Saw The Stepford Wives today. Not nearly as creepy as the original. It does have Bette Midler, Nicole Kidman, and my old pal Faith Hill in it... so it's of course worth seeing. Perfect for a 'bored what else do we have to do' kind of day. Otherwise... wait until it's a rental. 

Matty's Journal

My friend Matt keeps a livejournal that I didn't know about...

We don't keep in touch like we should, especially considering the sordid history that is our friendship.

I paged back through the past several months of his writing... and it reminded me of something that at one time hurt me in a way I could never get him to understand. He could talk for hours and days about how no one would ever love him for who he is, and relationships never work with him because the other person is never willing to commit to him, give everything they had to be with him... no one would think about him night and day and want nothing more than to be content with him. All the while I was standing in front of him with a fist full of romance and doing everything I could to show him that I was EXACTLY the person he was looking for. At the time, *I* thought about him night and day. I sent him cards and gifts and talked to him as often as I could... would get downright giddy when he would grace me with a phone call from Wisconsin. I went to great lengths to plan a spring break trip for him that turned out to be one of the most amazing vacations I have ever had. (Check the link and see the cemetaries, architecture, and flowers pages for some of the pics.)

All the while, he was simultaneously telling me that he wasn't ready for a relationship, and dating someone at school.

I think it is a universal truth that we are never more parched than when we are standing in a river.

A couple of weeks before Matt came to live with me for that summer in Berkeley, I met UncleMonkeyBoy. UMB always seemed worried that he was the 'rebound' from Matt... and Matt always seemed to think that since I could get into a relationship with UMB so soon after him (whatever our relationship was) that I must not have really cared about him. They were both misguided in their concerns.

Matt made it clear that he couldn't see me as a partner. UMB entered my life at the exact moment that I let go of Matt. It was not that I cared any less about him, just that I could no longer afford to focus the attention on him that I once had. This caused a lot of tension in my place that summer. Matt was convinced that I was being callous and that I lied to him when I said that my intentions were noble and unselfish. What he didn't understand at the time is that like all other things in nature, all elements of a situation will eventually attempt to return to a state of equilibrium. I could no long give everything that I had without getting anything in return, not because I was selfish, but because I had nothing left to give. It was all yang, no yin. I was like a 9 Volt, hanging on until well after the low-battery indicator light begged to be dealt with.

It's been over 2 years now since that road trip and UMB and I got together. For the most part our relationship is level. Perhaps lately I've been more selfish than I should, I chalk that up to being stressed about the job and living situation and business plan and all the other little things that seem to come up. We rarely fight (we've only ever had ONE *real* fight), and never stay mad at each other.

I often make a relationship analogous to a hand. If your hand is open, people are allowed to move freely back and forth, in and out of your life... when one leaves, another soon walks through. If you clench your hand into a fist, trying to hold on to the one that happens to be standing there, not only does that person struggle to get free, but everyone that is trying to get in is blocked.

It took me 27 years to learn how to apply that idea to my own life. This is my hope that my good friend Matt learns to keep an open hand.

Very cool topic happening at RetroCrush.com about the coolest song moments.  

Sympathy for the Devil... A great article about one of the best rock songs ever! Check it out! 

June 1st.

I can't believe it's June 1st already.  For those of you following along at home, today is my last day of employment at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.  I don't have very many nice things to say about the Lab right now, and I want to wait to say what I want until after I receive my severance check, if you know what I mean.

 

One of the hardest things for me to do, as a songwriter or an author is stare at the blank page and figure out what to put in black and white.  I think that same problem carries over into my life. 

 

How can you start the next chapter without having some idea where it should go... can you write a verse without an idea of what the chorus pay off is going to be?

 

It's time to start this next chapter in my life story, and I haven't the faintest idea where to set it.  Does our fearless (?) protagonist tough it out in the brutal financial landscape that is northern California?  And if so, does he open his own business? Buy a house? Rent a crappy apartment until he can afford to buy a house?  Or perhaps he loads up his wagon and heads to San Diego, to do who knows what?  Then again, he could take off to Nashville and get an affordable place and work on songwriting again.

 

I'm extremely anxious to start the next storyline, but I'm sitting here with the worst case of writer's block I've ever had.  Literally.

 

 

Searching for....

So I got curious this evening/morning and decided to look at the stats for my blogger page. Here's something funny: My page gets accessed fairly often (even though no one bothers to comment or ever drop me an email *sigh*) by people with some unusual search terms. Seems I show up on the first page of a google search for "benadryl sedate cat" apparently because of my story of the unfortunate incident with Zipper and the bonecrusher garbage disposal.

Incidentally, for everyone who finds this post due to that search:

Yes, you can sedate a cat with benadryl. I have done it several times. You too will learn if you ever decide to drive cross-country with a very unhappy cat in a carrier. At any rate... You can safely give a cat weighing over 8 pounds a standard 50mg pill (the kind you can buy OTC). It will make the cat VERY sleepy. If you're worried about it, you can give a smaller dosage by breaking the capsule open and mixing the contents with some wet cat food or tuna.

Be aware, though, that the taste is really nasty and will likely cause the foaming that I mentioned in the referenced story. It's just the cat's way of trying to get that nasty taste out of her mouth. She can't really pick up a toothbrush or use an altoid, can she?

I wouldn't recommend giving benadryl to any cat under 8 pounds with out consulting your vet. As a matter of fact, since I'm not a vet, I don't recommend giving anything to your cat without a vet's ok. I'm only speaking about my own personal experience.

To round off the point I was making about the searches that lead people to my page... They apparently like to look for things associated with Wil Wheaton. He's got a great page that you can check out by clicking on his name, or you can check out the page on my website that has that great picture of the two of us at a radio promotion I was attending with Tiffany.