Mistletoe

Well today marks, what will no doubt be, the last forum of the year. It was, I think, a decent year for this journal. This entry marks the 44th of the year, and 145th overall. Though there were times that I tried, I still have no idea how people post more than once a week…as anyone who comes by this little site knows, it’s a very rare thing indeed, when I can find more that one thing to say over the course of seven days.

Today at the mill, the decorations started to come down. The fake Christmas trees were dismantled and loaded into boxes, the swag and fake presents taken down and put away for another year. Here in the City of Destiny, the promised rumors of a post Christmas day snow have all but petered out, and though the sun was making it’s way over the mountain this morning on it’s way to what will no doubt be a beautiful clear day, I found myself wishing for those low hanging gray clouds, and the big white flakes they bring when it’s cold enough.

I am looking forward to the return of longer days and the shining morning sun, however.

Getting up and getting home in the dark starts to take its toll on me after a while, and dragging my sorry ass out of bed this morning took a pretty Herculean effort. It was one of those mornings when you lie in bed thinking about how you wish you had a cold so that you could sniffle pathetically into the phone, while calling in sick. Instead I just kept hitting the snooze button in the hopes I might come down with something, but after an hour there was no cold, no fever, no rash or hive to be found anywhere…just pathetic excuses for what was, no doubt, the result of me staying up too late. In the end, I just dragged my legs to the side of the mattress and let gravity pull me out of bed.

Last Wednesday The Prairie Dogs filled in for a cancellation at Jazzbones, here in Tacoma. It was just three of the four of us, as Mike lives a bit to far away to make that kind of a trip on a weeknight. It was a lot of fun, if not a little sparse without all of Mike’s parts. I brought my amp instead of plugging my guitar directly into the PA system. I liked the fact that it allowed the whole thing to rock a little more, and let us get a little louder. It lent itself to a more aggressive approach to the songs and after the show we got a number of very nice compliments from people who we didn’t know and who hadn’t seen us before. I’m not sure what Dave thought about the whole, “louder is better” thing, as he tends to like it more on the quiet side, but I know Doug was right there with me.

Over on the right I’ve put up both the song we sent out this year and also the one we sent out a few years ago. For this years song I got Dave to bring his big stand up bass and Doug to play drums and I’m pretty happy with the results. It has a nice live feel that I just can’t seem to get when I try to do all the instruments myself. Feel free to download them if you wish, just remember who wrote them and who sang on them, if you’re gonna pass them around.

Peace, and I’ll see you all in the New Year.

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