The Tony Times

Is There Anybody Out There?

2009-10-20T17:30:00.002-04:00

Hello, Hello, Hello...: (just nod if you can hear me)

Hi all, how has everyone been? (No answer.) Well, its me again, up to my old tricks, blogging at work. (Can you see me? Are you still after me? I hope not, we're friends now, right?)

Looking Back: Just re-read the blog post I put up last October about "taking the next calendar year" and being a professional musician. And boy, has it worked well!

I started going to two new venues for open stage. Docksider on State Street and Creekside in Waterford. Met a great bunch of new friends and musicians who feel like I have something special, which is very cool. Playing with heart gets you a long way, apparently.

These Status Reports, Ugh: I realize that blogging every three months is pretty much useless, I email everyone, I don't know why I do this. I need to get in better habits of writing. I had/have a cool music blog that I started a few months ago but it never got off the ground because I made a format for it. Maybe I should go back to that, hell, I don't know.

Between buying this house and getting ready for music shows and packing and still working forty hours a week and cleaning the house and all that, I never really have time to do these things. Or maybe I do, who knows, geez...

Pirates vs. Nationals, Aug 3 2009

2009-08-05T14:07:00.002-04:00

My view at the Pirates game on Monday, August 3, 2009. Beautiful way to watch a game. Why do we insist on making these seats so expensive?!?!! :)

My Political Views, circa 2009

2009-08-05T10:52:00.002-04:00

These Change Everyday, Or Should
I took a few minutes and took a quiz to see what sort of political stance I do have with world views. I guess I'm a little more libertarian than average and a little more left than average, but that probably had to do with my open views on gay marriage. I almost BET on that.

My Political Views
I am a center-left social libertarian
Left: 2.78, Libertarian: 4.31

Political Spectrum Quiz

Not Lead, But Follow

2009-08-04T23:33:00.002-04:00

Confidence Lost In Space

Not exactly sure why, but I don't have any self confidence for my solo guitar anymore. I'm considering shelving the lead guitar endeavors completely until I can figure out a new avenue. George Harrison basically reinvented himself from a rockabilly guitarist to a blues rock guitarist in the Beatles to a solo slide guitar player in his later years. I'm thinking I might chuck out the pentatonic scales for a brass slide for a little while. We'll see.

I went to Clancy's Pub tonight for the first time in a few weeks to 'jam' and there was only two other guys there; Rob, an older guy who can play quite a bit of things, and Chip, an aging singer who has a very loud, belting voice. We couldn't figure out what to play for the longest time, and then when we did, I just didn't know what I was doing with the soloing.

The more I 'jam', the more I realize how far down the road I'm getting with the 'singer/songwriter alone on stage' routine. Clancy's is not a place for my style any longer. I can't sing Oasis covers there. So we move on, try new things, and maybe come back when I'm feeling a little more...confident!

Yes, Its Back

2009-08-04T19:17:00.002-04:00

The Question Is, Where Have YOU Been?

Currently, I am working part time at the hotel, I have started my music career in earnest, and Amanda and I are expecting a baby in April of 2010. I have rededicated myself to my fanship of the Pittsburgh Pirates, and I am really looking forward to hockey season this winter as well for the Pittsburgh Penguins title defense. I am still weighing the options of giving over to being a Steelers fan, but I'm not a huge football fan so I don't know if that'll stick. For now, I'm feeling pretty damn good about my life and I hope that you are all doing well.

The Pittsburgh Pirates, and Tony Kellogg.

2009-08-04T19:06:00.001-04:00

In 1988, I was playing tee ball in Erie. MYAA. Sponsor? The Beer Mug. Yeah, I've got pictures. 1989? Sammartino Home something or other. That year, I got a “baseball card” made, and on the back of the picture is two questions and answers...FAVORITE TEAM : PITTSBURGH PIRATES and FAVORITE PLAYER : BOBBY BONILLA. I was collecting baseball cards like mad; I was a massive fan of Andy Van Slyke and his diving center field catches. Doug Drabek, Jose Lind, Jay Bell...

My first game was in 1988 vs. the Philadelphia Phillies at Three Rivers Stadium, and I still remember the awe I felt sitting in that seat in that stadium, seeing the tiny specks that I watched on TV play the game that I loved. 1989 brought me back to see the New York Mets come to town. Bus trip from Ridgway. My mom's side of the family were huge Pirates fans; my grandma knew all of the players and there were times that we'd sit and watch games together. We were watching a lot of games together that summer; my parents marriage was crumbling and my little brother and I spent a lot of time at my grandma's house.

The turn of the 90's finally brought the Bucs their first division crown in a decade, with guys like Van Slyke, a skinny kid named Barry Bonds, Mike “Spanky” Lavallier, Sid Bream, Lind, Doug Drabek, Neal Heaton..the list goes on and on. Those tight polyester black and yellow jerseys, the high bouncing grounders on Three Rivers' artificial turf, the ghost lines of the football gridiron crossing the field like a giant cat ran his paws across it.

My parents were living in separate homes by then, my mom with a new guy; my dad, alone. Dad wasn't much of a baseball guy, but Bill, my mom's new dude, was. So I still spent a lot of time watching games, seeing Chris Sabo and the Reds tear through the Pirates in the 1990 NLCS on their way to surprising the Athletics in the World Series. The next year it was the Atlanta Braves outlasting the Bucs, and then the heart wrenching seven game National League Championship Series in 1992 against the very same Braves team...

A line drive to center...Bream around third...throw home from Bonds...

Suffice to say it was pretty hard. The Bucs, as widely known, haven't been in the playoffs since. In fact, that year I turned 12 years old, was the last year that they won more games than they lost.

The rest of the 90s was an awkward, confusing time for me; my home life was choatic at times and I stopped collecting baseball cards and watching as many games. The Pirates were a mess too, losing like they didn't care. They lost all their players to free agency or trades; Bonds went to San Francisco, Bonilla went to the Mets, Van Slyke moved on...the team was just dead. In 1995, I fell in love with a guitar, a deceased Texan blues guitarist and five rock musicians from Manchester, England. Baseball was falling off the radar for me.

The Pirates almost left town too; they were saved pretty much at the last minute by an ownership group and the new group promised a new era of Pirates baseball, including plans for a new grass stadium. Around that same time, Erie got a new ballpark and ended up being an affiliate of my favorite team. I saw Aramis Ramirez, Jose Guillen, Chad Hermansen, and a bunch of Pirates players that ended up on the 1997 “Freak Show” team that almost won the National League Central division but came up short and still didn't win more games than they lost. In 1998, the Erie SeaWolves became an affiliate of the Anaheim Angels and we didn't see any more future Pirates. Jeremiah Konetsky took me to the last game of the season the year Jim Leyland decided to leave the Bucs, and I remember choking back tears when he came out of the dugout for a curtain call at the end of a hard fought extra inning loss to the Cardinals.

Jeremiah also gave me the opportunity to go to the very first game of the final year of Three Rivers Stadium in 2000. I was feeling pretty good; just finished my first year (well, ¾ of a year) of college and we went to see them play Houston in the season opener. Unfortunately, it was rained out. Thats a long trip to make for a rainout, but it was worth it to say that I WAS there.

PNC Park opened in 2001, and I got to go to the very FIRST game (albeit exhibition) against the Mets. Saw Mike Piazza hit the very first homerun into the left field stands. The new stadium was absolutely beautiful too, a real sight to see.

A few months later, I went down to Pittsburgh and stood on Washington Hill to see Three Rivers Stadium be imploded. I thought it would be a fun time with my friends, it was freezing and we stood out there to watch it. The stadium was stripped of everything but the concrete; it looked like a circular tombstone. I looked at it hard, and remembered the smiles and the memories of those games in 1988 and 1989, and I took a step back from my friends and swallowed hard, trying not to cry. Even as I write this, the hairs on my arms are standing on end.

I went to a couple games that year; but even though the “new era” that was promised ended in a 100 loss season, it felt like brighter times were on the horizon.

Boy was I wrong.

The team was on a virtual never ending carousel of losing. Just when you thought they were picking up, they would trade off their best players at the deadline for “prospects” who nearly NEVER made the majors. They were drafting players that weren't the best ones available. It was very upsetting. My grandma, who I still managed to visit a couple times a year at most, said that she stopped watching games because she didn't recognize any of the players. This was a very dark time for the Pirates, and I personally stopped watching them after just a couple years. I still followed, but it was always pretty much a joke; they traded away everyone every year, signed free agents that were WAY past their prime years in the game. They never finished higher than next to last place.

In 2006, I met a guy at Sears who had been a big baseball fan but stopped watching because it had been getting too big. He is a really funny guy who has very hard nosed opinions on the world. His real love is writing, and he turned me on to a guy named Jim Bouton who wrote a very important and controversial book called “Ball Four”. The book was written about Bouton's comeback season as an aging pitcher for the Seattle Pilots in 1969. He wrote about the locker room talk, the trading politics, drugs, alcohol...the “realities” of the life of baseball. And boy, did I get hooked.

So I took a new interest in the game that I loved as a child. And a new interest in the Pirates. Unfortunately, they were still losing like crazy. We had a few really great players; Jack Wilson, Jason Bay, and the eventual batting champion that year, Freddy Sanchez. But the management just wasn't there, and they continued to lose. But I kept on the love interest. I got into a new job at a hotel and realized that working second shift afforded me the chance to start listening to games on the AM radio again, and I just loved it. It was wonderful. The team stunk, but I was still screaming when Matt Stairs crushed another pinch hit home run into the crisp summer night, or when Mike Gonzalez struck out another last batter to save a rare win for the Bucs.

In 2007, I started realizing that I didn't want to follow a team that wasn't going to commit to winning games. They traded away players at the deadline yet again, and signed some over the hill players to small contracts, yet again. But at the end of the year, the Pirates owners fired the General Manager and the team President left to pursue new duties.

2008 saw a new era begin with the addition of former Cleveland Indians assistant GM Neal Huntingdon take over the reins of the GM spot and former MLB exec Frank Coonelly became team President. They came in and told every player they were on the hot seat and that they needed to prove their worth. They got rid of a few big contracts that they didn't need, but the team still didn't win. They traded away the Pirates big player, Jason Bay, to the Boston Red Sox. But we received a few guys who have been at least average everyday players, so it wasn't like the 'prospects' deals the old regime had made. The Bucs still finished last.

2009 was supposed to be the new big thing. The Pirates were #11 on the Power Rankings on CNNSI.com in May. 14-11 record. Pretty good things going on. But a few weeks later, they shocked the baseball world by trading 2008's surprise star Nate McLouth to Atlanta for a few other players. My friends and I were shocked. What the heck were they doing? Then a few months later, they traded away fan favorite Nyjer Morgan to the Washington Nationals. Rumors abounded about the players they were going to get rid of at the deadline, and that nobody was safe. I swore to my friends in an email that if they traded away Freddy Sanchez and Jack Wilson, that I was done being a fan.

At the deadline, the Pirates traded away Freddy and Jack as well as almost every member of the 2008 team that finished dead last. Seven players gone...and I was upset. Called myself a “fan free agent” and was totally dejected, leading a toast at a bar to “screw the Pittsburgh Pirates!!” that was met with smiles and laughs.

My aunt Betty wrote me a text message mentioning my now deceased grandma, how sad she'd be at the current state of the team. My mom writes on Facebook that I'll always be a Pirates fan in my heart. And it brought back a flood of memories about how much I truly love this team. How sad my grandma would be that I gave up on them. What team was I going to raise my child watching?

It got me thinking. Maybe this isn't so bad. I analyzed the deals. Seven players gone, three major leaguers received, but 25, TWENTY FIVE prospects, including a pitcher who San Francisco coveted like Gollum coveted the Ring of Power. Maybe this ISN'T so bad. Yeah, my team is going to finish under .500 for the record breaking 17th consecutive season, setting a pro sports record. But I'm going to be there, and my heart isn't broken. If anything, I am really looking forward to the next couple years watching this young, speedy team gel into what could be another few years in a row of winning baseball.

We can only hope. But hope is what we have as Pirates fans. Hope.

Hope, and maybe a little luck.

PMBD post 3/9/09

2009-03-09T10:13:00.000-04:00

http://tonykellogg.blogspot.com/2009/03/equipment-piece-of-day-for-march-9-2009.html

The Tony Times V2.00

2009-03-09T01:12:00.001-04:00

Ok, back to regularly scheduled programming.

But for you technogeeks, bookmark my music blog. I missed not being able to talk about the person that doesn't always sit in the studio...the one that works at a hotel and gets pissed off in traffic...

What Kind Of Artist Am I?

2009-02-21T22:38:00.002-05:00

I'm writing this basically off the cuff so if it doesn't sound edited or rehearsed, its because I only have a few minutes before the next person shows up at work.

I've been thinking a lot lately about what sort of artist I am. Most of you that have heard my music know that its not exactly headbangers music. I identify a lot with guys like Ray Lamontagne, John Mayer, Eric Clapton, John Prine, Jim Croce...etc. My first CD that was pretty big (Kelso Drive) featured all pretty slow balladry.

My first show (and only, so far) that I played, I played "Put Your Hands On Me" which is basically a blues-rocker in the Stevie Ray Vaughan vein. But honestly, that isn't the type of song that I end up starting out trying to write. It always ends up being a downtuned, droney rainy day sort of song and the lyrics I write usually feed that. If there's any evidence for me not being able to do party music, see the lyrics for my song "Get Up And Move It". Not exactly earth shattering.

Anyway, at this show, my songs that I feel are my better ones, "I'm Nobody Without Myself", "Little Sister", "As Long As Time Allows", among others, didn't go over well. I decided that night that I wasn't going to focus on those types of songs. I started playing more covers at open mic nights, playing more Hendrixy solos, that sort of thing.

But I've noticed something. I don't feel like I'm being true to myself. Even my solos are softer than the normal bombastic guitar solos you hear on most blues guys records. Doug, the other guy at Clancy's that is always there, says I make his songs about ghetto blues "prettier" than they should be.

Maybe he's right. Maybe I should add this little Hendrixy thing I do (more "Angel" and "Castles Made Of Sand" than "All Along The Watchtower" or "Voodoo Chile") to the softer songs that I write. Whats wrong with having music to chill out to? Jack Johnson has made a career out of that!

Amanda says I always make a lot of "life decisions" that never stick around very long. I know this is one of my bad traits...but I feel thats where my heart lies. Music to chill out, kick up your feet, and relax too.

Clancy's Pub is in a lower East side neighborhood and its not really a market for "cup of coffee" music like that, so maybe pulling out of my original songs in favor of Foreigner covers isn't the best idea. Over the next few days, I'm going to retry to write some new songs, more like Kelso Drive stuff than anything else. Looking forward to having (yet another) goal.

Amanda plays pretty too...so that always helps. I'm thinking about shooting a video of her and I playing one of the songs she just learned, but I'm not sure which one yet. I'll post it here, of course.

SideWoman

2009-02-19T09:22:00.002-05:00

Ladies and gentleman, I'd like to annouce that I have gained a new band member. You may also know her as the assistant general manager of another local hotel...

my girl Amanda !!!

Yeah, she has decided to pick up the guitar again. Man I'll tell you what, she picks that back up after what seems like a year or so and she's making jumps left and right! Its exciting!

I taught her a few new chords, which led to teaching her three new songs.

1. "The Weight" by The Band. Its her favorite song!
2. "Gravity" by John Mayer. (Once she masters that C to Gminor barre chord move, of course)
3. "Landslide" by Fleetwood Mac. (Fingerpicking aside, which will come, I am positive)

Still working on "Stay" by Sugarland.

"Crazy On You"...well...maybe next year. :)

Its nice to have a rhythm guitarist. Keep up the good work babe... :)

Coldplay Syndrome

2009-02-18T18:20:00.002-05:00

Yeah, the whole no more email thing kind of ran its course.

So I have been listening to some of my music lately and I realize that it sounds a lot like, well...nothing. Its too basic. Bothers me.

I listen to Coldplay's "Viva La Vida" and I can play it on the guitar, but it doesn't sound like it. I understand that there's more instrumentation, but what is it that makes it so different from what I'm doing? I know my songs are better than just okay, and more than fine. Why don't I believe that they are?

Musicians Jam went great last night, by the way. I played "Lollipop" by Lil Wayne (yeah, a hip hop song) and everyone loved it. I might try to do that every week, some obscure hip hop cover that everyone will get. We'll see.

I just wish I could write some new things. I don't want to write about my own life and sound precocious either. What happened to the lyricist in me!

Making Progress in The First Day

2009-02-16T17:32:00.002-05:00

Made some progress today! Although it took basically two hours to get the rhythm guitar right for "I'll Try", I got it mostly done except for a vocal part. I also took another stab at "Little Sister", a bit of a speed up and clean up effort from the original recording.

I'm planning on getting four songs completely done by March 1st for a new unveiling on my MySpace page and a brand new Facebook site for my music.

Tomorrow night I plan to play a little more professionally than I have in the last few months, try to engage the crowd a little more than I had in the past, at least so people know who I am. I know that I don't play the type of music that some of the patrons like, but I'm going to try my hardest.

Then Wednesday night I might stop into the BayBreeze for their open mic, since we were invited there by kind folks from two weeks ago. Amanda works in the PM on Thursday so we could at least get some duet stuff on.

Plus she's been learning some guitar! Might have even written a song last night! Maybe I won't have to re-record old stuff after all !!!!

another genesis...?

2009-02-16T10:41:00.003-05:00

Woke up this morning, feeling just a little bit groggy. I went to bed a little earlier than I had in about a week, but I still slept until 10:30. Oh well.

I'm still feeling pretty ambitious this morning, I just want to start recording and get it going. I'm tired of putting the shit off. Just need to do it.

Today's the day.

A Change of Gears

2009-02-15T23:35:00.002-05:00

During the lifetime of this blog (less than a year) I've been writing about just about anything. Its been fun, but sometimes I itch for having some sort of subject other than just my life.

Lately, I've been getting more and more serious about my music. Yeah, its been slow. But each day lately I have woke up with a fire of practicing and getting some new life out of some of my older songs. This being said, I'm going to blog here about my music for a while, and nothing else, unless it pertains to something that may affect my music. Which, I know could be anything, but, we'll see how it goes.

I am also no longer going to email this blog to everyone, I've decided that there are sometimes I want to write something but I hold back because of the fact I'm emailing it to everyone and I don't want it to seem a bother to those folks I have in my auto-mail list.

So bookmark the site, write it down, whatever, you can check out the website whenever you want to at thetonytimes.blogspot.com.

Off work tomorrow (Monday 2-16) so I'll be getting some major music time in. I'll check in from time to time tomorrow.

Revisiting Pet Peeves

2009-02-13T20:57:00.002-05:00

Had a nice dinner tonight with my dad, Amanda, and Townsend...at the 8th and Pittsburgh Avenue Pizza Hut, no less. (Yeah, everywhere else was packed.)

Anyway, food was fine, service was good, no big deal there.

I went in to the bathroom to take a leak and wash my hands before dinner, and now we've come to the point of this story.

Do you know someone who chews tobacco? If you do, please tell them to leave the room.

What is it with spitting the tobacco juice anywhere and everywhere? I mean, in every walk of life, spitting is regarded as semi-offensive, tobacco juice nonwithstanding. Why is it so much better to spit tobacco in public? I know smoking has become this taboo subject, but for god's sakes, if you HAVE to spit...

MAKE SURE YOU MAKE IT INTO THE TRASH, OR TOILET, OR URINAL!!!!

Taking a leak into a urinal with dried piss on it is disgusting enough, especially the half-flushed, stained hole that you are going into. If thats not bad enough, someone had the horrible aim of spitting their tobacco juice onto THE TOP OF THE URINAL, in which it had a nice curved line, little bits in tow, all the way down the side and onto the floor. Whoever does that sort of thing might as well just park their ass on top of the thing and drop a turd right on top. At least it will curtail the stench of the orange dried pee on the lip of the urinal.

When I worked at Sears, I don't know how many shelves and endcaps I had to clean tobacco spit off of. There are disgusting things, and then there is dried tobacco juice in conspicuous places. I'm just sayin'. Its nasty. I know we're terrible aim at peeing, but at least we have some sort of aim with spitting. Keep it in your mouth.

Oh and one more thing --- you gum chewers...put it in the garbage. The thoughts of what that chewed up ball of Big Red is soaking up just makes me want to vomit.

My First Sports Talk Radio Call

2009-02-12T12:48:00.001-05:00

I've been listening to sports talk radio for, oh, about two years now, but only really seriously for the last few months or so. I enjoy listening to Jim Rome, Petros and Money, Andrew Siciliano, and the best one, Mike and Mike in the Morning.

A new one I've sort of become a fan of lately is a local program on our AM 1260 The Score station, called Chico and Company. Chico Bormann hosts it, and its pretty much open lines the entire time, at least as long as I've been listening to it.

I've listened pretty intently this week and he has talked a lot about Alex Rodriguez and the steroid scandal and people have some good input. I almost called on Monday to talk about the previous note I wrote ("Don't Wait Until You Get Caught"), but I chickened out.

Now to the point of the story.

Yesterday, Chico came on and was talking about a story he'd read on CBS Sportsline about former Cleveland Indians shortstop Roberto Alomar, who has been out of baseball since 2003. Apparently, the story is about a former ex-girlfriend who is suing Alomar over the fact he had unprotected sex with her for the four years they were living together (2002-2006) during which time Alomar knew he had HIV, and if I remember correctly, she was unaware he had it, hence the lawsuit.

I decided it was time to finally make that call.

If you are a sports fan and remember the name, thats because Alomar was busted back in 1995 or 96 for spitting in an umpires face after a controversial call at home plate. John Hirschbeck also claimed that Alomar said some comments about his recently deceased son in the ensuing tirade after the call. Hirschbeck later forgave Alomar for the incident, but not after the media dragged Alomar through the mud, and probably fragmented his chances of making the Hall of Fame. And while it is tragic that Alomar has HIV and its not really a laughing matter, I am a firm believer in karma and people getting what they deserve. You spit in a man's face and make derogatory remarks about another man's dead kid, thats pretty low.

So I made the call into Chico's show because I felt that there was 'another side' to the story there.

I called and got in pretty quickly, next in queue. He says "Caller go ahead" and i said, "I wanted to make a few comments about the Alomar thing. First off, I wonder what John Hirschbeck has to say?"

Chico immediately hung up on me and I remember hearing him say that it wasn't even funny to joke like that and that if I had spent a half hour trying to come up with something like that I should never call his show again and that I should "go back to my cubicle."

I felt sort of bad because I probably should not have started out what I was going to say like that, but I did have a point. We're so quick to throw these athletes under the bus for the steroids issue, but this man made a very public fool of himself and did something morally disgusting to that umpire, and I lost a lot of respect for him. Yeah, it sucks the guy has HIV but looking at what type of guy Alomar was, sort of makes you wonder what kind of guy he was off the field, and somehow, him having HIV doesn't really surprise me.

I wrote an email on the AM 1260 website to Chico's show, which I have yet to hear a response from, although not expecting one, but I feel that I had somewhat of a point that should have at least had the light of day.

Don't Wait Until You Get Caught

2009-02-09T23:42:00.003-05:00

Over the weekend, Alex Rodriguez was "outed" as a steroid user back during the 2003 season. He admitted to it in an interview with ESPN that he used steroids for three years, starting in 2001. He totally denies using since then (even though he totally denied using at all a year ago, which one is it, man?) and that he's "sorry" for "being stupid" and "naive" during his time as the Texas Rangers shortstop.

What have I learned? Its sort of odd, but hear me out.

Most of us do not live in the 30-35 cities that are "major league" cities. A LOT of us live in cities that have smaller teams in them.

I live in Erie, PA, where we have major junior hockey (OHL's Otters), double A baseball (EL's SeaWolves), a brand new NBA Development team (BayHawks) and even an arena league football team (RiverRats). We have four really great and competitive colleges (Gannon, Mercyhurst, Edinboro, and Penn State Behrend) and a LOT of high school sports.

I think everyone out there should rethink their fan hood of major league sports; those that have come down as a major business and turned blind eyes to this sort of behavior, and start supporting your local teams rather than these cheats and jokers.

Instead of buying that $35 Yankees hat that is colored purple and yellow...spend your money at a minor league baseball game, watching the guys that are living the dream, hotel to hotel, bus to bus.

Instead of buying that $200 authentic Lakers jersey, maybe spend it on a ticket to an minor league hockey game...high school basketball game, anything...but don't spend it on a league or team that encourages and lets guys like Rodriguez get away with it.

Alex, man...if you wanted us to really forgive you, you should have gone back on 60 Minutes with Katie Couric, brought along Bud Selig, and professed your complete and utter allegiance to the game of baseball and said you would have helped in ANY way to clean up the game. Don't do a padded interview with Peter Gammons about being sorry you got caught. If you "respected" the game, you'd have come out last year when the steroids issue was first catching serious flight.

Then, and ONLY then, would I consider you a hero.

LISTEN PEOPLE...if you are doing something you shouldn't be...don't wait until you get caught. Be real. Own up to it. Get it off your chest. Probably will help your health, probably will help you sleep at night. Think about all those lies you've told. Most likely, it won't be the end of the world if you tell the world your secrets BEFORE you get caught, unlike A-Rod.

I Live On The Writers Block

2009-01-30T18:31:00.002-05:00

If you found a map of Writers Block, you'd find that its outside of town, right on the border between the suburbs and the country. You know where I mean, that nice paved road that bends to the right, but only sort of ... you could still go straight on to Writers Block, but its on a dirt road. Most people don't want to drive on a dirt road, so I am stuck there.

The little cottage has yellow walls, a dirty white carpet, and a few couches. It hasn't been cleaned in years. Ironically, it hasn't been cleaned since I last wrote a song that I felt was any good. Yeah, in this cottage I write my songs. I don't play guitar here, thats somewhere off the ground. Sometimes its more grounded, like in the rickety tree house out back, and sometimes its way up there on that mountain, where everyone can hear me but noone can actually see me.

I really, really want to clean this place up. Its a mess. Full of oddball memories, like this duck pillow, an old lawn tractor, and strangely enough, a laundry center with a dent on the corner. (its blue, if you must know.) There's a St. Patrick's Day shirt in the corner, but I don't dare pick it up because thats where my cats used to pee. Every once in a while I look at that birthday card slash coloring book page that my sister once made for me and I smile. But then I remember that time, and I think about how I used to sit in this room alone, staring blankly out the window, saying nothing, phone unhooked from the wall.

Do I have any reason to continue writing music here? I mean, I'm still a strong young man, I don't need this cottage anymore. Cell phones have made staying disconnected rather pointless. Unless you leave it in the car. Why would I leave it in the car?

I guess it doesn't ring much anyway.

So I walk into the kitchen and there are dishes there, white Corelle dishes with a green design ringing around them. The floor still has that shiny brown hue with the odd design. The walls have a velvety texture to them, a reddish color. Reminds me of a house I used to have nightmares about as a child.

Anyway, a redesign?

Maybe I should do as every artist does (or should) and throw out everything he knew/knows and start again. Light a match, end this cottage's existance.

I think I'll do that.

The duck pillow isn't important anymore anyway.

