I managed a little more sleep yesterday afternoon, then got myself down to Dev's place at a reasonable hour - 5:15pm, in this case.

The idea was that I had more than a car load's worth of stuff, plus tankgirl_13 had expressed interest in going. So I'd make the first trip, unload, head back to my place, pick up the girl and my speakers, then bounce back down to set up.

Best laid plans, etc, etc.

First of all, the Angelic one wasn't responding to calls or texts - not a rare occurrence, so no biggie. Second of all, Dev was delayed by a huge assortment of factors - none of which were his fault.

I didn't get around to figuring out how to break into the house until nearly 6:00pm. I shortly gave up completely on the original plan, and bugged timenchanter to bring me the speakers. That at least meant I got to give him the tour.

The funny thing there was Keri. She walked in while I was showing Timmie what was left of the blue room, upstairs, and was staring at us when we walked back down.

She was there to help Dev with the party, and hadn't ever met me before. The look on her face was... entertaining.

I managed to get everything placed and hooked up by about 7:40pm, meaning I was only a few minutes late - and I didn't really get songs until 8:10pm, anyway.

It was another one of those "starting out slow" nights - though not terribly so. The first rotation was Dev, myself, Sean, rackstraw, David, Bill, and Steve (the guy that tipped me to the Coulton karaoke). The second added LT, Christina, and Tony - and it accelerated from there.

The party really started with the third round, anyway, as that's when we added Holly and raven2000 - not to mention Melanie from the beach party.

In any case, it built up to 18 singers, and largely stayed there until we stopped a little after 2:00am, after the 7th rotation and three group songs. It was quite a party.

I had around 8 people on the dance floor for a good fraction of the night. And the income wasn't too shabby, either. Not huge (Dev actually took his share this time), but very nice.

Timmie came over after he was finished at TD's, helped pack up some stuff, and drove off with the TV that I borrowed from Paula, meaning I could fit everything in the car. Well, except for Raven, but she was kind of occupied, anyway.

What with a slow shutdown and general hanging out, I didn't leave until something like 5:00am. If I'd actually followed the orders to get in the hot tub, who knows when I would have left...

Got home, and pretty much collapsed. I need a bit more sleep at this point, but I'm not totally sure I can afford it. There are a few things I need to do before tonight, and I must be there on time - the J/G group is coming, apparently bigger than ever.

Plus we'll have a kshandra.

The plan was that R would be coming with me, but I kinda doubt that's going to happen...

Mood: calm

I just discovered I have a secret, um, non-admirer? Hater?

The actual phrase used was "passionate dislike." And they're not really that secret, either. But whatever.

Mildly disconcerting, it is.

And in an odd way, kind of validating. I'm more messed up than I thought...

On a more positive note, A+D just got back to me on the mashup karaoke bit (which was first discussed in the comments here) - they've found a couple of DJs that have been doing it, and they'll be doing karaoke upstairs at the DNA at 11:30pm this Saturday (there's a song list). There's a possibility of my future involvement, I'll likely be able to get my hands on the tracks, and I'm on the guestlist for this show.

It's great! I can pretend to be a big wheel!

OK, I can at least pretend to be a wheel. Perhaps a medium sized cog.

Meanwhile, back at the bar...

It was a nice little night at the bar. Financially, we did well enough that the weekend take was only 11% down from target. I personally did quite a bit better than that, because I was tipped a rather large number of twenties. Unusual, but nothing I'm going to complain about.

I started pretty close to on time, with myself, timenchanter, ajayav, and synkitty. Chip's companion, Milez, then started putting in songs. A couple of rotations of that, and it was looking like a slow evening.

But then Kathy & David J. walked in, followed by swanhart. Then a new group (Jen, Arthur, and a non-singer. Jen has a wonderful voice), then kizmet100, the elder Mark, Honey (with Hanan temporarily in tow), Matt, and James W.

Later we were joined by lucydogstringer, supersniffles, and a rare, one-song late night appearance by jasonmagick.

And a quick, non-singing visit by moahb.

All-in-all, 9 rotations. I didn't even get many refusals from the people that were suiciding.

