Starting to look for a new band, again...

So, I'm trying to get out of my depressed little rut and see if I can form a band. I went on Craigslist to post an ad, but I found one already there from a drummer who looks like he's trying to form an original band himself, so I shot him off an e-mail this morning instead of posting my own ad. He sent me back a reply while I was at work, saying that he liked my background and would be able to meet pretty much any time. I just sent him back a message telling him that tomorrow evening would probably work better for me, but I obviously haven't heard a reply back yet, since I just sent my message back to him a couple of minutes ago. Hopefully, we can get together tomorrow and see what clicks. He's down near Keller, so it's a bit of a jaunt, but we'll have to see how it goes...

I started drafting an ad to post on Craigslist trying to start an original band, but I haven't yet finished it and posted it. I did just send off a message to a lady who said she was looking for a band. She didn't really specify whether she was looking to do original music or not. Her little demo on Myspace was all covers, but she says that she writes lyrics on that page, so I figured I'd send out a line and see what comes back.

I've also started doing a serious rework on my resume. Not sure it's going to help all that much, but it certainly can't hurt. I think I'm going to go talk to either someone at the Texas Workforce Commission or someone in the admissions office at NCTC tomorrow. I also think I have a few more books that I can take down to Half Price to try to sell off. I think I'm a little further away from being able to pay the rent than the girlfriend expected, and I'd really rather get as close as possible, even if she can make up the rest of it by borrowing it from her mom. I just really don't feel like sponging off of them. Damn, I need to find a job, and I really hope my 401(k) distribution check comes soon...

And all of the hunts continue...

I woke up early this morning, after not getting to sleep until about two last night. My sinuses feel like crap, and I've had fluid draining from my nose for the past hour. I'm not really sure whether it's a cold or allergies. After sitting down in the park for the past couple of days, it might very well just be some kind of spring pollen or grass issue, but I don't really know or care.

I got a reply back from the guitarist/steel guitar player I wrote to last night. He said he's looking for a singer/songwriter first, but he'll keep me in mind once he gets that part lined up. I wrote back and told him that sounded good, and that I could also help out with collaborating if he found a writer who just needed a little help with getting stuff finished. Because I'm so damned good at finishing stuff myself, right?...

I still haven't heard back from one of the people whose ad I responded to, and I haven't heard back from the guitarist who I replied to yesterday, probably because he now thinks I'm just far too old. Little bit of a double standard on that one, methinks...

Guess I'd better get back to the old job hunt now. I was just reading an article about how current college graduates are facing one of the toughest job markets ever, and that they should get out of fields that are shrinking, like finance, and into ones that are growing, like healthcare and computer science. That's just great, as I'm thinking about going back to school to get out of computer science and into finance. I still just don't know what the hell I'm going to do, but I'd better damned well figure it out pretty soon...

It's another day, and I still just feel listless and depressed. I have no idea what the hell I'm doing lately, and I really have no idea what the hell I even want to do. I've been thinking that I'd like to go back to school and get an accounting degree, or at least study accounting and get into that gig.

In the meantime, money continues to run out. I haven't posted as much stuff for sale on Craigslist as I wanted, and I didn't make as much money selling books at Half-Price as I wanted, and it's probably going to take a couple of weeks before I get the money from my old 401(k). Guess I'd better get to trying to post some ads...

I've been looking through the Craigslist musician ads for the past few days, too. I found a few here in Denton that looked interesting, and I've bookmarked them to write back. I just haven't even felt the ambition to draft a few e-mails to people lately. Damn, I feel useless. I should get that done today, too, and maybe I'll actually be able to play some more music, unlike the past several years...

Yes, I'm still alive...

So, I've definitely not been keeping up on my hypothetical daily postings to the blog. But to review in general, I did find a job, doing database programming at Denton County MHMR, the mental health and mental retardation authority for the county. It pays just a little better than my old job back in Oregon, which is nice, and considering the fact that Texas doesn't have an income tax, I'm actually doing quite a bit better than I was back in Oregon from a financial point of view.