How Frustrating A Day In The Studio Can Be

2009-01-29T17:58:00.002-05:00

Don't let anger steer you wrong.

Over the last few months, I've been sort of itching to get some real recordings out there. As I mentioned in my blog yesterday, I really would like to find a studio to get five songs or so down on real, gosh-honest CD format. And actual sales-piece.

I sent a letter to another musician, Ray Lanich, who lives down in Cochranton. Him and I were at Docksider the same night a little over a month ago. His CD, "I'll Play A Song For You" seems pretty professionally done and I was curious where he did his recordings at.

"I do them at home."

So, I decided to start again today, give it another shot. After all, I have a really good microphone and a very expensive guitar pedal that features on-board recording technology, so I should be able to get something good, right?

Not so fast, apparently.

I decided that I'm going to start this process with a song called, "Little Sister", which as most of you know, is a 'lullabye' of sorts to my sister Kori. I really like the song; I recorded it about four years ago one night within an hour of writing it. A true "genesis" recording. Very good.

I would like to recreate it with a little more feeling and a slide guitar in between all of the parts, which would be very tasty, in my humble opinion.

So I sit down into my "studio room" to get going around 1 pm. I get everything set up and play the song the first time through, this time through a microphone plugged directly into the pedal.

Not loud enough.

Tried again, this time playing the guitar THROUGH the pedal.

Sounds like its recorded in a tin can.

After two hours of wrestling with it, I took a nap.

Woke up at four, and the last two hours I've been wrestling with the sound levels, playing it through one time, transferring the data to the computer, and it still sounds like crap. I don't know if I'm my own worst critic or something, but I tell you what, I just can't get this stuff down, and its extremely frustrating.

But I suppose its not as frustrating as working at that hotel. But anyway...

A Long Vacation

2009-01-28T13:26:00.003-05:00

Blues, blues, blues.

Its now been what, 31 days since I've written? I'm so sorry for not doing so. I just get in these funks and I just don't feel like writing. But I'm pretty sure if there wasn't folks I directly emailed this blog to, nobody would read it anyway.

Not that I need to prove anything.

Anyway, so far, 2009 has been nothing about control and preparation, as I wished it had been. Oh well. New Years resolutions are for suckers anyway :)~ .

As most of you know, I played my very first show on the 17th of the month at Clancy's Pub and Pizza, where I also smash the strings on Tuesday nights. The show went off pretty well, some hitches, but nothing terrible. The owner was pleased (although he was out of town, so much for impressing the guy.) I played some of my originals (some I'll never play in public again) and some covers (that I forgot some lyrics from, oh well) and I just noticed I use parentheses way too much.

Work.

Work sucks. Hotel sucks. Its just a job. Its all screwed up now.

Love.

Amanda and I are doing great! We have had the opportunity to spend a lot more time together and I think its been good for us. We're both talking a lot about "redecorating" our apartment at the least cost possible. (Anyone have any cool places to get nifty furniture?) Since we're not going to be moving any time soon (see "Work."), we are going to try to make where we live cool.

Music.

Anyone locally know of anyone with a studio? I'd like to self-produce/record, but if I could pull off a small five song demo-style CD for a small price, I'd rather do that.

I'll try to have a little better format next time. Not sure if this one worked out.

2009 Resolutions

2008-12-27T09:40:00.001-05:00

Christmas 2008: Came and went like it has the past few years, a few feverish days trying to make sure I got presents for everyone, a hectic Christmas Day full of here and there's, and finally gearing up for work the very next day. :) Thanks to all my family for all the wonderful gifts I received, I love you all!!

On To Serious Business: 2009 is slowly trudging its way toward us, and I, for one, plan to do some housecleaning this year. (No, not that sort of housecleaning, honey.) My new years resolutions this year boil down to two words:

CONTROL and PREPARATION

Control basically means that I have let way too many things slide, whether it be money, music, or work, I've come semi-irresponsible if I want these things to work out. Money, well, everyone's not in control of their money, but I'd like to get a lot of my bills paid or at least on a good run very soon. Its going to be tough, and I might have to try to find myself a second job, but I wanna get it done. Music is something I'd like to seriously pursue this year; I would greatly like to be in a band by the fall time, or at most, playing alone on a regular basis. I need to set up better practice times and get my originals back into play form. Work, well, I need to feel like I have something to shoot for, to have pride in, and something I strive to be. Sounds very general, but I really don't know exactly what that thing will be so its a work in progress.

Preparation ties in with control, because without preparation, control means nothing. But specifically, saving money and planning ahead for trips needs to be a better priority with myself and my family, whether it be food or travel routes, this sort of thing. I've sort of lived by the seat of my pants in 2008, but that sort of lifestyle is like the little girl with curls: when its good, its wonderful; when its bad, its terrible.

I know all these are very general, but I've picked small things over the last few years or so and these are things I know I can work on throughout the year.

Santa Likes These People?!

2008-12-24T20:54:00.002-05:00

Sometimes I Wonder Why He Bothers Anymore: Its been a while, but I have a hotel story for all of you. As you probably don't know, I'm working 3 - 11 pm on Christmas Eve instead of working Christmas Day. Yay for that! Well...I guess the Christmas spirit has worked their magic on a few of our guests.

When I came in to work today, our AGM was watching the desk. She informed me of a story about one of our arrivals that was upset that we chose not to serve the full hot breakfast for Christmas Day. She explained to him that we wanted the breakfast cook to be home with her family, and he threw away the suggestion like a toy that a young child didn't want. He said that the only reason he booked here was for the hot breakfast and that he would be writing into the big corporate company for his inconvienience.

A half hour later, that same guest called down and told me that he was experiencing some problems with his heating unit, that it was rattling. Well, sure enough, I went upstairs and the problem magically disappeared!

Around five o clock, I had about six guests check in, one right after another, and the last guy took the last of the three luggage carts. As he's walking out with it, this blonde woman, we'll call her Meghan, passed by him and yelled, "WHATS THIS? NO MORE CARTS?" I was sort of shocked at her rage, and I informed her that I just had a lot of guests check in so they were currently in use. "SO YOU GUYS HAVE APPETIZERS TONIGHT OR WHAT?" Still in shock, I said, "Well I explained to the gentleman--" "I'M NOT WITH THAT MAN!" I must have raised my eyebrows because she got this look on her face like she was going to jump over the counter. I told her about the pies served tonight and she turned around to her now-present husband and said, "Oh, honey, this Hilton only decided to have one luggage cart for the whole hotel so we're apparently out of luck."

One of those guests that checked in was a "SUPER VIP" member who had never stayed our branch of hotels before. I said that I hoped we made him proud. Nice guy.

An hour later, his teenage son came down and asked if we offered "dog walking service". I said no, then asked him and his mother if they had a dog in the room (I know, odd question, but I had to ask) and they conceded that they did. I told them there was a fee for it and the woman looked at me like I had cheated her out of winning the lottery or something. "Well thats just GREAT! I'll have my husband talk to YOU, because we don't pay that dog fee if we're SUPER VIP GUESTS, SIR." I told her not to worry about it, "Merry Christmas."

A little later on, Meghan's husband called me and said the gas fireplace in his room was out; of course, they were checked into the only room that has problems with the fireplace. I went up and started fixing the fireplace. They were watching "Man vs. Wild", a Discovery Channel show (that Amanda and I love) where the host shows how to survive in the most treacherous places on earth. In this episode, he decided that he was hungry enough to kill a frog and eat it.

Meghan started talking to her children about how she had learned how to do all of that in survival camp in Africa, and that to do it, he'll have to stab the frog in his head with a knife to kill it. A few minutes later, the host does exactly that. I fix the fireplace and get the heck out of that room as fast as I can... (!)

I get downstairs and realize that the pie must have made my stomach turn so I ran to the bathroom to do a #2. While I'm in there, the phone rings. It rings as such that I know its an internal phone call. I didn't answer it, of course, because, well, I'm going #2!! The phone rings about nine times, stops, then starts ringing again. I lean over and pick up the cordless I had taken with me and answer it.

"Yeah, this fireplace is still not working, and we'd appreciate it if you came up and shut it off so the gas doesn't choke out my family. Thanks."

I go upstairs just as soon as I can clean up and shut it off, apologize for the faulty fireplace, and get out of that room as fast as I can (again!).

When I got to the desk, the dog guy called and asked for some popcorn, so I ran it up to his room.

I got off the elevator and I could hear Meghan's family was in the lobby in front of the desk. I thought, oh man now what and sure enough, I could hear them planning to put hot chocolate and cookies in front of the Christmas Tree for Santa Claus. Once I turned the corner, the one child, around seven years old, was being launched up onto a luggage cart by his eleven year old sister so he could do pull ups! I ran over and caught the luggage cart before it tumbled over from his weight! Imagine if I hadn't been there! His parents were completely cool with it and they were fifteen feet away!

Unreal!!

Imagine what they would have said...

"Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuudge."

Except I'm sure they wouldn't have said fudge. :)

Merry Christmas All!!!

Take Heed, Pirates; I'm Watching You

2008-12-24T16:56:00.002-05:00

Disgruntled? Yeah!: This may or may not seem lame to some of you, but I think its pretty cool. You'll have to stick with me while I talk about some dorky internet stuff I do.

That being said, there is a website that I have been following as a "favorite". Its called UniWatch, and its an "analysis" blog that talks about uniforms in sports. I'm a semi regular "commenter" to the site, usually something goofy about the Erie teams (Otters, Seawolves, and Bayhawks) but mostly just making jokes about the Yankees or something. Sometimes discussions get about as heated as internet discussions could be (and I say that because most of us internet dorks couldn't fight ourselves out of a wet paper bag).

On Tuesday, they featured a story about a guy who made a baseball helmet modeled after the pillbox style Pirates hats of the late 70's. He created it as a kitschy baseball hat for fun, but then realized it'd be a cool idea for the base coaches to wear (long story, if you care why they wear helmets while in the field, you can email me and I'll explain it).

I for one, thought it was a great idea, considering the Minnesota Twins had done something sort of the same this year, having their basecoaches wear helmets modeled after their 1970's hats.

Near the bottom of the entry, Paul Lukas, who runs the site mostly by himself, commented that he knew a few folks in the Pirates PR team who might be interested by this invention. I agreed completely, and went down into the comments to make my supportive voice heard. As I scrolled down through the comment board, I noticed that NOBODY said anything about it; rather they were making comments about the design of hockey jerseys in the 1980's. Made me angry; not at the site, but at the fact that a Pirates themed idea garnered no criticism or positive reinforcement.

I decided to write a comment that made my voice heard toward those "Pirates PR guys" that Paul knew. There had been 148 comments before mine, and that just upset me dearly. Here's what I wrote:

Dear apparent Pirates office workers who follow Uniwatch,

Being a huge hockey fan..., I hate to gloss over the awesome discussions about hockey jerseys.

But you know, if there’s someone watching this site that works for the Pirates… then I have something to say. Do you realize that this website has taken the time to HIGHLIGHT a great Pirates themed idea and nobody on this message board so far has commented about it? What does that tell you about the respect out there for this team?

Take this guy’s great idea for the basecoach helmets and run with it. Use the money from the dumb freaking bobbleheads of players that you’ll probably sell off in August and make this helmet a reality for the basecoaches.

I don’t think I can possibly take any more mediocrity from this organization.

1. Get rid of the red jerseys, I’m talking press conference, formal apology from Frank and Neal.

2. Get rid of the pinstripes. You’re not the Yankees, stop trying to fool us.

3. Scale yourself down. Go to a simple jersey set; road greys and home whites. Nobody buys your jerseys outside of Pittsburgh (and even then its a stretch) anymore so stop trying to push merchandise by creating another alternate.

4. Take all the money you saved from recycling those red jerseys into Primanti napkins, getting rid of the IDEA that anyone gives a crap about bobbleheads of Nyjer Morgan, only doing fireworks on the fourth of July like IT SHOULD BE…

AND BUY SOME BETTER PLAYERS!!!!!!!! AHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

Sincerely,
Tony in Erie
Disgruntled Pirates fan since 1980

I meant every word. Sounds silly, but I do. I'm tired of all of this crap about the Pirates not being able to afford good talent but continue to do basically nothing and let this organization be a laughingstock. We had our chances last summer when Jason Bay, Xavier Nady and Nate McLouth were ripping the cover off the ball and we were having our chances at finally winning more games than we lost for the first time in 16 years...and they traded Bay and Nady for a couple guys who flopped after a few months, helping the Bucs to lose 95 out of 162 games.

Immediately had a response from another reader, identified as ScottyJ In WV:

Well said, Tony!! Here here!!!

Also, gotta say that [the helmet creator] is the kind of fan a team should be proud to have. The pillbox coaches helmet is one idea the Bucs should run with.

Thought it was pretty nice to have someone support a comment that I actually thought would be deleted by the site administrator! But there it stayed, well after I went to bed last night. I also received a personal email from another reader, Doug Keklak, that reads as follows:

I was away from Uni Watch after 3 yesterday and didn't fire it up until much later.

Read your post regarding the Pirates.....GOD DAMN are you dead on! I was thinking the same stuff..how Ricko's scanned print ad of old hockey jerseys took over and no one really gave a damn about the main entry.

This will be the first summer since I moved to Allegheny County in '98 that I plan on going to no games whatsoever.

F--k them.

Kek

have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, always enjoy your comments

Nice touch, Doug. :)

Shockingly enough, I saw the coup de gras; I woke up today and found the following comment from the Pirates employee on the site:

I know of at least one other Pirates front office member, besides the aforementioned Dan Hart, who is a regular reader/contributor. However, she is extremely busy right now and the rest of the office is closed.

I’m not exactly sure how much I can say, but look for new jerseys to be unveiled at some point during the winter caravan/Piratefest. From what I hear, Tony in Erie is pretty close.

The bobbleheads have been greatly trimmed down, along with all the other garbage giveaways (collectible plates, etc.). Fireworks are not going anywhere. I have never seen a town go so stupidly bat-poo crazy for fireworks, no matter the date, time, or spectacle, as they do in Pittsburgh. Other teams actually have more fireworks nights than the Pirates. The Tigers had them after every Friday and Saturday night game last year.

I’m going to assume, that by the “buy better players” comment, he really meant “draft and develop better players” since that’s the only realistic option.

I hope this person, by the way they wrote, were part of the Pirates front office team. Talk about hitting your mark! I'm pretty excited that at least SOMEONE who is paid by that team saw my letter and maybe, JUST maybe, is circulating it around down there. Yay for me!

Next they'll be calling me for a job!

Yeah right. :)

The Best Day, Continued.

2008-12-23T13:08:00.003-05:00

There's something I'd like to talk about because I'm, well, confused on this issue.

Last night, after the horrible day I had, I had a few more drinks than usual. Now, before I had my drinks, I had about fifteen chicken wings and a few slices of pizza, so there at least was something to sop up the alcohol. I wake up today, and I'm not hungover, even though there are a select few of my friends that are hating life this afternoon.

Which leads me to wonder: What am I doing with high alcohol tolerance?

All of my high school friends drank when they were very young.

I didn't.

I was usually grounded for something stupid like washing the dishes wrong or forgetting to clean up the dog poop. I was in my room, playing guitar, wondering why I felt like such a bad child. I never really "partied" when I was in high school.

The group of "hockey guys" had parents that purchased beer for them and their friends, as long as they drank it at that parent's house and nowhere else. Nearing our high school graduation, from what I hear, they started having parties with beer bought for them by the local college kids that they were friends with.

To each his own -- I used to really hate that about the group of friends I was attached to, despised it, wished bad things on them, and I'm not afraid to say that. But now, I'm not angry about that. As a matter of fact, I feel like I'm the least angry I've ever been in my entire life.

I had my first alcoholic drink on New Years Eve when I was 20. I was trying harder and harder to fit in with the only friends I had, and I thought that I was turning 21 that year so it couldn't hurt. I wasn't driving, nothing like that. Harmless little vodka and juice or something or other. It tasted like crap, to be honest.

That fall, I was introduced to Mikes Hard Lemonades by way of trickery...I was told they had very low alcohol content because they were mostly sugar. Six in a half hour time later, I was officially drunk for the first time, and I felt like a complete asshole. Acted like one too, from what I remember.

I didn't drink but maybe once or twice a year for a long, long time. The most dangerous night I ever had was being out in downtown Erie one Saturday night about five years ago with my fellow Sears tool salesmen, and it was one of my "fitting in" nights so they were shoveling me stuff to drink like crazy. I know we were at Sherlocks but I sorta don't remember where else. And yes, we actually had a designated driver, so there's no horror stories, take it easy, Mom and Dad.

The next morning, I woke up and was fine. Hangover? My friend Marc had less than I did, and he wasn't able to make it into work. Really confused me. Someone suggested I had a high tolerance for alcohol...but I wondered, how is that possible? Isn't 'tolerance' something that is built up?

During my relationship with Amanda, we've had a few nights where we've both had a few more than we should have, but we've always been smart enough to think ahead and plan accordingly to ensure we got home safely.

A few weeks back, I wrote a blog about "changing my life" and doing things so that I wouldn't be saying in ten years that I should have done things when I was 28 and not trying to be cool closing in on forty. That night, I went out to celebrate a good hotel inspection with a few of my friends and I had a couple shots of something I don't remember what, and the next morning I had a pounding headache, didn't want to get out of bed, it was horrifying. Amanda did too.

So I can have hangovers, it does happen, but if I think back long enough, I only remember "hating the morning" three times in my entire life.

Here I am, 1:30 in the afternoon, after a restless night where I didn't sleep very well, and I'm fine. No stomachaches, no headache, nothing. Amanda suggested that I have a high tolerance.

I still can't help thinking, how?

The Best Day

2008-12-22T18:50:00.002-05:00

Even I'm Shocked: As anyone would know that has a television, the entire area around Erie has been blanketed by a big blizzard, dropping a foot or more in some areas. The interstate highways were shut down. The roads are pretty much unpassable.

Last night, I had to work at 5pm until 11 pm. The weather started getting snotty. So Amanda worked out getting us a suite to stay in at her hotel. Of course, I could have stayed at my own property, but what fun would that be? Anyway, shift went by uneventful, but I wasn't tired at all after I came back to the hotel. Best part, I had to be back into work only a short eight hours later, 7 am to 3 pm.

Today, we are having our hotel Christmas party from 6 pm to 10 pm or later. We were scheduled to have a representative from the Rochester hotel of our brand to watch the desk from 3pm until 7am. Sure enough, those closed highways included the ones between here and there, so we have to go without. I volunteered to work up until the party started at 6.

My shift went by pretty quickly, but the last two hours were the worst. I got berated by a "SUPER VIP" member after I realized that he used a pretty sneaky ploy to get himself a big free room. Its what I get for being a nice guy. Anyway, it just ruined my shift. Completely pissed off, I finally got away around 6:35.

I go out to my car to clean it off so I can finally get to the party, I start it up, and jump out of the car to clean it off. I get it all nice and "clean" (as well as possible) and go to jump back in.

It took nearly three years of ownership, three different homes, two different jobs, but I finally did it.

I locked my keys in the car. Running.

Luckily one of my fellow GSA's has AAA, but, due to the fact we are having the aforementioned storm of the year so far...they won't be here for an hour. And I'm down to a small amount of gas.

Is anyone going to blame me for tieing one on tonight?

Seven Points To Ponder

2008-12-21T20:29:00.004-05:00

Pretty cool picture.

So I'm pretty much lost for ideas for another blog, so I'm gonna take some time and just write whats on my mind.

* I just finished reading "Deception Point" by Dan Brown (the author of "The DaVinci Code" and "Angels and Demons"). Its a political thriller; basically there's an election coming up and despite the presidential challenger's disdain for the space program, NASA discovers the "find of the century" and the current president involves the challenger's daughter to join a team of scientists during the discovery. Unfortunately, for all involved, the find of the century ends up changing all of their future fortunes. ... I know thats a pretty bad summary but trust me, if you like the poli-thriller, its a rocket read. I sacrificed half a night of sleep to finish it.

* * Found an awesome article on ESPN about Mike Tyson's Punch Out, that old boxing game for the Nintendo. I have many memories of the ol' NES, and I'd love to have one now. I have some of the games on my computer, but its just not the same. Anyway, if you loved the Nintendo, the game really brings back some memories.
* * * Jack Wilson, the shortstop for the Pittsburgh Pirates, has been on the trading block since the season ended back in October (well, for them, in July)...recently his name has been taken off the baseball insiders list. Wilson finally stood up and proclaimed his distaste for the organization, and he's been applauded for that. Unfortunately, Jason Bay did the same thing LAST winter, and look where it got him. Traded. Or maybe thats ol' Jack's hope, that he'll have that shot to play short for the Anaheim Angels next fall. Who knows. God I hope that my kids will have something to cheer for when they're growing up.

* * * * Went to Amanda's hotel party last night, and it was held at this little "speakeasy" club in central Erie called "Astro Noeva" or something like that. It was held right at the bowling alley in the basement, this classic eight laner AMF style lanes, just like they had never been touched in the last forty years. Beautiful. Even had to do scoring by hand. I bowled like crap, rolled a 70 (yeah) and then a 104 (better? ugh.). I'm experimenting with a new throwing style.

One thing that not a lot of people know about me is that I used to be a pretty good bowler when I was little. My mom and her husband at the time enrolled me and my little brother at the Polish Falcons 123 when we were 11 and 8. I took to it pretty well, even got a personalized engraved ball for Christmas one year. I led a team of kids to YABA PA state semifinals in Grove City; I had a 150 or so average then. Not bad for being 11.

Anyway, back to present day...I used to toss the ball straight on, pretty lightly years ago. As I got older, I watched guys throw the ball really hard so I had to adapt. But as I started doing that, my arm and hand started getting number and number to the point that now, if I do it, my whole right hand is totally useless for the night if I even bowl one game.

So I'm trying to adapt to the curve style come hell or high water. I was able to throw three games worth of balls. I didn't do well, but its a start. (I didn't score the third game, in case anyone is trying to point out the flaws in my writing.)

* * * * *Anyone looking forward to Christmas? I am. Should be a good day. I have it off! Got Townsend a bunch of really great presents (thanks our own personal Santa Claus, you know who you are) and I think he'll be really happy with what he received.

* * * * * *I officially changed my availability at work so I can't work Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning, so I can prepare more fully for the night at Clancy's. 2009 is going to be a good year for me musically, I just know it. My voice is getting better every time I sing. Someone has to be taking notice, or at least someone WILL be. I'd bet good money on it.

* * * * * * *I noticed something earlier (obviously you can tell I was spending a lot of time on ESPN.com). What is it about boxers that have religious items on their shorts? This is a pic of Evander Holyfield from his recent fight against some (very hairy) Russian dude:

Note the "Psalms 107:20" mark on his shorts. This passage is "He sent his word, and healed them, and delivered them from their destructions." What? I'm confused. I mean, I usually "get" these things, even though they don't make much sense, I still figure them out. But this one totally throws me off. What does being an over the hill boxer have to do with that passage? Totally over my head, I suppose.

Well, thats about all I can think of now, I should get something constructive done. Comments or questions, go ahead and email me! I love feedback.

Blustery

2008-12-17T15:37:00.001-05:00

Neighbors: Got an email almost right away from my friend Lisa, who encouraged me on to make this music thing more serious. So I spent a few minutes cleaning up the big kid play room we have off the living room so I can have more of a "live" setup.

Feeling a little better after my shower, I plugged in and started playing, and for some reason, after playing two songs, I just lost all feeling for it. I think I need new guitar strings for my Stratocaster...but I think I know what it really is.

I could hear my downstairs neighbors stomping around and I started wondering how loud I was singing, so I stopped singing louder. Then I turned the guitar down. Then I went to my acoustic. Before I knew it, I was trying to sing "Simple Man" in a whisper.

Wish I had someplace or some other way to practice without worrying the neighbors. They might not say something, or they might, who knows...I just feel bad being a bother. I know the one guy works third shift on Tuesday nights so the chances of him sleeping while I was trying to play a solo was pretty good, and it'd piss me off if I was the one sleeping.

Sort of popped the bubble of any good mood I had going today, and now I'm at work, and don't want to be here at all. Luckily there's not many people coming in.

The World Has Turned...

2008-12-17T11:01:00.002-05:00

And Left Me Here: About 15 minutes before 11, my scheduled shift end, I got ansy and decided to change clothes to go out to open mic while I was still at work. The guy who works over night is always ten minutes early anyway; I figured why not. So I get all changed out of my nice red shirt and black tie into my Beatles "Hard Days Night" tee shirt and jeans and go outside and start my car. At this point, I'm rip-roaring ready to go to open mic and tear the roof off.

A few minutes pass and I think, well, thats odd...he's usually here by now.

The last time I actually had plans after a 3-11pm shift, he was the one who was taking over for the third shift...and he was late.

11:00 becomes 11:05, and I'm still standing there at the desk in my Beatles T-shirt. Phone rings for a wake up call.

C'mon man...I wanted to BE there by now!

11:05 becomes 11:10. I realize now that there is a distinct possibility that he's not coming in for his shift...so I give the ol' boy a call. No answer. But the phone rings again a minute later.

"Hey...Tony.....uhhhhh...I just woke up."

He said he could get there in like twenty minutes (he lives close by) but I told him to take it slow because the roads were crap. I go out to my car and shut off the engine.

So there I was, watching the desk until 11:35 in my Beatles T-shirt. Great. :)

Tearing The Roof Off, Er...Wanted To: When I arrived at Clancys, there was noone performing. A video of John Mayer was on the TV screen blaring away. Amanda and I head up to the bar and order a beer and sure enough, the old man who "had soul" last week was sitting there. Told me he'd been waiting for me to show up for three hours!

So I plug in, get situated, and start monkeying around...for some reason felt like I didn't have much direction songwise. I couldn't think of any tunes to play or anything, so I started off with "Walk Don't Run" by The Ventures. Got some applause. For some reason, I was feeling nervous, and I can't figure out why, even as I write this.

Ralph, the old man, steps up and picks up his bass guitar and we start in a little jump blues in G and things sound frickin great, I'm getting into it, the guy is grinning ear to ear, and sure enough, Doug, who "is always there" walks up and plugs in his acoustic guitar and took things over, again.

Starts playing the same five songs he always plays, just like he did last week, and the week before the week before. Following me? ;)

I played along for a while, Ralph gave up after that one song and wandered off outside with some drunk preppy boy who kept pestering me about needing a drummer. But after about forty minutes, I honestly just wanted to go.

I'm not sure exactly where my night was ruined, whether it was the 3rd shift man being late or the weather being crap or Doug taking over (AGAIN), but it was not one of my better nights there. I'm going to have to learn some new songs for next week so I can just keep playing instead of giving up to someone who knows only a few tunes.

Pet Peeves Be Damned

2008-12-16T13:45:00.003-05:00

Back To School, Er, Work: So I finally got back to the ol' HWS front desk last night. Truth be told, I am glad I got the time off but I sort of missed the place. I feel a lot more loose and cool now and lets hope this feeling continues. No major problems, tried to get some laundry done but the rigors (ha!) of phone calls, toilet plunging, and toothbrush runs just wears me out, man. Had a talk with the general manager about some of the things that were bugging me and he said that he will try to take that pressure off my head as long as I try not to get upset over things I can't control. All gd, as he'd say.