Because Dev is without his flat screen tonight (apparently the movers goofed up), I borrowed a TV from the bar, which miraculously fit into my back seat. I'm a little surprised that a large tube TV didn't seem all that heavy, but I'm not gonna complain.

Denny's afterwards was myself, Timmie, Synthia, Maggie, and foxypinkninja. Then home, and that sleep thing before too long.

I was up fairly early this morning (in fact, I should nap for an hour or so), but apart from responding to emails, it hasn't been the most productive day.

Speaking of which, I need to update the bar website...

Mood: calm

After talking to Dev, I'm going to start at 7:30pm tonight, rather than 8:00pm.

Just so ya know.

Mood: cheerful

Tomorrow is the last Tuesday party at Dev's before he moves.

As always, we're asking $10 a head to defray expenses, for which you get snacks, sodas, karaoke by moi, and access to the firepit and jacuzzi.

We have a bunch of people showing up this time, so it promises to be quite a party!

The address is:

3403 Cherry Ave
San Jose

Mood: cheerful

I got myself out of the house by 3:30pm or so on Friday, failed to match schedules with raven2000 (between a job and a more "normal" schedule, it just wasn't gonna happen), and so did some general, well, stuff.

Got the slips from FedEx, some more pens at Staples (I'd just gotten my coupon for recycling a toner cartridge), got gas, tried to deposit some cash (my bank was closed), then realized I really needed to do some laundry.

Since I started the laundry after everything else, I didn't make it up to my parents' place until about 7:30pm. I continue to be a bad son.

But hey, I did manage a couple of chores for them, in exchange for my gourmet meal...

I left there around 10:30pm, and was feeling kinda blah, so I decided to head home and chill - as opposed to going directly to the party at Max&Alex's.

According to the texts and calls I got from timenchanter, onyx101, and Hex, this was not acceptable. So I headed down there, and much fun was had.

There was hanging out with Tara and a cheerful, if sunburned, Shar, much talking with Alex about software, and a bit of cuddling here and there. There was some Mo, and some Veronica, and people I didn't know, but should have talked to, like Jocelyn (I think that's it), and Ida Rose (I think that's it, too...).

I finally left around 4:00am, and got myself some sleep.

Not too surprisingly, I got going a little late Saturday afternoon. Still, picked Raven up by 4:30pm, had a relaxed dinner at the Valley Fair CPK (it was on the way), figured out which beach we were going to (Manresa), and made our way to the party that rackstraw had invited her to.

Turned out to be riversprite's party, so we were first welcomed by the dulcet tones of hektikat screaming "Bruce!"

Then I got to spend a fair amount of time catching up with Jasmine, who would have introduced me to her boy, if he'd been conscious.

And a bunch of other people that are again a little fuzzy at this point. I talked to a Melanie, who just got her masters in psych. I think Chris, the guy running the grill, was her boyfriend, but I could be wrong.

If I'd been able to find my swimsuit, which seems to have completely disappeared, I might have braved the ocean. But as it is, we just took a long walk in the sand. At least I remembered a hat this time - there was no noticeable increase in sunburn.

We left around, I think, 9:00pm. The illegal fireworks were in full swing.

Grabbed some groceries for breakfast, then settled in to my room to watch Narc. R has a fondness for cheerful movies.

In the morning we continued with Salò or the 120 Days of Sodom, which the landlord had loaned me. He's apparently a lot more perverted than I gave him credit for.

R quite liked it.

She braved the kitchen long enough to make breakfast, and then I got her home. The rest of Sunday was pretty mellow (I think I just went back to sleep). I know I got to the bar late (again). Still, I was able to get started by about 8:20pm, which isn't too bad. It did mean Carol didn't get to sing.

We started with myself, Timmie, synkitty, qzar_mystik, and Jasmine (!!!). I hadn't seen this Jasmine in ages, either.

We were eventually joined by Hex, Joyce, James W, the elder Mark (he was off housesitting for the last month, which is why he hasn't been in), Kellen, Veronica, Jorgie (who was in, umm, "fine" form. Managed to creep me out. Plus I'm invited to his son's wedding in Washington. Yay), Dennis (I believe it's actually been years), and lucydogstringer (who was thrilled to learn that Julz might be shitting all over yet another gay bar).

