Apropos of nothing: I've had "The Famous Polka" by They Might Be Giants stuck in my head for several days now.  Early this afternoon it was temporarily replaced by Woodsy Owl (and the Ad Council)'s "Give a Hoot, Don't Pollute" jingle/song from 1979ish, but now it's back in full force.

I played it for Matt since he hadn't heard it before, as it lives on TMBG's lesser-known "Miscellaneous T" 1991 album, which is a fab compilation of B-sides and leftovers. Listening to the song didn't remove the earworm. *shrug*

In other news, I was in East Peoria, Illinois this entire week and it felt good to work. I was a touch rusty because I've barely worked this summer. It can be nice to have your summers off, like a kid. But it sucks balls to have no income.
Things seem to be picking up for the autumn, but not at the velocity I'd like.  My publisher owes me a substantial wad of cash. I hope they send it soon. I emailed them a polite "When should I expect this check?" today, but got an out-of-office auto-response back: Vanessa took the afternoon off. 

Vanessa.

OK, that's all I got for here. Got lots of stuff to do. Joe Trainor's bachelor party is Sunday, and as Best Man, I've got tasks to check off now that I'm finally home.

Your pal,
Jill
 
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8/29 '15 1 Comment
 
 


I got a message the other day informing me of an appointment on Monday 02/Sep/15.  Corrected swiftly to Wednesday 02/Sep/15.  Which got me to wondering how far in the future it would take before 02/Sep/15 was a Monday.  (It turns out that it'll only take 100 years, until 2115.  Isn't it nice how two-digit years have slid back into common usage as memory of the Y2K panic fades?)

But I noticed something as I was checking through the centuries, and that is that September 1st ??15 will never be a Monday, and it's all because of Pope Gregory.  Moving forward 100 years from 2015 to 2115 moves us back two days in the week, because 100 years = 100 * 365 + 24 leap days (which would be 25 if not for the Gregorian calendar rule where 2100 doesn't get one), or 36524 days total.  36524 days is 5217 weeks plus five extra days, or 5218 weeks minus two days, so the weekday moves back by two (or forward by five, which equivalent in modulo-7 arithmetic).  So the same thing happens going from 2115 to 2215, and 2215 to 2315.  We've now gone back six days.

And then we go from 2315 to 2415.  This time, though we have our full 25 leap days, because of the 400-year rule from the Gregorian calendar, so we only go back one day.  So now we've gone back seven days, or a full week.  If we started on a Tuesday in 2015 (as September 1st will be), we'll go back to Sunday in 2115, Friday in 2215, Wednesday in 2315, and back to Tuesday in 2415.  And 01/Sep/15 will never be on any other days of the week.

The Julian calendar didn't have this problem (problem?  Maybe that's a bit strong; it's really more of a characteristic), because it always had 36525 days per century, and always went back one weekday in the same interval.  So any given date would hit every day of the week for a given two-digit year suffix.

Who is it we have to blame for the seven-day week again?  Babylonians?  Wonder if we'll ever be able to get rid of it...

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8/25 '15 2 Comments
There are two kinds of people: people who have thought about weeks at some point, and people who look at you like you're asking if black is white when you question them.
 

So I missed the big one, but I may get a second swing at it soon. We'll see.

Honestly this life is pulling me so many directions, I'm at the point where I'm going to say jesus takes the wheel. Each month I'm working about 60% of it, and that's fantastic news. I'm to the point in my career where I can finally start running up the stairs, climbing to bigger jobs and working towards getting on much larger things.

Still, feels empty. or lonely is the better word, and I don't now how to fix that. No one I started with is still racing with me, and that's cool. I understand. And I'm excited to get to this launch point. Just thought I'd have more people to talk to about things, and not wondering where the next run of motivation comes from.

That sounds arrogant doesn't it? I don't mean to. It's the one area in my life I'm feeling vaguely in control of. Which usually means at this point everything will start hurtling out of control.

I need more drives through the starry desert night. I need more mornings on an ocean liner through winter kissed mountains.  I need tea and quiet thoughts. Cat footprints across keyboards.

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8/24 '15
 
I've overhauled www.rmbryan.com. I have an email list you can join, some social media links, including goodreads, and a fledgling podcast where i read from the books.Next up, finalizing the DRM-free ebooks.
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8/23 '15
 

The Good Husband award goes to Mr. Jack Houser, who spent most of his day today scanning photos of his in-laws for their 50th Anniversary party slideshow (party is in September).  We have miles of photos to go before we sleep.

The Great Husband award goes to Mr. Jack Houser who did the above willingly and with a generous heart, despite losing his own father to cancer this year.

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8/23 '15 4 Comments
Outstanding!
<3 my first Hanukkah! <3
What a good man. :)
I believe it's called love. <3
 

I promised to keep the bubble universe safe. I kept it on my finger. I watched it. I held it by my bedside and my place of bathing. 

