Funny The Way It Is

Said goodbye to a special someone tonight.  We haven’t really been hanging out for a terribly long time but I have still really enjoyed spending time with her, having intelligent conversations (as well as not so intelligent conversations) together, and just being around her awesome personality.  I’m really stoked for summer, yet I am not so excited to only be able to talk with her over the phone.  It’s strange how terrible the timing can be with things like this.  Bugger.

In other news, I’ve been watching a fair bit of Angel recently and after about a season and a half of snooze alerts and Clifford the Big Red Dog kind of episodic connection, I have finally hit the good stuff.  The episodes have finally begun to get hazy and non-existent at the corners and have started turning into one big story instead of several episode length tales coincidentally involving the same folks.  Angel has started to do for me what Buffy was able to do so well; it is telling a story that makes sense, is compelling, is imaginative, and is comfortable with what it is.  Sure, it would be easy for a show like this to either be way too serious (I mean, come on, it’s about a vampire who finds many of his answers by singing for a demon in a bar) or else way too goofy.  Instead, Joss and the other producers were able to level out Angel in a way that allows for a stellar plot progression supplemented by comedy, drama, and spoofy fun.  To anyone starting out with this show, I have the following message: Push on, brave soul, and you will be heartily rewarded.  I just hope it continues along this path.

Also, as a final note, this from Jonathan Carroll’s twitter today.

Makes me wonder why I define love the way I do.

A good night

Band practice rocked tonight.  We came up with a new song, played through and worked out a newish song and rocked one of our older songs.  It was absolutely incredible.  I don’t know what it is about playing with those guys but things just seem to come together.  A good portion of our songs were written on the spot, in the band room, with one of us just starting out playing something neat or catchy and then everyone else jumping in and rocking out.  The new song that we birthed tonight began with me just messing around with a funky drumbeat.  G looked over at me and said, “Keep playing that.”  I did and within a few minutes we were finishing up playing through the song in its entirety.  Fun doesn’t even touch how great that was.  I had forgotten how amazing it is to just let yourself go in the music you are playing.  Tonight, hitting those drums as hard as I could, I let go of all of the little bits of heavy darkness pulling down on my brain and it was perfect.  Jamming out with my buds was exactly what I needed.

So, in summary:

New Song: Check

Polished Newish Song: Check

Mental Enema: Check

The little things and the big things

Today is an awesome day.  The sun is a nice warm blanket for the bits of snow still scattered around and the wind is strong enough to push a smile onto your face and light enough to play with your hair.  I woke up this morning after having a pretty rough night last night.  It was filled with little sleep, lots of awake and big time headaches.  But I still woke up this morning.  And the sun is still shining today.  The headphones to my ipod have been disfunctional for quite some time now, the left earbud having stopped working seemingly of its own volition.  Yet this morning, as I strapped on my backpack and turned on my ipod, a mobile surround sound experience that I haven’t had for what seems like forever hit me and I couldn’t help but smile a little.  I know what you’re thinking and yes, I do walk around with both headphones in even though only one of them usually works.  Why?  I’ll tell you as soon as I know.  But it worked for me today.  Jimmy Eat World rocked both of my ear drums this morning, for a little while at least.  The left bud had totally fizzled out by the time I got to class, a mere 1.5 song walk from my room, but hey, I’ll take what I can get.

Thinking about how happy that little surprise made me helped me to think about things that I have been worrying about.  Grad school, family, summer work, friends leaving, grades, tests…all of this crap has been sitting in the swamp of my mind for weeks and it felt good to feel some relief, just for a little while.  I realize that having my little happy-fest over my headphone working isn’t going to solve any of those problems but it gave me the little boost that I needed to realize that those problems are going to come along down the road and all I need to do is get ready and do my best when they get here.

It takes a day like this to help me appreciate all the days not like this.