That was pretty much it for the evening - though it was a lively little group, especially with Stacy lurking at the bar (and she does lurk so prettily). 12 rotations, and the bar did OK, if not great. Tonight'll have to be fairly good to hit target, though.

The Denny's afterparty was myself, Timmie, Synthia, Jasmine, Kellen, and Steven. Much fun was, as usual, had.

Then home, and that sleep thing. I haven't done too much today, apart from send a complaint to AT&T about my yellow pages ad. You'd think they'd at least get the name right...

Mood: calm

The week's kind of a blur right now, and I should post before it gets even more blurry...

I left off on Monday morning. Well, there was some sleep, and then a day, in which my main activity was prepping for the show. I bought the new Coulton songs, and then had to do something about update sheets.

I've been buying toner through eBay, and had found a really good supplier - the cartridges at least look new, the price is good, and the quality has been excellent. I was running low on the 19th of last month, and ordered another cartridge. A couple of days later, I ran out while in the middle of printing a book.

And started waiting for my cartridge to come. I've tried contacting the supplier, and have had no response whatsoever.

Except a UPS shipment notification today that I should receive it on the 7th. Thrilled I am not.

In the meantime, I had two discs' worth of updates to deal with. FedEx is fortunately not that expensive.

Then off to the bar.

A slow night, punctuated with cookies. synkitty bakes when she's feeling down, and, well, she was really feeling down.

The night was a mere 12 rotations long, consisting of myself, timenchanter, Synthia, David T, onyx101, kizmet100, kshandra, stuberyl, trivialt (freshly back from NYC, and not thrilled about it), Stacy&Terese, and supersniffles.

A good time, if not exactly, um, profitable.

Tuesday was generally chill. Well, technically, it was actually hot as hell, and I spent the afternoon in kind of a sweaty daze. Around 6:00pm or so I contacted Joyce about hanging out, so we did dinner at Zeni, and I dropped back at her place to get introduced to Min and Abby.

From there I headed to Effie's, to get Michelle a disc she needed (Unusual karaoke song for a memorial - don't think I'll be getting it for the collection. Contemporary Christian. Blech). Since I was there, I hung out and sang a bit.

It was... odd. A few people recognized me that I don't really remember anymore. There were several people that go to Dev's parties (Sean, Judy, and Tony, as well as Michelle), and then there was Nancy.

I'd completely forgotten about Nancy. She used to be part of the Old Opry House group of actors, which regularly came in to the Creekside Inn show, lo those many years ago. She's got a new man (John, I think), and doesn't really seemed to have aged or changed much. Very odd talking to her.

Judy convinced Sean and I to "dance" behind her while she did Poker Face. It was one of the few songs from this decade that I heard while I was there.

Around, I believe, midnight, I headed over to TD's to visit Timmie. When I got there, the room was largely empty, and he was playing a background disc while reading. We talked a bit, and I was settling in to considering whether to give him a slip or not, when Don&Rusty walked in, and started perusing the book.

I'd never actually talked to those two, so I hung out with them, and we sang. Not too long after, we were joined by jasonmagick. So Timmie had enough people to keep him going until 2:00am.

Then I just went home and slept.

Wednesday, I decided to do something about the toner issue, and bought a toner refill kit at Micro Center.

Bad idea. I'm not sure what the issue happens to be, but there are serious legibility problems with the output. It may be because of the amount of toner I put in (I always accidentally add too much), but the results have just been terrible.

Including an unusually large number of paper jams. Bizarre.

I made it up to the City at a reasonable hour (sans passenger this week), and was, for the second week in a row, ready to go on time.

So, of course, for the second week in a row, the J/G group didn't show up. My worry is that they've decided that I'm not worth it - they have to leave by a little after 11:00pm, and the last time they were there, I wasn't really ready to go until 10:00pm.

I've been religious about being there on time the last two weeks in large part because of their limitations, but, well...

Anyway, people started trickling in around 9:30pm - including, of all people, Sean. The first rotation was myself, Dennis (who apparently does a show in Oakland), Sean, and Matthew. Then it gradually started to pick up.

