I'm so damned tired right now. We were in the studio Friday and Saturday nights, plus we had that show on Saturday. I didn't even get seven hours of sleep after we got back from the studio before we had to do the show.
I don't want to talk about the show. Nikki got food poisoning and was blacking out during our set. We were also the opening band, which is always a bad place to be. We played great; but the less experienced performers in our band were disheartened by the lack of response. At these dinky little shows the first band will always feel unloved. People wait until the second band to come in/get up.
There was also something of a fight after the set – the producer had requested that only the most necessary people be at the studio for the mixing. Nikki, while enthusiastic, has a tendency to waste time. Aaron decided to take it upon himself to tell Nikki that he wasn't needed at the studio that night, and it came out all wrong.
Well, really, it's just that Aaron isn't very tactful and Nikki got the idea (semi-true) that he wasn't wanted at the studio. Hell, I didn't want to be at the studio, but I had to be there to drive Dirk and Joe home, since Aaron had to leave early for work. I spent most of the time watching satellite tv. I'm not going to lie -- I think the whole recording process is utterly boring. I would occasionally wander into the mixing room, but for the most part I parked my ass on the couch and watched t.v.
The boys are apparently pissed with Doug and Tom (the engineer and producer, respectively) because they don't act like they care how the mix sounds. I think we're going to the studio some time this week and picking up the tapes so that we can take them to inner ear and mix them ourselves. Things came to a head when we got a taped copy of the mix this far and discovered that they'd completely taken out the solos and they'd taken out some of the vocals. Everyone was furious, except me. I'd thought Tom was a creepy little freak as soon as I saw him.
I don't mean that in a bad way.
Speaking of creepy little freaks, my ex has been contacting us again. He wants a copy of the old GABOC tapes (plus the artwork) because he lost his copies. He was also hoping that I'd have a copy of one of his books, The Vampire Faggot, on disk. His disk went bad -- I can easily imagine how. Dirt, dust, magnets, extreme temperature changes; floppies are actually rather delicate. So he e-mailed offering us $400 for the above items. After discussing it with Dirk, we decided we could do it....but then my ex decided to put conditions on it. He didn't want to send us the money, he wanted to send it to Paul and have Paul give it to us in exchange for the stuff. Forget it.
We don't particularly need the money, so we just told him he could either play by our rules or no dice. Anyway, his tone in the e-mails had been getting snarky after the first one. It's amazing how quickly that boy can move from abasing himself so he'll get an answer to making snappy little comments about our band, our apartment, and our lifestyle. This is not how one wins friends and influences others.
(Note: if my ex didn't want me to mention him, he would have quit pestering us a long time ago.)
Sunday was the only day we got to rest, and I had to do some grocery shopping. I've been introducing the boys to the versatility and economy of eggplant. Personally, it's one of my favorite plant-edibles. Then, unexpectedly, Nikki, his brother, and his friend Edward came over, and it seemed polite to invite them to dinner. So I wound up making eggplant parmigiana for six people. I was showered with compliments, which is especially nice when you consider the fact that I'd never made it before in my life and I was working with no recipe, just what I remembered from watching my mother book it.
Lest you get the wrong idea, let me just say that I am nothing close to a maid in this apartment. Since I do a lot of the cooking (although I will sometimes be cruel and tell them to fend for themselves), I don't do much else. I don't vacuum, I don't do dishes, I hardly pick up, and I definitely don't clean the bathroom. I do the laundry because the boys are laundry-retarded and I don't want my panties turning pink. I also suspect that Aaron (who does his own laundry) hasn't quite grasped the purpose(s) of softener. I was taking his stuff out of the dryer so I could put my stuff in, and I noticed that his clothes didn't smell fresh and clean. They didn't smell like anything at all. It's the softener that puts that lovely smell into clothes, so my only guess is that he just isn't putting softener in.
I was sad when I found out that Karen and Scotty broke up. Karen was the original ringmistress for Poison Ivy -- Journals that Sting before she handed the reins to me. She was also very supportive throughout the bad times and gave me a lot of good advice. Most of the time, I could give a shit about what's going on in the realm of online journals, simply because I'm disgusted that there are so many of them these days. But I feel for Karen.