And Now For Something Completely Different: I was on my way to work yesterday and I took a different route, from Liberty to 26th and then 26th to I-79. On my way, a driver in a Toyota truck almost t-boned me at the corner of Cascade and 26th. He pulled out behind me and was right on my tail for quite a ways. Then when the road split after Greengarden, he tried to pass me on the left but got caught up when another vehicle decided he was going to turn on Hampton Rd. I made it onto 79 and the guy was RIGHT ON MY TAIL.

As we pulled off the off ramp, he whipped out into the far left lane while he was still coming down the ramp and laid on the gas, flying by me at almost 75 miles at hour (at least). I got pissed for just a second, then realized that there's no reason at all to be mad. I didn't do anything wrong. For all I know, the guy might be heading home from work to his sick kids in school or maybe he found out his wife let the UPS guy in for a little more than just a drop off, who knows.

I turned off the Kearsarge ramp and got onto Interchange, and was stopped in traffic at the light over the bridge. And guess who was right beside me. Yep, you guessed it. Toyota truck dude.

Anyway, I remember the term "pet peeve" floating through my head for just a second, and I realized something.

What the hell is a pet peeve, anyway?

Seriously, think about it. Whats your pet peeve? When someone tailgates you? When someone has 11 items in the 10 items or less line? When your cat takes a dump in the litter box in the kitchen while you're trying to cook dinner? When NBC cuts off coverage of your soap so they can put on the President talking about who he is putting up for Cabinet appointments?

And we get all angry because of this.

Why?

What seriously changes your day if someone tailgates you? Are you really going to be all that much later because someone decided to carry one more item into the check out line? Are you going to smack your cat for doing his natural duty? Are you seriously going to absolutely die if you don't find out if Brooke is going to go back to Ridge, AGAIN?!

Come on. Pet peeves are stupid. We need, as a culture, to rid ourselves of the unneeded stress of the pet peeve. Unless your pet peeve is something that is unchangeable and is impeding your bloodflow, stop worrying about it. Really.

Am I wrong? I'd like your thoughts.

Hoops-a-daisy!

2008-12-15T09:48:00.003-05:00

Three Times...A Charm: Had ourselves some free tickets to the first three games for the Erie BayHawks (or is it Bayhawks? *shrug*) over the weekend. Thursday night they played the then-undefeated Iowa Energy, then played the Fort Wayne Mad Ants (yeah, thats their name) on Saturday and Sunday night. Got to catch all three games. Pros and cons...

Pros:
1. Incredible basketball team. They control tempo, they are very fast when it needs to be, and they play really hard, you can just tell. Iowa, an undefeated team, got out to a 15-3 lead in the first quarter on Thursday but Erie went on a twenty point run and never looked back. Definitely some fight in this team.
2. Excitement abound! The promotions and marketing team for the Bayhawks appear to have got their lessons from the actual NBA (I'll get to that in a moment). Loud music, kids play area next to the court, in game promotions that aren't stupid (like the Otters), and affordable tickets! (Well, they were free, so, uh...)
3. Clutch. The Mascot. Dude is just as cool as the San Diego Chicken was. Climbing all over the stands, leading cheers, doing handstands, making fun of the floor waitresses...I'm not ashamed to admit my eyes were following the mascot around rather than the Bayhawks dancers. Well, Amanda was there, so I couldn't have anyway; not that they're pretty or anything, honey. Okay, they are, but they need some more dance moves. Can't expect season ticket holders to watch the same three dance moves all season, girls.

Cons:
1. Erie. Yeah, I said it. Erie sucked as a fan community this weekend. I'm sorry to say it, but when its opening night for a big time new basketball team and less people show up than at recent Otters games, you have a problem. The biggest cheers of the weekend were when they were offering free products -- free t-shirts got the fans on their feet, not the three pointers of Erik Daniels and Taj McCullough. Free fries got people screaming like children, not the dunks of Ivan Harris. THERE WERE PEOPLE LEAVING THE GAME WITH FIFTY SECONDS TO GO ON SUNDAY, AND THE GAME WAS TIED!!

I'm not sorry I said any of this, but if the NBA D-League continues to put product on the floor that is at LEAST the best the SeaWolves have put out, Erie doesn't deserve a team like that. Fans need to show more love....I expected more people out for this weekend. Not less than the Otters draw during a losing streak. Pretty sad.

....by the way, the D-League is a relatively new league that the NBA put into action a few years ago made of of mostly Western US teams. Erie is the farthest East by A LOT, only Fort Wayne stands between them and South Dakota. And even then, South Dakota is quite a jaunt from the next easternmost team in Tulsa.

Anyway, the league is made up of out-of-college prospects, much like minor league baseball, but 98% of the players aren't owned by the parent NBA clubs. In Erie, theirs are the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Philadelphia 76ers. But if the Cavs had a player that they signed out of college and he ended up needing a little more polishing but they had no space on their team for him to catch up, he'd go to the Bayhawks to get more playing time.

Don't get me wrong, a lot of these players on the court are professional-caliber guys. No doubt. Good show though, I must say. I was hugely impressed. And coming from a guy who had only been to two basketball games in his life before hand, thats saying quite a bit.

My State Street Debut!

2008-12-14T12:47:00.002-05:00

Music, Music, More Music!

2008-12-11T16:48:00.004-05:00

Roll Em On: Went to Clancy's Tuesday night again (as I will be most every Tuesday until I get into a band or something else kicks in to gear, I'm now sure of) and had the best night of my performing life. Played a little bit with "Doug", this guy who seems to be drunk the entire time and only knows five or six songs. Shame, he seems funny, but I dunno about all that. By the way, I said I had no pictures from last week --- I lied...

Thats Amanda singing "Mercedes Benz". Knockout. She's awesome.

Judging by my hands, I'm probably doing "Put Your Hands On Me"

Went extremely well this past Tuesday though, getting back to the point...This old guy who had been making comments the whole time about his bass guitar or whatever comes up and starts playing Doug's guitar, tells me to play these certain four notes. He then proceeds to play only five solo notes, but he KILLED IT! Proves that soul goes a heck of a long way when you feel it.

I played so well I could have never played again and I'd have been happy. But....

Hey, There, Rockstar: Went to Docksiders for the Acoustic Open Mic night as well on Wednesday. Had a pretty good evening; Amanda's mom and brother went with us and Rachel, one of my coworkers, showed up with her little posse. I got to play for only about twenty minutes but I did my acoustic thing (not as great as I wish it was) but apparently I was a lot more impressive than I thought I was. I was welcomed back to play any time there. Amanda shot a video of me doing "Wonderwall" that I will upload to the site here soon.

Psst:...I'll be at Clancy's again on Tuesday :)

Tired, or Maybe Bored

2008-12-08T18:08:00.001-05:00

I Think I'm Burned Out: When I worked at Sears, I had a boss named Frank that always complained that he got this lump in his stomach when he drove toward work. He always seemed to never ever want to be there.

Lately, I feel that way here at the hotel. I don't know how to explain it, and I have ideas WHY, but I just don't want to be here. I don't want to be working at all. Luckily, starting Wednesday, I have five days off in a row. That'll be a nice little break, eh? Can't wait for that. I just feel like we're all fighting wars on different shores.

A long time ago, one of my managers told me that the best way to screw things up is to fight wars on different fronts. Take one battle at a time. Get one thing fixed, and eventually the chips will all start in motion. I hope I can influence the powers that be to get that ball rolling.

The Strat-o-Caster: Went to Clancy's Pub again last Tuesday night, and although I don't have any pictures this time, it went really great! I was basically in the drivers seat for the whole three and a half hours; only flanked by a lead guitar player. He was a little overpowering at times, but I think it went rather well considering we don't know each other outside of musicians night. Amanda actually got up on stage and sang a version of Janis Joplin's "Mercedes Benz" which she promptly knocked right out of the park. We then sang the classic Johnny and June song "Jackson" and also a version of "Evangeline" by The Band. Why we don't always perform as a pair is beyond me...maybe in time.

HouseCleaning: Anyone want to clean our apartment? I'm getting tired of looking at it. No, seriously. I really don't like our place anymore. I see it as way too much work to make it "our own". I would like to have a house or an apartment out in Edinboro or Waterford or something. Can't stand to park on the street anymore, can't stand to deal with living upstairs to someone else. I just want to be able to turn up my guitar and really play and not be afraid of pissing someone off. I want to be able to go out the back door and throw a baseball as hard as I can and not worry about it bouncing off a fence five feet away. I'm seriously getting tired of the apartment life. I know Amanda feels the same way. I don't think we can afford to buy a house now, and we both know its out of our range anyway at this point, but still...I can't stand that apartment anymore. The 'place' is cool, its just that things keep breaking down. The oven doesn't work right, the locks don't work like we wish they did, the basement is a dirty hole in the wall with old appliances stacked everywhere, some of the outlets in the place don't work, and we're paying out the ass for the place. Even the furnace is a landlord admitted piece of crap that we have to have the handyman come out every six months to fix it. I know we're not paying them but still, its becoming a real pain. *breathe tony, breathe*

Anyone know of a place we can rent that ISNT in the city?

Nobody Knew Me When I Wasn't There!

2008-11-30T00:22:00.004-05:00

I Surprised Myself! Well, I finally did it. I went back to playing live. Next time there might be a little better lighting or something, but here's picture evidence -- me playing "Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out". Its real folks, I've finally made my music leap. Yay for that.

Next Tuesday, I'll be going back to Clancy's Pub on the corner of East 10th and East Avenue in Erie for my next shot at getting famous.

Pipe dreams, yeah, but its a heck of a lot more fun that I've had in a while.

Cold As Wet Snow: This morning, Amanda, Townsend and I went to Edinboro to go sled riding on Culbertson Hill. Good times...wet and cold but good times. Here's a pic of the three of us:

Faith

2008-11-25T09:19:00.001-05:00

No More Sitting In Park: I'm online this morning messing around, doing my normal email check in thing, and I find a photo gallery on Sports Illustrated featuring "Most Notable Retirees of 2008." Inside are pictures of guys like Warren Sapp, Mike Piazza, Mike Mussina, Dale Jarrett, Dominik Hasek...people that I remember how much of a big deal it was when they were DRAFTED. I don't know if I've ever noticed a set of retired athletes before that had their careers during my lifetimes that I knew front to back.

I realize that I'm getting a little older day by day and I can't be sitting in park anymore. If I am going to do something with my life, I have to do it NOW. I think I have some sort of feeling on people that have six months to live and know it. I'm scared of the possibility of looking back ten years from now and thinking "why the hell didn't I do that then?"

Quality, Assured: The hotel is having their inspection as we speak. Apparently we are not off to a good start; already been assured we can't finish higher than a 90%. The management are all really nervous. I don't know if they should be. After all its their first inspection as a team and the first one of a new term is always a learning experience. But its easier said than done. At least I'm assured we're all going to have a beer tonight. Haha!

Economical Conundrum: Isn't it wonderful that I can finally afford to go "driving" again for basically no reason? I really missed doing that...the open road, the missing knowledge of where you're going....wait, whats that? Oh, higher grocery prices? higher gas bill? electric bill?

Eh, it was a thought. It'll get better. Gotta have faith.

Snow Panda

2008-11-22T09:24:00.000-05:00

Happy Winter!

This message was sent using the Picture and Video Messaging service from Verizon Wireless!

To learn how you can snap pictures and capture videos with your wireless phone visit www.verizonwireless.com/picture.

To play video messages sent to email, QuickTime� 6.5 or higher is required. Visit www.apple.com/quicktime/download to download the free player or upgrade your existing QuickTime� Player. Note: During the download process when asked to choose an installation type (Minimum, Recommended or Custom), select Minimum for faster download.

Snow (Hey Oh)

2008-11-22T09:20:00.001-05:00

Welcome Back, Mr. Winter: No, the famous albino guitarist isn't back in town. This is the other older man with the last name of Winter. Wasn't a huge surprise, but the fact that its snowed almost every day in the last week has been interesting.

This time of year is very bittersweet for me. I like the Christmas season (for as much as the retail industry tried to beat that out of me), but I don't like the fact it is dark at 4:30 in the afternoon. Last night, Amanda and I went out to a club and we didn't really go out til about 10:30 and it felt like it was 2 in the morning. We played Scrabble (congrats on beating me again, Panda) around 8 pm and it just felt like the right time to go into bed. But we (and by we I mean "I") decided to tough it out and go out to the club. Weather wasn't too bad, and it was good to see our deejay friend Lori again.

A Great White North Story Too Good To Not Pass On: Last weekend, Amanda and I decided to do the big weekender again with the Erie Otters hockey games, both against the Owen Sound Attack.

On Friday, we had Townsend with us. I picked up tickets in section 19 and we headed to our seats. Outside the entrance to our section, I noticed a lot of fans with the other team's jerseys on. Inside, I noticed more folks. We got up to our seats and I realized that we (and be we I mean, "I" again) were sitting right in the middle of a sea of Owen Sound fans.

The "Attack Pack" as they called themselves, had lots to celebrate over, as they beat the Otters pretty badly 3-1. What was great about it was the collision of my patience and their fans. I stewed the entire time. There was a girl sitting beside me that had an oldfashioned wooden noisemaker...every time they made a good pass or had a big body check or their goalie made a good save, she would ring this friggin' noisemaker right next to my head.

Best part of all of it was when Towns was sort of acting upset that we didn't buy him cotton candy early on. The women behind us had a little conversation with him...

Canadians: Hey little man, would you like some candy? (Townsend looks at Amanda real coy) I'm sure it'd be alright.

Me: No, I think he's alright.

Canadians: I can't imagine how upset he must feel, considering your team is down 3-1.

Townsend is not my son. But I still wanted to punch the woman for being so stupid to him.

On Saturday night, we went again, just Amanda and I, and the Otters won 6-2. Big time adjustments had to have been made at practice after that Friday night game because the Otters played 500% better than they had on Friday night.

I got a chance to talk to the Otters general manager and he said that the team had to bench about seven guys due to a nasty cold that had been going around. And the guy actually APOLOGIZED for the game. Talk about humble, eh?

Ick, now I'm even typing like a Canadian.

Editing Note: The next entry that will be posted to the blog will be a picture of Amanda in front of a snowbank that I took yesterday with my camera phone. Please email me if it is not showing up in your mail.

If it doesn't show up, you can always go to thetonytimes.blogspot.com and check out the main site.

Friday Randomness

2008-11-14T09:42:00.001-05:00

Yesterday I passed a threshold in my career; I finally got a name tag with my first and last name on it! I was going to take a picture and upload it to the blog but I decided I didn't feel like blacking out the name of the hotel. Feeling pretty accomplished, and I think I might finally be starting to truly feel like I'm on the right career path...Took a long walk last night through the streets of my neighborhood. I found it very therapeutic and I'm looking forward to doing it again. Hopefully under other circumstances...Looking forward to another Otters weekend with Townsend. I think we're going to go to the home game tonight against Owen Sound; always a fun rivalry. Working 7-3 all "week" so we'll have plenty of time to do the hockey thing. I'm surprised he's been so for it...Hillary Clinton as secretary of state? Huh. Its an idea...

Chinese Democracy Has Nothin' On Me

2008-11-13T14:10:00.001-05:00

So I think I've come to the realization that I need to stop putting so much damn pressure on myself to record new music. I don't have a record deal. I don't even have people calling me ASKING for new music or anything. Amanda is very supportive; listens to me every time I change direction in my brain with my music. So thats great...I just wish I had the patience and time to get these songs right.

They sound so cool, I mean, I can't wait for all of you to hear "Put Your Hands On Me" like I intend it. I also have a pretty cool Beatles type chord progression going on that I have been working on. I intend on playing a little bit of blues guitar this next time...but then again, who knows.

One day I wanna be John Mayer, next day I wanna be the Stones, next day I wanna be the Greatful Dead, the next day I wanna be Eric Clapton, next day I want to be the first Tony Kellogg, next day is the day I have time off work and can do it and I end up putting it off because I listened to Hendrix and have myself convinced I can never be that good.

I need to realize that most of these people spend six months or more in the studio, most likely eight hours a day, perfecting these songs. I have a few hours each evening AFTER I've spent eight hours standing in one place (okay, more like six and half standing, one and a half running my butt off) and I just don't feel musical.

The first CD I ever made was "Coming Home" back in 2003, and I was sleeping five hours a night and addicted to the internet. I was dating Jessica but she wasn't living with me yet, so I had some time. The next CD I did was "Kelso Drive" in 2004; I recorded all nine songs over a three day weekend as a whim to have it done before Jess got back from some vacation she had in the Carolinas.

You can hear the sound qualities in those and you can tell they're just banged out.

"I'm Nobody Without Myself" I took about four months to finish; I recorded and re-recorded and threw tracks away and thought I was on the right track. The songs sound better but they are limited to the technology I had then which was basically a mic and a computer with a bad sound card. (I won't get too technical)

"The Kitchen Sessions" I finally finished in March or April (can't remember) of 2007 and the songs came out really well because they're mostly acoustic. But there's nothing poppy or catchy on them, so I really don't have much recollection of them.

So I've been trying to record new music here for almost a year and I just can't bring myself to really push into it. I've had a full time job this entire time I've recorded songs so its not work...I've had serious relationships almost the entire time as well. So what is it?

I wish I knew. I guess I keep bitching about it maybe I'll get going one of these days. I spent last afternoon recording "Hands" and I really got some good things out of it -- first off I realized that I am a pretty freakin good guitar player. I'm not the most technical person but I have a style all my own. I play blues how I like to. I play rock in my own little style. I'm not an over the top rock star soloist but I like to think that my solos have an emotional feel to them. I'm happy with my guitar. No problems there. I've been pretty happy with my solos for years.

But its my voice. I don't know what it is, but there is only about one day out of the week that I feel confident in my voice. I have the talent, I know when I'm singing out of tune, I know when its right on, and I know when I am barely hanging on. But for some reason, I'm missing that dynamic. My voice is like the guy who just goes to work, finishes his job, and goes home. Has nothing to offer except punching in and punching out. I know its there. I know it has potential.

Anyway, Axl Rose is finally releasing "Chinese Democracy" as a Guns N Roses CD on November 23...seventeen years after first starting it.

I kinda feel like its been that long for me. I know it hasn't, but thats how I work best--under pressure.

We'll see. Maybe I won't listen to Hendrix this time.

President Barack Obama

2008-11-05T00:20:00.003-05:00

Its hard to believe, isn't it?

I sat on the couch in my old home on Route 99 in McKean eight years ago after casting my very first vote for President. I voted for Al Gore; and somehow, that night, something seriously changed in my head. I couldn't believe I was seeing Fox call the election for Bush. No matter the legal stuff that followed, that election was really over in my mind that very same night that I saw Fox News call the election for him. I remembered how prosperous things seemed to have been during the Clinton administration; how could anyone not vote in Al Gore?

It was hard to believe.

Four years later, I voted again, this time in downtown Erie. First time hitting the polls with a computer, as most of us were, and once again, I voted for the guy who lost. Looking back, I can understand why John Kerry lost; the devil you know is better than the devil you don't. Bush seemed like he was screwing things up and didn't care. He got voted back in by even more votes this time.

It was hard to believe.

Nearly two years ago, I met a woman who would completely change my life; give me the strength and the hope that I could really truly be something without resting on my laurels of being a "smart kid in high school". She is everything to me, everything I wish I could be, everything that I wish everyone could be. Someone that I always have fun with, and someone that I knew from the very first moments together that I would never ever stray from. I never thought I'd meet someone who was truly great.

It was hard to believe.

This morning, I woke up at 7 am and walked to the polls with her, this time four blocks away at a Methodist Church. Only person in front of me was Amanda. And I cast my vote for a man that people very close to me refused to take seriously because of various reasons that I am ashamed to even re-type (so I won't, even though I really want to). I never felt more enlightened about a person that I felt so strongly could lead our country, not in the RIGHT direction, but in a BETTER direction than its gone.

Tonight, I watched this man speak for the first time as the President-Elect of this great country. His speeches sticky with beautiful patriotic goodness; the camera catching Jesse Jackson and Oprah Winfrey, along with lots of 'ordinary Joes', crying. To think that someone of minority descent could bring so many people together; that he could win over voters in states that haven't elected a Democratic candidate since before the "I Have A Dream" speech.

It was hard to believe.

But tonight, more than ever in my life, I believe that things are finally going to be set in the right direction. I have faith in my fellow people that want this change. I, quite honestly, have bounced the idea around about politics before personally...and who knows. Makes you wonder what you can really do.

The man is incredibly inspiring.

President Barack Obama.

It is hard to believe.

But its true.

Is It November 5th Yet?

2008-11-03T09:58:00.002-05:00

Long Time Gone: So its been a while since I've said anything politically in my blog. So here goes. Hope I don't sound like a moron.

Election Day is tomorrow, November 4th. And not a day too soon. I'm really sick and tired of hearing all these political ads. I'm actually sick of feeling the need to listen to talk radio as well. All its doing is pissing me off and wishing that it was all over soon.

Just yesterday, I turned on WJET AM 1400. Mostly just to hear what the conservative guys are saying, because I like to be "entertained" and to figure out what I'll hear next about how bad of a person I apparently am.

So this guy, Mike Gallagher, was ranting on about this man in Hollywood who had decorated his house up for Halloween and had included a hanging effigy of Sarah Palin. Gallagher claimed that this man had gone on the "coward" route by not hanging an effigy of "BuhROCK-oh-BUHMA" because it had racial overtones. He then went on to complain about this man and his "life partner" who had obvious problems with Governor Palin.

My take? Of course its not right to do something like that. Hanging any effigy is no good.

If Pedro Sanchez couldn't hang a pinata of Summer Wheatley in "Napoleon Dynamite", then noone can do it in real life either.

That being said, Gallagher went on a rant about "coward liberals" destroying the fabric of our country by doing things like hanging effigys of Governor Palin. He then challenged any listener to call in and defend these guys.

A call came in after the commercial from a guy named "Jody" who went on to explain that back in 2004, someone did something just like that in his neighborhood for Halloween. A neighbor had made two scarecrows; one stabbing the other one in the back numerous times. The stabber was George W. Bush, the victim, John Kerry.

So "Jody" then said that if thats not proof that this stuff is all baloney about it "damaging the moral fabric", then he didn't know what was. So Gallagher said, "You're calling in and defending this two gay men from Hollywood, this gay couple that decided to take on a political star like Sarah Palin, and decorate their house so spooky, that their gay neighbors would think it was 'fun and twisted.' Now, Jody, this gay couple--"

The caller cut him off and said, "Mike, why do you have to label them as gay? I didn't hear you say 'heterosexual vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin'."

Gallagher retorted, "Oh, you have a problem with me calling them what they are? They're GAY. Thats what they choose to be? Are you homophobic? Your homophobia is BLEEDING through the airwaves."

Jody tried to get a word in edgewise but couldn't. Gallagher went spouting on about "liberal cowards like you" and he has "no problem with gay people at all, and thats what liberals, deep down, can't take. Most conservatives like me and 'my guy' John McCain, have no problem with gays, but for some reason, liberal cowards like you and 'your man', BuhROCKohBUHMA can't take these people for what they are."

............am I missing something? I don't know. I tell Amanda about this stuff and she has this great internal power to say she doesn't care and it doesn't really matter. I wish I had that. Its really strange, but I feel this overwhelming desire to just scream when I hear people like this. Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Mike Gallagher. They just sound like they're skirting every issue by sweeping it under the rug. Like they're all trying their best not to just come out and say "don't vote for Obama because he's black" or something.

I don't know. Maybe I'm too passionate about all this.

The lingering problem I feel is really hurting this country though is this huge emphasis on the four year cycle of "elections" as if there's only one election every four years. Thats not democracy.

EVERY SINGLE GOVERNING LEADER IS IMPORTANT TO THE EXISTENCE OF DEMOCRACY. EVERY SINGLE ELECTION IS IMPORTANT TO "EVERYDAY JOES".

School Board, Tax Collector, Mayor, City Council, County Council. These people have the powers of changing your local and your property taxes. Does anyone know who their reps are? I have a fair shot at answering no.

State Representative, State Senator, US Congressman, US Senator. These people are the ones effecting state laws like drinking ages, polling places, district redistribution, state taxes, matters of the Constitution like abortion and military drafts. Some people would be okay to know these folks, because most of them float by for years unopposed.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but because of "checks and balances", the President is only a figurehead that apparently has the power of vetoing any bill that passes through the House and the Senate, and has the power to appoint Supreme Court Judges.

Yeah, a radical person who is against a big issue could effectively bring in enough judges to overthrow a major issue (like abortion), but the government would never allow this to happen. Thats why our political system works. No radicals will get into power and stay there.

Heck, we almost threw out Bill Clinton because he lied about having sex with an intern. Imagine if we got wind of a President wanting to eliminate the drinking age.

Anyway, I hope I haven't confused any of you. I hope all of you go vote tomorrow. I don't care who for, as long as you go vote. People that don't bother are at the mercy of groups like the NRA and AFSCME. Do you want 'groups' to change what you have to say? No, of course you don't.

Your vote counts because it shows your choice. Anyone that has ever said "my vote doesn't count for President" just proved everything I was writing about today.

Your vote DOES count when its only one of a couple thousand that vote for the county executive who decides to bring in a casino. Your vote DOES count for the school board members that want to enforce dress codes in elementary schools.

EVERY SINGLE GOVERNING LEADER IS IMPORTANT TO THE EXISTENCE OF DEMOCRACY. Remember that.

My "Saturday"

2008-10-30T12:24:00.002-04:00

Dreaming Again: Woke up yesterday morning at 11:30 am. Boy did I apparently need the sleep. One thing about sleeping so soundly...I dream the weirdest things. There was quite a bit of weird stuff in there, tornados, cars... but the oddest thing was this chain of events.

I was at a car dealership looking at Buicks when along came a salesperson to "bother me". The salesperson ended up being Kelly Robertson, who I used to work with at Sears. She said, "You know, these cars are really great. But one thing you don't get at other dealerships---a free computer monitor with every test drive!" So she gives me this monitor (which looked a bunch like my first computer monitor, about the size of a television) and I wanted to see if it would work. We walked around the back of the dealership, which turned out to be the back of my old neighbor Chaz Lucchetti's place. We finally found a plug to power it up with and when the screen came on, there was a music video playing. It was Toby Keith, singing some song about Ford trucks. The odd thing was, the band and him were all wearing these plastic plates on their arms that were held on by rubber bands. On the plates? A red logo with a big M -- thats right, McDonalds.

I woke up with the notion that, "wow, I haven't had McDonalds in a while."

Dinner Dash: Dad called me up around 4 or so yesterday and asked if we were interested in having dinner and of course, we obliged. Dinner is always a good time with him. His beard is getting long! Looks great though. I wish I could get mine to look like that. Anyway, dinner was basically the same as it always is, good, fast, and tasty. Lories is such a great place.

I need to get something else for dinner there other than that barbecue burger though.