We had Evan, as well as Evan&Matt's new roommate, Amy. There were also Kevin&Carly, an excellent new singer named Tammy, an unusually late jannypanlj, Wil, Kym, and Anthony, who brought in a birthday party (Oscar, Lindsay, and Steve).

Patrick sang a couple, and I ran late to get a few last people in (like Yasmin, who was adorable, and Adam, Kym's SO). We also had quite a few songs by and with Anna, who was visiting from Boston with her husband, Frank. Much fun, that one.

All in all, 22 singers, and 7 rotations, ending around 2:20am. I didn't make a huge amount of money, but definitely enough to make it worthwhile.

Thursday afternoon I hung out with raven2000 a bit, and also had a long and unhappy set of text messages from my recent houseguest. She'd heard that I'd posted something about her online (not sure from whom - it wasn't Raven), and was, by all accounts, livid.

It's not clear she saw what I posted. I've since removed her first name, and fuzzed out yet more of the details, but I'm sure that won't be enough. Whatever.

I'm curious about this - I try to be relatively discreet, and so far, the only person I've had issues with is R, who considers some of the most minor details super-private. Now I've run into another one. And they know each other. Coincidence? I think not.

Different social group? Quite possibly. The word I'm thinking of begins with a "G"...

And then last night's show. Very nice, 'twas. I started a little late (I'm not completely sure why), and the first two rotations were just 8 people long (myself, Timmie, Albert, tlsthatsme, Jason, Melissa, ajayav, and swanhart), but then around 9:45pm, the crowd started to develop.

There was Terry, and Ruby, and parts of the Alex group, and Maggie, and Cindi (there early!), and Kellen, and snafflekid, and Hex, and Mikey H, and Aaron, and Sunny, and a new guy (Scotty Joe), and a straight-looking group (Maria and Ricardo sang), and qzar_mystik, and Mandi, and Jorgie, and Mark (who's incredibly familiar, but I can't quite place), and nightvzn, and Andrew S, and Mark's friend (?) Melanie, and Keni.

Quite a few people I hadn't seen for some time, in there. A total of 31 singers for the night, and 3 additional rotations. I assume the bar did all right.

I certainly did - tips were quite nice last night.

The weird thing is the story circulating around that Julz just bought the Savoy. This would be... odd. Her equipment hasn't been there for a while, and there were indications that the bar hadn't been open since last Monday.

Paula hasn't said a damn thing, but then she's not really good at, say, telling the person dealing with her website that schedules need to be changed.

I dunno. From what I know of Julz's ability to keep friends, and business acumen, I rather expect that if this is true, the Savoy will be in yet different hands by about this time next year.

But I've been wrong before.

Anyway. I'm dead tired, because for some reason, I napped in my chair last night, rather than clearing off enough bed to sleep in. And I need to head off to FedEx and pick up some slips - and possibly do lunch with Raven, depending on her schedule.

Mood: tired

There's hardly anyone here, but at least there's a near endless supply of synkitty's most excellent cookies, and with the swamp cooler, it's actually reasonably comfortable...

Mood: cheerful

So I've acquired a few more Jonathan Coulton songs.

That brings the track count to 14,593, and the unique song count to 10,793.

The songs page has been updated, and there will be fresh, clean update sheets tonight, courtesy of FedEx. My new toner cartridge still hasn't arrived, so I'm forced to slightly more expensive solutions...

Mood: accomplished

My houseguest spent Saturday night on my bed. I spent part of the night in it. So close, and yet so far...

By the time I gave up on sleep (around 8:30am), it was 92° in my room. It went up from there.

I got ready to head up to the City, and as I was finishing up, woke the girl. Who was not doing well, for various reasons.

Mild heatstroke probably being one of them.

She finally got herself together, and I dropped her off with a friend at a hotel somewhere. Back to the usual.

Then I headed up to the Millbrae BART, and thence to Pride. I met up with timenchanter and ladymorgana71 in short order, and we watched a large fraction of the parade - after all, it was scheduled to start at 10:30am, and I got there at 12:30pm. There was a lot of parade left.

In fact, we wandered off into Pride long before it was over.

For Timmie and I, it was the usual wander. Amy seemed determined to check out every booth, and buy stuff. Good for the vendors, 'twas.

