February 29, 2004 - 1:32 AM

From a Far Enough Distance, It's a Straight Line

The nice thing about life, at least, from what I recollect while standing back and observing with a little distance, is that when there are downs, there are also ups to counterbalance. You putter along at an even keel, and every day, you get some tiny bits of rollercoaster motion; occasionally, you get the big rises and the big dips. Bad stuff happens, good stuff happens; great expectations and low expectations mix with rich rewards and lousy payoffs. It's not always a balanced equation of course, and you can't expect it to be symmetrical (plus followed by minus followed by plus followed by etcetera); but if you just sit back a little, it does achieve some sort of equilibrium.

I remind myself of this whenever I feel like the shit is being dumped on the fan in large quantities by teams of burly men. And it helps settle me down. Like, this week, I was all worried my job and the stuff that was going on at the studio, but my not-working gave me time to finally get a check-up at my doctor's office, as well as a chance to see Victoria and Stolie on Wednesday and tonight, and time to hang out with friends and cousins.

Thursday, I picked up Victoria from her friend's apartment where she's been staying the past week (she and Stolie leave tomorrow to head back east), and we went shoe shopping and checked out The Grove off of Fairfax, which I had never been to. We caught up on the past 3 years of each other's lives (oh my, that girl has done quite a lot, and been very brave in doing so...kudos to her) and really had a spanking good time. I dropped her off back at her friend's place, and an hour later received a call from my cousin Carol. She was driving in from Santa Barbara along with our cousin Sandy and they wanted to do something with me. They were in the area for just two days, collecting transcripts from the various schools that Sandy attended (she needs them for her new job application as a police officer). When they finally reached my apartment, we decided to see 50 First Dates at the Arclight, a movie for which I had no hopes of any kind. Much to my surprise, I enjoyed the Adam Sandler/Drew Barrymore vehicle and was touched to a certain extent by it. Afterwards, we grabbed some ice cream at Coldstone's and then headed over to Matt and Sharon's place where they were staying. A few games of Halo later, and then we called it a night.

Friday night was spent with Nick, Mer, and LDBL. They were mixing up all sorts of cocktails, of which I had one Kamikaze. I played LDBL in a game of Texas Hold 'em Poker ($6 pot) which I won (but only because he became too tired to play). A spur of the moment drive up into the mountains to star gaze was partook, and we saw some strange cloud formations along with the constellations. I smoked my first pipe (regular tobacco) and we were warned by the Police that the Park Rangers would be none-too-pleased to have us milling about with no "adventure pass permit". Whatever.

Today, Saturday, I had dinner with Tony and attempted to run some Fantasy Baseball drafts, but nothing got done, unfortunately. I picked up Matt a little later in the evening, and we went to the Derby to catch the Victoria/Stolie/Neko Case show. Tori and Stolie did a good job to a fair-sized audience and I got to say hi to an old acquaintance from school who showed up in support. We were both in the Music Engineering program together as well as in the string department (he on violin, me on cello), so we saw a lot of each other at school; even though we both moved out to L.A. in the summer of 2001, we hadn't run into each other until tonight.

The rest of the concert was ok. There was a second act, a guy named Ian Moore, who I thought had a killer voice that prowled the warm lower ranges while also plying a pleasant falsetto. His songs were pretty decent, too. The finale was Neko Case along with 2 of her label mates at Bloodshot Records, Kelly Hogan and Carolyn Mark, and two guitarists doing a bunch of old country/gospel/bluegrass type numbers. They're all quite talented and put forth a great show, but to be honest, there's only so much of that type of music I can take in one sitting (or standing, as the case may be) and an hour and a half of them was a wee bit much. Smaller doses for me. I think I still might give a full Neko Case concert a try in the future, though.

More negatives from the week included the merciless rains earlier, an elusive paycheck covering the first week of February that I still haven't received (my time card was lost and I had to jump through hoops with accounting and my studio manager to straighten things out), and one of my friends putting in her two weeks notice. But the inclement weather actually brought back fond memories in addition to serving as a reminder of how gorgeous the weather usually is around here (especially today...sweet lucifer, it was atrociously spectacular today). The paycheck fiasco should be resolved in time so that it won't cause any problems when rent and bills are due next week, plus it gave me an excuse to drop by the studio and say bye to my friend.

Now Listening To : Stolie - Satire-Laden Melodies
Random Thought : A man and woman standing next to us at the show: Matt thought he was Judd Nelson, I thought she was Dana Wheeler-Nicholson.

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