so much, so much...

it feels so nice to have a day off finally. things have been nice and crazy lately. i am forcing myself to do nothing today. well, i might make a new screen. some of the t-shirts came in the mail and i've messed up about eight of the black ones (basically all of the black ones that i had). i think i figured out what the problem is- the ink was drying too fast, so it wasn't sticking to the fabric- the prints were more and more faded. did i give up? no, of course not- i just ruined about $45 worth of t-shirts that i paid for with a credit card. it's been a bit of a disaster. i've been trying not to think too much about it. i went into it with some really unrealistic expectations- mainly because the first t-shirt i tried to silk-screen went perfectly pretty much, so i just figured all of them would. the first one i did is still the best of all of the ones i've attempted. basically i need to get started on the blue shirts and the screen for those hasn't been made just yet. if i don't do it today i would like to tomorrow and possibly try to start printing the other t-shirts. i really wish that i'd had enough crappy t-shirts to ruin before i started using the ones i needed. there might still be time to replace the ones i ruined before tour, but i'm beginning to think it wouldn't be such a good idea. i'm about to give up entirely on the idea i'm so disappointed in it.
we're also housesitting for jay and diana right now- and have been since last week. they will be back on wednesday afternoon i believe- we basically have to go straight from housesitting to our show at the empty bottle. i'm not too worried about it- we've played some good solid shows leading up to it and the empty bottle has a great sound system so that usually means we'll be fine. we also won't be rushed at all, so that can only help. i think we're shooting for around a 45 minute set bearing in mind that if we go over it won't be a big deal. it'll be very interesting to see how the whole thing turns out. i'm very curious to see what the turnout is like and how many people will stick around to hear us. since there are four bands the outlook isn't too good on that account in my mind. oh well, we'll just have to make the best of it.
two weeks from saturday the tour starts. yipes. i had no idea it was so close. it kind of snuck up on me. the finances are in a terrifying state. we were saving for a nice sized raft of funds, but as always pretty much everything which could go wrong has and every opportunity to fix this problem has been foiled. tips have been very lackluster. i think i have one last shot to rectify it, but i would be extremely surprised if it worked out. i'd be extremely surprised if the chase thing works out because i realised that i might have to do the training again and i don't think i can sanitize missing three more days of work at the coffee shop after missing 10 days just to go through the training again. i guess we'll just see...
to further push the financial troubles the store ended up being closed in the morning on tuesday. i only ended up missing out on about an hour-and-a-half of work. naturally the store is closed on labor day. it'll be nice to have a day off in the middle of my working week. i might try to put my pedal board together that day because that will save us so much time at the shows and then things will be less rushed and we won't forget to do important things, which we tend to do because we are always so rushed at shows.
before tour we are supposed to record with chris. i'm not 100% sure of what we'll be doing that day. 'sleep now...,' 'petals in a rainstorm' and 'no stars' are the most obvious and pressing ones. it crossed my mind to finish 'disappeared' at last, possibly even 'dried blooms in baby's breath' so that it doesn't have to be done later on, but who fucking knows... honestly...
i am just very tired right now and probably not making much sense. i have the car right now- had to go to the post office to pick up a package for stefanie. last saturday we spent all fucking day driving all over the fucking city- stefanie wanted to get her tattoo touched up and the guy who did the work lives over on grand and western, so after i was done with work i figured i'd head to our apartment and spend some time with our cats and feed them, but stefanie called me and wanted me to take the dog while she was getting her tattoo done which she insisted would take '30 minutes max.' well, it took an hour and a half and the car that we're driving around in has no a/c and the dog (he's a greyhound named seth) gets overheated very quickly if it's over 80 degrees. it was humid as fuck and over 90 all day on that saturday and i had to take him around for what ended up being an hour and a half. i was a little upset. this was after opening the store and working a full day. the pace has not really slowed down since that day. then after all of that we came to our apartment to practise. at least the weather got cooler. it's just been very difficult to relax and even more difficult to actually spend time with our cats. after i'm done here i need to head back to our apartment and spend some more time with them. then i have tomorrow off and then i have to go right back into the whole thing again. jay and diana's cats are used to being fed at 6am every morning, so they come into the bedroom and wake us up as early as 4am. as you can imagine all of this running around on practically no sleep is a little exhausting. it'd be a bit easier if we didn't have our own cats to take care of. but really, we like housesitting for them- their house is very nice, it's nice to have a car for a while, it's a refreshing change of pace to go stay out in evanston for a while and basically we really need the money. the payment for this is constituting about half of the money we will be taking on tour. basically i just tried to factor in the worst cost of gas and try to have the money on hand ahead of time so that if we happen to get paid decently at any of these shows (haw haw haw) then we have money to do fun things.
i think i'm going to wrap this shit up in a little bow then. love ya! see you tomorrow.