We went from there to Wal-Mart, where we picked up a few things. Dad told us this story about how he used to put Adam and I into shopping carts and run full throttle around the grocery stores, and it used to make Mom mad. Hilarious stuff. :)

Darius Rucker Sings Right To Me

2008-10-28T21:28:00.001-04:00

Weird, But Sadly True: A few weeks ago, I heard Darius Rucker's new country song, "Don't Think I Don't Think About It". For those of you that don't know, Rucker is the frontman for the 90's roots rock band Hootie and The Blowfish. He's suddenly gone country, and his new album, Learn To Live, is pure country shtick but I like it. A lot. Very catchy tunes, good lyrics...things that Hootie was always pretty good at.

Anyway, I was on my way to work the other day. To get to the hotel, I have to pass by Sears, my old place of employment...the place that I still think about every once in a while. Rucker's tune (now a #1 on the charts) was playing on my car radio and the song for some odd reason, struck me as almost exactly how I feel about Sears.

I know, weird, but sadly, its true. I kinda miss the old place, but I'm very happy where I am now. As Rucker sings on the title track to his song, you gotta live and learn, so you can learn to live.

Anyway, here's the lyrics to "Don't Think I Don't Think About It"

I left out in a cloud of taillights and dust

Swore I wasn't coming back, said I'd had enough

Saw you in the rearview standing, fading from my life

But I wasn't turning 'round, no not this time

But don't think I don't think I don't think about it

Don't think I don't have regrets

Don't think it don't get to me

Between the work, and the hurt, and the whiskey

Don't think I don't wonder 'bout

Coulda been, shoulda been all worked out

Yeah I know what I felt

I know what I said

But don't think I don't think about it

We make choices, we gotta live with it

Heard you found a real good man and you married him

I wonder if sometimes I cross your mind

Where would we be today, if I never drove that car away?

But don't think I don't think I don't think about it

Don't think I don't have regrets

Don't think you don't get to me

Between the work, and the hurt, and the whiskey

Don't think I don't wonder 'bout

Coulda been, shoulda been all worked out

I know what I felt

I know what I said

But don't think I don't think about it

Don't think I don't think about it

My buddy Mike sent me an email today telling me that they painted over my "time capsule" in the stock room...there was this really tall shelving unit that hadn't been used for years up against one of the recieiving bay doors. Before tearing it down, I stood on it I reached up as high as I could and wrote everyone's name that had been working there at the time. There was graffiti all over the place from back when the stock room shelves had been about twice as high as they were at that time...so I didn't think a little list of names would be so bad.

Sears is going through this "Shine and Clean" thing (rumor has it they are looking to get bought out again) and they painted over my little brick. Makes me sad.

Sleep Deprived

2008-10-28T19:06:00.001-04:00

Who Knew I Could Be So Lazy: In all my years of internet addiction before, I rarely slept a full nine hour night. I'd stay up until four in the morning online, just wasting my nights away, doing quick math to figure out how many hours I could sleep to survive.

Side Note: I still believe the Flounder Quotient -- guy I used to work with at Country Fair (nickname was Flounder) said that if you sleep hours in multiples of threes you should be safe. It works.

Anyway, Saturday night, I went out to the Otters game with Amanda (they won!) and we went to the Plymouth afterwards. Didn't get in until later on. I didn't sleep really well, only got a few hours of consistent sleep.

Sunday night I worked until 11 pm and had to be back at the hotel at 7 am for our front desk staff meeting...so needless to say, I didn't get much sleep, again.

Yesterday, Amanda set up an appointment with State Farm to look into renters insurance and possibly a new car policy for her. She rescheduled the appointment for this morning because she wanted me to be there. So we went to bed last night after I got home from work and got up around 8 am...once again not getting a great night of sleep. Oh, and we didn't end up going to the appointment. Again.

So today I'm sort of sluggishly lazy. I watched a couple television shows that I taped (one on disproving "spontaneous human combustion" and a UFO show; shows my brain laziness). I washed a set of towels, cleaned out the litter box...and...uh....that's about, um, it.

I'm off the next two days, so that should be an exciting time. Er, something.

I put up a newer, flashier sounding version of "Put Your Hands On Me" on the MySpace site. Noone's ever said anything about it...so I'm wondering if anyone has checked it out...so...hint hint...DO SO!

Just Don't Forget Where You Came From

2008-10-16T23:36:00.003-04:00

Happy Birthday: Welcome back, Tony!! Been a while, where you been, kid? We've been lookin all over for you! Anyway, I know its been eleven days since I wrote so I'll try to keep you informed. I really haven't had a ton of things to write about in the "normal" position, so I'll just catch all of you up on the things that were really big in the last eleven days.

See Former Title: Yes, it was my birthday on October 9th, thanks to everyone who wrote me on MySpace and the emails and the cool cards and the actual real cards. I didn't do all that much on my birthday; Amanda took me out to dinner at O'Charleys and we went to see "Step Brothers" at the Cinema Six. Dinner was very good, and the movie, well, as I've told a few folks, was the "most hilarious waste of two hours" I quite possibly may have ever experienced. But it was a good time, anyway. Thanks babe. :)

Well, Its Better Than The Alternative: Got pulled into the managers office a few days back after I'd had a small altercation with the sales manager; thought for sure I was gonna get run up the flag pole for that one. But in fact, it wasn't about that at all. Shawn and Jen brought me into the office to let me know that they are promoting me to Front Office Manager!!!! I apparently have done well enough work to be qualified for the position. It was weird, still is....I've never actually been GIVEN a promotion without having to kick and scream and fight for it. So its nice. I can go into work in actual nice colors and all of that, plus the authority to change a few things that I have been increasingly frustrated with at work.

And its a little raise too.

The Musician In Me: There's not much to say here, uh, so I'll just post this blog that I wrote on my brand spankin' new MySpace music site that is promoting my re-venture into the music business. I've decided to take the next calendar year and seriously open myself up to the possibilities of being a professional musician. I'm going to start small with open mic nights and hopefully meet some people to get things going with.

Oh yeah, and I'm growing a beard. Haven't heard a bad comment yet.

Homecoming '08

2008-10-05T07:31:00.003-04:00

Edinboro, PA: It was quite slow at work on Saturday morning so the general manager convinced me to cut out early, around 12:30. Amanda and Townsend went to Edinboro for the university's Homecoming parade in the morning.

Apparently the parade was crap compared to what it used to be, so they weren't heavily entertained. To make matters worse, Townsend's grandfather (his dad's dad) was in an accident and was put in the hospital. Amanda took him home in the early afternoon to be with John.

I drove down to the Boro around two and we went to the new and improved Charlie's Pub in the Giant Eagle plaza. Charlie's used to be "Uncle Charlies"...I guess by taking down all the old-timey decorations and putting up big screen TV's you're suddenly not an "Uncle" kind of place. Food was the same, greasy. Service was the same, no waiters. *shrug* What would you expect, I suppose.

So the plan was to go to this pig roast at a house of a '97 classmate of Amanda's, Jeff Cullers. Our friend Allison was there and she already sounded pretty toasty. (Unfortunately I only ever see her in this mode.) Amanda and I parked down by Edinboro Lake and walked over to the gas station for a pop for me. (I'm on a semi-permanent break from drinking beer.) On the way back we saw a few old friends of mine at a fenced in party near the beer distributor and we decided to go check it out. Stayed for a couple minutes, saw that they were playing "apple dodgeball" (a sport reserved for folks south of the "Mason-Dixon line" aka I-90) and we left them to their devices.

Headed on down to the pig roast and it was a total disaster. A whole mess of people that I never looked up to kindly in high school, and Amanda felt about the same way. I don't mind social atmospheres as much anymore, but this time I felt like I had fleas on me. Couldn't stand being there. We left pretty quickly, once we were able to say hello to everyone we knew.

I got a phone call from one of the "apple dodgeballers", Curtis LeSuer, asking us to go over to Gary Barbour's place to hang out for a bit. So we went over and the afternoon was a rescued for the most part.

Got to catch up with Curtis, talked fantasy football shop and watched the ending of the Penguins-Senators game. Gary's got a nice little place! Amanda also got to meet the only other person I know that still likes Oasis, Eric Kraus. Typical Eric, bouncing between the hockey game, downloading smut on his laptop, bitching about how many fantasy points we get for return yards, and blasting Oasis's new single, "The Shock Of The Lightning".

When we left, Eric was walking around on stilts and they were getting ready to gear up for beer pong. There are times I wonder how in sam hell I got caught up with guys like that, but I'm still glad I have some friends that care that I'm around.

American Splendor: Got our newest movie from NetFlix last night, "American Splendor". Starring Paul Giamatti, the movie lays out the story of Harvey Pekar, a guy who grew up in the sluburbs (no typo, i just made that up) of Cleveland Ohio and ended up with a dead end file clerk job. He is the author of an underground comic strip which the flick was named from. Not really all "horsies and peppermints" of a story, just a real guy living a real life in the doldrums and finding something good out of it.

Couldn't help thinking of Chris Brown's comics. I wonder if he's inspired by that at all. Or if he'd ever heard of them. Anyway, if you folks haven't seen it and like the indie style of films, check it out. Giamatti is freaking awesome. Every movie I see by him impresses me more.

I'm Glad I Was There: A few days ago I blogged about a long term guest of ours who was rushed to the hospital. The last bit I'd heard about him, he'd been diagnosed with pneumonia and that he'd be back in a few days. Yesterday afternoon (a week later) I found out that he had taken a turn for the worse and slipped into a coma and that they weren't sure if he was going to make it out.

Unfortunately, probably around the time I was being told of this, he died yesterday morning. He had a rough battle the last few months and you could tell he wasn't the same happy guy we had here before. I won't forget what he said that afternoon when I was sitting with him in his room waiting for the paramedics.

"Its hell to get old," he said. "I don't recommend it."

Suddenly A Convert

2008-10-04T08:32:00.002-04:00

Don't Judge A Book...: Amanda and I decided to take a walk down to Dobbins Landing (yeah, the Public Dock, Mike, I know...) and check out the brick Dad got for my brother and I, and take a walk around on a nice day. Apparently, after all this time, I'd never mentioned to Amanda I had this brick and I talked about how I went down there with Mike last Thursday and she was quite embarrassed...whoops!

Anyway, we walked around, and it was quite blustery. She suggested we take a walk over and see the Sheraton. I wasn't really into the idea, because they are "competition" and I didn't really want to "get caught snooping." I actually wrote about it earlier in the year in my short lived Erie-flections blog as being one of "Erie's Eyesores".

But we went anyway, and walked into the lobby to find our old Sears friend Teja working at the front desk.

Quite cordially, she invited us to take a tour and the sales manager Lisa Chilson (who ironically enough used to work here) and took us on a nice tour. Gorgeous lobby...their "Link" as they call it is all in dark wood, with Navy blue and deep reds in the fabrics. She showed us a couple of their banquet/meeting halls and their views are spectacular.

I left there not jealous at all, because that hotel is definitely in a league of its own, but it makes me proud as an Erie resident we have a really really nice place like that. Worth the money and the eyesore? Eh........... but its definitely nice.

With Two Days You Get Eggroll: Yeah, I don't really have all that much to write about, so I'll do the rambling thing again. Dad finally got me new tires (two fronts) for my car for my birthday (October 9th in case anyone forgot...)...I decided to grow a beard now, I got permission from the hotel management (*cough, laugh, giggle, cough*). It might play into a Halloween costume...Finally got the right rythym track down for "Feelin' Like The First Time" for my CD. Shaping up to be a good track...Oasis album comes out Monday!

Ninja Cat - I Had To Share This!

2008-10-02T10:46:00.003-04:00

The video that is sweeping the e-nation.... NINJA CAT!

Ninja Cat @ Yahoo! Video

If you can't see it, click on the "Ninja Cat" link above.

The End Of Karaoke?

2008-10-02T01:33:00.003-04:00

Swan Song: Tonight Amanda and I went to karaoke at the club we'd been going to. It was exceptionally busy for a typical Wednesday night. Lots of faces I'd never seen. But apparently we were needed, because the DJ came by and hugged us, saying "thank god you're here". So we sang a couple songs, typical stuff. For some reason though, it seems to be weighing on me going there, and Amanda and I had a little discussion about it...maybe its time to stop going.

I look across the way and I see one of my co-workers there, along with the guy who works for the Scott hotel that won't give me rates. Anyway, I went over to my coworker and said hello. His boyfriend looked incredibly pissed at me, pointing his finger in my face and saying he expects a full apology.

Turns out earlier today when we were at work we were having a discussion and my coworker made a wisecrack about his boyfriend being a little crazy, and a comment was made that "better watch out or he'll cut you to pieces." Right now, I can't recall if I said it or if he told me that one of his friends said it and I just agreed with it.

Anyway, my coworker apparently told him that I said it and this boyfriend of his got extremely pissed and basically threatened me if I didn't apologize. Which I did, because I'm not a punk, I had some responsibility for the comment, whether I said it or not. But I didn't appreciate the steamrolling I received right at the beginning.

I think Lisa is right about people hanging out with folks you work with. Doesn't always turn out right, and when it does, it makes things extremely uncomfortable. Hopefully by the next time I work with the guy all this drama will have dissipated and I'll be alright.

But I went on stage soon after this and sang "Rain King" by the Counting Crows (spot on performance) and said that it might possibly be the last time I sing there. I just don't need this drama crap. Especially since I'm trying to find ways to be less worried man and more happy man; less stressed and more relaxed.

I'm getting there....

I Don't See Any Ushers Here...

2008-10-01T07:13:00.003-04:00

Pour Some Beer On My Sacred Heart: Last night Amanda and I were invited to be guests at the Sacred Heart Ushers Club up the street from us. A woman she works with is a member there and has been bugging us for weeks to go.

I remember what it was like to go to 'clubs' like that as a kid; they have this mirror on the wall and you have to buzz someone to let you in or show your identification. I'm frankly surprised that those places still exist...

Anyway, the club was exactly how I expected it to be, pretty small barroom, but it was very clean and had these two huge big screens (that I found myself stuck to the White Sox - Twins game) and a nice sound system. It was a decent place, but I was tired. I guess there was some sort of subconscious effort to get Amanda to go home at 10:30 because she wanted to stay and I was growing really tired. After a Coke though, I felt pretty good about staying and we played a couple games of pool.

Its October: The baseball playoffs start tonight, so I figure its a good of time as any to make my picks for the playoffs and World Series...so here we go:

National League Divisional Series
Chicago Cubs vs. Los Angeles Dodgers : I like the Cubs in this series...I think Manny Ramirez can only take Los Angeles so far. And when you have a pitcher who hit nine home runs this year (Carlos Zambrano), how can Chicago really go wrong here? Cubs in four games.

Milwaukee Brewers vs. Philadelphia Phillies : I'm seeing this as a five game series that ends up being closer than Wild Card vs East Champ should go...and I am going to stick out my neck and call it for Milwaukee. Sabathia's performance should give them two wins at least, and I hope that one of the Brewers other pitchers can pick up the slack and win them that third game.

American League Divisional Series
Boston Red Sox vs. Los Angeles Angels : I'm going to go a little romantic, my dear. I'm enjoying the success that LA has had in the last few years, and I find them to be totally under rated. They won 100 games this year! I'm giving the Sox one game but the Angels will take this in four.

Chicago White Sox vs. Tampa Bay Rays : UPSET! Yes! Stop The Presses!!! After watching that game last night, I'm convinced the White Sox are going to upset the first time AL East champion Rays...its a matter of experience AND the wave those guys are on. White Sox in five. Only because Tampa won't go down without a fight, because yeah, they're still good. No matter how hard it is for John Pritchard to swallow that. :)

National League Championship Series
Cubs vs. Brewers : Its their year. Brewers will run out of gas after pitching Sabathia on three days rest for the second time in two weeks and he'll prove ineffective in an important game... Cubs take this series in five games.

American League Championship Series
White Sox vs. Angels: This one is tough to call for me. Giving the White Sox the series against Tampa Bay may be the worst prediction I make, but if they knock off the Rays, don't be surprised if they give the Angels a run for their money and give the world the possibility of an all-Chicago World Series....but I'm still gonna give this series to the Angels in seven. They're just too powerful and you can't deny Mike Scoscia's club.

World Series
Cubs vs. Angels : A ratings bombshell this one will be! There's lots of talk about the fact the Cubs have gone a hundred years without a championship and how there is a curse...but I watched the Red Sox AND the White Sox roll over this myth and I'd like to hope we can move on in this 21st century world and be real, stop crying jinx and stabbing voodoo dolls for comfort.
The Cubs will face a steamroller in Los Angeles's AL team, and the Series will be a hard fought battle for both teams. I'm going to say the series will go six games and my choice for the World Series champion in thirty days is.... Chicago. The Cubs can't possibly screw this up this year.

So here's me saying, GO CUBBIES!

108 Years Without Ten

2008-09-30T08:01:00.004-04:00

The Worst Is Over: I can finally move on at work...the "new" Assistant General Manager started yesterday, something I was subconsciously hoping wouldn't happen, but the day went off without a hitch, as once again I swallowed my pride and decided its easier to take the high road and deal with it in a positive manner. Makes me feel better anyway, and who really needs that stress?

A New Direction: Going to the show at Forward Hall the other night has inspired me to take a new direction for the CD I've been working on. I think I'm going to do it 'live' with as little overdubs as possible (overdubs are edits after its originally recorded, track by track recording like is done in a big studio) to make it more as you'd hear it if you went to see me at a show.

I'm spending too much time and stress going over a bass line or a harmony vocal, and when you'd go see me, you'd either see me playing alone or possibly having Amanda singing right next to me, so the most you'll probably hear is her singing and maybe playing another guitar. The only overdubs would more than likely be a few parts that I feel are important to the sanctity of the song, like Eric's banjo or maybe a sweep-you-off-your-chair lead guitar solo by yours truly. As of yesterday, I'm starting to do things with the harmonica too as much as possible.

Course, unless I change my mind in two weeks. Who knows.

Lack of The Typical Third Subject Leads To Rambling: Fell asleep "mom style" last night on the couch around 8:30 pm; my body is still trying to get used to the new schedule. I haven't woke up to an alarm more than a couple times in almost nine months!...If you happen to get a chance, check out the Discovery Channel's "Planet Earth"; watched it last night with Amanda and I'm happy I did. Its amazing stuff. Thats the sort of thing that should be on high definition TV, not a soap opera football game...The Pirates fired their pitching coach yesterday. I read somewhere that it was the first time since 1890 (!!) that the team didn't have a pitcher win at least ten games. I think thats a pretty good reason to lose your job, considering an average pitcher has at least 35 chances in a season to win a game..."I can live in a recession, I've been preparing for it. Hope these other people can." - Mike Sebald. Had a great time Friday, by the way!

An Alright Saturday Night

2008-09-28T07:54:00.004-04:00

Forward: Well, the big Saturday night I was looking forward to ended up going alright. Only made it to one out of the four -- the big jam show at Forward Hall. Almost was a bust too -- we ended up late because we took Townsend home and took our time getting back.

First act on stage was this guy named Matt. I immediately recognized him from open mic nights at Clancys. He does the singer/songwriter thing but plays alot of old obscure blues stuff. Played about eight songs, some electric and some acoustic.

During his act he mentioned something about a CD he had if anyone was interested. To get in to this show, there was a $7 cover. Amanda and I took our friend Lori (who is a DJ at the club we go to) and she really didn't seem to enjoy it all that much. After Matt mentioned his CD, she joked, "For this price and for this show, I better get it for free!"

Second act was Gypsy Dave and The Stumpjumpers. A lot different than what I pictured them as. I listened to a online radio program from Knoxville last week and heard them and the band seemed pretty good. Anyway, they played for about forty minutes and it was good! They weren't anything floor rattling, definitely mood music. Have a very core audience. I can't imagine them getting big and selling out a stadium. But what band does anymore?

Third act was Rachel Eddy. She's a fiddle player from Nashville. Think Kathleen Edwards without the Sheryl Crow side of her. Pretty cool. She played with Fred Parker and Billy Smith, both pretty big bluegrass people out in the "sticks". I was impressed...although Amanda seemed to have a problem with the fact Rachel was wearing Crocs. *shrug*

Last band on was Shotgun Jubilee which featured an old high school mate of ours, Ryan Bartosek, on bass. He was as good as he was back then, probably better...the band was decent but we left early cuz it was getting late and I had to work pretty early.

Definitely worth the $7.

By the way, the Otters lost in Guelph on Friday night (5-1) and beat Kitchener 4-0 last night. Their record stands at 2-2. Not bad.

An Interesting Five Minutes: Yesterday one of our long term guests, I'm gonna call him , called 911. He's an elderly guy that has stayed here for a long time, and in recent months has had some bouts with his health.

I ran down to his room (after calling the boss for split second advice) and got in there. He was coughing alot and having trouble breathing. I didn't panic (it doesn't help anyway) and sat with him until the paramedics got there. Had to calm him down because he was seriously freaking out over the fact he couldn't stop shaking. The paramedics were there in about ten minutes and they took him to the hospital.

Found out later in the evening that he has pneumonia and that he should pull out of it with some treatment...he's had a couple episodes this year and hopefully everything turns out fine.

New Developments: Possible new career move on horizon...I am looking forward to another chance that has come up in the last few days. I'll keep you posted as much as I can with that...you can email me if you want to know more, not much I can say publicly.

Its War!

2008-09-24T19:56:00.003-04:00

You Forgot To Put In The Crystals: Last night around 5 pm, I started getting phone calls from guests saying that their internet wasn't working. So I jabbed with the technical support help desk for about a half hour, and they said everything seemed to be in order from our end.

Unfortunately the guests were still having problems. I gave them the number I call and most of them were actually able to get fixed and work. But some of them didn't. When they didn't, they came down to the business center to use the internet down here that is hardwired into the wall.

And...that wasn't working either. I called up the company who runs the computer and they said we have some sort of virus blocking the internet from coming in to the hotel. Great! So today they were supposed to call back to get all these things fixed, and apparently the technical support still hasn't fixed these problems.

Its a great day to be a front desk agent...but even better knowing you have the next two days off. Yay!

V Is For Vonnegut: Tomorrow morning I'm having a overdue visit from Mike Sebald, one of my buddies from Sears. I really miss having him around. When I mentioned all those "good guys" in my blog a week ago, he was one of them. I haven't seen him since I had lunch with him and Chris Brown about two months ago. We are all busy people, I guess.

I've Got People: Came into work tonight and the boss tells me that he received the order for new name tags (since I lost mine a few weeks ago) and forgot to order mine. He then asked, "Who do you know at the engraving company?" I was pretty much clueless unless he gets them from the Trophy Shop Engravers in Edinboro.

"Someone wrote 'Hi Tony' on the box."

AH HA! I let him know that its most likely my mom...she's a sorter at UPS and did that when I worked at Sears. Always got teased for it, but its nice to know she's watching out for me. :)

And Finally, ITS WAR: A month or so ago, one of the front desk people left here and went to the new Hilton Garden Inn on upper Peach Street. When he left, I told him that I was in the running for Assistant General Manager and that I wanted to see if he'd let them know that since they're a Hilton property, like ours, that we could make amends and share information. He said that he'd see what he could do because he does understand expanding the company base.

Fast forward to this past week...I'd been talking with this front desk girl there who's been giving me the amount of rooms they have left to sell, and I felt okay with that. I'd just look up their rates, is all. Tonight, our former desker answered the phone and flat out refused, even pushed back at me, when I asked him for the number of rooms remaining. I told him that the girl had been giving me this info, and he said "management wouldn't be happy to know that".

Now the story here is that Scott Enterprises owns alot of the properties in that area. Hotels such as the Courtyard by Marriott, the Comfort Inn Peach, the Holiday Inn Express, the Residence Inn by Marriott, and now the Hilton Garden Inn. They also own the Applebees, Steak and Shake, Boston Pizza, Bob Evans, and the Splash Lagoon waterpark.

Great, right? WRONG. Why can't they understand that we are trying to build the company's name? You're never going to be anything but a property management company. People don't go to your properties because you're owned by Scott Enterprises....they go because they like the Marriott's no smoking policy...they like the prices that Comfort Inn has...they go because they're attached to Splash Lagoon.

Whats with the strongarming? Why push everyone away? I need to understand this badly, because it now makes me pissed off at that desker who is "following orders" ... they make the same amount of money I do. Its not as if they're all making twenty bucks an hour waiting tables.

Why does this crap go on?

Embracing My Stripes

2008-09-23T13:43:00.006-04:00

I know most of you get this blog directly in your email; occasionally I'll post a little poll that only two of you actually visit but this time I really want you to go to my main internet page.

Go ahead, click here to visit what I really wish everyone could see.

I stumbled across some really kick ass cartoons of Tony the Tiger the way he used to be, not the way he's been basically my entire life. I don't know what it is or why, but I really truly prefer the younger Tiger. I sorta edited the original drawing from this guy named Johnny Yanok (really awesome artist)

Not much else goin' on here in my corner of the world. Had a talk with the boss yesterday that let him know how I feel about everything but that I was ready to move on and leave it all behind. He seemed pretty happy about that. Nothing wrong with letting folks know how you feel.

Been laying around doing nothing the last few days here, haven't really been in the mood to record any music (probably because I feel weird not being able to do anything loud before Robert gets up at 1:30 in the afternoon every day, but thats another story, another day).

Anyway, I hope everyone's doing well and enjoying the first full day of autumn!!!

Stumpjumping

2008-09-22T11:55:00.003-04:00

Things I Wish I Hadn't Done: Well it appears that I didn't need any emails from anyone giving me the third degree about missing Kori's birthday because I was "trying to get promoted". I feel bad enough. I swear I'll never sacrifice anything anymore when it comes to work. Unless its something that cannot possibly be done because I'm going to be meeting with heads of state, I'm taking time off when I SHOULD and not when I am ABLE.

Sorry, Kori. :(

I'll Be 28 Soon: Went out to dinner with Dad on Thursday and he asked me what I wanted for my birthday. It was the day after I found out the crappiest news of them all and I was still recovering (was? still am now!) from it. So he took Amanda and I out to Lorie's Wildridge (very underrated restaurant on West Ridge Road) and had a nice dinner. Even got a piece of awesome blackberry pie!!

Afterwards, he suggested we go to World Of Music to check out some acoustic-electric guitars. I had mentioned about getting "better tools" for my musical reconstruction. So I went and picked up alot of really nice (and some very expensive) acoustic guitars...and mostly picked apart their bad sides the entire time. I liked this small bodied Yamaha guitar, and a pretty nice Alvarez that was a knockout to look at. But we left empty handed.

As well we should have.

Last thing I really need is ANOTHER guitar. Maybe trade in a couple for a nice one, but I shouldn't have this many of them as it is. Most of the time I'm playing my red Stratocaster or my Ibanez acoustic electric, and the rest of them sit in the closet. When I'm feeling spry I pull out the 12-string (because its still an awesome sound!!) and play. I'm doing better.

But I've got four other ones! My dobro I touch only when I'm in my slide phase, the red Washburn electric is good for recording (prefer that one recently), my wine Telecaster sits in the case in the closet, and the bass only gets played when I'm recording.

