the rain

yesterday was heavenly. i loved it. if you're lamenting the end of summer, i'm really sorry but i don't feel your pain. i am beyond relieved that fall is beginning to return. i am prepared for a few more hot days, but today is the second day i was able to wear long sleeves.
as i've written here many a time summer is quite the endurance test for me. since there's been some evidence of the coming of fall it feels like a massive weight has been lifted off of my shoulders. what i will say is that it was really quite a mild summer- i'm very relieved. we managed to tough it out- i think we slept on the floor in the living room with the a/c on for only one night. i slept a second night with it on by myself. every other night we slept in the bedroom and just trained an army of fans onto ourselves. so at least it wasn't too terrible. we got another one of those really beautiful and temperate junes. i have to say that i do enjoy those quite a bit. they are an unexpected surprise. so i am looking forward to winter. i love it. last winter was one of the most beautiful times i've had in a really long time. i loved all of the snow. i loved all of the ridiculously cold temperatures. i had to keep it to myself because at the coffee shop i had so many people complaining to me about how miserably cold it was while inside i was thinking 'man, i could take another three months of this- i love it.' it actually snowed in kansas city over christmas time. i can't remember a time that it's done that since i was a little kid. i didn't like landing in a blizzard- that was a bit scary- and the ride home on the highway with stefanie's dad driving was harrowing to say the least (most of it wasn't the way he was driving but the way other people were), but i think it was worth it. we had a great time.
this year at christmas is going to be kind of different. we're not going home for as long and we're flying in on christmas eve again, which is kind of a bummer because there's no lead-in to christmas. you land in the evening, go home, eat dinner, go to sleep, wake up and it's christmas and then it's over. i'm a big fan of the lead-in, but that was the cheapest deal- flying out on christmas eve. it's nicer at the airport too because no one really travels that day and people are very quiet and calm that day.
the tour starts a week from tomorrow. i have managed to not save a dime from last week's tips. amazing. not a dime. we made some money at the show- about $45 or so (i think). that's half of the igo charges. good enough for me. for a while i didn't think that we were going to get paid at all because the place was anything but packed, but we still made some money anyway. we sold a few cds, which is always nice. mostly the new one. i get very excited when people buy it because i'm so proud of it. it's incredibly gratifying to see how well it's turned out. i lived with the record as an idea for about ten years. to have been able to make it and have it turn out so well on practically no budget is amazing. i'm excited for what's coming up next. we're going to record some strings for the ep on thursday evening. exciting. i might try to get some recording done next week before we go. it'd be really nice to have the ep wrapped up or nearly wrapped up before we leave. there isn't much to do. i think a few days of work would probably get it incredibly close. the rest of the strings will have to wait until october when i go to visit kc again.
i'm also getting to the point with the whole money situation where i am not too worried about how things will turn out. even if i don't get to go back to chase then i think that i'll be able to manage. there won't really be anything to save for for a few months. the ep will be fairly cheap to do, so it shouldn't be a huge problem to get it done and out by hopefully christmas time. if it gets put on hold until next year that wouldn't be the end of the world either. with everything we've gotten accomplished this year it amazes me that my debt isn't bigger. once we're back it'll be good to get back into the swing of things how they normally go.
i'm going to try to be optimistic. i think that we'll be okay for the tour. so many things have been very pleasant surprises along the way, so hopefully this will follow suit. hopefully. either way we'll get through it. we always do.
next year will be a bit less about doing more things. we're going to try to do less things i think. we have a record to finish, after all, so it might be a repeat of 2007- where we hardly did much of anything. i'd like to get my debt in order. i know that i say that every year, but dammit, i'm going to do it. i must.