The Bushrod Chronicles

had a swell day today…

took les enfants to a state park built around an 1800s homestead… looked at horses… pigs… sheep… chickens… etc… then we had a picnic… it was good… kenzie chased a crow…

band practice last night was pretty good… was our first chance to kinda debrief from last week’s release party gig… kinda mellow practice… worked on some brand new songs… have to say they show a bit o’ promise…

was a little bittersweet though… the rehearsal studio we’ve been frequenting for the last nine months or so is shutting down… izza bummer as we dug it there big time… i reckon we’ll head back over and see our pal eden at evolution studios…

must admit i watched the super-mega-huge american idol program this season… haven’t done that before… i guess because whenever i heard/saw anything about it in the past it involved folks singin’ some new school/r&b/soul/croonin’ stuff which isn’t my fave… this season however they had a rocker dude or two so it was sorta fun to see…

however… what the hell’s up with the randy jackson judge feller???… he’s got an awesome resume and more often than not i agree with his assessments… but c’mon… yo dog… keepin’ it real… when the ladies are up in front of you “man” and “dude” are not the right salutations to be using… my opinion i guess…

karen’s mum arrives for her visit tomorrow eve… the fence project commences bright and early saturday morn… i think i’ll keep a little photo journal of the undertaking… and if i don’t completely hose it and have to call in the professionals i’ll post some pix of my work…

so we’ve got this fence…

actually… around our whole fenced in area we’ve got 5 different types of fences… our predecessors in this fine abode had a sort of slap-it-together-with-what-ya-got type mentality from what i can figure…

karen’s mum is coming on friday for a visit and karen is going to take a couple of extra days off over the holiday weekend so the time seems right to replace the main fence around the side of the yard… which as it turns out also is the main offender in lookin’ crappy and general overall ghetto-ness of construction…

so i’m figuring out how to replace this bad boy… the yard has been surveyed… discussions have been held w/ home depot and lowe’s employees who have a clue… the materials list is created… suppose all i gotta do now is do it… and i reckon that little adventure will commence first thing saturday morning…

seems i’ve got shingles… how bizarre… i sure seem to get some weird stuff when i get sick… a year or two ago i had meningitis… from what i can tell both of these are somewhat rare-ish… i think in my group o’ friends only one other person has ever had shingles…

anyway… kinda blows because its caused by the chicken pox virus and tugboat hasn’t has his vaccination yet… so i tried to sorta avoid him over the weekend… which wasn’t much fun… i’m hosing myself down w/ antibacterial hand sanitizer constantly so that i don’t infect the lil’ feller… i’d be very upset if i put him through the chicken pox now…

… uh… and it hurts… hah…

anyhoo… the doc gave me some badass medicine so hopefully it’ll be done soon…

well that was a fine time indeed… lotsa folks came out to see our little shindig… the folks at the central were awesome… couldn’t have asked for a much better night than that… thanks to everyone for making it so cool…

made for a bit of a long day yesterday though… les enfants didn’t much care that dad was out late the night before acting all goofy and rock-star-like…

steve took a few pictures and has linked to his flickr page from the band site… there we’re some pals taking pictures too… hopefully we’ll get copies that we can chuck up there too for your viewing pleasure…

so tonight’s the night… hopefully all the local-type folks we love and adore will be joining us this eve at the central for some spank brand rock ‘n’ roll hi-jinks… should be a rollicking good time methinks… details at the band website…

on an unrelated note… i’m having a blast screwin’ around with sony’s acid music creation software… i got a copy of their bare bones version when i bought a magazine the other day… took about 20 minutes to get the basics down and now i’m bustin’ out phat block rockin’ beats baby!!!… hah… and they have what appears to be a very cool support/community site as well called acid planet… i think i shall embark on a side career as an internationally adored producer of jungle/trance/house/trip-hop/industrial soundscapes o’ looooove…

so once again its been too long since a post… seems with this whole stay-at-home-dad thing they’re just gonna be a bit less frequent… for a while at least…

so let’s see… what’s been going on???…

the big ol’ ep release party is this coming wednesday… read all about it at the spank website…

along those lines we had a fine practice on weds and everyone’s feeling excited and ready to rock… come on along for the adventure if you can… should be a good evening and we’re gonna sell the cds for the rock bottom release-party-promo-price of five u.s. dollars… how can you go wrong i ask???…

