And the skies are grey

When I moved to California over 25 years ago, one of several things that drove me absolutely nuts was the seasonal patterns.   A long dry summer and then a wet winter.   Two seasons--rainy and not.   Or as I used to tell friends and family back east,  "mudslide" and "fire" seasons.    I don't miss winter, and like the verbal concept of most Bay area folks when they refer to the snow as a destination rather than a weather pattern (that is "going to the snow), but the lack of rain over several months tends to wear on my soul to the extent that I feel like the parched earth of a Depression era farm.

We haven't had rain here in a while and its now January.   The promised rain of yesterday has not arrived and the sky hangs with dark clouds seemingly heavy with moisture.  Like a two year old with a coveted toy, it teases with the promise of things withheld.

While drummer boy doesn't particularly like rain, I need rain.  It allows me to slow down, to hibernate inside.  To drink coffee and defer plans.  To read and cuddle with the felines.  Its a panacea for all the ills I have as an introvert.

Now I know I've got a heart because it is breaking.

My oldest is heading back across the county to school again.   I won't see her until June.  And while there is Skype, phone calls and texts, its really not the same.  

Its the little things I'll miss like watching "How to Steal a Million", or having tea every day after work in my mother's portmerion mugs.  But most of all the intimacy of conversation that only comes about when you are both in the same room.

My dreams have been strange lately, full of odd messages wrapped in odder visuals.   Last night I dreamed that the Prose Edda had pronounced that I was the "changing human" and I had to always get tattoos.  My arms were intricate full sleeves of images of winter and spring, including lily of the valleys and bare trees.  I planted a broken off branch of a pussy willow tree and it began to grow new branches immediately from the scars in the branches.

Change is neither good nor bad.   Its change and you have to embrace it.   Even if your heart is breaking.

And there was MUSIC....

One of the things that brought drummer guy and I together was our mutual love for music.  Let me rephrase that: our obsessive love for music.   When we both determined that we were going to place our hearts in fate’s hands and move across the continent to live together for evermore, we had this minor issue of our respective record collections.   They were both huge; combined, they consisted of easily 1500 pieces of vinyl.   So we decided to throw a vinyl “gifting” party, giving away one copy of any of the duplicates that we owned.

There were a grand total of 125.  

So while we both love the Clash, Elvis Costello, Devo, Peter Gabriel and the Rolling Stones, our collection and tastes goes off in wild solitary directions from that point of reference.  He loves Zappa.  I love Nine Inch Nails.  He adores Neil Young and Dylan.  I love Desmond Dekker and any Stax song with Booker T and MGs as the house band.

This brings up an interesting dilemma during concert selections.  The eternal question arises:

  “How far I can push the musical tastes of the love of my life before until they would rather have a root canal than go to a concert?”

Over the years concerts have fallen into three categories:

Music you introduced me to who I now love as much as you do!

This list has grown over our 25 plus years together.  It’s at the point where I’ll buy the Billy Cobham tickets before drummer guy does.   Drummer guy gladly heads off to San Francisco every New Year’s Eve to party with me and every freaky Primus fan in the Bay area.   Stanley Clark?  Check.  Zappa Plays Zappa?  Of course.   Ian Hunter?  Sign me up Ticketmaster!   They Might Be Giants?  Let me get the Tshirt out from the last tour to wear.

Music I’m not really into but I love you so much I can spare 2 hours and maybe I’ll actually like it.

For me, this is Tom Petty and The Black Crowes.   Not a huge fan but I enjoy the concerts.  Crowded House, a drummer buy favourite falls into the same category.   For drummer guy,  Gang of Four was fun but not something he’d seek out himself as a concert experience.   Same with Tower of Power and Nine Inch Nails.

Sidenote on this list, the Residents (who I love) may be in the list but it’s too soon to tell.   Drummer Guy review:  “They sound like Captain Beefheart on acid”.   

Oh man, I’d love to go but I have that pesky dentist appointment!

To me there is a trifecta here:  Bruce Springsteen, Dylan and Neil Young.   While I have not seen Dylan in concert yet, I don’t even want to go there.   I did see Springsteen with drummer guy once.  And only once.  It was three long hours of endless encores that I will never, ever get back.   I really don’t understand the big deal of Neil Young (who we saw at one of the Bridge concerts).  His songs are lyrically sophomoric and his voice is annoying.  

On the flip side (like the record reference there?), here’s Drummer guys list.   Any reggae / ska artist other than Selector.   He don’t like reggae, he hates it.   He once accompanied me to a Love and Rockets concert and he was having such a miserable time we left early.   I doubt I’d ever get him to a Depeche Mode concert or any band that lacks a real drummer.   And Seth Williams, who I raved about after we saw him open for Les Claypool and Drummer guy looked at me like I had lost a few brain cells along the way to the merchandise stand.