Musically, I've played with a couple of people around the area, but I've kind of dropped out of touch with them, unfortunately. I really should call back Alan, the one guy who I played with several times. He likes 60s and 70s sort of folky-rock, which is all right with me. Not really sure why I dropped out of touch with him, but it's been a couple of months since we talked. The other group I played with mostly did the sort of Def Leppard/ZZ Top kind of thing, which doesn't really appeal to me all that much. I'd really like to find a band that wants to do originals. Maybe I'll start perusing Craigslist again to see if anything comes up, or maybe I'll put up an ad myself.

The programming job I'm doing right now mostly entails me gutting a bunch of Access databases which my predecessor designed and moving them to SQL Server and ASP.net webpages. It seems that the guy who did the development before really didn't know a whole hell of a lot about database design or anything at all about writing actual code in Access. There are tons of temporary tables where there should just be queries, lots of episodes of pulling data out of the SQL server back-end database wholesale, then running sets of delete queries against the data to remove the parts he didn't want. And there are a ton of arcane steps to do things, because if it couldn't be automated in a simple macro with queries, he couldn't do it without user intervention. So most of the applications are getting completely rewritten from the ground up, because it's less work to start over than it would be to try to refactor them to make them work well and have normalized data. Definitely a chore, but they seem happy with the work I'm doing there.

I'm watching the baseball playoffs now, in addition to trying to get a few things caught up on my e-mail, but I do plan to actually keep up a little better with the blog in the future, though. For now, though, I'm outta here...

The daily rundown, May 8

I slept in very late today, so I don't really know why the hell I was so tired. I had a couple of new replies back from musicians. The guy over in Mesquite sent me a message with his phone number so we could talk at more length about what's going on with his music. Of course, I'm down to virtually nothing on my phone, so I guess I'd best get to the store and get a new card soon. I also got a reply from one of the other bands, located over in McKinney, which is nearly as far but not through urban areas. They seem to be trying to become something like an 80s hair-rock band, but a lot of their tunes are familiar to me, so that makes things quite a bit easier. I had a bit of an e-mail conversation with the front man, I guess, this morning, and he sent me MP3s of a couple of the tunes they're going to be working on. Their practice is going to be this Saturday, but I won't be able to make that. So the next one is going to be on Wednesday, and hopefully I'll be there and have some tunes worked out on the bass. Guess I'd better plug the little beastie in and get hacking, eh? Also got a reply back from one of the other bands that I thought wasn't looking any longer. Turns out that I kind of misinterpreted his reply, and they haven't found a bassist yet. It's in kind of a weird area of town, though, around Arlington, and I don't really know that I want to commute to that area. From what I've heard, the driving isn't all that great there, and it's not exactly a rural kind of area where you can make easy U-turns if you miss your cutoff or whatever. Plus it sort of sounds like someone's got a little bit more "vision" than I do, perhaps.

Didn't do a whole lot else with the day aside from communicating with the other musicians. I looked on the web for tabs for some of the songs that the band over in McKinney is looking to play. Mixed success on those, definitely. Of course, the songs that they're really planning to rehearse next week I couldn't find any tabs, chords or anything else for, so I guess I'll have to try to figure them out by ear, which is never really all that easy for me.

When the girlfriend got home, we had a bit of dinner and then sat and watched TV for a while. Watched some of the hockey that was on and then a little bit of stuff on Discovery and the Science Channel. Nothing really all that memorable, but it did pretty well kill off the evening. Despite having little to watch on the tube, I still didn't get to bed until fairly late. She wanted to get to bed early because she was working a very early shift on Friday, so we could get started over to her dad and stepmom's place early. Best laid plans, and all that...

The daily rundown, May 7

I got up this morning when the girlfriend did, although I pretty much just sat on the bed as she got herself ready for work. She asked me if I could fix the toilet, since it appears that the chain came off of the little plunger thing. After she left, I got that little honey-do done, although it took me quite a bit longer than I expected it do. That wasn't really because it was a difficult task or anything, but just because of the fact that I don't know where most of her tools are, and I had to improvise quite a bit and then spend quite a bit of time looking around for things like pliers and such. At last, though, mission accomplished.

