cover me, slowly

so the trip. it was good. relaxing for the most part. the 26th and 27th were understandably and unsurprisingly a bit stressful- even a 30-minute strings set proved to be quite a bit to get together in two days. of course, i expected it. but at the end of the day we pulled it off. i think it was a success and everyone told me it sounded really good. the strings sounded quite nice and courtney and grace did an awesome job. billy always does an awesome job- so there were no surprises there. my mom kept remarking on how serious billy looks when he plays the cello. once the show was over relaxing and unwinding was really easy to do. even christmas day was more relaxing than last year was (not that that's a big surprise either). we stuck to a policy of not doing anything that we didn't feel like doing, but we still got a good amount in. going to the cashew was a lot of fun. a good mix of people. it degraded real quickly once stefanie suggested we go over to the condo to drink the sixth glass bottles. wow. i have never seen a group of people get shit-faced faster than that. i was the only one that didn't participate in the drinking of the sixth-glass since i was the one who had to drive stefanie home. that stuff truly is brutal. in a brilliant way. dad, if you're reading please keep that stuff coming- i love it.
stefanie and some dude sitting in the aisle next to us almost got into it on the plane. we were pulling out onto the tarmac to take off and this guy wouldn't stop talking on his cell phone and a flight attendant came by and said 'sir, please turn that off' and he still wouldn't so stefanie tried to tell him to get off of his cell phone as nicely as she could and he got all huffy- 'i know the flight procedure, miss' and she said something like 'well, i just thought you might not have heard them' and he got all sarcastic-like 'thanks soooo much for reminding me.' it's always fun when you have someone much older (and supposedly more mature) than you acting like a complete baby to you.
is it possible that people could just grow the fuck up for a change- everyone is so sensitive these days that you can't say 'boo' to them without them getting offended or touchy or shitty. she really wasn't being rude to this guy at all and he should've hung up his phone way back when they closed the doors and a flight attendant asked him to hang up. there's just no call for getting offended when someone says something to you about it when you ignore repeated reminders. this is something i'm beginning to just want to blame on the cell-phone culture that is beginning to infect our society. people just have no manners or consideration when they're using cell-phones. if i am at a restaurant and i absolutely have to use my phone i excuse myself from the table and go outside to take the call. it's not that big of a deal.
anyway, other than that and a really rough and scary landing (it was very wobbly) the flight home was fine. it was very fast- they made up all of the time that we'd lost in the delay.
i was a nervous wreck on the way to the airport- i'd thought that i was going to be able to get through the day without falling victim to my ridiculous pre-flight nerves, but i was proven wrong wrong wrong. wow. before the flight to kc i'd gotten my nervousness out of the way on the 23rd- of course it lasted all day. it also had to do with how horrible the weather was and the fact that i spent most of the day hearing everyone's horror stories about how no one could get out of town on a plane, train or automobile.
some shit might be about to go down at work. the owner asked me about getting certified today. it's possible that that means that he intends to fire anthony as he is the only other person who is food handling certified at work. it's one of the main reasons that he tolerates the constant lateness and saltiness with the customers- anthony is certified and that way he doesn't have to go to the trouble to have anyone else get certified. but now that i'm mr. dependable there (not a tall order, let me tell you) it might become me *shivers*.
