Playing hooky

I used to sluff class when I was in high school to go home and listen to this song. I seriously would. I'd just walk home, listen to this song a few times, and then walk back to school. I never got caught either. In fact the only time I ever got caught sluffing I had gone to my friend Allen's house during my wood shop class. We ate microwave pizzas and pushed a slinky down the stairs a few times.

The next day I got called into the principals office and interrogated about where I had been. Well, it wasn't much of an interrogation. The principal asked where I had been and I told her. Naturally, I didn't rat out my friend so I had to take a 10% grade cut in the class I skipped. When asked if I understood the consequences of my actions I remember looking at her and saying, "It's just shop."

The Cure

I surprised Amanda today by getting us tickets to The Cure concert next weekend. I am incredibly excited. They've been one of my favorite bands since I was a freshman in high school. When I first met Amanda, she made the "mistake" of telling me The Cure was her favorite band. I thought she was really cute and wanted her to come to my house so when she said that she liked The Cure I told her she needed to come over some time and check out all the rare Cure records I have. I have a pretty decent collection. The rarest one I've got is a 7" picture disc for The Caterpillar in it's original PVC sleeve. Not too shabby.

Anyway, Amanda knew what I was up too when I invited her over. I didn't really want to show off my record collection, I just wanted a really cute girl to come to my house. Obviously, my ploy worked.



Here's excerpts from one of my old journal entries about this great band.

"May 30th, 1992

I DID IT!!! I GOT TICKETS!!! 4 tickets to see The Cure on July 7th- OH MY BUT I AM EXCITED!!! I AM GOING TO SEE THE CURE IN CONCERT!!! OH YEAH!!!! I'm going to write a letter to my cousin Theresa to tell her- She'll be jealous! I was talking to Brando today- He got tickets too you see- BUT- I am on row 21. He is on row 135- I laughed most heartily upon hearing this news! I AM SO EXCITED!!! I CAN HARDLY WAIT, I AM GOING TO SEE THE CURE. LIVE IN CONCERT!!! These are the songs I want them to play: Lullaby, A Forest, A Strange Day, Short Term Effect, Cut, Killing An Arab, The Walk, Primary..."

The list of songs goes on and on and on. In all I listed more than 50 songs. The way I was acting you'd think I was a 14 year-old-girl who just met an American Idol finalist.

Two more songs

I've spent a good bit of time lately working on hymns. Use the download links to check them out.

Israel, Israel, God Is Calling
Redeemer of Israel

The first one is more of a (ahem) "traditional" arrangement of the hymn. It's got some pipes in it which I will probably bring down in the mix, but over all I like how it sounds. One of the guys at work, who hasn't heard the song before, said it reminded him of Irish immigrants crossing the western plains, and since this tune was a favorite of early English converts who moved to SLC, I guess that's close enough.

The second one is more like the other arrangements I posted the other day.

This stuff has been a lot of fun to work on, but I'll write more about that later.

Religious music

Amanda has been encouraging me to record versions of some of my favorite hymns. Obviously I appreciate music, but the trouble is, with LDS music it's hard to be enthusiastic about it. Most of it is just so boring. And when an effort is made to make it so the music isn't boring, it's so corny it's embarrassing. Isn't a person's relationship with God supposed to be rewarding and fulfilling? And if that's the case, why does so much LDS music sound like the soundtrack for a coma? I don't know the answer to that. I'm sure it lies somewhere in our culture's tendency to celebrate the bland.

Anyway, here's a few of the songs Amanda has been encouraging me to record. Maybe they're embarrassing. I don't know.

just click the song titles:
Come, Come Ye Saints (download link)
All Creatures Of Our God and King
High On The Mountain Top
Reunion/The Spirit Of God (I did this one for Amanda right after we learned we can be sealed sometime soon.)

On a related note, I once did a story about a guy who knits all sorts of different clothing. He was very good at it and his life story was amazing. He said something though that was very insightful about life along the Wasatch Front. He said that he loves to knit. He loves knitting all sorts of items. He loves to knit colorful items. But here, people only like stuff if it's brown. If he makes a brightly colored hat, nobody will buy it. If he makes a brown hat, it sells quickly.

Amanda has a red sweater the guy made. I have the brown hat. Doesn't surprise me at all that Amanda went for the colorful one.