I made myself a pot of coffee and sat down to read through the now much smaller quantity of e-mail in the box. Unfortunately, there were still no responses from any of the musicians I sent off messages to from their Craigslist ads. I sent off another message, but his response indicated that he was a whole lot further away than I'd really want to be traveling. Bummer. He seemed like a pretty nice guy, though.

On the cross-stitch front, I finally started doing a little more work on the now well-belated 4th Day of Christmas. Got to get that done fairly quickly so I can maybe get day #5 done before the end of month #5. Fortunately, the fifth one seems to be pretty small, since it's just the number 5 with five small rings draped over it. I'm hoping I can whip that out in just a couple of days. I also wrote up a little review of the "Brilliant Plumage" pattern that I bought the first week I was here when the girlfriend and I went down to Hobby Lobby. Hopefully I can get at least a couple of more people saying something on my little cross stitch list on SU. We'll just have to wait and see, though.

Finally got ready to go and drove down to the recycle place and got rid of all the papers. Came back home afterward because my pants kept falling down. Got a belt, called the girlfriend to tell her I was going to the store and if she wanted anything. She only asked me to pick up chicken breasts, and I told her I was also going to get milk and eggs. She's going shopping after work, so I guess she won't pick those things up now.

I opened up all the windows to let the house cool down a bit before heading out, since it seemed very hot and muggy inside, but it had evidently cleared up outside. There's a tornado watch for the area, and it looks like it turned into a tornado warning for some areas northeast of here. And, of course, as I was driving out to the store, the clouds loomed over and started spitting rain. I could have had the place open for about half the day without any problem, but as soon as I open it up, then the rain comes. Oh well.

Got to the store and found a parking place. Looked like the place was going to be a little more crowded than usual, and it sure enough was. Fortunately, I shopped like a guy and was in and out in about ten minutes. Soda, milk, eggs, chicken breasts, newspapers, done... Unfortunately, I forgot about getting a new card for my phone until I was already in line, and I didn't really feel like going back into the fray, so I guess I'll have to get a new card somewhere tomorrow. I really need to get to the bank and the post office tomorrow, too.

Over the afternoon and evening, I've sent off nine messages to musicians on Craigslist. Heard back from four, only one affirmative. One was the guy I mentioned this morning. Another is a female fronted band that practices in Corinth, which would be really convenient because it's just a few miles down the freeway. But they already have a bassist, and are now just looking for a drummer. Damn. And the third no-go is a band that is in Dallas, so that's not a huge issue. Unfortunately, the one that did say they were still looking for a bassist and would like to hear my stuff is based out of east Dallas, on the border of Mesquite. That's quite a little drive for the possibility of playing some music. Hopefully I'll get some kind of good reply back from one of the others, or from one of the two guitarists who have already expressed interest. There are a couple who I've checked out on Myspace, but one of them, which sounded pretty good, is located over in Rockwall, which is even further than Mesquite. One of the others, which sounded not so good, is located here in Denton. It's a brother and sister who pretty much decided that they'd heard people doing music, so they figured they could. The sister actually has a pretty nice voice, but the pitch is problematic. Overall, not something that I'd want to deal with, and I doubt they'd want to deal with me anyway, since they look like they're in their late teens.

No news on the job front, but I haven't really been sending out as many resumes as I should be. Lazy, and it's not really helping matters for me any, damn it...

The daily rundown, May 2

We slept in a little late this morning because the girlfriend was working the late shift and didn't have to leave until almost eleven. When I finally did get up, I fed the little bratling before checking the mail and such. I got replies back from the dance rock band guy and from the other guitarist I'd written to. The band is going to get together Saturday at 6, which should be an interesting drive if nothing else, as they're in the east part of Dallas, an area that even the girlfriend isn't all that familiar with. I need to call the guitarist and see where he's at and when would be a good time to get together. Haven't heard back from Bryan, the other guitarist, for a week or so, so I'm not sure what's up with him. He did say he was on call for a week, but I think that should be over by now. I'll have to send him off a message and find out what's up.

