pretty tedious trial and error process. It occasionally included an embarrassing realization sometime after I thought I learned the song when I discovered through one way or another that I had been playing the song wrong for several months. The verse and chorus structure were relatively easy to learn and play. The intro and post-chorus riffs were a little hard for a while, and I still struggle with them at points. Overall though I enjoyed playing the song and it joined my regular rotation of songs that I would play for friends. When I would hang out with my friends I would often bring my guitar along, and at some point in the evening bring the guitar out and play for the assembled audience.

My friend Mike rented a house in Woodbridge that was adjacent to railway tracks. It was the first place Mike lived with his future wife. It had supposedly been a crack den for a time, or at least had been abandoned for a period of time before being bought by its owner. Even after it was rented by Mike a lot of paint and work needed to be put into it. Mike really enjoyed hosting people at the house, and a tradition got started where on any given night you could go over to the house and it was almost guaranteed that some people would be there. There would be beer, music and tons of laughs. We were a lot younger then, and today I can’t imagine working a full day at work and then having people over every night until 11 or midnight. Mike created a wonderful environment though – it was warm and inviting and all of us who were trying to find our way after high school could get together to pretend it was a simpler time. Mike has always had a big heart and wanted people around him to be happy, and the nights at his place were a concrete demonstration of that.

The house had a bit of property, surprisingly large for a rental house. One night Mike decided to build a fire out in the backyard near the railway tracks. We sat around drinking beer, laughing, telling stories we’d told a bunch of times before, and eventually I started playing the guitar. In the course of playing I started playing “Driver 8,” and wouldn’t you know it around about the first chorus a freight train started racing by. Everyone thought it was hilarious (even though the likelihood of a train coming by at that time of night was pretty good), and one person even said that I had conjured the train with my song.

When I hear “Driver 8″ I am reminded of that particular night, and of the time when I had a lot less worries than I do now.

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Twitter Updates for 2010-01-25

January 25th, 2010 · No Comments · Twitter

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Twitter Updates for 2010-01-22

January 22nd, 2010 · No Comments · Twitter

  • I am down with #KuntaNation. #
  • #3wordslibshate proves there are a lot of idiots on Twitter. #

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Twitter Updates for 2010-01-19

January 19th, 2010 · No Comments · Twitter

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The guilty son

January 17th, 2010 · No Comments · Blog

I am really a ball of anger and frustration and guilt right now.  I talked to my Dad this afternoon to find out that my Mom is back in the hospital.  Apparently her new wheelchair has created pressure sores on her back, one of which turned necrotic and will need to be debrided.  She was admitted on Friday and has been held at the emergency ward all weekend, probably because they don’t have the staff on the weekend to admit her to a general ward.  She will probably only be in the hospital for a week, but I feel awful about this.

I am worried for Mom’s state of mind – she at one time stated to me that when she lost her leg her greatest fear was dying a piece at a time.  Towards the end of her hospital stay she developed a pressure sore on her stump and both her and Dad were paniced about the possibility of it turning necrotic.  I also feel a very familiar guilt that I have been feeling ever since Mom went into the hospital – that if I were living in Toronto I would be able to be a significant force in Mom and Dad’s life and make their lives easier.  I feel like they gave everything raising me to be the person that I am, and now that they need help I am unable to, or afraid of, giving equally.  I don’t want to confront the reality of their situation head-on; I’d much rather just band-aid the situation and go back to enjoying my own life instead of worrying about theirs.  Meredith tells me that I am doing what I can but I feel like I am too self-centered and could be doing a lot more.

I remember when my Mom was a little older than me and my grandmother was in nursing care my Mom would call my grandmother every day, take her to all her doctor’s appointments, and basically ensure that she got the best possible care in her life.  Is that because my grandmother didn’t have her husband (my grandfather) to look after her?  Was it because at that point my mom and dad had been married for quite some time and were focused more on the day-to-day of living their lives instead of doing the entertainment type of stuff that Meredith and I are doing now because we are newlyweds?  I contrast that with my Dad’s Dad, who basically lived alone and my Dad called him maybe once a month and my grandfather was on his own pretty much right up until the end of his life.

I am also struggling with what I can do.  Part of me wants to sweep in and wave a magic wand and “fix” everything, but I don’t have the money or time to do that.  I also am trying to be conscious of my Mom and Dad being adults and the fact that they don’t need their kid bossing them around.  I feel as well that my parents want me to live my own life and not worry about them, probably because were roles reversed that’s the way I would feel.  Part of me as well is lazy and wants to bury my head in the sand and hope it all goes away (for the better) without any intervention from me.  Most of all I am just sitting here on a Sunday night with the wheels spinning in my head when in reality there isn’t anything I can do right now anyway.

There are some direct actions I should probably take.  I need to figure out some way I can help Mom and Dad out without trying to swoop in on them.  I am wondering if some private nursing/care organization is necessary because Dad seems frustrated with the care that the hospital has provided up this point.  In the back of my mind I have the work that I feel needs to get done around their house too.  I think that I need to see about getting some kind of counseling as well, because I feel like my emotions around living in the United States and being far away from my parents are clouding my ability to make correct decisions about what is appropriate to do in this situation.
It’s at times like this when I feel at a complete loss that I am envious of people who seem to be able to roll with whatever life throws at them, and who have planned things out so that if they need to spend a significant amount of money, or take a significant amount of time off work, that they are able to do so at the drop of a hat.

I really wish I could be as good to my parents as they have been to me.

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