Anyway, one of things I was telling Amanda I wanted to buy the day I got promoted was a set of matching white letter tires for my car. I had a set on my old Cavalier and they looked so impressive...but now that I'm still just a desk guy (for now, *rubs hands together real fast*) I was just going to make sure my bills are paid.

Dad called me up on Friday and asked me if I wanted new tires for my car for my birthday! How ironic is that?! I can't imagine how he would have known that...unless my stupid short term memory forgot or something, who knows. We're going to check that out soon enough, and get me some nice all-weathers.

Exciting Saturday Ahead: This Saturday is a busy one! For the first time in a while, I'm going to have a lot of things to possibly do....

1.) A bluegrass show featuring some awesome local bands is at Forward Hall at 7:30 pm. Gypsy Dave and The Stumpjumpers, Shotgun Jubilee, and Claire Stuczynski are set to play. Amanda's saw them all before with Eric a couple months ago but I had to work. Not this time!!!!!

2.) Birthday party for Kimmy, a front desk clerk from the property next door at the Plymouth Tavern at 6 pm. Will at least show our faces!

3.) DJ J-Roc show at the Metropolitan that we (as well as apparently everyone at the hotel) were invited to because our laundry guy Ray is doing security. Not entirely sure if thats going to happen.

4.) If all else fails (which I don't plan on it) the Erie Otters home opener is at 7:30 at the Civic Center. The Otters split their opening weekend, losing 4-0 to the London Knights on Saturday, then winning in Plymouth 6-1 against the Whalers. Yes, so everyone understands, now that the Pirates are in their last few games of the season, my focus has shifted and will now be square on hockey for the next few months (football really doesn't interest me, sorry).

Beginning Again For The First Time

2008-09-18T11:02:00.008-04:00

One year ago, I was at Sears, working as the manager of the receiving department, as much of you already know. I was probably wearing a dirty black t-shirt and cargo pants with torn pockets. Relatively floppy steel toed shoes, walking up and down the dusty storage aisles cracking jokes about a customer with the greatest bunch of guys I had known to date.

I had found out that Pam, the Assistant Store Manager in charge of the Home Improvement department, had decided she was leaving for the Ashtabula, OH Sears. She pulled me aside and said, "Tony, I want you to know I'm leaving and I want you to put in for my position. There aren't many people I know that would be a better fit than you." She helped me put in for it and within a few weeks, she was gone.

I had my interview with the Store Manager, Chris, and it went extremely well. After all, every single job I'd had in my six plus years at that store had done almost exclusively with that department. I was a salesman for two years; I was a stockman for nearly two years; I was the manager of the signing department and spent almost a year pricing and setting up displays there; and finally worked as the manager of the department in charge of loading those products into customer cars.

The interview went spectacularly. She seemed really excited about it, and I felt like I was seeing my last days of being on the sidelines.

Within a month, I was up at 5 am pouring egg beaters onto a hot grill in the kitchen of the Homewood Suites by Hilton.

Sears had decided to pass over all of that experience for a guy who was the produce manager for the past six months at a Giant Eagle. It was hard swallowing that, I must tell you. Was it me? Am I to blame for what has happened? Did I burn bridges that I couldn't smell the embers of? It was very hard to comprehend, how we were going into the Christmas season and they'd go with someone that was completely new over me. The experience I had.

I was so humiliated that I decided that I needed to find a new place to work. After all, we all know Sears has had financial troubles since they broke champagne bottles over the pillars of the Sears Tower in the late 70's. Who was I kidding? I wasn't going to retire from there. And I sure didn't want to end up like my one time boss Frank; going to work every day with a knot in my stomach and regretting not leaving the company years ago.

So I went to the Homewood to work in the kitchen. Lisa, the manager, had brought Amanda in a few months earlier to be in a management training program they called STEP. (Still don't know what it stands for.) When Amanda was done in February, I'd apply to get into this position that they were scraping for people to get into.

After three months in the kitchen (that I still have nightmares about to this day), I was promoted to the front desk. I didn't think I could do it. It looked easy; there were lots of times I'd look up from sweeping scrambled eggs off the floor and saw the girl at the desk laughing and carrying on with Amanda as if the world were made of marshmallows and chocolates. Answering the phone like a robot, saying the same things, talking to guests as if they were having the time of their lives. It looked like I could never do it.

But soon enough, I learned the job and found my own little way of doing things, and it worked for me. I started to enjoy it. And soon enough, it came time for the STEP program. So I applied, and was interviewed. A few weeks went by and I got nervous, thinking there was a problem. This very same program spot (that six months prior was filled when Lisa went to Sears to complain about her grill and found Amanda) had fifteen candidates looking for it.

The word came down that the company was looking to sell some of their assets and they didn't have the money to continue the STEP program, and it was eliminated.

So I had left Sears for nothing, really. I had risked leaving a job that, yeah, sucked hard, but I was good at and left behind a really good bunch of people.

I still miss them, alot.

Had a tough time with it, and my job performance went in the can. Within a few weeks I was in the managers office getting ripped for being nasty to a guest on the phone and also being nasty to a guest in the hotel in the same night.

I had the next two days off and I thought long and hard about what I was going to do. I felt shamed and stupid for making this jump and it not working out. But I found out most likely I didn't need this STEP program anyway. Who knows, maybe in a few months or so you'll have an opportunity to be a manager! So I decided to refocus and just treat it like it was just a job. Stop TRYING to be something that you aren't.

Fast forward a few glorious months where I shined like a new penny on the sun. Guest compliments, friends made, emails to the manager about my service, everything. At the beginning of August, Lisa relocated to Illinois and her assistant, Shawn, has moved up and become the new General Manager. What a guy, too. Smart, funny, and definitely seemed very relaxed at work. Someone I related to very quickly.

And I was told to put in my resume to be his assistant. Lisa said, "There aren't many people I know who could possibly be a better choice."

Unfortunately here's where the story gets short and cryptic, because apparently there is someone that reads this blog at the hotel and I don't want to say anything mean about the people that I was up against. It was a rough few weeks, looking at everyone else's pros and cons that I worked with on the desk, and I was a jerk alot of times. In hindsight, I wish I would have known this was going to happen.

Yesterday, Shawn made the decision to bring back a woman who had previously been the Assistant General Manager at this very same property but quit for reasons I don't know the truth about, only hearsay. I must say here in my own little blog that I strongly, STRONGLY disagree with the decision to bring in a person from the past. I thought we were trying to create a new atmosphere with the end of the Lisa era.

Once again, I'm faced with the internal squabbling: Did I do something wrong? Whats wrong with me? I don't smell anything burning! Why can't I break through?

But, in a business sense, if thats what Shawn feels is best for the hotel, then so be it. Although I feel that our team has been cheated somehow of not getting our chance to succeed, I can live with the decision. I'm not happy at all, and I have no bones about saying this. Someone "of influence" could read this. At this point, I don't care. Its the god's honest truth and anyone who knows me more than just a few minutes knows that I wouldn't be Tony if I didn't say something like this.

I'm sure that Dad is reading this right now thinking I'm going to get fired or something. But I won't. I've done worse, and after all...

The real issue is that this political bullshit doesn't matter. I still believe, after everything else, that it doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter to the guy who just got done driving 14 hours to get to Erie for his brother's funeral. It doesn't matter to the woman who stays at the hotel to work at a local business. It doesn't matter to the ten year old kid who just wants to hurry up and get changed and get in the pool! These are the people that are important. Other people, whether they are guests or customers, are the ones who need to be treated decently. Call it a quasi-spiritual quest or whatever, but I feel better knowing I made someone's day, and I will continue to do so.

As of yesterday I had, ironically enough, the next two days to get over this and go back to work. And when I do, it will be with renewed focus and drive. But this time, my life in general will go forward and be successful from this point out, not necessarily just my career.

I'd said in prior posts that if I don't get it that I'll start working hardcore on my musician credentials, and I intend to do just that.

I just want to say thank you if you are still reading this contrived little ditty. I know that in a matter of weeks I'll look back at this post and laugh at how silly it sounded, but thats the beauty of life.

You can forgive.

Its going to take a little extra for me to do so this time, but I will.

Found: Barber In Erie

2008-09-16T12:07:00.004-04:00

The Crystal Ball: 9 am. Ah, yes. Woke up this morning and went to the bathroom, blew my nose, and took a look at myself in the mirror.

YIKES!

Dialed up Sears. They have this new "automated phone system" so you can't actually call direct anywhere anymore. And even though I KNOW that the hair salon people are there at 9 am, I can't get through to them. I tried to force it through and the call went to the auto center. Whoops.

Dialed up Best Cuts. They can't take me until 1:30. Too many appointments. Never seemed that busy before...but maybe their computer was down. *shrug*

Dialed up Joe's Barber Shop over on West 8th Street. Bingo. 9:45 am. Jumped in the shower real quick and got moving over there. Walked in and the place had that "hasn't been remodeled in twenty years" wood paneling on the walls.

This woman comes walking out from the back and meets me, introduces herself as Crystal. She looked like this lady I worked with at Sears but I didn't think of asking her. She was very, very cordial, as was I (thank you hotel industry!!!) and we got along very quickly. I wanted to do something a little different with my cut this time (why I was so leery about going somewhere I'd never gone before) and she was very patient and very efficient as well. I'll definitely go back...as long as Cheryl's okay with that.

Shine On, You Crazy Diamond: Had some bad news this morning...read that Richard Wright died.

(Who the hell is Richard Wright?)

Okay, I'll tell you. Wright was the keyboard player in Pink Floyd, one of my favorite bands. (Okay, top ten. Not like I sit in blacklight rooms with Dark Side of The Moon on every night.) Anyway, most of my favorite tunes of theirs he was credited with writing. Lots of the Dark Side keyboard stuff that I like.

I was talking with my resident Pink Floyd friend Eric this morning and he was lamenting about how in the next twenty years all of our big named musicians/legends are going to be gone, and its sort of depressing to learn that, but you gotta realize that there's alot of really edgy good music going on right now. Oasis, The Killers, Wilco, Ben Folds, Robert Randolph...gotta look at it that way.

Maybe I'll Be In A Commercial: Got an email this morning from Progressive, my car insurance company. I have electronic debit on my account to save me about $15 a month on my policy, and have for a few years now. Progressive has basically rebuilt my car (Remember, $9,500 in damages a few years back?) and I always expected it to be really high premiums.

But I've always been a really good driver. I've only been in two nonfault accidents (only one reported, other driver's choice), got one ticket for going through a red light (freaking Cambridge Springs cops), and one ticket for bad inspection (motorcycle cop on Presque Isle. How embarrassing!). Other than the complete annhiliation of my car a few years ago, really not alot of incidents.

My monthly bill has been around $125 for about two years now. I got the email this morning and it says they're only taking out $96 a month. Thought maybe there was a mistake so I called them up. And, as always, they were extremely nice and explained that I am a "loyal customer" and "low incident record" gave me a $29 a month discount for this six month period.

I was so happy I actually hollered for joy!

That Lucky Old Sun: Downloaded the new Brian Wilson album, That Lucky Old Sun. (I had a free album coupon, get off my back) Freaking awesome! Course, you have to be a Beach Boys fan. But there's really not much "Surfin Safari" type stuff here...its very orchestrated with these lush harmonies, its just so damn awesome. I love this guy.

The album is basically a run down of his love for Southern California life. Lots of little raps about neat things he sees on the street corners. I saw a documentary on him and he looks like Ozzy Osbourne; all drugged up. But listening to this album sounds like a guy who is completely enamored with his life right now. Just beautiful music. Makes me smile. :)

Wanted: Barber In Erie

2008-09-15T15:37:00.007-04:00

Shave and A Haircut, Two Bits! Over the last couple of days, Amanda keeps saying, "Boy, you need a haircut." "Tony, you look fuzzy." "Hey Lori, doesn't Tony look like he needs a haircut?" I called up Cheryl a couple nights ago to ask if she could do it (like she has for the last four years) and she told me she's got school and work and a bunch of stuff; she can't do it til after six pm on Thursday. She gave me permission to go elsewhere and wouldn't be offended.

Today. Ten am. Phone rings. "Hey honey. Just wanted to get you up and rolling, so you don't waste the day away. You know, get your bills paid, get your hair cut. You said you didn't want to sleep all day. You also said you wanted to record."

Of course. Yeah. Haircut. How could I forget?

So I crawl out of bed, jump in the shower, get dressed, pick up my bills, and head on down the road. Went to the gas company first, paid the bill. Drove across town to Millcreek to go to my bank. Called Sears to find out if they had any openings.

"Sorry, we had someone call off this morning. I can get you in around 1:30 if you want to come by!" I declined. Too close to work time.

Drove up to West 26th Street and went to Best Cuts, the place Cheryl used to cut at. I walked in the door and this sixteen year old looking girl looks up from her customer and says, "Sorry, I can't take any more appointments right now, the computer crashed. Managers orders, I'm really --" Walked out of the door. Called a few places for a haircut, and they didn't answer the phone. Closed, probably.

Maybe a haircut wasn't in the cards today.

I did avoid two pretty nasty accidents today on my way to work as well -- one on 38th and Liberty (car in facing lane was turning left, and luckily I was paying attention or we'd both be short a hood, engine compartment and a front bumper, as well as some teeth and an airbag) and one near 54th and Peach (a vehicle in the right lane let a car out from a side street and the impatient perpendicular driver didn't see me coming in the left lane, and luckily I wasn't hungry for a T-bone). Not a great day so far.

Lunch with Theresa and Robert and Amanda was okay, though. Its also Robert's birthday (21). Unfortunately due to my schedule I was able to go to lunch with them and not to Kori's cake-and-ice-cream meeting tonight at Mom's house. DONT ANYONE SEND ME NASTY EMAILS. I'M NOT IN THE 'SWITCHING SCHEDULES' POSITION RIGHT NOW. TRYING TO GET PROMOTED, REMEMBER?!?!

*whew, sorry about that*

I've Done Something Wrong: Wrote a new song last night about my "guilty" personality, thinking I'm always the one doing something wrong or that I've always done something bad. Don't know where that comes from, but I make fun of myself in the song. Nothing that sounds like it'd be on the upcoming U2 album, rather something that sounds right out of the Bob and Tom Morning Show.
On that same note, I read the Rolling Stone interview with David Letterman that everyone keeps talking about. There were two questions in there that, if anything else, show that Letterman and I have one huge personality trait in common:

In the past you've described yourself as suffering from anhedonia, the inability to feel happiness. Where are you on the anhedonia index these days?
Well, I think it has always been a defense. If you mention often enough how disappointed you are in your own behavior and your own performance, then you've pretty much just pulled the rug out from under people who were just about to say, "Jeez, that was really disappointing, we're not pleased with his performance."
Isn't that just false modesty?
Jeez, no. I don't think it's a false modesty. It's just everybody has their own mechanism for getting through the day, and I guess it's easier for me to pretend to be a perfectionist. Or, maybe, I really was a perfectionist and there's no difference there.

Talk about the same personality, huh? I was really surprised to learn that. But then again, I think I have that same thing in common with Eric Clapton. He was once interviewed saying that he put off making an album with B.B. King because he didn't feel he was "accomplished" enough.
I always thought, "Is the guy serious?!"

The album was basically shit though. Oh well.

Fifteen Years Old

2008-09-14T22:06:00.005-04:00

September 15th: Tomorrow is my little sister Kori's birthday. She turns 15. FIFTEEN. Oh my god am I getting old.

I can still remember the moment I found out she was born. I was playing roller hockey on an overcast day. I was wearing a black Penguins sweatshirt that was too small for me; I also had on red sweatpants and roller blades. All of the sudden, Bill's mom Hilda came stumbling out of the door and yelled, "Hey Tony! You have a sister!" I remember being pretty happy.

Fifteen years later, I have plenty of memories from her. Failing to protect her that night that Bill stole her from the house...getting up at the ass crack of dawn to see her off to school in Waterford...that first day I saw her with straightened hair. Just strange to know she'll be able to drive a car next year.

God am I getting old.

My Barometer's Gone CRAZY! Had a chilly weekend filled with some rain here in Erie. But for some reason it was humid as hell today, and now we're battling some nasty rain bullets. The hotel's power flickered for a sec, but it came right back on. We've actually gained some guests from the hotels that lost power completely. Yay for God's wrath! Just kidding. Thats completely tasteless.

Anyway...

Its On The Way

2008-09-14T11:58:00.003-04:00

Evangeline, Take One: Woke up today with the gumption to record, like I said I would weeks ago, but today is for real. I set up my guitar pedal to record and went to work. I put down the building blocks for "Evangeline" by The Band...3/4 time click track, rhythm guitar, lead guitar, and the bass part. Took me around an hour or so to complete.

I listen back and realize two things that are bad: One - its too slow. I forgot to set the correct tempo. Beautiful. Two -- and worst -- I screwed up the timing on the right chords in one of the verses.

So I have to go back and do it alllll over again. Great.

But I'm making progress, everyone!!

Driving In The Rain

2008-09-13T19:37:00.003-04:00

Crazy Drivers: Went to Mudville to pick up Townsend for the night like normal on Friday. It'd been raining most of the day, and we headed down there around 3:30-4:00 pm. We pick him up, everything's like normal. On the way back, a purple S-10 started tailgating me.

Now if anyone's ever driven with me, they know that I can't stand tailgaters. Can't stand it. I thought I alleviated the problem years ago by thinking that maybe they need to get home and get to the bathroom, or maybe their wife is in labor but eventually, like sicknesses to vaccines, I grew too accustomed to these excuses.

So I'm going around 45-50 mph through the twisty windy roads of northern Crawford County and this guy is right on my bumper. I got to a passing zone, and sped up to the speed limit. He must have realized his mistake because he fell back quite a bit. But soon enough, he was right there parked on my cars behind once again. Finally, after speeding up to 70 mph and Amanda chastized me for speeding in the rain with her son in the car, I slowed down. The guy was right on my tail for another mile or so then finally I got tired of it and pulled the car over.

Townsend says, "Why did you pull over and let all those cars pass you?" I told him that the guy must have had to get to the bathroom. But I understood the tone in the boy's voice.

Later on, we're heading back on 99 through Edinboro, and we got stopped in traffic. Sure enough, a car had crossed the center line and smashed head on into another car, causing a pretty nasty looking accident.

Just makes you wonder, thats all.

Oh, and neither of the cars were S-10's.

Work Update: Just in case any of you are curious, I had my interview at work and it went pretty well. At this point I'm just playing the waiting game just like everyone else. He has a really tough decision to make, and I sure wouldn't want to be in his shoes. Apparently every single front desk associate applied for the position (something I didn't forsee) as well as an old employee who was here in the past. Who knows. All I know is I interviewed very well (I always do) and I'm fine with it now if I don't get it. Its gonna suck, but it won't suck as much as it did at Sears last year.

Course, unless they pick a person who was the produce manager at Giant Eagle over any one of us. Then I might be upset. :)

My Team Are Losers: So since I blogged last, the Pirates officially lost game #82, ensuring themselves of tying the record for most consecutive losing seasons in professional sports history, matching the 1933-1948 Philadelphia Phillies. And what do I have to say for it?

I'm not looking forward much to next year.

Yeah, there's some bright spots. The management is finally coming through on positive notes. Some of the players we received in trades are working out better than expected.

But in reality, the Pirates team we fielded this year, 90% of them couldn't even be starters on most major league teams. The pitchers all stink this year. Paul Maholm, the "ace" of the staff, still is a 50-50 chance on winning games...this is our ace? No - "ace" is Cliff Lee of the Indians (22 wins) Brandon Webb of the Diamondbacks (20 wins). Hell even Francisco Rodriguez of the Angels (57 saves) would be a better starting pitcher than anyone we've got.

The position guys --- the LaRoche brothers (strikeout machines), Freddy Sanchez (NL batting champ in '06 but hasn't hit for shit the last two years), Jack Wilson (spent too much time on the DL), Ryan Doumit (makes Jason Kendall look consistent).

I'm just tired of these guys getting playing time. Don't we have ANYONE who can be a solid performer??!?! Its so damn frustrating!!

How Do YOU Save Money?

2008-09-07T22:04:00.004-04:00

So I've seen alot of websites and television shows lately about being "green" and/or saving money, and I started thinking of a few ways to start yourself off saving money.

1. Don't buy Hot Dog Buns or Hamburger Buns : What's the point, actually? We all had that relative when we were younger who put our hamburgers on to plain white bread...so whats the difference? I'll tell you ---- NOTHING. Not a thing, except our vanity.

2. Whats the big deal about wine glasses? : Anyone that doesn't already have enough wine glasses to last them forever probably doesn't have to worry about it --- but --- we should melt every store's inventory of wine glasses and make something worthwhile out of it. Why do you have to drink wine out of a glass with a stem on it? Vanity.

3. Is bottled water really necessary? : I never really had much bottled water around until Amanda came around; not saying that I wouldn't have it if we weren't together, but seriously...whats so wrong with tap water?

And the list continues on...any input would be awesome! I'd love to make a good list!

Glenn Frey Said It Best

2008-09-04T19:11:00.003-04:00

The Heat Is On: Today is the first official day that the job for Assistant General Manager has been posted. It has to be legally posted for at least seven days, and I'll be having my interview sometime in the next...uh...seven days. Wish me luck. :)

Make Sure You Vote On The Weekly Poll: This weeks topic, Sarah Palin. Visit the main blog for the poll.

Football Predictions: A few weeks ago, I made a friendly bet with our friend Lori that the Browns were going to finish with a better record than the Steelers. Lets hope so, for my sake.

Haircuts and Hand Grenades: I've got this friend, Cheryl. Now Cheryl and I met about four or five years ago at Sears in the hair studio. She was working at the studio and I went to her to get my hair cut for a long time. Long story short, we dated for a few months a couple years back but we knew we were way better off as just friends.

Over the winter, Cheryl got tossed from her job at Best Cuts over by Tops Supermarket, and then her mom died. So it was a rough season for her, to say the least. Found herself a job working at Spencers in the mall and got promoted semi-quickly. This entire time she's cut my hair every three to four weeks or so.

Lately, she's been either really busy or very forgetful -- I can't figure it out, but she doesn't contact me at all inbetween cuts. I feel bad, like I shouldn't be using her for just haircuts.

Any opinions?

Album Progress: Uh, none. Not a bit. But I did get a phone call from my old friend Vicki the other day. She's putting together a slideshow for her daughters first birthday and wants a slow, fingerpicking instrumental for the slideshow music. I suggested one, and I'm sort of working on something to write for her. Anyone have any suggestions? I'm guessing something "Dust In The Wind"-ish without any vocals is the main idea for this.

41st Post! Lets Celebrate!!

2008-09-03T15:29:00.003-04:00

Lazy Bones: So in the last week and a half I've officially only written one blog. Outside of todays, anyway. Basically I've been taking some mental time off, or at least thats my excuse this time. I've spent alot of time lounging around the house doing basically nothing unless I either (a) am asked to or (b) can't stand to look at it anymore.

Today was a pretty good example of my laziness...Amanda got up around 8 to get ready for work and I woke up pretty alert. Instead of getting up and having a nice breakfast, however, I laid back down and fell asleep again. She came in after her shower to get dressed...I woke up, and fell asleep again. She left for work around 9 am, I fell asleep AGAIN for another half hour to an hour.

I got up, finally, and spent about an hour online, searching through stories about The Next (alleged) Hero Of The World, Sarah Palin. Mrs. Governor, who's only been in major political office (if you count Alaska as major) for twenty months. Yeah, this woman could be president in a few years. Yeah. She's a super conservative but (allegedly) has more in common with women than Hillary does...or at least thats what the Repub's what you to believe. I'm sorry, anyone who wants to inflict governmental control on women's bodies, I have a problem with, red or blue.

ANYWAY, I went back onto the couch and tried to call my dental insurance about "selecting a primary care dentist" because I apparently can't get my teeth cleaned without having a certain somebody...and I was told after waiting on hold for ten minutes that I had to go online to do it.

And what'd I do after that? I fell asleep on the couch for an hour and a half!!!!

But I woke up feeling pretty refreshed and stable, unlike I've felt the last few days. Been sort of up and down with the stress of the (possible) job opportunity and money pinches and lack of a good nights sleep lately.

Hello, I'm Mr. Hotel: I had a pretty awesome guest experience over the weekend, and I knew that I wouldn't be able to keep it away from you folks for too long. So here goes:

Saturday, I worked 11 am to 7 pm. At 3 pm, another desk guy, Craig, came in to work 3 pm to 11 pm. Around 3:30, these guests came in that had a problem - they had pre-arranged for a room for the NEXT weekend. Unfortunately when you pre-arrange, you have to pre-pay and you can't change the reservation at all, otherwise you lose your money. Nothing we can do about it because its done over the internet and through a third party company. When I informed her of this, she got all red in the face and mad. Craig tried to figure out if he could help her and I printed out the exact text from the online site, because she was starting to attack us personally.

After a little while, she found out from our company's corporate line that her money could not be refunded. Craig and I decided to give them a cheaper rate for the room because their "vacation had been ruined". When we informed the husband of the rate change, he waxed philosophical to Craig that it "isn't anything personal, I know its not you guys fault" and all that, although upset with our company and used quite a few curse words in front of his (now crying) children.

So the wife came up to the desk and said they'd stay and she thanked us through tears for giving her the $99 rate. I printed out the registration card for her and said, "Here, just so you can see, I did change that rate to $99." She immediately got redfaced and said "I don't appreciate your sarcasm. I know that you've changed the rate, you don't have to SHOW me that you did so." Her husband used a few curse words in my direction, saying "You're not Mr. (company) so you shouldn't talk to us like we're ****ing animals. Talk to us like we're people, sir; we're people!"

Pissed me off so badly I was angry for the rest of my shift. I couldn't shake it, I just wanted to scream. I've been swore at before (plenty of times at the Sears service window) but never in a situation where there were small children around. If anything I was more upset that they had acted like such asses in front of their kids. I couldn't help it.

I found out today that the woman has filed a direct complaint saying that our hotel rooms "have roaches" (never ever been a complaint about that) and that she was "thoroughly unsatisfied with the hotel's performance" and should have their (albeit) TWO NIGHT STAY for free.

If it was so bad that first night, why did you stay?

Lisa, what would you have done? Apparently they're getting what they want now after all, and will be given a free upcoming stay as well. Sometimes I guess you just can't win.

Everything Has Its Plan

2008-08-28T20:42:00.002-04:00

Day Five - Small Progress: So this big bad CD that I wanted to start five days ago...yeah, have only recorded the rhythm tracks to the first song. And I did that last night. And I don't even think I'm happy with it.

But its cool...I've had lots to keep me busy. My old manager, Lisa, needed help moving stuff out of her apartment, so Amanda and I spent some time helping her out. We have alot of books, in case anyone is a big reader they can have them! Plus we got a new radio and a TV and some other things.

Went out to karaoke last night (was supposed to go with Shawn and Lisa, but they backed out due to lack of energy) and had a pretty good time. Learning more and more about singing in front of an audience.

Cats Out Of The Bag: So its been an interesting week here at work. First off, the guy who trained me in breakfast, Scott, has decided to leave and go work for the brand new Hilton Garden Inn up on upper Peach Street. Alex, one of our long term housekeepers, has also decided to leave. Two very important pieces to the puzzle here at our hotel.