Then I accidentally exposed it to Jill's voice. 

Her voice made me weep. I took my eyes off the bubble universe. Their membrane broke. 

The Hatters are free. The Tepid Witch laughs. At me. 

I failed. 

EDITED TO ADD; but after Jill's voice released The Hattervarse, Vince went into the studio to make music. 

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8/23 '15 6 Comments
It's the Most Sacred Knuckle-duster.
Way to go Pandora
Aaaaigh!

Did it break at the show?! Is the stone gone? If you call Bellefonte Cafe and ask them if they found the stone, Matt can swing over there and pick it up and hang onto it for you.

Oh noooOoOoooo! That ring was so pretty!
It's all gone. I looked for it with one of the servers, but there just ain't no way.

despite what I've said about the ring, it wouldn't hold up to scientific examination to be what geologists or gemologists would, technically, call a "stone." I'm pretty sure it was glass.

GLASS FROM THE EAST WINDOW OF THE TEMPLE OF SHENSHAKAZONG! Salvaged from the fire which killed Ko'ni't'pring, High Priestess of Melatonin, during the Festival of... Okay, never mind.

I'm not fussed. It had to move on. And now, when something goes wrong, we can blame the escaped Hatters and the Tepid Witch.
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
I'm not sure where the accent comes in "Shenshakazong."
 
Hot Breakfast! has a free show tonight from 7-9PM at The Bellefonte Cafe (804 Brandywine Blvd, Wilmington). Good eats for people of all foodly needs and desires. We'll be playing a nice mix of our mellower stuff and our ridiculous dork-rock... so there'll be something for everyone. Non-screechy kids are welcome, since we're a family-friendly kinda band. (No F-bombs tonight!) :-)
(I should mention that we play for tips, though. So "free show" is relative.)

In other news, this morning I was cruising Instagram as I do in the morning, and saw a photo of many friends at a girlie event last night at a casino. My gut reaction was "Wow. Gee. Thanks for the invite." But not 8 seconds later my butt-hurt turned to relief, because I wouldn't have wanted to go. I like the people just fine, but it looked like a drinky kind of night, and I absolutely would have been deemed the designated driver, and I reeeeeaaaaallllly, rreeeeaaaallly dislike drunk people. 
Drunk people used to be fun on those occasions when I'd also drink. But I'm not interested in drinking anymore, and babysitting and/or pretending to enjoy the company of drunk people is not something I'm willing to spend time pretending I like. Life is short, and I don't wanna spend it doing stuff I don't wanna do. 

Plus, the casino is super-smoky despite the place's mega-ventilation... and one thing I hate more than drunk loud people is smelling like smoke.

Last night was my last night home with Matt before I jet off for 5 days, and the only place I wanted to be is with him. 

Does this make me a party-pooper? Sure.  And maybe that's why I didn't get invited. Or maybe the invitations only happened via Facebook, and that's the price I pay for steering clear of that site (see sentence re: life being too short to spend time doing things I don't like doing).  Or maybe the event was coordinated by someone on whose radar I do not appear. Whatever. The reason is moot, because even if I was invited, I either would have politely declined, or I would have attended and spent the night in uncomfortable shoes feeling socially awkward, spending money I don't have at a place I don't like with people I'd rather spend time with when we can actually talk. 

I can see why this circle of friends "jokingly" calls me "The Anti-Fun."  

Anyway, I'm really not butt-hurt. I'm genuinely relieved I didn't have to go.  Everyone won.  Yay!

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8/22 '15 5 Comments
It was not me.
It was totally me.
I knew it!!
How did The Voice perform?
Were there healthy chords?
Welp, <i>chords</i> are Matt's domain, since he plays guitar. :) I believe most of his chords were healthy, though he swears he played one or two bad ones. The nice thing about writing your own music is that when you play a "wrong" chord, it's actually right. It's your damn song, and you can change up the chords whenever you dang well please. :-)

Anyway, I'm just playin'... I know you're talking about my vocal cords. (I don't have too many pet peeves, but I have a totally irrational "Gaaaargh!" when people mix up "cords" and "chords." Everyone does it. It's in print everywhere; like in reputable publications. Billy Joel even made the mistake on <i>The Nylon Curtain</i>'s liner notes for the song "Laura.") This either means that people rely too heavily on spell check, or it's actually a non-error as our language naturally evolves. It also probably means I should get this giant pole out of my ass. :)

ANYHOO, thank you, very sincerely, for asking. (I mean it.) I'd say the month of 78% vocal rest did its job. Matt was a sweetheart and prepared over an hour of his solo material in the event I couldn't sing and he had to take over.<sup>1</sup> I really didn't know what to expect. I sang the first song, and my voice felt... different. I wasn't sure if it was just dusting the cobwebs off, or if it was a warning that things were about to get bad. But after that first song (which went well), I felt absolutely wonderful... possibly better than I've felt in a very long time. I sang the whole two-hour set, and I chose not to take a break because I didn't want to lose the momentum and energy we (us + the audience) had going. There is really something special about playing at Bellefonte. It's not big, it's not a huge moneymaker, but you can really connect with an audience... and that's really why we make music, isn't it?