I was, as usual, people-watching. Granted, most of the people I was watching were young women wearing next to nothing (in some cases, latex and a smile), but we all already know I'm a dirty old man.

It was a good day out.

Amy took off around, I think, 6:00pm, and Timmie and I headed off to the Castro to meet up with Joe. He kept jumping bars as we were walking there, but eventually settled in at the Edge, where we saw him, cybrenn, and Brad.

I was not, as it turns out, doing too well. First of all, I was in a room with a huge crowd of gay men. The issue there being heat. It was a sweaty sauna. Second of all, my right knee is hugely better than it was when I injured it at last year's Pride - but it's still not all that happy of a camper, and there was standing room only.

Eventually I decided to head home.

The Bagdad Café was between me and the nearest BART station, so I settled in there to have some food and sit. Not the worst idea - my eventual destination was my room at the Duplex, which was not going to be exactly comfortable (It's not. I've managed to get it all the way down to 89°).

And then I got myself home.

Where I'm doing my best to keep myself hydrated, and periodically slathering more aloe on myself. My arms are pretty bright, but I think my nose can be seen from orbit.

Damned daystar.

All-in-all a good day, though I'll be paying for it for a while. Reverified that Amy is a good kisser, though we were interrupted by Timmie. The heterophobe can only deal with so much.

Mood: hot

There's a cute girl napping on my bed. No, not that one. Downside is that she's still wearing boots, and they're sticking off the end of the bed, making it difficult to get around my room.

Life is hard, sometimes.

Stiff, even.

Anyway, back at Wednesday... I actually got ready reasonably early, scooped up raven2000, and got to the Cat Club by 7:45pm, giving me both time to set up and time to play with a sound a little bit.

Not enough, though. I need to see if I can come in even earlier, so I actually have time to commune with the system. So to speak. I refuse to believe that I can't get better sound of of their system.

But whatevs. It was adequate, and I was ready to go by 9:00pm. Not that anyone else was - the Joshua/Grace group didn't show at all, and the crowds simply did not materialize this week. But we had jannypanlj, and Matthew, and Wil, and Tim. I'm assuming Alethea took off because she wasn't feeling well, so Rachel ended up bartending. It was just like home. And, as the night progressed, more people trickled in.

We still didn't make a whole hell of a lot of money. But it got to be a pretty wild party, especially after 2:00am came and went, and it shifted over to private mode. Patrick was having a good time, there was quite a decent level of flashing going on, and Steve, the bouncer (the guy I had trouble with the first night) got involved in singing. Mostly oldies - given the bands he talks about, I was really expecting hip-hop.

Rachel was just getting over the last of the disease that apparently everyone had last week, and so her singing wasn't perfect - but at least she did sing. And, of course, apologized profusely for not being perfect. The usual.

I believe Raven and I started breaking down around 3:00am. I would have stopped chez April, but R was out like a light, so I got her where she could sleep more comfortably.

I'm not really sure what happened Thursday afternoon. At some point R convinced me to switch over to Comcast for my internet connection, because (a) it's a lot cheaper than what I'm paying, and (b) she gets a commission.

I was latish to the Thursday show (we didn't start until 9:00pm), but the crowd didn't start really showing up until later, anyway. And they definitely showed up. 36 singers, and 3 and a half rotations - the half being whoever I could shove in between 1:40am and 2:00am.

A very lively night, with jasonmagick, Albert, synkitty, Wayne and Jorgie (Jorgie being extra Jorgie), Gia with friends (Kate, Michelle, and Sasha. It Sasha's birthday), a nicely energetic new group (Asha, Verenice, Marcus, Jay, Jason, and several non-singers), the Alex group including both Nelson and Manny (and their friend Maria), stuberyl, cybrenn, snafflekid, Kellen, justnate, Mandi, dionuse, markobellydance, celticnoor (for her last time before she moves down south. Sigh), lucydogstringer (with his boys and his sister-in-law in tow), and supersniffles.

Very good energy, and a nice amount of dancing.

It took us forever to shut down, and then timenchanter and I crawled over to Denny's for some recovery time.