I tried calling the IRS office in Dallas to find out about my bonus payment thing, which they'll probably try to direct deposit but won't be able to because I closed that account. Unfortunately, the local office doesn't have anything over the phone but a recording, and I didn't want to waste all of my minutes waiting on hold with the 800 number, which I think is national. I guess I'll either get it when they mail it or else I won't get it at all. Damn it. I should run down to the Farmer's Branch IRS office, but I've been having a hard enough time getting myself motivated to do anything at all, let alone drive there just to ask a stupid question that they probably won't be able to answer for me anyway.

I spent most of the remainder of the morning and early afternoon alternately reading e-mails and doing a few other very minor little things around the place. But I definitely should have gone out and at least got the laundry done. The girlfriend says she has almost nothing to wear, and I'm getting pretty close to that same situation myself. Unfortunately, I was too lazy to do so, damn it.

The girlfriend called from work and asked if I could go to the theater and pick up four tickets for the last showing of Iron Man. I told her I would, but by the time I was getting ready to leave, Cory came home. I told him that I needed to go do that, but that I wasn't sure where the theater was exactly, so he offered to drive and get the tickets for himself and Danielle, leaving me to just pay for mine and the girlfriend's, which was nice. We drove up to the theater, which isn't very far away, and bought our four tickets for the 10 PM show. Tickets were only $5.00 a pop, which is pretty nice.

After we'd purchased the tickets, Cory said that he was pretty hungry, so we headed down to Sweetwater for some lunch, or dinner, or whatever you'd call it. I guess Friday is corned beef and cabbage night there, so he had that and I had the blackened cheeseburger and fries. We talked about fishing and the fact that there are no tall buildings in Medford and a few other oddball things while we ate. The service today was much better than it was when the girlfriend and I went there, and apparently it was worlds better than the last time she and some other friends went. She described the waitress that time as generating Doppler effect as she flew by. We had the same waitress a different time and she seemed to do all right, but I'm happy that we had a different waiter and he was quite prompt and efficient this time around.

During our meal, Cory got a call which was evidently from his sister, Ashley, and she was going to be able to join us for the movie, so we had to go back up to the theater and get another ticket for her. That done, we headed back to home. Cory went back into his room to do whatever he does there, and I plunked my butt down in front of the tube and started watching a baseball game. When the girlfriend got home from work, that was pretty much what I was still doing. She did the late shift, so we had to pretty much head on out the door pretty shortly after she got home. Danielle got here a little while before we left, and we all bundled into Danielle's car for the ride to the theater. Ashley was going to meet us there, since she had to drive in from out of town. I'm not sure where she lives exactly, but it can't be all that terribly far away for her to come up here to take in a movie, but evidently it's at least a couple hours' drive.

She did get there before the show actually started, and we actually managed to get seats that were all adjacent, which was kind of nice. Some of the people standing outside expected that we'd have a hard time finding four seats in a row, but we got there and got seated early enough that it wasn't even an issue. There were a lot of different places we could have planted ourselves, but we took a spot about two-thirds of the way back in the theater and on the right hand side. Cory had mentioned before that he didn't really like the sound system at that theater, but it sounded just fine to me. Of course, I also am pretty easygoing when it comes to details like that, so who's to say... The seats at the theater have a nice little bar shelf in front of them, and they have waitstaff wander through before the movie starts, taking orders for a nice variety of dishes and drinks. Of course, because they can't serve hard liquor, the drinks are a little different than they would be at a bar. I ordered something called the Blue Thing, which was their combination of tequila and blue curacao, maybe with something else added, I don't recall. Sort of a blue margarita type thing, served in a margarita glass with salt on the rim and all of that good stuff. Fortunately also served with a straw, because I really don't like putting my mouth around a rimful of salt. The girlfriend warned me that the blue thing was usually pretty sour, but I didn't find it to be too bad. Definitely a bit of a citrus bite to it, but at this point, having had nothing else at the Movie Tavern, that will be my drink of choice. Later, I'll try some other stuff, but so far it's the front-runner.

