It's been a really long time since I updated. Oh well. I work too much and enjoy the other parts of life too little right now, but I think I can rectify that if I just make the effort to strike a better balance. I want to start playing music more than I have been and maybe even start playing gigs again soon but I feel like I need to write some new material before I do that, if for no other reason than to keep myself interested. Also, I think I need to prove to myself that I can still write well. Anyway, today's actually a gorgeous day (2 in a row!) after what seems like a million years worth of grey and rain and shitty, shitty blech, so maybe I'll use this opportunity to sit out on the porch and drink beer and play guitar. Or maybe I'll go play tennis. Or maybe both. Oh, the possibilities....

So my dear friends just had their third kid, and I've gotten to hold him briefly a couple of times, but last night I actually got to have him sleep on my belly while we watched a movie and then fall asleep myself. At this point in life, I'm perfectly happy not having kids of my own, but it sure is nice to fall asleep with a newborn sleeping on you. Babies are cute.

So, life is full of really, really awesome changes right now. First and foremost is that we've finally come to our senses and elected Barack Obama as President and I am fucking elated! Aside from that though, I've also started a new job in which I'm helping real people make substantive positive changes in their lives and making a really decent living for the first time in my life. There's a significant time requirement on my end, but it's rewarding work and feels like my first real step toward that weird thing called adulthood. And I'm actually not afraid of that. In fact for someone who generally doesn't deal well with change, I'm really excited about all of the changes that are taking place right now. Except for my computer taking a vacation of undetermined length. Hence, my general absence from this site of late. Alas. Things are still very good right now.

I'm confused about the person who keeps tagging new sets with "lipless pussy". I wonder if this person knows what a vulva is or looks like or similarly what a vulva's "lips" look like. It makes me say, "Hmmm..."

So it's been a really long time since I've been back on SG. My computer shit the bed several months ago and it wasn't until just recently that I've been able to get it fixed. I realized how oddly dependent I was on the internet for all manner of things and it was a really significant adjustment not to have immediate access all the time. It kind of sucked, but it did teach me a fair bit about myself and force me to learn or relearn other ways of entertaining myself, which was probably beneficial.

In other news, I'm about to teach my first guitar lesson in many years and I'm pretty psyched about it. I had been thinking about getting back into teaching, but doing it in a way that focused on the particularly unusual techniques that I use like slapping and double-hand tapping. They're both techniques that I love watching other musicians employ in their playing because there's really no pre-established "right" or "wrong" way to use them, so everyone who uses them tends to come at that style of music with a really fresh and interesting approach. So I figured, why not teach more people about this and see what can come out of spreading this knowledge to even more people? Then out of nowhere, this guy who had seen me play somewhere came out to one of my gigs and asked if I'd ever thought about teaching that kind of a thing. So we set up a date to sit down and play around and here we are. I think it's a pretty cool prospect.

Other than that, I'm busy chasing a girl, trying to stay caught up on my booking stuff and counting down the days until I can spend a couple of weeks with my family in Maine on the coast. Shit, that's going to be nice. Oh, and I'm likely going to start a job that will pay me buckets more money than I'm making now. That will be nice. I guess that's all for now.

My Giants won! Yeah!

I don't think I've cared about the Super Bowl since I was probably 11 or 12 year's old but tonight was so much fucking fun to watch! My grandfather and I used to root for NY together and I got to talk to him on the phone after the game, which was awesome.

I've actually got a gig coming up in his neck of the woods, so hopefully we'll get to spend some time together.

Alright, I've got to go now because I might be drunk

I'm going to play my first gig in NYC tomorrow and I'm really fucking excited! It's not a big gig, but it's always fun to have an excuse to get out of Boston and go to fun places like NY.

Well, it's been a while since my last update. Since that time I have: spent roughly three weeks homeless and couch crashing at friends' places, then I moved into a new apartment, turned 25, went to VT to spend time with family members that I rarely get to see, been through countless hours of brain crushing union/management negotiations at my workplace, decided to change jobs after the new year, decided to start pushing my music into places outside of Boston, landed a gig in NYC, thought about home, made a drunken fool of myself and sat in a hot tub while snow fell on my head. Other stuff happened too, but I'm too lazy to recount it all and its not very interesting anyway.

Life has been remarkably fucked up recently. But I just rediscovered how therapeutic playing music can be.

I feel remarkably motivated to do shit, but it's too late to justify doing anything. I should really be asleep right now, because tomorrow I go up to upstate NY for my ex's graduation and I'll be gone all weekend , so I should conserve what stamina I have left for working tomorrow before I leave. However, I fear that Imay just blow off work for the sake of doing laundry, buying a sword and generally dicking off tomorrow. Especially if tomorrow ends up being as nice as the last few days have been. I need to play in the sun.

However, I'm going to be in Ohio next week visiting my parents for their birthdays, so I really have little excuse for dicking off this week, except that dicking off is all I really want to do. Stupid work and needing to do it for that I can pay bills.

Anyway, it'll be nice to see the fam and get out of the city for a few moments. I'll actually be gone a week, which will be nice. I know a lot of people don't even get that away from work a year, so I should be hapy with all the time off that I get. And you know what? I am. I'm going to enjoy the fuck out of myself. And then I'l come home to even more mayhem. I guess I"ll describe that when it happens though. Salud!