Friday I was supposed to go up to the Dome, and did, eventually - but first had to make it through the installation of the aforementioned Comcast connection (by contrast, I believe it was two weeks before AT&T would get around to doing anything). I was impressed - the installer had issues, but obviously knew what he was talking about, and got them resolved. And I now have what so far, at least, measures as a much faster connection than my $65/month DSL. I'm thinking of dropping the phone line altogether.

Granted, Comcast will become more expensive in 12 months. But then maybe I'll go to Earthlink...

But then there was the one bizarre technical issue. Every machine in the house worked fine, except my Ubuntu laptop. And it worked fine, except for Firefox. And Firefox worked fine, unless there was a flash movie on one of the pages.

At which time it slowed down so much, it might as well be stopped. Rebooting the laptop multiple times had no effect. I finally gave up, and headed up to the mountains - at something like 6:30pm.

Oddly, my parents were happy to see me, even then. They even fed me a nice salmon dinner...

Around 10:30pm I rolled back down the hill, to discover that my Ubuntu/Firefox/Flash issues had evaporated. My best bet is that my router had still had the wrong DNS servers cached, but I easily could be wrong.

I fiddled around for a good part of the night, mostly playing on the net, and eventually getting SC-8583 incorporated. I think I got to sleep around 6:00am.

About noonish I got a phone call from the aforementioned cute girl, who was stranded, so I threw some clothes on, picked her up, got her some food, and brought her here, where she is, as previously mentioned, asleep.

I was toying with the thought of going to Bootie tonight, but I think I'll opt for more of a Pride Sunday thing. Though Tim is supposed to be at the Cat Club, potentially with Maria, tonight. On the other hand, I haven't had much sleep - and I don't feel like waking my guest. I think trying for the parade might be best.

Otherwise, I've done a teeny bit of shopping - my new glasses came in, which are very comfortable. Not the look I was going for, but they'll do. And I can see. Better, anyway.

So I also grabbed some other Costco goodies while I was there. I have toothpaste! Woo! Or something.

Mood: tired

I just got the last of my latest Australian shipment, SC-8583, which, obviously, I've finished incorporating.

The track count is now at 14,583, and the unique song count has made it to 10,783.

As always, the songs page is fully up to date, and the update sheets will be printed by Monday one way or another - I'm waiting on the shipment of a toner cartridge.

Mood: accomplished

Just so everyone knows - I won't be at the bar again this Sunday, because of another Pride-related Latin event.

Mood: cheerful

I left off Sunday, shortly after midnight.

I'm not really sure what I did for most of the day Sunday. Probably coughed and slept, much of it together.

Every day this stupid cold thing, or whatever it is, has been getting better, but it just won't quite go away.

Sunday evening was a pleasant little show. We had qzar_mystik, megnc86, synkitty, supersniffles, snafflekid, Sandra (who at this point is a name on a chart - the problem with waiting too long to post), Honey (with Hanan), lucydogstringer, swanhart, jorgitoelcubano (!), and Matt, a guy who came in a week ago or so.

A pleasant little group, which actually made the bar a reasonable amount of money (I'm sure the two rounds of shots didn't hurt). We went for 9 rotations before closing.

Cindi and Synthia came out to April's with myself and timenchanter.

Monday I spent most of the afternoon hanging out with Heather, one of the people I met at Dev's. I'd promised her a full back rub many moons ago, and she decided to collect. Since she hadn't been out in quite a while, I took her along with me to the show that night, which was fairly slow, but not as bad as it could have been. We went for 12 rotations, not 20.

Bar take was 19% off from target for the weekend. On the other hand, it was 14% higher than the average for this year...

So we had the aforementioned Heather, Synthia, a full night of kshandra (!!!), a bit of David R (new guy), quite a bit of Albert, some (Big Bad) John, and the usual supersniffles nightcap. Heather got another ride home, and Timmie managed, in the end, to convince Cindi to come out to April's with us again.

He's had a lot on his mind lately. Silly boys, and their silly secrets.

Tuesday afternoon I got a text from Dev, asking when I was going to show up. I therefore knew the show as on, and started notifying people.

Spent a little more afternoon time with Heather. I do so hate giving rubdowns to attractive women...

Tried to print up two new sets of books, and almost got there - ran out of toner about a quarter of the way through the last book. There's a new one on its way (ordered it last week), but I probably won't see it until Friday.