And then, today, we found out that Shawn got the promotion and is now officially the general manager of the hotel. So congrats to him!! But the train rolls on...and his position is now officially open.

I'd been keeping my mouth shut pretty much here about the promotion, and I haven't actually written much on my blog because I found out someone here had found my blog and visits it regularly. I'm pretty sure it was Scott...but anyway, I hadn't said much because I didn't want there to be some sort of strange animosity among all of us front desk people.

So I asked Shawn today if he'd said anything to anyone else about me being interested and he said he did tell a few people. So the secrets out. Eh well. Guess I'll just learn from Sears that its best not to go blabbing on about it to everyone about how I deserve this and all that crap. I know damn well it ain't about who deserves it.

Basically I think I'd be a total sponge for the operational part of this hotel. I am interested in how everything works; how we set prices, how we deal with corporate accounts, all of that stuff. PLUS I really miss being a coach. One of the things I really miss about the old receiving job was taking someone aside and teaching them how to do things. (Oh, and working with Mike Sebald. That was the best!!!) So I'd really love to have that opportunity to help people along, you know, the human part of such a position.

We'll see what happens....but two weeks from now I could be looking down the barrel of another wait for a position to open up, or...I could be holding the rifle. :)

Day One: The Goal

2008-08-24T14:23:00.003-04:00

Well, its time for another music-themed post, ladies and gentleman. I've had lots of interesting (and funny) responses to my "Daydreaming" post. Makes me wonder, you know?

So today, August 24, 2008 is Day One of the next music project. And you ask, how's this different from the others?

Easy: Its all but done.

I've spent countless hours lately playing guitar, screwing around with chord progressions, writing down little ditties, that sort of thing. Plus I'm noticing the power I have vocally within the recent few weeks with all the karaoke I've been doing with Amanda at the club.

Tomorrow I will start laying down serious tracks for a new CD, tentatively titled Learning To Fly, which will be under my name as well as Amanda's. We'd talked in the past about doing some songs together, but I've decided to take the idea a little more seriously and run with it as a 'band' thing (since we're both awesome!)

In the upcoming weeks, I'll be finishing these songs. The tracklisting, as of right now, is:

1. Evangeline (cover of The Band)

2. Coming Home (another version of one of my old ones)

3. Jackson (cover of Johnny and June Cash)

4. I'm Nobody Without Myself (a better version of my old one)

5. Put Your Hands On Me (a pretty cool blues-rock thing)

6. Learning To Fly (Tom Petty cover)

7. Building A Spider Web (already out there)

8. Gravity (John Mayer cover)

9. As Long As Time Allows (already out there too)

10. Feeling Like The First Time (Tony original)

11. Hitchin' Blues (my first slide blues original, if you can call it that)

12. Mercedes Benz (Amanda, a cappella)

I'm currently looking for a website to sell these tracks online when completed, as well as an exciting new website (on MySpace) for our music.

Stay tuned...posts/blogs will be written daily on how the progression is going.

Wif me mum

2008-08-17T19:17:00.003-04:00

Screwed Up Big: Recently I've come to notice (with thanks in part to some well crafted emails) that I've not spent enough time with my immediate family, including but not limited to: Mom, Adam, and Kori.

Mom is going through a hard time with the death of her friend Fred, and I've realized that I had no idea who the guy was! She's been spending alot of time with him and I had no idea he even existed outside of a couple comments she'd made. I feel really bad about this...I should be spending more time out there in Waterford. I've made some strides, and I'm going to go with Mom to her friend's funeral tomorrow morning.

Adam is working in Cambridge Springs at a job that apparently isn't going to be there soon; the company is talking about packing up shop and unfortunately leaving without him. Not fun. Kori (who I saw at CelebrateErie watching Jakes Blues with her dad) gets bigger every damn time I see her. Its not cool!!!! :(

So last Wednesday, Aunt Ella sent me an email letting me know that she was having a birthday party up in Erie on Saturday for one of her grandkids and she invited Amanda, Townsend, and I to the party at Chuck-E-Cheese's, so they could finally all meet.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnndddd.......... I forgot... you ever forget sometimes i do and i did forget and to forget is not good so forgetting is not the best idea but i still did forget!!!!

Felt pretty stupid yesterday!!

So I'm going to try to head out to Waterford more often. I'm thinking possibly getting ready for work super early and hopefully Mom's home by 1 o'clock pm so I can at least get a couple hours in. The gas is such a crunch on budget that it's tough to go out alot. I budget for enough gas to get me to work every day and possibly that trip to Meadville and back.

But I'm going to make a serious try. If Amanda's Mom is taking us out to lunch and calling me her "future son-in-law" to her friends, I think I can spend a little more time "wif me mam an' duh rist of em"!

Random Hotel Notes: Had my first call from OnStar tonight ("Hello this is Katherine from OnStar, I have a member looking for a two bedroom suite") and it felt like I was in a TV commercial for a second...a guest wanted me to guarantee her that a pet has never stayed in the room she is in for the night. I told her that I couldn't possibly come close to even SAYING that a pet hasn't been in a certain room, for we've accepted pets for years here at our hotel...Speaking of Amanda's Mom, we all had lunch today at Buffalo Wild Wings; had a pretty good bacon cheeeseburger, fries were average though.

Wow, not much to talk about tonight. Must have been that awesome show I played last night. *smirk*

Daydreaming...

2008-08-17T11:13:00.002-04:00

ERIE (AP) - A few years ago, a homecoming like this couldn't possibly have been imagined for a rock star in Erie. Remember Pat Monahan? Even more, remember the pop flop for Jakes Blues?

Last night, an estimated 20,000 people stuffed into the small quarters of State Street and Perry Square waited for up to four hours for an opportunity to smash the idea that an Erie native could come home successful.

Around 8 pm, hometown hero Tony Kellogg took the stage with his wildly popular band, Edsel's Comeback, amid huge cheers from the CelebrateErie audience. He stepped to the mic and, in his traditional fashion, thanked Foreigner for coming back to Erie and opening up for the Comeback. And after a short joke about the flight back into Tom Ridge Field, the show began with his first hit, "Put Your Hands On Me".

The crowd went crazy as Kellogg picked out the chunky blues riff, perfectly augmented by his ever-present band. Jeff "Scooter" Cooke on the drums, Del Kitessen on bass (who keeps Kellogg in check with his double neck bass solos), Eric Laughery on the electric banjo, and his girlfriend Amanda Pritchard on rythym guitar. Eric's banjo solo during the coda during the opener was virtuous enough to warrant a huge cheer from the crowd.

The band worked tirelessly through classic Comeback songs such as the acoustic "Building A Spider Web", the funky blues of "Green Pastures", and the punk-blues of "Stick Shift".

During an extended break in "As Long As Time Allows", Kellogg told the audience how much of a thrill it was playing to the Erie faithful who had long become a muse for the bluesy folk-rock that Edsel's Comeback had come to make popular throughout America, and gave his girlfriend (who was the "female" of the song) a big kiss on stage. She was able to keep rythym during the song, despite tears streaming down her face.

Mayor Joe Sinnott was invited on stage to sing, but due to the song "Empty Barstool" that was written about Sinnott's ever-present image of being a barfly in office, he chose to decline. So Kellogg invited his tour-mate, John Mayer, on stage for a version of Mayer's "Who Did You Think I Was?" that went on for almost fifteen minutes.

Even after Kellogg left the stage at 10:30, a two and a half hour free concert for his hometown, the crowd lingered, begging for a third encore, and refused to leave. A half hour later, with the Comeback getting ready for an autograph session at Starbucks, Kellogg returned to the stage alone and acoustic to play one last medley of "Blues Ryder", "Life By The Drop", and "Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out", a tribute to the three artists that heavily influenced him (Jakes Blues, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Eric Clapton, respectively). He thanked the crowd one last time, nearly breaking down into tears.

"I really didn't think I could handle it, even being here in Erie. I thought they'd boo me off the stage for all the negativity I'd written about this town," Kellogg said later. "But boy, were we surprised. Even Scooter was surprised we got that big of a reception. I guess being from the big city [Cooke was born and raised in LA], he doesn't understand that sort of hometown love."

Edsel's Comeback is in Toronto tonight for their concert at the Rogers Center, with Oasis opening for them.

Destined For Failure

2008-08-15T15:47:00.008-04:00

"Lets Hope The Guests Don't Ruin It": My AGM and I are both scheduled to work the arrivals tonight at the front desk. I've been looking forward to working with him all week, as we've been on opposite shifts. Well, he'll be in the office doing his thing and will help me when I need it. Apparently before I got in we got whacked by a guest who BOOKED a smoking suite and were given that suite when they arrived. They were upset because of some mix up where they really wanted a non-smoking suite. Big arm flailing situation occurred.

So I've decided to make a running tally of the crappy things that have happened tonight.

* 3:15 pm: guest checks in and was informed we had to change her reservation to a king studio suite from a queen one bedroom suite. she was VERY angry about it, saying she was "guaranteed" this certain room, to which I told her no rooms are guaranteed.

* 4:05 pm: guest checks in and I notice on his reservation that he has a pet. I re-confirm the $75.00 fee for pets, and he says he was never told about it. I am nearly positive, when he called to change his reservation JUST YESTERDAY that I told him about the fee. He lies to my face and told him I never told him that and laughs at me like a parent laughs at his silly child. The AGM waives the fee, basically to be rid of the guest.

*4:45 pm: guests comes back to the desk with a key from a room that was scheduled to leave this morning. i asked him how long he was staying and he said for another week....which overbooks us for tomorrow. sweet.

*5:15 pm: original upset guest (before I got here) comes down and lets us know they'll be leaving early. apologizes at first, saying my agm was "incredibly nice" to him but "the other guy needs to learn customer service" (she was quick to point out it was not me). fifteen minutes later, she comes down and is upset again about the fact her room still smells like smoke, and gives my boss the evil eye, like she'd never apologized.

*6:30 pm: guest checks in with a note on his reservation that he is a vip and he wants a complementary bigger room. we tell him that unfortunately we are sold out, and he throws a tissy fit when told he can't have a bigger room because WE DON'T HAVE ONE.

9:30 pm: Well, the shift ended up not being as bad, but still...you get the idea.

Stop This Train

2008-08-13T17:02:00.004-04:00

No Title Needed: Guest came up to me at the desk last night. Unbelievable. Here goes...

Guest: Do you have internet access back there? I need to look something up and the (expletive) guest computer keeps kicking me off.
Tony: Uh, yeah, I do. What can I do ya for?
Guest: I need you to look up something...where the closest "Build A Bear Workshop" is.
Tony: You don't have to go far - its in the Millcreek Mall right behind us.
Guest: *laughs out loud* You mean, the mall? The one with five stores in it? We came up all this way for a 'plaza'? A 'mall' where I come from has an enclosed walking area and a whole bunch of stores.
Tony: Uh, yeah, the Millcreek Mall. Right over that way (points toward mall)
Guest: What, do you mean there's more than just an Old Navy there?
Tony: Um....*reaches down, grabs a map of the mall* yes, theres...uh, quite a bit of stores!
Guest: *checks out map* Oh, my Lord. I feel so stupid right now.
Tony: *thinks "yeah, you should! but thinks better and says* Oh, its okay, no big deal, people make mistakes all the time. The mall is open tomorrow morning at...

Am I Missing Something?: So as many of you read, last week, Amanda's nephew and grandmother died. One of my coworkers brothers was almost killed. Bernie Mac died. Issac Hayes died.

Mom calls me this afternoon that one of my her close friends died this morning in Pittsburgh. He had an artificial heart and there was a malfunction in the machine and he passed away. Mom says that seeing his family makes her want to spend more time with me and my family. Agreed.

Pidge-zilla vs. Mothra

2008-08-12T20:06:00.004-04:00

Still Feeling Dumb: So after my nice ride back home last night after I realized I wasn't supposed to work, I spent the evening cleaning the house. Around nine or so, I went down the basement to check on some laundry I had down there. The second I opened the door, a huge moth came flying in the door.

Now I have to rewind the story a week or so for this to make sense. I called Amanda one morning after she'd gone to work in the AM and she asked me if I would "please go into the bathroom and find the giant moth" that scared her "half to death" while she was taking a shower. I spent a little bit of time poking around but I couldn't find it. While I was shaving before work a few hours later, here it comes out of the fan...and she wasn't kidding! It is huge! I finally was able to whack it with a towel and get it. Once I opened the door though, my curious cats were in waiting, hearing all the noise.

Fast forward to last night: I'm in the kitchen with the broom, trying to whack this moth and prevent it from flying into the house. Sure enough here comes my cat, Pidge/Pookie/Pookah Bear/Fat Cat (whichever you choose), ready and raring to kill this thing herself. I got a good shot on the moth and it started flying lower, and she jumps about three feet off the ground, paws in the air, and grabs the thing out of mid-air. She starts stamping on it and it flies away, and we are in the cat and mouse game again. I hit it again and it flew near their cat dish. Pidge knocks over the food dish and spills the water bowl trying to get to this moth. She had it too, right under her paws, and looks up at me with this ain't you proud of me pa? look on her face, and the thing still wiggles its way out and flies away. I finally got mad and really gave it a good shot with the broom and it falls onto this shelf that sits directly above the garbage can.

So I figured I've finally got it and I went down to get the laundry. I come back up a minute later and went to shoo the dead moth into the trash. Before I touched it though, I noticed that both my cats (where the hell were you, Chewy?) were sitting there with dialated pupils waiting for the kill...and I push the moth off the shelf. Sure enough, the damn thing flies (well, steered itself while falling) right underneath the stove. So my cats spent the next hour meowing and staring at the stove.

Silly Lady: Oh! I completely forgot to mention this to you folks! One of the funniest hotel moments I've had so far...

I had a woman check into a room about 8:30 pm on Sunday night. Around ten o clock (remember the Witching Hour?) she calls me and tells me she has a big problem.

She tells me that the neighbor to her room had turned up their radio about ten minutes earlier and she was having trouble sleeping. I looked at her room number and noticed something odd: she is bordered by a maintenance closet and our meeting room. I'm at a total loss for words with her. I said, "I will, uh...look into it for you!" She seemed okay with that and I immediately tried to figure out if I'd stepped into The Twilight Zone or something.

I had a few other phone calls, and I finally went to head down to her room...and the phone rings again. I pick it up, and its her.

Guest: Hi, Tony?
Tony: Yes?
Guest: You're going to think I'm stupid.
Tony: Absolutely not! Whats going on?
Guest: Remember how I asked you to tell my neighbor that the radio was too loud?
Tony: Yes, in fact I was just heading down there to...
Guest: Yeah...it was my battery powered clock packed in my luggage. So, uh, you don't have to come down.
Tony: *speechless* Uh *tries not to laugh* Okay! Well, glad to see its *snicker* settled!
Guest: *busts out laughing and hangs up the phone*

Witching hour, indeed.

Focus, Tony: When I was ten or eleven, I started playing hockey alot. Now I don't mean just a little bit, I played roller hockey alot. And whenever I played, I was goalie. And I was good. Started playing with some better players around fifteen, and got better. When I was twenty, I started playing goalie at Evans Skateland, and realized how far behind I was in skills to REALLY good players. And after a while, I got better, as anything in life.

Just two years ago, I noticed something about myself: when I was having really good nights, I started having tunnel vision. Not like, oblivious to everything else, but really really focused. I could just feel it. Almost like someone had turned up my vision. I noticed it alot and on the nights I had that tunnel vision, I was unstoppable. My positioning was spectacular, my hands were fast, and generally I was in a better mood.

I stopped playing hockey last March, basically I was noticing that my knees aren't what they used to be and it started to worry me that I was going to blow out my ACL playing roller hockey for no money with a bunch of nineteen year olds at a rundown roller rink.

Recently, I've noticed this 'tunnel vision' back. It happened every once in a while, but the last two days its on some sort of autopilot. I feel so incredibly focused on everything. The guest paperwork. The credit card types. The greetings. The phone calls. Even the carpet patterns seem to be focused. Its very strange. And I'm not stressed at all. I feel really freaking great. Nothing is bothering me. Nothing is stressing me. I'm feeling very level headed, very responsible, very...something. I can't put my finger on it.

Survey Of The Week: When Amanda and I first got together, she started keeping my maple syrup bottle out of the refridgerator. I noticed it again this morning that I have started keeping the practice of not keeping it in the fridge. And it got me wondering, as silly as it seems, do other people not refridgerate their syrup?

So I've decided to start a poll, which I'll start doing every seven days, with a new question for you folks that read the blog.

Now if you receive this blog directly in your email, you don't see all the fun extra stuff I have on the website. So to participate and make your voice heard, click this link to go to The Tony Times and click on the answer that fits your situation on the right hand side of the page.

Headaches

2008-08-11T18:57:00.002-04:00

Witching Hour Is On Mountain Time: What a nice night at the hotel last night! Very smooth, easy guests, no problems, everyone was really polite and nice, even when I was juggling a couple phone calls at once. Even got ten minutes to sit down to eat dinner! Got to catch up with the laundry guy (he's had quite a week as well), was able to get pillows and blankets for guests with the slightest of ease.

Then, somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, a bell tolled.

Ten o'clock, the phone started to ring. I picked up six phone calls within two minutes. And from then on, the phone rang at least every two minutes. I got a phone call from a guest who claimed housekeeping "stole food" from their refrigerator.

At the time, I had two people standing to check in and another lady on the phone who I had already transferred to reservations once and barked "I don't want to be transferred!" when I was going to again.

So I put her on hold and went back to the phone call; I offered compensation to the guest and of course she laughed and said "You aren't being very generous" so I gave her a little bit of an over the top form of compensation and she seemed okay with that.

I counted down my drawer during a five minute lull in phone calls, because I hadn't had someone come down to the guest store to buy anything for two hours. Of course, the second I finish up, three people come down to buy cotton swabs, pop, and deodorant. The revenue is good, mind you, I just couldn't believe my luck.

Ten minutes to eleven, I get another phone call from a guest claiming that the toilet is busted in their bathroom. In this particular suite there are two bedrooms, each with their own separate bathrooms. I went up to plunge it and it went down, just not really fast. I know from past experience (as well as the rest of you do) that once I get a slow flusher, I can't fix it. So I told the guest that and she looked at me like I'd insulted her first born child. I apologized and asked if the other bathroom was working properly, which dug me in even deeper. "You're saying I have to use the OTHER bathroom if I have to go in the middle of the night, and wake up my daughters?!" I swallowed my now growing flame (spurred by utter embarrassment for this woman) and said that I was really sorry, I'd have maintenance take a look at it in the morning. She gave me a little more tongue lashing that I (for some reason) stood there and took it, and I left the room.

I'm starting to dread ten PM. Ten is the new midnight.

Sing A New Song: Afterwards I met Amanda and the crew at the club for karaoke night. When I got there, there was noone singing. Another slow Sunday night, I guess. Amanda and I started things off by singing "Sunday Morning" by Maroon 5, which sounded like it does when we're driving in the car. Only really intended for our ears!

I've been wanting to do this for a while, since early last week, and I decided to go for it...the next song I did was "Angel" by Sarah McLachlan, and I dedicated it to Vincent and Amanda's grandmother. (The song was one of her grandma's favorites.) So here I am scared to death I'm gonna screw it up, because I know that I'm not the greatest high note singer, but I knew somehow I'd carry myself through it. And to my surprise, I did REALLY well. The deejay complimented me on how I can change my normal range to my falsetto without missing a beat. I walked offstage and Amanda was waiting there, tears in her eyes, thanking me for the dedication. It was tough to sing.

I picked up the mood a little bit by singing "Paying The Cost To Be The Boss" by BB King. A great old song that got me into the 'flailing my arms gospel style' sort of singing. Pretty cool. I got to sing with one of the bartenders, Megan, for the first time. She's another awesome talent that I've talked to about doing some sort of music project with, and we sang "Whiskey Lullabye" by Brad Paisley and Alison Krauss. I did my best; it always seems like the country duets have REALLY low male parts. Anyway, she was happy with it. I finished off the evening singing "Champagne Supernova" by Oasis (its not karaoke for me if I'm not singing one of theirs!), which I turned the last verse into an opera song somehow, don't really know why I did that.

For A Less Proud Moment: When I got to the club, I immediately had three beers. (Mom, stop being mad.) I usually only have two at most during the night, but I just was so angry from work that I decided I wanted to cut loose a little bit. (And yes, by the time I was leaving, I was fine to drive, so don't worry.)

Woke up this morning with a MONSTER headache. Went to the cupboard - no Advil. Argh. Amanda and her headaches probably has it in her purse. I sent her a text message, and sure enough, she had it. But she was nice enough (as if I ever questioned it) to come home from work to bring me the meds and to bring me some lunch (since I didn't get up til 11 am, hehe).

I ate a little bit and felt a tad better. It was getting close to 1 pm and I realized that I had no clean shirts to wear to work...so I rushed around laundering the stuff. Shaved as quick as possible, got myself ready, and headed to work. Got there a little before three........and found out that I was actually off of work tonight. Dummy.

Boy I Feel Stupid!

2008-08-10T17:35:00.002-04:00

The Last Place You Look: So here I've been writing these blogs for a few months now, and once in a while I get really frustrated that I never get responses. At least since I moved the site over to this internet blog and cut off the folks that didn't ever respond.

I decided to log into my GMail account tonight and sure enough, here I've got like twenty emails from a whole bunch of people!!! My primary email account is the one through Yahoo so I hadn't been checking it. I will from now on, so keep the messages coming :)

So...aunt Betty, aunt Ella, Vicki, Nick, and Eric - I appreciate all the nice words you guys had for me and Amanda's family this week. I am happy with my decision to be there for Amanda, despite the fact I missed out on days of work.

I did get back to the hotel and was welcomed back with no problems, in case any of you were worried about it. I am very proud to work for such a great hotel that has such a good crew of people.

Its Just A Game, Tony

2008-08-10T13:40:00.002-04:00

Here's some pictures of the excursion to the Midwest last week:

Amanda took me down to the riverfront on Monday night and we sat around for a little bit. This is a photo of the American Queen riverboat heading upstream on the Mississippi.

A photo of downtown Keokuk, Iowa; I was outside a flower shop looking east toward the river. Small town; city center reminded me of Ridgway.

A few of Amanda's relatives; aunt Sherry, her two kids, and grandmother Nadine. Amanda's middle name comes from her.

This is a photo of Amanda's immediate family; (L to R) brother Robert (who stayed with us a few months ago), me, Amanda, nephew Zach, brother Jeff (Vincent's dad), his girlfriend Jennifer, and Amanda's mom, Theresa. (dont' ask me why i was turned like that, I was told to "scrunch" in so Robert could fit; he looks like he had plenty of room!)

If you're not able to see these, head to the main blog site to check out the photos if you'd like.

The Return: I worked 3 to 11 pm last night at the hotel, and boy, did it return the love. Made me really miss it. And I say that sarcastically...I got my butt kicked! They were really stretched this week though. One of my coworkers had some bad luck too; his brother was working at a gas station this week that was robbed and he was shot twice in the robbery. Last time I talked with my coworker, his brother was upgraded from critical to serious condition. Positives, I guess.

Guitar Hero: After work, I was invited to join Amanda at our friend Lori's house. For some reason or another, I threw a childish fit when I found out they were playing the video game "Guitar Hero". I can't explain it, but ever since I saw that game on the shelves, I've been pissed about it. Making the act of playing guitar seem like a game, I guess, when I'd taken the instrument so seriously over the last ten or so years.

After some ruckus, we got back to trying to have a good time. And believe it or not, I actually decided to play the game (okay, I was convinced into it) and it wasn't really that terrible at all. Kind of fun. I can't imagine really being into it too much though. Requires the same finger motions as playing a solo does but without the fret or string recognition...basically a "practice til you get it right" sort of thing. I'd play it again, given the chance.

Finally Home

2008-08-09T00:36:00.003-04:00

Well, don't have much at all to say tonight. We got home around 11:30 pm, drove straight through, 12 hours it took (if you disregard the hour we lost from Central to Eastern time zones). Car ride wasn't nearly as somber, no phone calls about anyone dying on the way home, so that was good. :(

Other than that, glad to be home. Amanda got her new cell phone and she's busy playing around with it in the next room.

The Last Full Day

2008-08-07T16:57:00.002-04:00

Today was early, 7 am. Had a bout of sickness overnight, just one trip to the bathroom, but it subsided quickly after. Took a quick shower, Amanda ironed my (and everyone else's) shirts....and we were off to the funeral.

The church they had the services at is called "Freedom In Christ". I'm noticing there's alot of irregularly named churches out here. Back home, its rare to see places like that. Mostly you see "First Assembly Of God", "St. Peters", that sort of thing. FIC is located in what would appear to be an old doctors office facility that had been gutted and redone to be a church.

The family was put in the 'youth group' room, which was quite spectacularly decorated as a cityscape, complete with Jesus spray painted on the walls. Very "hip" designs, although not as tacky as you'd imagine they'd be. The youth group is entitled "Route 180 Youth Group"....I'm guessing 180 degrees sort of thing. Interesting.

So we were led out of the room so we could walk by Vincent's casket. His grandmother was inconsolable standing in front of him...it was hard not to break down even though I'd really not known the guy except for that one day I met him. We walked by quickly because there was a big line, and sat down with the rest of the family near the front.

The service was quicker than most I've been to; they played a few songs: Greenbaum's "Spirit In The Sky" but remade into a pretty cool techno song...another spiritual song that for some reason I can't recall...and a Michael Bolton cover of "Lean On Me" that was interesting as well. Not much was said outside of how good of a kid he was.

We went out to the cemetary for the service (something I'd never done) and were nearly in the front in the funeral procession. The line of cars stretched back for about a mile...I think the entire high school was out there paying respects. I can only hope I have half that many people at my funeral. Vince was only 17 years old. Just so tragic. It was a hard service to watch, all my family so broken. But hopefully good will come out of it for the community.

Amanda and I will be heading back tomorrow, with or without Robert or Theresa, so we can get back to work on Saturday. I can't say enough how much I appreciate the whole staff of the Homewood for stretching out and helping me be able to take this time off. I know most of the load was juggled by Shawn, the acting General Manager. He's such a good guy.

One Day At A Time

2008-08-06T21:55:00.002-04:00

Strange dreams over night. Woke up around 4:15 am in a panic that someone was in the room. Very strange. Couldn't calm down for nothing...very strange. But we woke up for good around 7:30. Amanda discovered some small bites on her legs but I didn't have any.

The rest of the family headed over to the funeral home around 11 am and Amanda and I decided to go to lunch. Finally got to experience a Sonic restaurant/drive in. Was pretty good, but nothing like I expected, honestly. Amanda tried to order my hamburger special and it didn't work out that way...got it remade though. Pretty tasty.

Went over to her Grandma Nadine's again, just the two of us. We knock on the door, no answer. Nothing going on, and just as we're about to turn away, Amanda says, "Oh, there she is....and she's in her underwear!" She unlocked the door and we went in after her grandma slid upstairs to dress. We had some more really entertaining conversation, explained how we met, all that. She calls me "Anthony" which is nice. Then Amanda's aunt Sherry came over and I met her as well...felt really good to continue meeting family. They're all so nice.