I was excited that we got to play more covers than we normally do, and a few of our softer tunes, too. After the show, the head of the Hot Breakfast! Fan Club (yes, really) wrote me a long email thanking us for playing what we played, and he reassured me that I sounded really good. He's very sweet, somewhat Asbergersy, so I value and trust his opinion because I know he understands our sound and my voice in a really cool, special way.

I may turn this comment into its own OPW post at some point.

Thank you for letting me clog up your page with my teasing you, and with my navel-gazey blather.

Love from Peoria,
Jill-o


<small>----------
<sup>1</sup> People sometimes forget that Matt has three solo albums out that predate Hot Breakfast!. They're wonderful. (I especially recommend his later two albums "All This Life" and "Songs For The Earthbound."</small>

 

this ring ended up on my finger today. I needed a magic ring, and now I have one. The true story involves a curiosity & antique shop, a raven-haired beauty, an odd little side street, and a missing husband dragged away by the siren song of curvaceous beauties.* Other than that, it's a very boring story. I need a better one. 

Tell me the significance of this ring, how I got it, and for what it's meant.  


-------

*Noise Pollution Records, Blue Bond Guitars.  

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8/21 '15 9 Comments
It is actually the Sacred Lozenge. As long as you wear it, you will never need another cough drop. You won it by defeating the Tepid Witch of the Middle.
Bonus points to Sir Tom for "The Tepid Witch of the Middle".
Tom, does she destroy through apathy?
The Tepid Witch of the Middle casts spells that begin with, "everyone knows..."

As soon as she says it, everyone is convinced they already knew it.

You tricked her into visiting an incredibly loud nightclub in Munchkin Land and hogtied her in the women's room.
The stone is actually a bubble universe on your finger, if you look within you can see entire civilizations rise and fall and rise again. Time is different there, and gravity, and light and sound and that other sense they have that is beyond our perception, but so far beyond we don't have words for it in any human language yet. They can't see us, but they evolved generation after generation with more fabulous and diverse millinery. Hatters were the leaders in government, and it was the roman empire lead cups scenario all over again because of that chemical, it's not the same there but you know what I mean, it drives you MAD. The hatters had to be stopped, so the universe was contained and hidden in a time capsule, waiting for the right guardian to protect it and heal it and prevent the Hatters from developing travel from their universe to others. That guardian is you.
*snerfle*

I will not shirk my responsibility.
I take it one of these escaped and made some trouble in the Victorian era.
Making trouble as of this hour. See subsequent post.
 
I am not sad about missing Burning Man this year.
I was sad up until yesterday when I read that the atypically high amounts of rain has made for a bug-tastic breeding ground, and they're currently inundated with huuuuuge swarms of green stinkbugs, beetles, and now bats. 
The photos are staggering.

I always loved Burning Man because the desert is a blank canvas with nothing there except what people bring. No animals, no bugs, just dusty people and the stuff we need to live (art included). 
It's hard enough keeping dust out of your trailer. I don't wanna have to worry about swarms of stinkbugs and some other bugs that bite and leave welts. This will not end well.
Read about it here... though you have to scroll a bit. (They didn't mention bats in this article, but I read it in another one.)
http://blog.burningman.com/2015/08/building-brc/a-second-generation-and-yeah-those-bugs/
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8/20 '15 8 Comments
Commented over on LJ because I saw it there first.
"hard enough keeping dust out of your trailer".

subtle, very subtle.
EW EW EW ITCH ITCH AAAGH GET IT OF ME OFF OFF OFF
(Linds, they're not even on you)
UGH ACK OH GOD NO PLEASE NO BUGS ALLOWED ATCHA MATCHA KATCHA AAAGGGHHH

Officially too much of a wuss for Burning Man.
And now imagine the bugs if you were tripping balls.
AAAAIIIIIGGGHHHH!!! :)
"Several thousand hippies were found dead yesterday at The Burning Man festival. Reportedly, they were all 'tripping balls.' The one survivor succeeded in using bug corpses to successfully build a dance club. Sources say he named it Buggy Town, and planned to spin only the finest house and techno mixes of music created by bands named after insects. However, "DJ X-Terminator," as he called himself, got stuck while looping a remix of Buddy Holly and the Crickets' "Not Fade Away," claiming he'd officially dropped the sickest dope bass beat of all time."
I FUCKING LOVE YOU SO MUCH
Well placed affection, for certain.
AH HA HA HA HA HA HA!