Good thing I'd printed up a whole buncha slips.

The show at Dev's was fun, as usual. Though it was odd not seeing Holly there - she's been such a fixture. But there was Sean, and Michelle, and Gia, and Steve, and rackstraw, and quite a number of others - we had about 10 singers, including new people like Christina, L.T., and Amy (who supposedly had never done karaoke before. Didn't sound like it...).

I think it was about 12:45am when I started to close down. Takes quite a while there, mostly because of all the cabling I run behind furniture.

Then I met up with Timmie at the Mini, since he'd just finished his show at TD's.

Then home, and sleep. Today's been pretty mellow so far - I mostly need to consider how much more sleep to get this afternoon.

I did just agree to advertise with the yellow pages. This will hopefully not bite me in the ass.

Mood: calm

Dev is hosting another party tonight!

As always, we're asking $10 a head to defray expenses, for which you get snacks, sodas, all the karaoke you can eat, and access to the firepit and jacuzzi.

The address is:

3403 Cherry Ave
San Jose

Mood: cheerful

I just found Texts from Last Night. It's like an immense snarky version of Post Secret.

I can't stop reading it - and I'm on page 35 of 309. Crack, it is.

Also, happy solstice, everyone!

Mood: amused

After my last post, I mostly fooled around, but I also did buy some more music - none of which was ever used. S'OK. I'm trying to increase the DJ collection side of things, anyway.

Thankfully, I decided against the Disney stuff.

What with one thing and another - and not feeling sure if I'd sleep or cough, should I lie down - I didn't get to bed until 5:30am or so. I woke up in four hours (as usual), but managed to wrestle myself back to sleep until noon.

And then got to the location at 2:05pm, fortified with Dayquil. Given the party was scheduled to start at 3:00pm, this could have been tricky, but it was a small room, and the cabling was easy to run, so I was ready pretty much at the stroke of 3:00pm.

And started playing background music, as the kids filtered in. There was much of that odd, irritating squeal that proves that teenage girls are actually pod people.

It was Gia's niece Samantha's 15th birthday, and she was done up with fancy tall curled hair and a tiara, while wearing a black dress and pumps. 'Twas cute - and given the skirt of the dress had reflective bits in it, quite entertaining when the sun got low. She was her own disco ball, which she enjoyed immensely.

The usual slowish start, but after half an hour, they really got into it. Many group songs, much enthusiasm, just a huge amount of fun, and, well... I was supposed to play from 3:00pm to 7:00pm. I shut down a little after 9:00pm.

Still got paid for 4 hours, though. I could have argued, but didn't feel like it, especially since I hadn't talked to anyone when it started heading well over the 4 hour mark. Still a nice chunk of change.

Gia also made sure I got fed, and the food was pretty good.

Nice kids - I gather mostly theater geeks. One of the girls was giving off a rather strong covert lesbionic vibe (Gia concurs), and during one awkward moment across the room, I think caught me noticing. There are times where I really wish I could tell someone that it'll be OK. Give them a hug - anything. But most all of my options come off as creepy.

I believe I was fully packed up by 10:00pm, and what with a long talk with Gia, got out of there by 11:00pm.

Got to meet her dog, Jasper, a very attractive Samoyed.

Got home, unloaded the speakers, started typing this up, and fell asleep. Definitely on the tired side of things.

At least this disease seems to be getting better...

Mood: cheerful

Akchally, I'm more than just under the weather - I'm sick. Ill. Illin'. Which might help explain the long series of fuck-ups that was Wednesday - in the days before symptoms appear, I frequently have a somewhat malfunctioning brain.

I did, in fact, have an hour's nap after yesterday's post, and was feeling a little scratchy when I woke up. I was out of my elderberry placebo, so yesterday's errands included grabbing some more of that. Otherwise, I mostly just dropped by Guitar Center to get a replacement yellow mic condom. I would have bought a red one as well, but they seem to not be restocking that part of the store - all they had was yellow and black, and not much of that.

Time to start shopping for those online, apparently.

I was a little late to the bar, but, surprisingly (and with the help of synkitty, who brought in and then distributed the books), I started the show on time.