read some more yelp reviews of the shop today. uncovered another little gem of a modern phenomena- the working stiff 'yuppie' inferiority complex relationship with 'hipsters.' it's a real paradigm folks and it needs to be addressed. read the review at the top dated 12/17/08. i normally don't give much of a shit about these because a lot of it is to be expected- people typically want organic hand-made sandwiches/coffee drinks but they want them as quickly as they get a big mac at mcdonald's because our culture is held up on a giant pillar of complete impatience and complete disregard for how long things take, but this really is too much. my favourite feature is the lecture on 'not judging a book by its cover' and then the complete admission at the end that this person doesn't even bother to take their own advice. i work at beans and bagels- i am not a fucking stoner. i smoke weed very seldomly, but by no means with any amount of regularity that would justify anyone writing me off by putting me in that drawer. i would be willing to bet the person (who wrote this review) that they probably smoke more weed than i do. i'm not a fan of the snarkiness that seems to be running amok at my place of work either, but it's not very fair to cast aspersions about everyone in the shop when you're only talking about one person (which is what a majority of these reviews do) and on top of that commit it to printed words. i guess i should be relieved at my absence amongst these reviews as it means that i haven't pissed any one of these people off enough for them to write me off on a website. but what to me is the most infuriating of all is this ridiculous paradigm showing up- why the fuck do people who consider themselves to have 'real jobs' and who have benefits and decent living-wage-allowing salaries, paid vacations, dental/vision plans, kids, life insurance, savings accounts with money in them, checking accounts that they don't have to watch like hawks and check their statements every day give two shits what someone in a fucking coffeeshop/record store/bike shop thinks of them? just look at what a huge stink some of the people on that page make about the fact that they're being served coffee by 'hipsters' make merely about the fact that they are 'hipsters.' who the fuck cares? it's a coffee shop that you spend 15 minutes of your morning in max? futhermore everyone there is paid minimum wage and our lives aren't padded with the comforts that their lives are- we don't have any of those benefits. i don't want to make this a 'selling out' debate because i've come to find that that's kind of a myth- everyone makes choices and sacrifices. being a 'hipster' working in a coffee shop/record store/bike shop what have you means that you've sacrificed these pillars of stability because you're just looking for something that you aren't going to get in an office environment. damned if i could tell you what it is because it's different for everyone so basically i don't understand why there has to be such a fucking hubbub about it from someone who's in a much-vaunted better social standing than i am. if i want to work in an environment where i can wear whatever i want then what skin is it off anyone else's teeth? is it harmful to anyone's pride? is it really such an awful thing? that's a choice i've made and have to live with AND serve people who are in a much better social standing than i am and listen to them bitch and moan about how i'm a fucking 'hipster.' where the fuck does the inferiority complex come from? what do they have to feel inferior about? i really want someone to tell me. i'm not defending how any of my co-workers treat customers because i've always felt uncomfortable when someone i'm working with gets shitty with the customers over nothing. i don't make a practise of doing that- i actually like the majority of the customers who come in. i just don't like this theme of people thumbing their noses like cowards and bitching on the internet when they really don't have anything to bitch about and i don't like being corralled in with people who i work with just because i'm there- i don't act that way and i don't appreciate being included in the catch-all write-offs.
or i guess i could just try to accept this fact and move on with my life. i'd be happy to if i didn't get weird looks every time i stop at a truck stop while i'm travelling or get randomly solicited for pot by someone who looks the part of a 'straight' and having to just laugh it off when they tell me to my face 'i know you're a stoner- you look like one. come on- i know you have some pot.' guess what- I FUCKING DON'T SO GO GET IT YOURSELF MR. HIGH AND MIGHTY JUDGEMENTAL PANTS. yay, rant over.
i got some really nice music for christmas and a few great dvd boxed sets. stefanie bought me 'microcastle' on vinyl. it came with 'weird era continued' which is nice. plus the vinyl is white and sounds like the aural equivalent of a warm down blanket. stefanie's mom gave us about 40 lps. we now have every beatles album in existence, as well. at least i think we do. we have 'magical mystery tour,' 'sgt. pepper,' the white album and the heap of early tracks. she also gave us a buffalo springfield double lp collection and the first black sabbath album. there's some dusty springfield, buddy holly, kinks and other ill shit mixed in there. nice. we were only able to manage to carry about 1/3 of it home with us though because it was pretty heavy carrying all of them on the plane.
i finally got ahold of a tasty nina nastasia bootleg that i was trying to get through those ridiculous bit torrent sites (i can't for the life of me figure that shit out- so annoying). i've only listened to a little over half of it. i have the next two days off.
i want to send out some sympathy to my co-worker emily who had to take one of her cats to be put to sleep today. i am not sure if she had to have both of them put down or just the one- but they are not very old cats. i don't even think that she's had them for a full year. after that she has to go out of town for an intense family visit.
i have to test out my new and amazing mics and preamp as well. i would like to give the harmonica mic a maiden voyage in particular. i figured out how to get it sit on a mic stand (it doesn't have a place to clip it on- but can be easily jerry-rigged). i am intending mostly to sing out of it as i am a huge fan of how jason pierce does this and i think it will prove to be a nice effect for the next record we are working on (and have already started). in fact i think i shall go to do so right now. tah for now! happy new year. my only resolution is to concentrate on decreasing my debt.