Next was a trip around town to a weird women's clothing store called "Cato". Kind of like Fashion Bug back home. Theresa bought some clothes, and I went next door to the GameStop to check out their video games. Second I walk in the door, I was accosted:

Clerk:Hey, guy! How can I help you?! Got any questions?!?
Me: Uh, no, I think I'm alright.
Clerk: Well man, if you need ANYTHING--
Me: Oh My God!! The pressure!!!!!!

He quickly walked away.

So tonight was the viewing for Vincent, and it was a very tough three hours. But there was ton of people there; I can only hope there are that many people at my funeral. The entire high school. Reminded me of when I went to Chris's high school graduation. I didn't know much about their popularity but it sure showed in both cases. Vincent was a very loved young man, and it is a real shame that this happened. Tomorrow is the funeral and then they're having a big dinner at the church.

I really wish I had pictures to post up. I'll definitely get the pictures posted up here when I get back to Erie. This town is very charming, the people are hit and miss, but I could see how someone could really get by living here. Makes me realize that you really don't need everything we have back home to get by. People are just as nice and just as friendly as they are in Erie. Just as many empty businesses downtown, just as many corporate smiling corner stores too.

It all makes you realize things, I guess.

Crossin' The Mississippi

2008-08-06T01:05:00.003-04:00

Woke up this morning around 9 am, well-needed night of sleep. We slept in Alyssa's room in her super soft bed, almost like a waterbed. The air overnight cooled off quite a bit so it was decently comfortable overnight. Came downstairs, had a shower, trimmed up my nearing week old goatee, and we were off to town.

First stop of the day was "Johnson Schmidt", a Diamond Mens Store type place right on Main Street in Keokuk. ("Clothes For The Particular Man") Jeff, Amanda's older brother, needed clothes for the services and he went and was fitted for clothes. I found it really strange that you look on the wall and see sports clothes and its Iowa Hawkeyes, Chicago Cubs, or St. Louis Cardinals stuff. Weird that its not Steelers or Browns things. They were extremely nice folks at the shop there.

Second stop was supposed to be meeting the Grandmother Nadine, who Amanda's middle name was after. She wasn't around so we went to a "Discount Shoes" place on Main Street. Sort of a "Payless" meets second hand store. Some interesting little items in the place; they had everything from work boots to comforters to a full size arcade game. The place feels so much like my mom's hometown, Ridgway PA, that sometimes I felt like I was actually there.

Then we went over to Vincent's mothers house on the other side of town. Lots of folks there supporting their side of the family. Jeff and her have been separated for a long, long time. Not on good terms, either, from what I'd understood. Amanda and Robert of course hadn't been around in YEARS so everyone made comments about "how big" they've gotten.

We went to Nadine's house finally and met her. She was very nice and very open, and very religious. Lots of wisecracks and that sort, but I immediately liked her. Amanda says that she will definitely be keeping in touch with her, maybe even come back out here this summer.

Then dinner at this Mexican restaurant in town...I had this Steak Tortilla thing with refried beans and hot sauce. Pretty good stuff, surprisingly...I was worried I wouldn't like it.

Amanda and I finally broke away from everyone around 8 o clock and we went out to the WalMart and picked up a few bottles of water. WalMart was needed just for a sense of normalcy, I guess. Its so different out here. Small town, nowhere near any lakes, things like that. People seem not as patient or anything like that, but its okay. I still think Amanda and I have too high of standards now that we're in the hospitality industry.

We finished off our busy day by meeting one of her high school friends, Adrienne, from Keokuk. Last time Amanda was here was ten years ago for her wedding. She has a gorgeous house right near Amanda's old home on the north side of town. I'll have some pictures for all of you sometime soon.

Now its off to bed. The next two days are going to be rough. Showing tomorrow, meeting Vincent's friends and that sort of thing. Then the funeral on Thursday, with dinner following. At this point it seems that we'll be coming back late Thursday or early Friday morning.

12 Hours Away

2008-08-04T22:23:00.002-04:00

Amanda and I were awoke at 5:40 this morning by her mom and her brother in our living room. After we came home last night we must have forgot to lock the downstairs door. Never happens! Whoops!

And thats the extent of the positive message here.

Teresa and Robert came by to inform us that Amandas nephew, Vince, was in a horrible accident near his home in Keokuk, Iowa. Unfortunately he passed away. He was only 17. At this time, thats all we know about what happened.

Basically, we both knew that we had to drop everything and go out there with Teresa and Robert, and I decided it was best that I took time off of work and came out to support 'my family'. I feel terrible that I'm leaving the hotel on the rocks, as Shawn is stuck running the hotel now down two managers and now a full time desk clerk for at least the next few days.

Ironically enough, we stopped at a rest station just before we got to Chicago, and we were stunned to see Lisa's Kia parked right next to us!!! How crazy is that?! Got to have a few moments with her before she headed up to Rockford, Illinois for her first day on Tuesday. Good luck again, by the way!

Then, outside of Chicago on the road, Teresa received a phone call that her mother passed away this afternoon right after one o clock. She'd been in a nursing home and had been suffering from cancer for the last few months.

What a day.

So here I am in the dining room of Amanda's brother's house in Hamilton, Illinois, right across the way from Keokuk. Its located right on the Mississippi River. Amanda took me on a little tour of Keokuk tonight as well; its where she moved from when she came to Edinboro in 1997. Hasn't been back in ten years. I can't imagine the emotions she's going through right now.

As for now, thats all I know about whats going on. I'll continue posting throughout the week as more details become available.

I appreciate any and all prayers for our family during this difficult time.

With Arms Wide Open-ahh!

2008-08-04T02:58:00.002-04:00

"I just need to learn to stop giving a crap." ~ Tony Kellogg

On That Note: Came home from work tonight and once again went to the club, but this time it was Karaoke Sunday. Amanda and I apparently were the only ones singing cuz they were happy we showed up. Noone was singing. I immediately tore into "Mannish Boy" by Muddy Waters, did that pretty well. Then Amanda sang "Killing Me Softly" by The Fugees. Showed me up. So I went and did "The Hindu Times" by Oasis. Mediocre. She then did "Me and Bobby McGee" by Janis Joplin, and showed me up again. So I decided to jump off the train and sing a song with our friend Bob..."Thats Life" by Sinatra. It was more fun than actually singing, and we did alright.

There's a guy that goes and was absent that sings "With Arms Wide Open" by Creed. So I did an awesome Scott Stapp impression and sang it, with the whole air guitar solo and everything. Pretty cool stuff. Lori tried singing "Bubbly" by Colbie Callait and she gave up mid-song. What a shame. Had a promising beginning.

Amanda and I ended up singing "Don't Go Breakin' My Heart" and that was fun. We both did a couple more tunes (my rendition of "Nights In White Satin" appeared to bring Bob to tears) but it was a fun time.

Sometimes I worry about the money, the lack of sleep, the dancing...I just need to seriously learn to just not give a flying damn about whatever happens. I'm 27 years old, I never did any of this when I was 21, 22...so why not catch up. Who cares? As long as the bills are getting paid and that I'm not late for work or anything like that, why care? I'm having fun.

When I get a job that requires me to be more responsible, then I'll care. But for now, I'm just a front desk clerk! Gotta have fun.

Can't You Hear My Motor Hum?

2008-08-03T12:26:00.002-04:00

"What lies behind us and what lies before us are

tiny matters compared to what lies with in us."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Another Saturday Night: After receiving about 50 phone calls throughout the night from folks looking for a hotel room, I finally left work at 11 pm. (Believe it or not, I found out that the Tally-hotel on Rt97, the 'dump' hotel of Erie, was charging $100 a night, a $60+ dollar upsell. Disgusting!! Genius!! Haha!) Amanda picked me up after being in Cambridge and Meadville with Townsend for the afternoon/evening. And once again, there we trudge out to the night club. But we both agreed that we are freaking broke so we'd only have a soda at the bar.

Basically, we only went for the fact our friend Lori was the deejay. So we walk in the bar and there's utterly noone there except for the normal little group we've attached ourselves to. Lori looked totally bummed out up on stage...apparently she'd had an extremely long day at work and there wasn't much going on. Amanda and I ended up leaving around 1 am.

Short night of sleep for Amanda though; she had to be at work at 7 am! Can't believe she's still standing at work. Have yet to hear from her today.

Hell Yeah, Remember Aurora: So I've been sitting here on and off online all morning (well, since 10:30 am when I woke up). I did pick up the house a little bit, getting most of Townsends stuff put away. Its a typical Sunday thing -- the house is a mess after the little one is here. Train set, foam swords, bouncy rubber balls, bouncy plastic balls, bouncy baseballs...you get the point. At least there aren't any rollerskates on the steps. :o) Turned on the Foo Fighters (I still love the "There Is Nothing Left To Lose" album) and started picking up...which I'm still in the process of...so I'll get back to that now.

I'll be at the hotel from 3-11 pm for the next few days. Here's hoping I have a fun evening! All the normal Monday-Friday folks come back tonight so I'm looking forward to seeing them. Its strange when they're not around, honestly.

God, its weird feeling like that place is a second home. Sears never really felt like that.

Oh, and the Pirates play in Chicago tonight for the series finale against the Cubbies. Lets hope Ian Snell can actually pitch more than just a few innings tonight!!! Go Bucs!!

Beginning Again

2008-08-02T18:12:00.002-04:00

"We have it in our powers to begin the world again." - Thomas Paine

Yet Another Non-Writing Cycle: Once again, I haven't written anything in over a week, so hopefully I can fill up this little space with some more clever words. I've been working alot more of the morning shifts at the hotel lately and by the time I get home from those I just don't want to be anywhere near the computer; so those of you who hinge on every blog I write can breathe easily, all...um, okay, you can at least be happy I wrote.

The Long Goodbye: The hotel manager announced this week that she has decided to take a job in Rockford, Illinois to stay with the company our hotel was previously owned by. It is hard to see her go, as she was the one who pulled me out of the mess that was my Sears career and gave me an opportunity to move myself up here at the hotel. For that I'll always be grateful.

Now that she's gone, the management positions have opened up and hopefully my awesome boss Shawn will take over the reins of the hotel. Then his job would open up as Assistant General Manager and....well, you get the point. Lets just hope whoever gets it will be the best AGM we could possibly have.

The Struggle Within: So this is two weekends come and gone with Townsend, and it appears that he's having some troubles adjusting to things as a 'here and there' kid. Last weekend was the first weekend that I completely lost my nerves with him. We went down to Pymatuning to a campground where Amanda's mom had set up camp for the weekend. I had off on Saturday, a rare occurence, so we decided to keep Towns from Friday to Sunday afternoon. We went down to the camp on Saturday afternoon, and unfortunately he'd been a little obstreperous the entire weekend up to that point. Screaming and crying when he wouldn't get his way and throwing three year old style fits.

So we're in the car, driving down, and he had this little bat that he'd received the night before. For some reason or another, I can't remember now, Amanda reached back and snatched it from him because he was throwing a fit. Now I'd lost my patience pretty well already with him so I tried to stay out of it. Immediately, he picked up another (and bigger) bat that was in the back seat and started winging it around. He almost hit me in the head with it!

I smashed down on the brakes and pulled off to the side of the road. I turned around, put my finger in his face and was about to start screaming...and saw the fear in his eyes and couldn't bring myself to lose it on him. I tried to explain to him that he can't be swinging something like that around while someone is driving! He cried hard for a while but he finally calmed down.

The rest of the weekend, I won't get into, but by Sunday morning I'd basically completely lost all patience with him entirely. I really need to work on that if I'm gonna be this awesome dad that I think I could possibly be.

Carry yo key: That Sunday night, Amanda had to work laundry late at her hotel and I went home after eleven from my usual Sunday night shift. On the way, our friend Lori called and asked me if I wanted to go to the night club that we had been going to lately, but this time without Amanda. I waffled a bit then decided to go. (Amanda got out semi-early and came down not too long after I got there.)

Anyway, Sunday is one of the two karaoke nights that they have at the club and I decided to break my solo singing cherry and requested to sing "Lyla" by Oasis. I got on stage alone and immediately all the nerves went away and I sang my heart out. Hit every note, stretched out the ones I knew I could, and came off stage to big time cheers and lots of friends saying that I looked like "a rockstar". It was awesome!

So Wednesday we went again and I sang "Round Here" by the Counting Crows and that was a little pitchy but apparently the deejay even liked it, so that was nice. Then I sang "Stand By Me" by Oasis and that totally sucked. I forgot that the chorus never ends, so I was standing on stage singing the same line about ten times in a row and I just didn't enjoy that at all. Sounded like poop again. The last song I did was "My Generation" by The Who, and that was pretty awesome. I still don't think it sounded that great but I heard "great performance" from the deejay and it made me feel pretty cool. Although I did get yelled at by one of the guys who works on the sound system about doing the Roger Daltrey microphone swing... :o)

Sittin' On The Dock Of The Bay: The baseball trading deadline has come and gone, and the Pirates decided to unload their star player, Jason Bay, to the Boston Red Sox for a few prospects. At first, I was happy they got some decent sounding players...and then twenty seconds later I was filled with remorse again as I realized they got rid of another good player for nothing again, just like they've been doing for quite a while now.

But now that I've had a couple days to mull it over, I've decided that I really feel the new General Manager, Neal Huntingdon, did a great job shopping Jason, who was invariably headed toward free agency at the end of next season, and why not get a great return for him. Plus, Jason got to go to his self-described "childhood favorite team" too, so here's hoping Jason can pick up a well deserved ring this fall.

The Pirates got a half decent outfielder, Brandon Moss, and he will hopefully turn out to be the next Xavier Nady (was a little known guy in another trade a few years ago).

I know a few months ago I went on a little rant about how I was going to get rid of my fan hood for the Pirates if they didn't reach .500. But for some reason or other I really, truly believe in the current leaders of this club. John Russell has coached this team into respectability, creating an atmosphere that still makes me want to listen to a game in August because they just might pull out a win against anyone (stopped the division leading Cubs' five game winning streak just the other night). Huntingdon's moves had an air of "knowledge", unlike the past GM's moves did, and it even seemed like the ESPN coverage of the Pirates seemed as though they feel the Bucs are only a few years out from another run.

So I'm hereby "re-signing" for another contract as a Pittsburgh Pirates fan, effective today. I'm excited about the new players and the possibilities they bring. Jeff Karstens, from the Nady/Marte trade with the Yankees, pitched a five-hit, eight inning gem in his first game for the Bucs. Moss, from Boston, got two hits in his Pirates debut and scored himself a highlight reel catch in that same game.

....wow, lots of writing!

A High School Questionnaire

2008-07-24T16:30:00.002-04:00

See, I have a sense of humor. I just can't help it I don't like looking back at high school....

Got this from MySpace...I figured I'd share it with all of you!

Fill this out about your SENIOR year of high school! The longer ago it was, the more fun the answers will be!! REPOST with name of high school and graduating year

Did you date someone from your school?
Yeah, Kyle Beth Bailey, the last few months I was there.

Did you marry someone from your high school?
Not yet :)

Did you car pool to School?
Nah, noone ever took me.

What kind of car did you have?
1990 Ford Escort

What kind of car do you have now?
2005 Chevrolet Cavalier

It's Friday night...where are you? (then)
Sitting in my room, playing guitar, avoiding confrontation with my step dad. Only sort of wishing I was at the football game.

it's friday night..where are you? (now)
Working the front desk at the Homewood Suites

What kind of job did you have in high school?
I was a cashier at Country Fair in McKean

Were you a party animal?

Hardly! I think I went to a few parties...Couldn't stand to watch all my drunk friends act like idiots for more than a half hour.

Were you considered a flirt?
If flirt means someone who dressed awkwardly and cared too much about how high his grades were in robotics class, then HELL YEAH

Were you in band, orchestra, or choir?
None of the above; the closest I came to band was playing electric guitar on lunch break one day with Randy English, and Mr. Marsalek came in and bitched me out for being in "the musicians room".

Asshole.

Were you a nerd?
Looking back I sure felt like I was, but I am told that I really wasn't, just sort of hard to pidgeonhole. So, yes...yes I was.

Did you get suspended/expelled?
No...worst trouble I got into was shoving Gomer Williams out of the bus door when he was picking on my brother (back when Adam was smaller than me). I had to sit in the front of the bus.

Yes, the same Gomer Williams that held a girl at knifepoint and tried to rape her in the Tinseltown bathroom. And no, the bus wasn't moving.

I wouldn't have cared.

Can you sing the fight song?
The Fight Song? There was one?

Who was/were your favorite teacher(s)?
Mr. Kozuchowsky, Mr. Way, Mr. Kieffer...yeah, I was a computer boy.

Where did you sit during lunch?
Most of the time I actually sat with the computer geeks, but once in a great while (probably when Charlie Bannister was out sick) I was invited to the cool "weekend warriors" table that I played street hockey with.

Can you smell the self esteem I have for my past?

What was your school's full name?
General McLane High School

When did you graduate?
1999

What was your school mascot?
The Lancer

If you could go back and do it again, would you?
Of course not. High School wasn't ever a good time for me, to be honest. I was always awkward, cared too much about schooling that ended up meaning total jack shit now...home life was on and off fun, thank god for guys like Joe Michael and the rest of the hockey crew that liked me when we were playing hockey (but probably talked about me behind my back)

...self pity session, over!!!

Who was your Senior prom date?
Kyle Beth Bailey

Did you have fun at Prom?
Yeah, it was a good time, thats for sure.

Do you still talk to the person you went to Prom with?
Occasionally online; I've seen her in person three times in the last year when I hadn't seen her in five years.

Do you still talk to people from school?
Well, Amanda and I had Matt Paszko over with Allison Hendrich a little while ago, had a party at Allison's with Brandie there too....but other than that I never really see anyone. Gary Barbour always ends up walking by with two pitchers of beer whenever we're out in Edinboro...

Volume 2, Issue 13

2008-07-22T19:01:00.004-04:00

Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time, but regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable. Sydney Harris

Open Mic Night Soon: Last night I played my new song for Amanda, even though it wasn't REALLY completed, and she agreed with what I had been thinking, that it was missing something. So I'll continue working on it. I do, however, have plans to go check out an open mic night soon. Possibly the Docksider tomorrow night.

I'm thinking of possibly trading two guitars for a new acoustic/electric; if anyone knows anyone who's looking to buy a Fender Telecaster or Washburn ES335 copy, let me know. I'd like to get a low-end Martin acoustic; the Ibanez one I've had for a few years needs some fretwork I think.

Spinning Out Of Control: The Pirates have to go 36-27 over their next 63 games to finish AT .500... this means they have to basically win 3 out of every 5 games til the end of the season; they're 2-8 in their last ten games.

I know a few weeks ago I wrote up a post that said that I'd be abandoning my fanship at the end of the season if they don't spring a 50/50 season. The more I started to think about it, the Pirates are sort of like our economy has been...not the best, actually kind of crappy. We're gonna have to give the next president at least a years time to fix it. So I might be 'flip-flopping' with my decision to go onto the free agent list. We'll see.

Nine Years Later: Just got a phone call from dad: "Well, its the end of an era." The cat that he's been taking care of for me for nine years (story will follow) ran off tonight while he was sitting outside on the phone. It is a big, fat calico cat that has threatened to run away the last few summers, and apparently it has finally made the break.

Nine and a half years ago, approximately, I was up at the mall with a girl I was dating and we stopped in the pet store. This little tiny kitten kept meowing at her and she begged me and begged me to buy the cat, so I did. She kept it at her place for a little while, but finally her parents made her get rid of it so I gave it to my dad to 'watch' for a few months until we got an apartment together. Well, obviously, things didn't work out and my dad ended up keeping the cat, who he finally named "Miss Kitty" a few years ago.

A couple summers ago, I was there for one of the cat's jailbreak moments. I was in the backyard and the cat took off across the mostly fenced in yard. She took off into the area of the property where we could corner her and force her to come after us or be caught. She ended up getting back to the front door, nearly, and dad reached his arm down to grab her from underneath a tree branch...the cat bit him across his wrists and he bled pretty good. I, of course, went into "screw that shit" mode and grabbed a shovel and tried to smash it...from what I remember, it was that that scared it back into the house.

So today, Dad was on the phone talking with a friend and kept watching the cat crawl out of the doorway and onto the paved driveway; a 'safe spot' that he let her go to. He turned his back for a few minutes and the cat was gone. He looked all over the place near his house and around the neighborhood and she's just gone.

I feel bad, and I could sense that Dad does too, even though he probably wouldn't admit to it. He's had her a long time, but he says he has no plans to replace her.

Lets hope she comes back!!!

Evening, 7.21.08

2008-07-21T20:18:00.002-04:00

Why would someone call for information about the hotel, ask for SPECIFIC directions to the hotel, haggle a price, AND NOT BOOK A RESERVATION!??!?! Argh!!

Got a new song today, its called "I Can't Help It". About some social demons I'm trying to shed. Sounds alot like one of my older ones, "I Try". Probably cuz the chords are almost the same. *smirk*

Its pretty gross, however, pulling hairs out of the dirty laundry at work. Starting to turn my stomach.

McGarrey's Oakwood Cafe has a great chicken parmesan melt.

Tried to recharge Amanda's air conditioning this morning. I parked the car in the yard (softest for laying down, instead of right on Liberty Street) and peeled apart the wheel well cover to get to the air conditioning valve. I undo the valve and green flourescent dye spits all over the place.
.... Uh, anyone want to fix that for me?

Maybe Karaoke Isn't So Bad

2008-07-21T10:05:00.003-04:00

Amanda and I have been going out to a club alot lately that features two days of karaoke. I, myself, have semi-retired from singing, because every time I have gone on stage it has ended up being bad. Amanda is actually a good singer so she can continue on.

But thats not the point of this post; I found this video on the Erie SeaWolves website. Gotta be one of the worst things I've ever seen.

Makes me wonder if I've seen this pair at the club.

Tearing Off "The Black Patch"

2008-07-20T12:40:00.004-04:00

I'd like to discuss a forwarded email I received from my mom called, "The Black Patch"

First of all, I would like to make sure people understand that, yes, I'm against the Iraq Conflict, but I'm not against the soldiers, and all that. I know that close friends of mine all showed up for duty in the National Guard and Air Force when we left high school and some of then ended up in this conflict that hopefully will end soon and these folks can come home.

That being said, I'd like to point out something about this "Black Patch".

There's alot of emails flying around that declare "THIS SHOULD BE ON THE COVER OF ALL THE MAJOR NEWSPAPERS" and all that.
Well, newspapers do have a right to publish real material, and not computer generated material.

Lets take a look at the picture of the 'renegade' who apparently had these patches all made up on his uniform:

Great, huh? A classic soldier shot...but lets take a closer look at those "patches"

It'd be a safe bet to assume these patches would be sewn the same way as the ol' Stars and Stripes would be, correct? But upon closer inspection, these patches almost look...*gasp* computer generated!!!

Whoever did make this picture did spend alot of time shading those patches, and they did a pretty good job, but seriously, its a fake. THATS WHY YOU DONT SEE PICS LIKE THIS IN THE MAJOR NEWSPAPERS...

Do you really want a picture that belongs in the major newspapers?

This was from a bicycle race in Mexico a few months ago, where a drunk driver avoided a roadblock and ran into this group of racers, at least killing one of them and seriously injuring (obviously) several others. Yet this picture wasn't in the major newspapers either.

I get it --- these Military forwards are supposed to be a morale booster for the public --- I don't want anyone getting the wrong idea about the purpose of this forward --- it just is really silly to send around things that are fake.

These are the sort of things that start to create all the ugly things that are starting to define us as Americans...

Before sending these around, make sure they're real, Mom!!!!

post it note: 7.19.08

2008-07-19T22:02:00.002-04:00

So I'm here at the hotel, its around ten pm, and you'll never guess who is sitting right in front of me: Ashley Sterrett's parents, here visiting a guest in the hotel.

Yeah, the same Ashley I left for Amanda last spring. And I'm sitting here ashamed of myself. Not as much ashamed for leaving Ashley as much as how I did it.

Quick refresher -- I left her after seeing Amanda for a little bit before I left her. She had no idea it was going on, and I broke up with her over the phone, and cold turkey too. No text messages, no phone calls... I even left a $100 Penguins jersey at her place, knowing it was there.

When Amanda broke up with her ex, she kept talking to him once in a while for a month because her conscience couldn't let herself do what I did to Ashley.

So fast forward...I'm sitting here totally embarrassed of myself, and for the first few minutes I'm sitting here extending a two minute phone call into a ten minute call. Her dad keeps looking up at me and I try my best to look away, praying they'll leave before I get off the phone.

Within a few minutes, a guest comes down and asks for some coffee to be made, which requires me to walk right past the little group that has extended their legs at the couch and chairs near the front desk. Suddenly...

Father: Hey champ, how you been?
Me: Uh, doing fine, funny seeing you here, I guess.
Father: How've you been?
Me: As good as you can do on a busy Saturday.

He then extended his hand and shook mine. I had so many questions: How's Cody? How's Ashley? I heard she was dating someone she is really happy with...

But before I could ask, he gave me a big smile. Was it a knowing smile? Who knows...but I felt something I'd never felt before right there...unneeded shame. Here I am, almost thirty, and I'm worried about a confrontation that most likely wasn't going to happen! Now other than that initial little greeting, they've continued their conversation and have said nothing to me since then.

I thought back to all those girls I broke up with in that same chicken way; Kyle, Vicki, Kim... and I thought it was the end of the world at the time, that my life was going to be forever haunted by their memories and, sure enough, I still talk to Kyle and Vicki online from time to time. We're still friends, albeit electronic, but we're still friends.

Its very strange, all of this.

I'm going to go back to standing here and trying hard not to be ashamed of myself. After all, its the most I can really do, now.

Volume 2, Issue 12

2008-07-19T18:00:00.004-04:00

And So It Begins: I'm sorry I've been so lax on writing blogs lately; as you've noticed, I don't like to write sometimes. I've been spending alot of time just enjoying the outside, playing alot of guitar, writing and recording music, and, well, working morning shifts at the hotel.

The Ravine Flyer!!: 15 years ago, Waldameer starting chatting about replacing the old Peninsula Drive traversing wooden coaster from back in its early years (1920's/1930's) with a new updated coaster. Environmentalists and politicians blocked its progress for years, but owner Don Nelson pushed and pushed and never gave up on it...and now its finally here!!

Earlier in the week, Amanda and I finally had the chance go to Waldameer and experience the Ravine Flyer II, the biggest wooden coaster being built in the United States this year. And let me tell you, it is a rush. No joke, when I finally got off of it, I looked around and said to myself, is this real? Am I actually at Waldameer?! Two trips later, I was convinced this is one of the coolest coasters I've been on as well as one of the fastest. The thing rips through the air. Unreal how fast it goes!

The twenty dollar Ride pass was definitely worth it. Then of course, Amanda and I both almost got sick riding the Spider. Yeah, I don't want to talk about that.

