a chain of dandelions

the next record is nagging me to get going on it. half of it is already in the can, really, but this morning i woke up and all i could think about was getting it going. i have a new song called 'voices in the air' that i am planning on getting started today.
on another note i have to go home next week for my aunt jeanne's funeral. i need to buy my bus ticket. i think i'm going to go down on thursday night and come back over saturday night so i can work on sunday. it's going to cost about $100, but i really feel like i should go- the last few relatives that had passed away my parents have told me they don't see any reason for me to travel for the funerals. when my grandfather died (my mom's dad) my mom said that since i hardly knew him at all and that there wasn't really going to be a service (they were just going to take his ashes somewhere where he wanted them scattered) that i didn't really need to be there for it, but since we saw my aunt jeanne a lot i feel like i want to be there for the service. we shared a birthday and she was a really nice lady. we used to paint easter eggs in her basement every year with her grandchildren (who are all older than me and lauren). i'm also thinking of the next record because, naturally, i was thinking of getting some of the cello parts recorded if billy's up for it and then that way i could not do any recording when i'm back again in may. that would be really nice and it would make the time over my birthday a bit less frenzied, at least for me. i'm going to give billy a call today to see what he'd prefer to do. i think that if i work things right it would be about five parts i'd need him to do- about three of them ones that he would be free to make up himself. having chris to work with helps as well to give me more flexibility working with billy. some prewritten parts that i would normally give to billy i can have chris play since he plays the viola so if those don't get done by billy i can always have chris play them.
as far as how other things are going, they are fairly good as far as i know. i'm anxious to see my paycheck for the last two weeks- which i'll get tomorrow. it was my first pay period working the five day schedule i'm currently working. i clocked in almost 80 hours- which was more than i expected and this means that i might get a paycheck that will pay all of my bills for the beginning of may- the rent, car insurance, health insurance and some igo bills. if it's large enough to cover those bills (that is my difficult period during the month) then i can pay more money to my credit cards. it also makes it easier to save some of my tips and i can still do enough fun things with the rest of my tips. the goal is to get my debt under control and then when it's paid (in about two years or so) i will have a ridiculous amount of financial flexibility and it will make it easier to build a studio or take stefanie to europe- two things i've been trying to do since about 2005 or so. not to mention it'll make it easier for us to go on tour.
speaking of touring i finally sent out the fliers to the colleges. we finally printed them up and stefanie is going to drop them in the mailbox to go out today. i am really keeping my fingers crossed for these- even if only one of them works out it will really help us make that happen. i do predict it is still going to be quite the financial undertaking. i haven't really looked into car rental deals- but from what i've heard renting by the week is cheaper than renting by the day. i'm trying to stay positive about it- it's a very scary prospect- it's going to require a lot of time off from work and it's going to be quite a feat to pull off- we are trying to get it so that we are playing every night until we get to seadrift and then portland. if the college shows don't work out i have places where i can try to get house shows, but the college shows really need to work out so that we can break even (or at least dramatically lessen the blow). house shows aren't paying for a two week tour where we have to rent a car and buy gas with prices as they are right now. i keep kicking myself that we sold the van, but driving around in that van on that lengthy of a tour would definitely cost just as much as renting a smaller car with better gas mileage. the ideal would be if we still had my old honda civic. even that would be a wild card as that car had a lot of problems as well, so really we aren't in that bad of a position. i wish it was ten years ago because doing a tour like this back then would've been a snap. 79 cents a gallon. it was real, folks.
this is really long again and just contains boring musings, so i will end it.