"I wish I had a pair of bongos...BONGO FURY!"

I'm sitting here listening to early Pink Floyd (I favor anything from before Dark Side Of The Moon. After that...meh...), and I truly believe that Syd Barrett's story is a tragedy.


Pink Floyd - Arnold Layne
(Let me know what you think!)

Shelley is helping make my Halloween costume. I refuse to divulge, you'll just have to be surprised.

A bachelor party is in its early stages of development for Eric. I fear I may have waited too long before I gave it thought, but it's not like I had a big celebration in mind with a Ferris wheel and fireworks. It will probably just be a bunch of us dudes going out for a beer (in Nick's 19-year-old case, a root beer). I'm so glad Eric didn't want some epic stripper-related blowout.

Then again, if I had a brother like that I wouldn't be attending the wedding, let alone standing as his best man.

It's really exciting. Every other girl Eric dated for the most part was a hosebeast of one brand or another. Like me, he has some interesting exes. One is married to a guy twice her age with two kids. Another turned out to have nothing really in common with him at all, ditching him for a guy who was into Nascar, trucks, and country music. I believe Dan Crall (Eric's college friend who introduced me to Masonna, Merzbow, David Lynch, and John Waters - in other words, you have him to blame!) referred to that one as a "stereotypical American bitch."

For the first time ever, with Maddie I can say I'm happy for Eric. I know I've said it before, but it really will change things. Mom has kicked around the idea of leaving Seymour once Nick was either in college or finished with college. Now that he's in college, I wonder if it will really happen. I say this because Eric and Maddie will at least be in Seymour for a few years since they've bought a house.

It will be a lot easier for Mom and Dad to move since Mom turned in her resignation notice at the nursing home on Monday. Not for two weeks. Not even for one. It was effective Friday. She had been looking at a job as head nurse at the Jackson County Health Clinic downtown (just a few blocks from the house), interview, job shadow and all. Her job shadow was scheduled for Monday, in fact.

She called to tell me how happy she was that she'd broken her issue into two parts: 1. quitting the nursing home position, and 2. keeping her options open regarding the job downtown. I had told her before Oktoberfest weekend even if the Health Clinic job is a bum gig she might as well have a crappy job that's three blocks away versus a half-hour drive one way.

It gets better: I got a call later Monday. She had turned down the job downtown as well. As I've learned, she has a tendency to do this every once in a while - quit and free fall until another job lands in her lap. When she quit the hospital in 2000, she took classes to get her real estate license, only to ditch it (after selling one or two houses) later that year to work at a doctor's office.

I hate that she was so proud of her tackling her issue, but I really hate that she tried to pass this off to me as something I should do if I ever encountered a dilemma. I'm well aware of deadlines and potential crises looming ahead. And I know to keep the graduate school applications in one pile and the research material for my Kinks project in another one. They are unrelated. But quitting a job is a two-part process, not two separate occasions: find a "better" job, quit your present one.

A dumb thing to do.

After the Zappa test on Tuesday, Andy and I had a bitch session of sorts. All this stuff with Mom was on my mind (nobody's going to go hungry, it's just I know, I KNOW until she finds another job she is going to grumble about expenses. And it's not like grad school applications are free. He who asks for money shall hear the bitching.), but Andy is having tendon problems in his left arm. For a guitarist, this is never good. He's had to cancel his show in December and had his surgery been on a Tuesday or a Thursday - you know how doctors are, your elbow can wait if it's good weather for golf - he would have needed me to cover Zappa for him.

I hate that his loss would have been my gain in a way, but his surgery has been scheduled for a Friday. Crisis averted.

Today I picked up a whopping four albums from Landlocked Music - I've promised myself a reward once every third payday:
Neil Young - Harvest & On The Beach
Alice Cooper - Pretties For You & Easy Action (his/their - the band was also called Alice Cooper until 1975 - first and second album, which were put out on Frank Zappa's Straight Records)


Alice Cooper - Refrigerator Heaven

David Briggs, who produced Easy Action to the band's dismay, also did all of Neil Young's albums aside from Harvest until his death in 1995, and did a damn good job. Small world...

I hate working on weekends, Shelley keeps reminding me it's extra income...but I'd like to see her deal with this region's finest batch of assholes for 5-8 hours on a Saturday or an entire open-to-close shift on a Sunday, where it seems EVERY nutjob has been let out of their little padded room and they have all congregated at the mall.

We'll see. I really like the idea of working at least through the Holidays. Pete has asked me how many hours I'd like...I told him as much as he needed me. I don't really want to twiddle my thumbs for the duration of winter break, which will run from December 20th to January 10th. For some reasons, that 22-day stretch seems so much longer than ever. Longer than that winter break where Shelley and I fell in love back around 2005/2006 - when I had my tonsils removed. Longer than my first Christmas as a non-Christian in 2006 and anticipated Shelley telling her parents off.

Maybe it's because I'll be in Bloomington. Maybe it's because Shelley won't be here. I get her place all to myself so I can watch Phyllis. This is a mixed blessing: yes, I won't be at my actual apartment and yes, it is nice every now and again to have some time/space to myself, but I have no idea how busy I'll be at Spencer's, which in turn will affect how busy my social life will be during break.

I'm hungry, I have work in 13 hours, and I've run out of things to talk about.

Alex