So our married sound track is varied and wonderful and we’ve learned to accept our musical differences and add a few more artists to our ever growing list.   It wasn’t part of the original vows but it works.

But if Robert Fripp ever decides to tour again, Drummer Guy is going solo.

Tattoo you...

I intended to make today’s entry about bass playing, but an incident this morning made me change direction.   

Since I am heading out for a conference tomorrow, I decided to get my unruly mop top cut.   The salon I frequent is wonderful and I love my hairdresser, Robyn.     She’s great at what she does and is a really engaging person.  

I don’t know if this applies to men, but the culture of the salon is such that women tend to take filters off and say some of the things they would never venture to say in other public places.  A good hairdresser must have enough information on their clients to be a highly lucrative blackmailer if they so desired.

As I’ve mentioned in a previous entry, I have tattoos.  I have a lot of tattoos in fact, but in places that are very easily hidden by a hairdresser’s cape.    And while the area of the universe I abide in tends to be rather accepting of body art in general, there are a few people who apparently aren’t so liberal in their acceptance, as I found out today.

Another customer and I were getting our hair shampooed.  The conversation started innocently enough between one of the stylists and her customer about their type of “guy”.  And then the customer stated, “I like the guy next door, you know boyish, no tattoos”.   Now I could have been fine with this; “to each his own” as the saying goes.  Besides, there are only so many tattoo love boys to go about for us women who happen to really find them attractive.  But she went down this amazing tirade about how no one can take people who have tattoos seriously and how people who are inked will be regretful of their actions later on.   This went on for ten solid minutes of soapbox lecturing.   And the whole time the woman had no clue that the woman getting rinsed in the next basis was sporting more ink than Amy Winehouse.

Finally she ended up with “Well, when they are all old, how will they feel then with their ink”?

I stood up, took my arms with their half sleeve tattoos out and turned to Robyn and said “Well, my goal is to be that weird, fun and wild Grandmother in the neighborhood”.     While I probably didn’t change any opinions, the other woman did manage to shut up on the subject.

I know not everyone loves tattoos or body mods.  I don’t like over plucked eyebrows on women or the helmet hair hairstyle that seems to be preferred by Republican candidate’s wives.   But I have far too much to do in my life without being the fashion or body mod police.  You don’t like tattoos or ear plugs?  Fine don’t get them.   I can live with that.   But respect my decision too.  Life’s too short to be throwing stones, especially when your glass house is so transparent.

Oh to be GLADoS now that Spring is here

For those of you who aren't video game aficionados. GLADoS is a character from the game "Portal".  I first encountered GLADoS when my fifteen year old son went on a Portal 1 and 2 spree a few months ago.   Her name is the acronym for Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System.  She's the power behind the computer system in the game and has one of the most annoying voices since HAL3000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey.  


But she's funny as hell.  She says all the wonderful sarcastic statements that I would love to say to people I encounter at work and not catch hell (or have my work history end in an untimely fashion).


People think working for the Government is a complete cakewalk.  It really isn't.  You have to abide by arcane rules and regulations that would make Kafka cringe. You have to deal with people who spend their entire effort trying to circumvent "the system" or cruise through their careers like flickering ghosts on the public radar.   Government breeds stupidity at times and "good enough for Government" is a axiom to live by.  


I've been a public servant of sorts for over a decade and days like today make me feel the burnout in the deepest depths of my soul.  Most people go into government for two reasons--security and the hope that they can actually make a difference in being a public servant.  I \am still mostly in the later, though days like today keep pushing me into the former.  

Its been a busy week and projects and trouble tickets seem to slam into each other like bumper cars set to kill.  My staff is overwhelmed and overworked.  I'm overwhelmed and overworked.  And the stupid  questions keep coming about things I've answered at least a half dozen times before . Or I get a request for data on reports that no one ever reads but need to be filed yesterday and suddenly take priority over the fires that are already burning merrily out of control on my schedule.

Yes, I envy GLADoS and her snide sarcasm.  She also has the luxury of lacking a tongue that has to be bit every time a problem child moves into her line of vision.

An introduction

Who am I?  On any given day the focus could change but getting down to the basics.

I am a middle aged woman, with two kids a loving spouse and a fairly well paying government job in Information Technology.  I have a house and three cats.


I also have quite a few tattoos ( I think the term people use is "heavily inked"), not a trivial amount of ear piercings and a nose piercing.  And I'm a vegetarian and a hope to be Buddhist someday (I'm studying).


Oh and I play electric bass in two bands and attempt to be a decent upright jazz player. 


Remember in school there was always one kid in the classroom that had those odd, artsy parents?  While several years ago, in my son's second grade back to school night, my dearly beloved spouse (hereafter known as drummer boy, since yeah, he's a drummer) and I realized that was us.  The weird artsy parents with government jobs.


I also love to cook and garden btw.


So fair warning.  All of the above is going to be present and accounted for in the blogs that follow.  Enjoy.