The Songs Are Coming, The Songs Are Coming!: I've been recording and writing new songs all the time for a new CD full of some good material and a few covers. I know I keep writing about this, but its really already on the fire, just needs some new vocals laid down and a couple other surprises. Amanda will be singing on it too, once we get around to getting her silly self in 'studio' mode. :) I wrote a new song I'm very excited about, called "Put Your Hands On Me" that is very John Mayer/Stevie Ray Vaughan style, probably the closest to a gosh honest blues-rock song that I've ever done. Very proud of it.

Hotel Blues: It turns out that we will not be finding out the fate of our employments here at the ol' hotel until the very first day of the new ownership, which is a real bummer, but thats how it works, I suppose. Finally had that long talk with the boss about the second job, to which she was totally supportive of if thats what I felt I need to do to get by.

Then I find out that back at Sears, an old compatriot of mine, Kevin Pollock, got promoted to the Assistant General Manager, Home Improvement Division. I was told through an email I recieved a few hours ago....I'm trying not to be bitter about it, because Kevin is a decent guy and all, most likely deserves it, its just hard for me to swallow knowing that I knew that job inside and out and was passed over for a guy from Giant Eagle. Still hard to get over that.

Not that the hotel isn't doing its wonders on me, we have good days and not so good days, but I'm learning a lot of things, especially one big thing, patience. Each day my patience gets thicker and thicker, little by little. I know good things are on the horizon for me career wise, I just need to be more patient. I was always grabbing at Sears, always punching underwater, never getting as much as i "felt" that I deserved. I looked back and knew that I deserved that promotion; I may have not been totally ready for it, but I knew I deserved it more than some produce guy (who ended up quitting before my two week notice was out last fall).

Anyway, I'm happy where I am; ten years out of high school, I've had many things I thought I was going to be - a tech ed teacher, a convenience store manager, a radio DJ, a journalist, a music critic, a retail manager, a studio guitarist, a traveling hotel manager....

Now, I don't know where I'm going. Who knows where I'll be next year. But I do know that life is good right now...I have a steady group of friends who, although I might not be the closest with them as I wish I was, I know would still be there for me and I would be there for them. My family seems to get bigger and closer each and every day, and I have the greatest woman of my life to share it all with.

I'm just staying where the light is...

photo of the day

"Yeah, your team might finally win a World Series for the first time in a hundred years, but MY team is gonna...hey, are you paying attention?"

Volume 2, Issue 10

2008-07-10T13:11:00.002-04:00

"There is a paradox in pride: it makes some men ridiculous, but prevents others from becoming so." Charles Caleb Colton

Getting Ridiculous: Decided yesterday I'd do some laundry, since its been about a week or so since I took care of it. Balled some up around noon, headed downstairs, threw it in the washer. Went down to check it out and to put some more in about a half hour later...and I realized I didn't put soap in the load. So I ran it again, with soap this time. Once its finished, I took it and put it in the dryer and went for a bike ride.

Came back, went downstairs, and the dryer is in the same spot it was before. Clothes still wet. I realized that now that the air conditioning works, its got the same problem we'd been having all the time we've been here: the furnace is on the same breaker as the dryer. So when you have the furnace/ac on, it trips the breaker...and you have to shut off the offending heating and or cooling system JUST to dry your clothes.

I flipped the breaker, turned on the dryer, headed up the stairs back to the apartment, flipped off the AC. Went back down forty minutes later, and still wet. I forgot to flip off the AC first. Christ! So I run back downstairs, flip the breaker again, turn on the dryer.

Went downstairs a third time now to check this laundry, and for some reason, it STILL isn't working. It works for the ten seconds or so that I'm downstairs, so what the hell gives?

DOES ANYONE KNOW AN ELECTRICIAN!?!?!

Karaoke, Pt. 2: Went out again last night to the karaoke bar with Amanda and her friend Lori; enjoyed it as usual. We played darts for a couple games (I really want a dartboard now!) and I won one of them, yay! Didn't expect me to be that good. After a while Amanda wanted to sing a song again, but I always like singing with her. She picked "Proud Mary" by Ike and Tina Turner (you know, the fast version) and I hadn't really heard much of that song before but I figured I'd give it a shot.

We got up on stage and started the song really slow together, and in the middle of the first verse I realized that there's no guy part it in other than the really low voice that goes "roooollllin' on a riiiiiverrrr" and I don't have a low voice so I was sort of screwed. But we made it through, we both forgot lyrics and things so we danced around like idiots, it was a good time.

Photo Of The Day

"Its easier for him to pee if we aren't looking at him."

Today's "Captured By The Cell"

2008-07-09T14:26:00.004-04:00

Talk about subliminal messages, huh?

Volume 2, Issue 9

2008-07-08T18:08:00.011-04:00

"The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil,
but because of those who look on and do nothing." Albert Einstein

Seven Years of Anger: I called my Dad this morning right after Amanda left for work and he offered to take me out to breakfast. We went to our favorite little restaurant, Lorie's Wildridge, out on route 20 (West 26th Street). We both saddled up to a cup of coffee and one of our normal waitresses, Beth, came up to us for our order. I ordered a short stack of pancakes, bacon, and homefries, and Dad ordered some sort of breakfast smile thing with eggs and toast, I dunno, wasn't paying attention.

What I was paying attention to was the blonde lady who was pouring coffee across the way. No, she was not attractive...she was an old boss of mine. "Say Beth, is that Lori Gadley?" Beth gave me this strange smile and said, "Why, yes it is...do you happen to know her?"

A few years ago, I was a shift manager at Country Fair in McKean. Actually, seven years ago, to be exact. And Lori was an Assistant Manager there. In the early spring, the Store Manager, Mark, who had been there for almost two years, decided it was time for him to move on, and they hired this lady, Terese, as the head of the store. At the time, Lori was going through a divorce and was a total bitch all of the time...never had time for your questions, had no patience for anyone.

For some reason, her and Terese hit it off really well...and over the next few months they forced out or fired all the male associates working there. I'm not kidding. One by one they either snapped or quit altogether. After only a few short months, I was only one of three guys working there, and long story short (long enough already), we finally had it one night and we pulled some shenanigans. The next day I was demoted (upon which I quickly quit) and the other two guys were fired.

So back to breakfast...I sat there in that booth with my dad and my blood was just boiling. I'm almost positive she had no idea who I was this morning, but still...isn't it amazing that after such a long time you can have such animosity to someone that hasn't been a part of your life for an extremely long time?

The Ol' Reliable Corner Gas: Amanda's car has never had proper air conditioning or heating while we've dated. We've never really been able to figure it out. The fan works on high, but the AC doesn't work at all. The heat worked through the fan but it only worked in super high gear. So while I was out with Dad, I questioned him about how to fix this. He, of course, only is a gearhead for pre-1990 vehicles (although he has performed admirably on my vehicles in the past, I love you dad :-D ), but he mentioned that he had a buddy who could take a look at it.

After breakfast, we went to the Sunoco station just east of Peninsula Drive. I honestly thought that it was some hole in the wall like the rest of the "stations" that litter the Erie landscape. Sure enough the guy comes out and he's like "Hey Freddy!" He took my car immediately in and called around for the part (which turned out to be a switch located deep in the heart of the dashboard). While we were waiting he shot the breeze with us, extremely nice guy who knows his stuff; his son was pretty cool too. Their owner (who they interrupted on his LUNCH BREAK to get the part!!!) returned with the switch, they installed the part and we were out of there (for a small fee, of course :-D) in no time.

Turns out they are one of (if not the oldest) family owned corporate sponsored gas stations left in Erie. I told the guy I didn't even think they actually sold gas anymore, but I will definitely stop back for gasoline (actually priced only two cents higher than the nearby Country Fair). Dad says that he actually gets better miles per gallon with the gas there. Its just nice to be able to go to a place that has decent people working there...who don't screw you in prices.

Boy, lots of parentheses there ... geez. Moving on...

The County Seat: Just so my Ferraro contingency is well aware, Amanda and I are planning on coming down to Ridgway on Saturday, July 26th. We will be bringing Townsend with us, and as far as plans go, my Mom will be going along with us. I'd like to have Amanda and Townsend meet all of you down that way while we're in the area. We also may be taking a trip to Kinzua Bridge and probably the Kinzua Dam on the way down. Any input on the visit would be greatly appreciated!!

Its been over a year I've been living with Amanda...finally might be time to bring her around to the clan!

PHOTO OF THE DAY

"Ugh... help? I think ... I'm ... broken."

Picture Of The Day 6/3

2008-06-03T12:38:00.001-04:00

No caption here... this is from a bike race in Mexico yesterday. A drunk driver plowed headfirst into a group of bike riders. I don't think I've ever seen such a rash photo on the AP wire. Ever.

Picture Of The Day, 5/30

2008-05-30T22:28:00.000-04:00

"Unbelievable! I fall into the goal and Fleury has to rip one. Gross!!"

Training Wheels, Tide, and Trainees

2008-05-30T22:20:00.001-04:00

Townsends First Bike Ride: Headed down to Meadville to pick up Townsend for the afternoon today; Amanda couldn't keep him overnight due to her big ol' training class in the morning. So I got dressed for work real early (details later) and rode with her down there like we usually do. We get to her ex-husbands place and Townsend is out in the yard beating around a birdie with a badminton racket (I debated on which sounded worse: him beating a birdie or a shuttlecock. Either way, I think you folks get the point.) I turn on "Green Onions" on the mp3 player, as I always do, and Amanda gets out and talks to John in the front yard for a bit. Sure enough I hear "oh my god!!" and I turn and see Townsend, who only last week was grinding away on training wheels, riding his bike around the yard!! The kid's only five years old!! I don't think I learned that early. And he's got complete mastery of it too; can slow down, speed up, all that. I have video proof on my cell phone, but i don't think I can upload it. Maybe I'll send it over at the enhanced blog site. Completely stunned though.

Has anyone else ever heard of catching on the bike at such a young age?

Subway and Shirts: Today, as I mentioned earlier, I got "work ready" around noonish so I could head down to Meadville with Amanda. I did this same thing a week ago and when I got to work, there was a huge crease across my chest where the seatbelt had sat. If anyone knows me from work, I like to be "date ready" when I go to work at night...so making sure my clothes are pressed and clean is pretty much top priority.

So today, we head down to Mudville and pick up the boy. On the way back, I was hungry for lunch so we stopped by Subway for a quick bite. I decided to go somewhat healthy and get a tuna sub. Amanda suggested (as I was thinking it) to get double meat so at least I was getting filled up. After being charged an extra $2.50 for the double meat on a $5 sub (never do that again!!), we sat down to eat. I ate about half.

Amanda then says "what did you get on your shirt!" Sure enough, I must have leaned into a little row of the oil from the tuna on the sub wrapper. (ever notice that when you eat at subway they wrap it up in that huge paper? and you have to smack your friends in their faces with it just to peel your meal open?)

Anyways, Amanda pulls out her "super" Tide pen and decides to rub out the little stain. I'm sitting there like a little boy having his shirt buttoned, and this nine year old girl is staring at me across the way, almost drooling in her awkwardness. I kept looking away from her but I couldn't help the fact she was mesmerized by this pen process.

Russians Are Coming!: So the hotel is contracting out housekeeping work to a local business that works with young Russian immigrants. Yes, they're legal, and yes, they're paid. Outside of how that works, I don't know. But it was a little funny when they were introducing themselves to my general manager this afternoon. "Whats your name" "Natanial" "Nice to meet you Neetanal. Your name?" "Sergey" "Pleasure is mine, sergee". I read an op-ed piece on CNN.com the other day by Glenn Beck about corporations still using "slave labor". I don't think this is exactly the same sort of thing. I hope not, anyways. But this is coming from the same company that I just found out is being sold in August and I have to be "re-hired" for my job, pending background checks and drug tests. Not that you couldn't eat a cherry pie off my background checks, but still. I don't like it.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: "Criticism is nothing more than other people's opinion." Clint Eastwood

The Next Three: "What'd I Say" by Ray Charles, "I'm A Little Kitty" by The Backward Mirror, and "Handshake Drugs" by Wilco

Picture Of The Day

2008-05-29T12:41:00.000-04:00

"I think my face should be right there to the right of Lincoln's. Yeah, I know, I'm not President yet. Yeah, I understand I'm out of it. But wouldn't the superdelegates think I'm a stronger candidate if my face was up there before the convention?"

Curtains, Ice Cream, and Clothes

2008-05-29T12:35:00.000-04:00

Few Days Off: So sue me, I took a few days off from writing. I've noticed that over the past week my blogs have been sort of stale so I guess I decided to take a little bit of time off to forget about the pressures of writing them. Course, there is no pressure, considering noone apparently missed them. Or maybe you did and you didn't say so. Oh well, here goes.

Follow The Gold Medal Ribbon: Last night Amanda and I went "curtain shopping" at JCPenney. She got a flier in the mail saying that there was a certain kind of curtain (funny, i know) on sale. So we went up there to check them out. We get to the department and Amanda starts looking. I flip through a couple of them and overhear a conversation between the two salespeople (TWO!?! We were lucky if we had ONE person working 10-5 in the draperies department!!!) and they were chatting with a customer. By the sounds of it, they knew her from somewhere, if not a former coworker. The conversation was about how much they "really enjoy" working in the department, how much they've "learned about draperies".

So Amanda and I walk around for what seemed like five minutes and BOTH of them completely ignored us. Finally the woman walks away and we waited a little bit longer and...nothing. They started talking between each other. Amanda and I made louder conversation about where they need to go, and measurements, and...nothing. So Amanda says "Yeah can we get a little help here?"

The first girl comes over and says "oh, yes, i can help you." We point out that we'd like this certain one that we'd found that wasn't the sales ad one. She says, "hmm, let me check." She checks, and says, "No, we've only got one. We can order them for you though!" So we decided that we'd put in an order for them. Amanda gets a few more ideas and the girl goes up to the register to put in the order. Of course, her system won't let her do it. She calls the other girl over, and they start talking between themselves about doing a "sens" or something. She doesn't offer this service to us, but mentions that they can't get them anymore. Amanda asks if they could get them from another store, and the second salesperson says, "...that...you can..." then asks her friend again who has to lumber back across the department (yes, lumbered...posture was like "leave me alone") and say that 'we'll be lucky to get these in' and tell us that it'll be $10 for shipping.

Oh, and when we asked about the curtain that was on sale, they both were in agreement that they'd never seen those curtains before.

Now I remember when I used to get bitched at at Sears for treating customers like this, and honestly, I had no problem with it then. Just didn't...figured that we didn't have it and that was just the way it was. I can't imagine doing that now. If somethings broken and I might be able to fix it, I fix it. If there's even a slight possibility that something can't be done, I say "I will do my best" so at least the guest knows that I tried. I apologize if I'm caught talking with someone other than a guest. I just can't figure out how I ever functioned like that before. Its hard to believe.

So we head down to get some ice cream at Baskin Robbins for a "pick me up". I got Gold Medal Ribbon and Amanda got some York Peppermint Pattie flavor that I wasn't really all that impressed with. We walked down to Sears to say hi and headed to the hardware department.

We talked to a few former compatriots, and sure enough I run into my old boss, Chris Litz. Chris tells me that apparently they've had to scrub the stores down, thats the new thing. Her hypothesis is that they might be selling off the stores. It wouldn't surprise me. Then she drops on me that Cheryl Sheldon, the Return-To-Vendor person, is having some major surgery again and that she might not be returning to work. How terrible :(

Then she asked me if Fred, the new Home Improvement manager (yeah, the job I almost got), had gotten back to me regarding my application I put in a few months ago for tools sales (yes, I applied again. So what, sue me.) and I told her he hadn't. She asked me if I'd want to do RTV if Cheryl couldn't come back. I told her I'd be all for it. Why wouldn't I be?
You scan boxes and load pallets with returned goods. 18 hours a week. Early mornings, but I'm sure if I couldn't make it due to a scheduling change at the hotel its not a job that would be the end of the world if I couldn't make it. I can turn on my music, have noone to bother me, and get my work done and go home.

I know that the "front desk supervisor" has been mentioned in conversation at the hotel and that I've mentioned it on the blog, but I can't wait for that to get a little more cash flow in, and last I knew, they weren't even looking for anyone to fill it. Besides, every other time I waited for something, I didn't get what I wanted. After all, I didn't wait for Amanda. :o)

"Baby Mama": Speaking of Amanda, her and I took one of her coworkers, Lori, and her friend Sabrina, to the movies to see "Baby Mama", the latest "SNL" flick that was probably taped during the writers strike. It looked hilarious on the previews, so we figured we'd check it out. It took a few weeks, but we finally went to see it Tuesday night. We showed up at Lori's apartment and picked up the girls and went to the theater.

Five minutes into the movie, Sabrina gets a phone call and instead of silencing it or saying "hang on a sec" and walking out, she gets up and tries to answer it while walking, and kicks over Amanda's popcorn. Amanda says "Are you serious?" loud enough, but the girl doesn't even stop and seem sorry about it, just kept walking. Lori gets up and goes out of the movie door. A minute later, she returns, and apologizes. Sabrina returns about five minutes later with a new bag of popcorn. No sorry, just basically shoves it in Amandas lap.

Oh, wait, the movie. Yeah, it wasn't NEARLY as funny as it appeared to be. Honestly, if they had worked it as a 'chick flick' it would have been a lot better in my mind. A few more sappy scenes and it would have been alot better off. Steve Martin steals the show as Tina Fey's boss though. Hilarious. "I'm going to reward you with five minutes of uninterrupted eye contact."

Dirty Duds Done Dirt Cheap: The last few weeks, as you've read, I've been fighting to fix the dryer downstairs. Laundry has been piling up. The neighbor downstairs offered to let us use her dryer, but I always feel weird about using it, since its not our utilities, all that stuff. So we decided to go to the laundromat on Tuesday morning. But not just any laundromat...we'll go to Campus Coin in Edinboro, where the washers are only $1.25 a load. Pretty cheap if you ask me. Then we'd stop by the neighboring Trophy Shop and say hi (For you new people, Amanda worked there for three years before she got the fateful job at Sears). We'd pick up lunch at Subway then head home for a bike ride.

We drop off the laundry, (took five washers to get all of it...I'd been wearing black socks for a week) and head over to the Shop. Mike, the owner, meets us at the door and we chat for a little bit. Tammy, one of their employees, says, "Hey Amanda, can you take a look at this?" and leads her back in the shop. I stayed out front and petted the dog and played around on my cellphone for a bit. Sure enough, Amanda ends up 'working' for an hour. I went over and put the laundry in the dryers, just in time for Amanda to meet up with me for lunch.

Subway $5 footlongs are still a pretty good deal.

So Amanda heads back to "work" and I start folding clothes. I get them folded, Amanda finishes up there, and we load the car back up and head for the Dairy Supreme. Get some ice cream, yummy, and head for Erie.

Sounds like a silly story, right? Sure enough, we realize at the end of the night that I somehow left an entire dryer load of colors at the laundromat. Mostly Amanda's work shirts. WHOOPS!!!! Luckily, the Trophy Shop also owns Campus Coin, and they had found the load of laundry at the end of the evening and have it there waiting for us.
Apparently the SpongeBob SquarePants pajama bottoms are what identified them as ours.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: "The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom." Henry Mencken

The Next Three Songs On My Mp3 Player: "Say" by John Mayer, "It Hurts Me Too" by Eric Clapton, and "Just Pretend" by The Bens.

NEW: British Phrase Of The Day: "nine bob note" ... Apparently, overseas, they don't have dollars (haha). So our phrase, "Queer as a three dollar bill" is "Queer as a nine bob note".

Earlybirds, Sunbirds, and Flipped Birds

2008-05-26T21:57:00.000-04:00

Early To Rise: Amanda and I decided to wake up early today, go bike riding, clean the house, do the laundry, wash the car...Yeah, didn't happen. We did, though, get up early.

*dramatic pause*

We ended up going to the mall to check out blinds to match our new "bedroom" that still has yet to arrive from Furniture Row. I think its been six weeks now we've been waiting on that awesome bed we're getting. At JCPenney, we found a couple more pairs of Tony's New Style jeans that I really like and they were on clearance too!! We also stopped by AC Moore to check out some stuff to make the bedroom window "stained glass". Anyone ever do that or know someone that has? I'd really like to do something cool with it that is removable if possible.

Incense and Sunburns: Amanda had been making comments on how white her skin is lately. We went for a bike ride the other day and she got sunburnt on her forearms (of course I didn't get burned at all). She looked pretty pink already, and decided to go tanning this afternoon. Silly girl. But its better to tan now, I remember last year, she gets burned REALLY easily.

Incensed And Burned: I'm back with the guys while they're doing the laundry and I overhear someone saying about how in August we'll be a different company. I come to find out that our management group has been bought out by another management group, so we'll actually be a new company come late summer. I have to re-apply for my job (that the company is legally bound to rehire me) and apparently we get better insurance benefits! I was pretty peeved at first to find out, but once I got all the details, I found out that everything is better! So I'm looking forward to that now. Interesting what happens when you actually find out whats going on...

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: "Good judgement comes from exprience. Experience comes from bad judgement." - Jim Horning

The Next Three Songs On My Mp3 Player: "Us And Them" by Pink Floyd, "Should Not Be Ashamed" by Wilco and "Cry Baby Cry" by The Beatles.

Gas, Wind, and Gunpowder

2008-05-25T19:29:00.000-04:00

Inspiration On Ethanol: As most of you know, I've been recording songs for about five years now, and have been using the pseudonym The Backward Mirror. Most of the songs were introspective, about my family, and it got lots of great followers and fans. Thanks to everyone who has supported me so far.

I haven't recorded any new music in over a year now, and I think I've kinda had it with writing songs about myself for a bit. Nothing about myself really bothers me enough to be inspired for. So I have been thinking about doing somethign new musically. I've always loved the blues, but always felt my doing blues on record sounded stupid.

On my way to work yesterday, a new "name" hit me: "Edsel's Comeback". I think its a catchy name(Here's a little history of the Ford Edsel). At work it was really slow night at work and all of a sudden, I got the inspiration to write something about the project, whether it be website material or lyrics or some fake news article.

I ended up writing nine songs! I have never had inspiration hit me like this but I'm really excited about the new possibilities. There will be big blues-rock influences, of course...plus a couple folkie songs and a surf-style instrumental (called "Tar N Chip" haha). I read my lyrics to Amanda this morning and she was pretty impressed, so I defintely will be working hard to get this project on the move soon.

Early Afternoon Tumbleweeds: Amanda and I capitalized on the awesome day we're having here in Erie by getting up early and going for a bike ride (with a stop at McDonalds and Wal-Mart, of course) down at the Peninsula. Just a little crisp wind was all that stood in our way. Stopped at Perry Monument and rode to The Channel by the Coast Guard Station. Hung around there for a little bit and were lucky enough to see the Brig Niagara float by! I've only seen the thing actually sailing once, back when it was first re-christened in 1990. Very exciting...Amanda got a few pics. We then realized that we were seriously running out of time so we turned around and headed for home. When we pulled up to the house, we noticed that I had left the front door open to the house!! What a numbskull!!! Luckily everything was accounted for. I came busting in the door and and the cats looked up at me with that what in the world is your problem?! look. I'm a dumbass!

Happy Memorial Day: I'd like to wish everyone an extra special Memorial Day. In this age of over-advertisement and crazy politics, remember that there are certain men and women who have fought hard to keep the principles we argue over on a daily basis intact. So a big thank you to them. The world is a changed place; back in my grandfathers day people were lining up to enlist for the services, and now people have trouble even saying thank you to former soldiers. Sad, sad things.

But honestly, Memorial Day sales should be left to an extra special discount for veterans and their immediate families. I don't think that someone who doesn't appreciate what a soldier has done for us should get hot dogs buy one get one free...but thats just me. After all, what would a Happy Memorial Day from me be without a controversial statement regarding our country! Enjoy your day off folks. I'll be working!!

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: "The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly. 'Tis dearness only that gives everything its value." Thomas Paine

The Next Three Songs On My Mp3 Player: "We're Not Gonna Take It" by Twisted Sister, "Letterbomb" by Green Day, and "Mama You've Got A Daughter" by John Lee Hooker

Creditors, Crap, and Cycling

2008-05-25T16:03:00.000-04:00

Good Start To The Day: I lost a letter a few weeks ago that contained a bill from my health care provider, and I guess somewhere in between, it went to collections. I have a weird habit of not answering my cell phone unless I know the phone number, so I've been ignoring a weird phone number for about two weeks now. So my dad calls me this morning right after I missed yet another call from this number. Tells me that he fell over the couch last night at TEN pm trying to field a phone call, and that he also had another phone call at like 7:30 this morning. I lived with my dad for about three months nine years ago and they still pull his number off my old credit report. Pretty crazy. But I called up the company that I had forgotten about and paid the bill this morning.

Nice Day For Riding: Amanda had a chiropractor appointment this morning, so Townsend and I had some time alone. We went for a bike ride down at Irving Park on 23rd and Raspberry. Nice little park there, I must say. Plenty of shade, decent concrete, and I don't notice huge piles of dog poop there. (Never mind the video surveillance notices) A group of thirteen year olds were walking by talking and every loud word out of their mouth was a curse word. I know I never talked like that when I was thirteen, but I am an exception to most rules, I guess. (In some circles, "exceptions" of my type are also known as "nerds")

Toilets + Tony = Not A Good Time: Tonight I am working at the hotel, and sure enough, got a message from a guest that their toilet wasn't working. I head up there, found myself a "new" plunger (piece of crap) and went to work. Luckily there were no presents, but the plunger didn't work for...well, nothing. I spent ten minutes in the room trying to get it to come loose, to no avail. The guest in the room decided that it was best to stand there and watch me work on the toilet, which frustrated me more (I think I got that bug from Bill, honestly. He always hated when he was working and Adam and I were either playing or standing near him. I hate it when people do it to me now. I need to lose that.). As I'm ramming the plunger down, I of course happen to get little drips of water on my shoes, my pant legs, my TIE, and finally, my eye. That effectively ended my efforts. I told them I'd get someone in to fix it. "Thats not going to work," she said. They're in a two bedroom suite, of course, with at least one working toilet (whats a bet noone ever uses their second bathroom at home, but I digress). I told her I'd have it fixed in the morning.

As I'm walking down to the elevator, absolutely disgusted, I get another phone call telling me there is yet another room, ironically down the hallway from that one, that has trouble with their toilet flushing, too. Luckily, there wasn't major problems with this one, but I still am really starting to hate having to plunge toilets.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: "I broke a mirror the other day. I'm supposed to get seven years of bad luck, but my lawyer thinks he can get me five." Steven Wright

The Next Three Songs On My Mp3 Player: "Walkin' All Night" by Little Feat, "Hey You" by Pink Floyd, and "Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen.

PS -- My condolences to Kyle Wisniewski, whose grandmother died yesterday.

FEEDBACK:

"Auntie Ella" said: just wanted to congratulate you on getting some work done around the house. It does give you a good feeling to accomplish something, especially when you can look back at it and think how nice it looks. (If it would only stay that way)... But keep it up, before you know it the project will have to be done again. HAVE A GOOD MEMORIAL DAY!!!!!!

Nick Tompkins said: "Go Elvis" ... I'm pretty sure you meant Costello, but I'll clear it up for my friends that haven't heard of him. This is Elvis Costello. Not this Elvis.