The movie itself was pretty entertaining. I'm not usually a big one for movies based on comic books and such, and I'm not incredibly familiar with that particular story, but it kept me amused for the couple of hours that I was there. The company was also pretty fun, which helped a lot. It's going to be nice being able to go to movies with other people now, instead of going by myself like I did in Oregon, which meant that I rarely went at all. I have the feeling that I'll probably be attending at least one, probably two or three, movies per month now that I'm down here. I'm not going to go into a big review of the movie, because it's already been done all over the web. Suffice to say it was worth the cost of the ticket, and I can't really ask for too much more than that.

After the movie was over, we returned to the house and sat around and had a few more drinks and talked about various things. Just general party chit-chat for the most part, plus talking about the movie and the fact that there will probably be a sequel, judging from the little ending part that we waited around to see. Danielle went home after a while, probably at about one in the morning, but Ashley stayed the night on the couch downstairs. The girlfriend and I crashed out fairly late, but that was all right because we didn't have too much that we needed to do in the morning, and she didn't have to go to work until the late shift...

The daily rundown, May 1

I got up fairly early again. I fed the little bratling and then browsed through some of the e-mail backlog. I wrote back to the guy from the dance band, telling him I might be out of the area tomorrow, but would be back for the weekend. I also wrote to another guy who I'd contacted before leaving Oregon. He is a drummer who was seeking musicians. Unfortunately, he replied and said that he was really mostly looking for a band which needed a drummer, not to start a new band, so I told him that I'd keep his address and if I got into a band situation and we needed a drummer, I'd drop him a line. I also sent off a note to another one of the earlier musicians I'd talked to, a guitarist seeking others to jam with, but I haven't heard back from him yet. He probably has a job or something.

I checked through some of the papers for jobs, but, once again, I haven't applied to any of them yet. Most of the morning was e-mailing the musicians and looking through the papers. I went downstairs and watched a baseball game around noon or so. The girlfriend came home for lunch, but she wasn't in a really great mood and went upstairs to have some alone time while I sat and watched more of the game. Unfortunately, the rest of the afternoon and the evening were very uneventful and I didn't really get very much of anything done. Watched some hockey, got a little more caught up on my e-mail, but that's just about the extent of things. I was going to go do the laundry, again, but wound up just being pretty much lazy for most of the day and didn't really accomplish anything useful that I was supposed to do. The girlfriend, Cory (the roommate), and I decided to go watch Iron Man at the theater they have here in town on Friday evening. It's called the Move Tavern, and they evidently serve beer and such there. No hard liquor, but they apparently do have some flavored alcohols that taste something like real booze. Hopefully it will be a decent movie and we'll all have a fun time. Danielle (the friend who came to the Jazz Festival with us) is probably going to be there, too, and I might even get the chance to meet Ashley, who is Cory's sister and a friend of the girlfriend.

After the hockey and a few drinks on my part, the girlfriend and I wandered off to bed, trying to make it at least something of an early night...

The daily rundown, April 28

I got up a little before nine, got the little beastie fed, and checked the e-mail. Nothing hugely interesting. There was a comment on one of my 43Things postings, and while I was reading through the mail, I got a message from one of my friends on StumbleUpon, but the majority of the remaining mail was just the usual kind of mailing list stuff. I still need to get caught up on the backlog, though, because I have hundreds of e-mails left to read. A little at a time, I guess.

I had all kinds of high hopes for getting stuff done with the day, but I wound up for the most part just sitting around playing on the computer more than I should have. I did get my application mostly filled out for the I/T job at the girlfriend's workplace. One of the problems I had with that, though, was that they wanted three references who were not previous employers, and one of the ones I put down on my resume was my former boss. I thought that was something of a gray area, so I wanted to find someone else who definitely wasn't a previous supervisor or anything. I wrote to one of the ladies in customer service who I usually had a pretty good relationship with, but I haven't heard anything back from her yet. I wonder if my e-mails are being blocked by the company now or something, although it's always possible that she's just on vacation or that the one particular e-mail got stuck in her junk mail folder or something. I don't know. But I really do need to write back to some more of the people there at the old work, just to keep the bridges still standing. I lose so many friends that it's unreal, and I'd really like to quit doing that, because I don't really know how many new friends I'm going to be able to make at this stage of the game...