speaking of the cd and the website… guitar player steve has uploaded .mp3s of the cd tracks for yer enjoyment… if you like ‘em drop us a line and tell us so… that’d make us happy… and if you really like ‘em and would like a bona-fide actual compact disque to call yer own let us know that too and we’ll get one to you… for the present you can send us an email… soon we’ll have some sort of order form on the site to expedite the whole process…

on a kinda related note i got an email through the band website from my old pal scott, co-founder of my official first-rock-band-ever the trash monquis… s’been ages and ages since we talked and i miss the feller… he and his son have reason to return to the great northwest for a visit so i’m hoping we can all hang out for a while… should be fun…

and just this morning in the mails i received my latest shipment from the cd club… two absolute classics from bob dylan… “blonde on blonde” and “blood on the tracks”… the cd gods we’re hating on me last year on our group fly-fishin’/golfin’/beverage enjoyin’ (yee-haw) trip and i somehow lost 15 or so primo cds… and as it turns out they were pretty much the 15 or so most primo ones from my collection… a bummer indeed… so after 11 months of hoping they were gonna show up miraculously i finally bit the bullet and am starting to replace ‘em… and these two delicious lil’ morsels from mr. dylan are the first to be so replaced… he’s one of my all time favorite artistes and these two discs are two of my favorites of his…

cheers to the mums out there…

and a special happy mother’s day to my lovely bride karen… you’re an awesome mother in addition to being my best pal… i love you very much!!!…

mackenzie and i did a little art project for the special day… sebastian looked on and offered emotional support…

note my added-after-the-fact apostrophe… grammar!!!…

had a spankin’ good saturday…

i mentioned my folks are in town… we were joined by our pals the laceys and wheelers for a nice lil’ bbq… was lots of fun… with all my fave ingredients… meat… amigos… kiddies… and the smell o’ freshly cut grass…

and miller lite…

mmm… ketchup…

lessee… what’s happened since the last post???…

been having lotsa fun with them kiddies o’ mine… had some adventures i’ll write about in homedad…

enjoyed the afforementioned pint(s) with guitar player steve and mr. reynolds… a fine chap that it was a pleasure to meet and … err… drink with… i see he’s back safely with his cup(s) o’ tea… this is good…

had a wholly enjoyable band practice on wednesday… getting geared up for the release party…

i stumbled upon the story of the jennifer wilbanks toast… the whole idea of which is funny i guess… it was very amusing to read all of the comments and emails associated with the auction… i actually had a rather sleepless night and some odd dreams after reading about this… hmmnn…

mr. lacey sent me a link to read and i found myself looking at modern drunkard magazine… “say it loud, say it plowed”…

can’t believe its been a week since i last posted here… i think that’s by far the longest spell without a spew into cyberspace since i started doing this blog deal…

kids asleep… now i spew…

trying to think about what’s happened in the last week…

guitar player steve and i did some talking at band practice last week and decided that the setlists we had compiled for the ep-release blowout were inferior… so i reckon i’ve juiced ‘em to where they need to be… pending review from the lads i think we’ll hammer at ‘em for the next two practices and then be good to go… looking forward to the party… details at www.spank-band.com…

we decided to embark on some yard beautification over the weekend… looks a little more beautiful i guess… and i’m really sore now… thanks to our pal samantha the arboriste / landscaper extraordinaire for all her help… and i’m really sore now… oh… said that already…

my folks have embarked on a cross country train voyage to come visit… sounds pretty cool to me… i dig trains and i think i’d like to have an extended trip someday via the rails…

i decided over the weekend… at about 6:00 saturday eve i think… that my absolute ideal “american” thing is having friends over for a bbq in the afternoon sun with the glorious smell of freshly cut grass still in the air… i’m an immigrant to this here fine country so i get to say cheeseball stuff like that from time to time… hah…

and tonight i think i shall be joining amigo steve for a libation… tom reynolds of random acts of reality is over from the mother country for a visit and he and steve are meeting this afternoon… his blog is one of the first i ever got into reading… and its also one of the best out there… so i’m looking forward to meeting him over a pint… should be a laugh…

critters buggin’…