Here's one more song for you to check out. It's an arrangement of a hymn done by my friend Micah. I love this one. It's by his band Vista:Four. I was in the band for awhile (after they recorded this song) and it was one of the most rewarding times I ever had musically. I'll have to post some of the stuff we did at another time, but since I'm on the topic of religious music, I thought I'd share this one too.

Elders of Israel (download link)

Exhaust problems

Ever try to find a metric nut that isn't a hex nut but is a square?

Monday I noticed my Vespa was a lot louder than normal. I also noticed the exhaust blew against the side of my leg instead of out the exhaust pipe. I knew I had a problem.

So I got down on the ground to check it out, and sure enough, the pipe leading into the expansion chamber had broken clean in two. Time for a new exhaust.

It's not a big deal because it's a super easy thing to fix. I called a guy I know who is a Vespa mechanic to see if he had any spare parts laying around he could sell and lucky me, he had an exhaust for a 1979 P-125X. He wanted 30 bucks for it. Awesome.

I went down to his shop and picked it up. He was missing a nut for it, but no big deal. I'll either use the one off my old muffler, or just pick up a new one at an auto parts store. He felt pretty bad about not having the nut and let me have the exhaust for 20 bucks. He's a super nice guy. It's why I always go back to him for stuff.

Anyway, I get home, get the broken muffler off. The nut I need is welded to the muffler. So I need to go get a new one.

How hard can it be to find a square head 10 1.5 metric nut?

I'll tell you how hard. It's impossible. I drove all over the city. Even went to the next county. Nobody had the right kind of nut. Not even the place that specializes in weird nuts. It was unbelievable. Most places didn't even have the size I needed at all. I bought all three, that's right, THREE nuts I found that were the right size but none of them were square heads. I got a hex nut, a hex nut with a vinyl lock in it and a wing nut. I just figured I'd see if one of them would work because I didn't have a lot of options.

Well, unfortunately I tried the one with the vinyl lock in it first. Everything was going just fine until the vinyl grabbed hold of the bolt. The nut started to spin and it's in such an awkward spot, you can't really do anything about it. I reversed the socket to pull the bolt back out, but it just spun that way too. Great. Now the bolt is locked into the nut and I can't tighten it up or get it loose to get the muffler off the bike.

By this time it was getting pretty late so the following morning I called a scooter parts place in Chicago to order some of the nuts.

They didn't have them either. Their mufflers all have the nut welded into place. It's better that way because the nut is so hard to find they just weld them on at the factory so people don't have to worry about it. I decided what the hell and just ordered a whole new muffler. That way all I have to do is get the current muffler off and I'll be golden. My Vespa is my main mode of transport. I really need it to get it going before I go back to work tomorrow so I paid out the nose to have the muffler overnighted to me.

This morning the muffler showed up but I still hadn't been able to get the other one off. That damn vinyl lock really did a number on me. I opened the box and of course checked the nut to make sure everything was fine. It wasn't fine. The nut is welded on in the wrong place. It was off center. Part of the hole is blocked. I couldn't get a bolt in it if I wanted too. Even if I drilled out the blockage, the nutt wouldn't line up with the holes on the scooter.

I called Chicago and explained what was going on. They're sending me a different muffler.

In the meantime I decided to go out back and see what I could do about the vinyl lock nut. I tried every combo of tools I could but nothing worked. Frustrated, I went to a nearby auto parts store and bought every type of tool that I thought might possibly help me out. I have all sorts of pliers now with weird angles and other odd shapes.

After a bunch of different attempts I was able to hold the nut in place and get the bolt off. The muffler is in my basement and hopefully tomorrow one with a properly welded nut will show up.

Replacing the muffler should have taken an hour tops. Instead I'm on my third day and I've spent close to $300.00 on parts, shipping and tools all because I didn't have one little nut.

That's life, eh?

no spring flowers

well its april 7th. we have absolutely no leaves , blooms, flowers, nothing. there has been a few wannabe tulips in our yard. thats it. hello!!!!!!! this is really starting to irritate me. i have been wearing a big winter coat all spring. i'm sick of it. o well i guess. what do you do.

sad day

When we first got up this morning Amanda turned on the tv and a live report was on about a seven-year-old girl who had been missing since the day before. I worked on the story quite a bit from the office, working with photographers in the field.

Her family were immigrants from Burma. They had lived in a refugee camp for 20 years before coming to America less than a year ago.

Police found in her in an apartment just a few doors down from where her family lived. She is dead and five men were taken into custody.

It's such a horrible thing.