I did write back to the guy who was looking for the bass player for the dance band. I just told him that I'd gone down to the jazz festival with my girlfriend and that I hadn't really had a whole lot of time over the weekend. I told him to go ahead and send me back an e-mail or something if I hadn't already totally pissed them off. Haven't heard anything back since then, but I don't know the situation, so not a huge deal at the moment.

I was supposed to go close the bank account today, but I just was feeling terribly unambitious. In addition to that, I also saw that there was still one outstanding payment on the account, for my Allstate motor club membership, and I wasn't sure what to do about that aside from just waiting for it to close out. So I basically wound up doing nothing as far as that was concerned. And, in general, I wound up doing very little with the day at all. I did wind up going downstairs and watching the hockey game that was on, but that was about the extend of my mobility, if you want to call it that. Never even got out of the house for the rest of the day. Typical laziness on my part...

The daily rundown, April 26

I got up fairly early when my girlfriend went to work. I think I was actually up at about 8:30 or so, which is definitely quite early for me lately. Unfortunately, I didn't take as much advantage of the extra time as I really should have. I got the cat fed and such and then plunked myself down in front of the computer and checked my e-mail and all of that good stuff. I had thought about driving down to Flower Mound, which is where the nearest branch of my bank is, so I could close out my accounts there and move them to a new bank somewhere here in Denton, but my lack of ambition got the better of me.

Over the course of the morning, I did subscribe to a new Yahoo list, which is the North Texas Crafters list. I posted a little message to it, introducing myself and what I do that is crafty, but I haven't heard back from anyone else yet. The list at the moment appears to be comprised of myself and the list owner, but hopefully more folks will add themselves and we'll get a little community going. I also noticed that I got a reply back from my posting to Tribe.net, but apparently their e-mail notification system didn't choose to notify me, so I didn't see it until I logged back on and had a look manually. Oh well. I need to take some pictures of some of the stuff I've been doing and post it up there.

On the job hunt front, I did add a couple more items to my online resume on the WorkInTexas site, but that's about the extent. I got a notification from one of the agencies I'd sent my resume to that they'd received it and would be looking at it to match me with their potential job openings, which gives me incredibly little hope that I'm going to get anywhere from them. Which is sort of a shame, really, because the job I'd applied for with them seems like it would be quite a good match for me. But that's the way the cookie crumbles.

From the band standpoint, I sent off messages to two new ads on Craigslist. One was for a possible Pink Floyd cover band here in Denton, which is made up of college-aged players. Not sure about that one, because I'd be old enough to be the father to most of them, but we'll see. And the other listing was for a dance rock band that needs a bassist and guitarist. I don't know precisely what kind of "dance rock" they have in mind, but I figure that the worst that can happen is a wasted trip to talk to them and possibly a couple of other people I know in the local music community. Not a bad deal, either way. The guy who posted that second ad wrote me back, asking me to call him after 4 PM, but I wound up having other things to do at that time. Hopefully I'll get back with him later, and we'll see what kind of music they're really playing.

After my girlfriend got home from work, which was in the early part of the afternoon, we had a bit to eat for lunch and each had a drink to "lay down a base coat," as she put it, and then we walked down to the site of the Denton Arts and Jazz Festival, which was going on this weekend. I was pretty astounded by the size of the thing. I had sort of expected a little outdoor stage with some folks sitting around on the lawn watching the band, but this was the size of a small county fair, with five real stages, as well as one small stage like I had expected to see, and probably a hundred or more booths selling food and various arts and crafts sorts of things.

We wandered through a few of the booths and such before stopping in front of one of the stages which was apparently the one where most of the UNT bands were to be performing. We met one of the girlfriend's friends and chatted with him for a while as we listened to some nice Latin jazz. The band switched over to playing more of a standard jazz after a few songs, though, and we headed over to see what was going on at some of the other stages. We made our way through the crowds of people and over to the jazz stage, which was pretty much the main stage for the event. We got there as one band was finishing up what sounded like a pretty decent set. It was pretty crowded, but we found enough room to lay out the little blanket thing we'd brought with us. I wanted to see Delbert McClinton, who was closing the night, so we kind of figured that we'd stay in that spot for the remainder of the evening, which we indeed wound up doing.

My girlfriend called her roommate and some of her other friends to see if they were going to come down to the festival. The roommate and one of her friends said they were, and they showed up after a while. The roommate was actually sort of funny because all he did was sat with his back against a big 50-gallon drum they had as a trash receptacle, facing away from the stage, and played his portable game system thing.

The first act that we got to see much of was a lady who went by the name of Annagrey. I'm guessing that her actual name is Anna Grey, but I guess they thought that naming the band that way was cooler or something. In any case, she was a singer in the vein of Sheryl Crow or something along that line, only fairly mediocre, really. I think a lot of the audience was just waiting to see Delbert, so the occasions when she tried to get audience participation or anything going wound up with lackluster results at best. But it didn't completely suck, which is always good. The bass player was halfway decent, although for the most part he just sat back and handled the groove. No real flashy solos out of him, and even his one real solo spot was more just sort of a funk groove thing, not a whole lot of trying to play as many notes as he could in as short a time as possible.

When Delbert finally started playing, the roommate left. For whatever reason, he doesn't like Delbert McClinton, but he thought the somewhat less entertaining (in my opinion) opening act was good enough to sit through. A little backward to my way of thinking, but I guess it's a case of different strokes for different folks. My girlfriend, her friend, and I all had a good time watching Delbert play, although he didn't wind up playing the one song they both really wanted to hear ("Have a Little Faith in Me"). We nevertheless had a very good time, including the fun of watching some of the people who were in attendance. There were a couple who managed to get their own little nicknames, although they'll never know them: Turkey Leg Girl and the Stripper were the two that readily spring to recall.

Turkey Leg Girl was a little girl, maybe eight or nine years old, although I'm certainly not a great judge of that sort of thing. She looked like your typical little girl, but for some reason, when McClinton started playing, she decided that she had to stand up and dance while alternately holding and eating her big ol' smoked turkey leg. Of course, she was right in the spot where the girlfriend and I had the best view of the stage, and she was munching down these huge mouthfuls of turkey as she was turned facing back toward us. By the time that I thought about taking a few pictures of her just for posterity, she had already moved on to annoying some of the other members of her little group and was probably off blocking someone else's view of the show. On the plus side, she knew how to dance far better than I do.

Which is definitely not something that I'm going to say about the Stripper. This was a fairly attractive girl, probably in her early 20s, I'd guess, although I might be guessing a bit older than she really is. In any case, we noticed her dancing after the band had started. She was doing a fair number of moves that would probably not have been at all out of place in a strip club, but she had absolutely no sense of rhythm whatever. She was dancing very fast to a couple of slower ballads, and the faster tunes, which she seemed to be enjoying more, just caused her to be somewhat out of sync, as though she had the right tempo, but had started about a quarter beat behind everyone else. She continued dancing most of the evening, although we did notice that her mom was leading her back along the exit aisle at one point. Mom was looking none too happy, and we all figured it was because Stripper was rather wasted. Nonetheless, they returned to the scene a short time later. I'm not sure what became of her as the evening's entertainment came to a close, because the people were pretty much clamoring to get out, and it became difficult to see anyone not one or two people away from you.

Other fun events of the night included my first funnel cake, which was quite good, albeit very expensive. Not surprising, considering the carnival type atmosphere. We walked home after the show and then the girlfriend's friend had to head home to do some work on a school project. The girlfriend and I sat around and destressed for a bit before heading off to bed, looking forward to seeing another entertaining show the next night...

Now that I'm here, I just need to get out and mingle...

I wrote to about a dozen different musicians in the D/FW area who had advertised for bass players on Craigslist in the month or so before I moved here. I got responses back from about four of them, saying that I should get in touch when I got down here. Unfortunately, I’ve been so busy trying to find work and just getting my bearings straight and such that I’ve only been in contact with one of them, and that was actually because he sent me a message asking if I’d made it yet.

So, I really need to get back in touch with people, and then I need to get my act together and get myself playing again and start looking for some folks to play with. It’s prime area for it, so the only thing keeping me from it is my own laziness…

See more progress on: play in a band again