It was another slowish Thursday, kept that way in part by the fact that it was frikkin' hot. But still, we had 22 singers in 8 rotations, including jasonmagick, Wayne, ajayav, Albert, megnc86, Matt H, the elusive swanhart, snafflekid, Mikey H, Honey, large portions of the Alex squad (including Nelson, who is rarely there), cybrenn, lucydogstringer, and supersniffles.

There was singing, and dancing (Ed, Jason, and Honey were there, after all), and progressive laryngitis from yours truly. By the end of the night I could do a little better than croak - but not much.

The bar did well under target, but hopefully enough to provide Paula with some profit.

I didn't feel particularly up to hanging out for supper, so I just grabbed some Jack in the Box tacos on my way home, and ate those at my desk. I wasn't too sure I could lie down without going into a coughing fit, so I slept for a few hours in my chair - then felt somewhat better, and transferred to the bed.

I got up around 3:30pm, feeling generally better, and slowly got myself out the door and to Kaiser by 6:50pm - nothing to do with this situation, but I had a prescription I needed to pick up. Then, since I wasn't feeling too bad, and had mysterious amounts of extra cash floating around my wallet, I had dinner at the Cheesecake Factory, where I actually didn't finish my pasta.

Bought some ginger tea, then came home, where I've been mindlessly goofing off since. It's good that I feel better, but I need to be at least OK by 3:00pm tomorrow, when I start the birthday party for Gia's cousin. It's just a matter of convincing my immune system of this...

Right now, I need to look into my dance music collection - I'm likely to be doing more of that tomorrow.

Mood: sick

I keep an insanely close watch on my income and outgo, including cash transactions, and when I periodically (every two months or so) recount how much cash I have, I'm normally well within $10.

I somehow have $179.85 more than I expected. I mean, it's really nice to have more money (really really), but where the hell did it come from?

Mood: confused

Welcome SC-8140, SC-8612, and SC-8800 to the collection.

The track count is up to 14,568, and the unique song count is at 10,769. The songs page is up to date, and the new update sheets are printing.

Mood: accomplished

I did pretty well at updating regularly for about a week, there...

Back at Sunday, apart from the insanity, there was kshandra's birthday party at the Sherwood Inn. A pleasant little group, with Kirsten (of course), timenchanter, firestrike, supersniffles, murphymom, rackstraw, ladycrim, the elusive gridlore, foxypinkninja, kizmet100, and more (two of Kirsten's siblings were there for dinner, other people dropped by for a bit (like drewkitty), and I'm sure I've forgotten someone vital).

I was somewhat underwhelmed by dinner, honestly, at least the whole price per quality bit. But whatever.

And the karaoke was the fairly typical Avent stuff. The KJ's name was, I believe, Chris, and he was reasonably good at what he does, even if I did see him wiping a disc with a circular motion. Tsk.

Cindi consumed an impressive quantity of beer, and Timmie made sure that Kirsten was well supplied - while keeping up himself. This most likely explains the episode where Cindi and Timmie were feeling up Kiri under her dress.

I was sooo glad we were in a relatively quiet corner. Still half expected to get thrown out. Timmie, in fact, spent a goodly part of the evening acting all hetero to Kiri, so I suppose it makes sense that Matt and I did a fair amount of snuggling.

Yeah, I'm not sure what the poor regulars thought of us. They can deal.

I ended up with a business card from one of the couples there. They apparently do karaoke at, among other places, Carlos Goldstein's. Their card said something about 100,000 songs, so they're pirates. Not that I'm bitter or disdainful or anything.

The party broke up around 1:30am, I poured Timmie into the car, and came home.

Monday afternoon, I got a call from somebody, saying that Des (somebody else, whose relationship with somebody is a deep dark secret (it's apparently shameful)) had told somebody to make up with me.

I foolishly took that as indicating that of the choice of either not dealing with me, or being blogged about, she'd decided it was more worth it to take door #2. Silly me. This was her more standard "let's just pretend the unpleasantness never happened" bit, as opposed to, y'know, moving forward. I am, again, not bitter in the least. At all.

But it appears I'm single again. Assuming I wasn't before...

Monday's show was quite pleasant, and in fact did pretty well in terms of bar income (for a Monday), largely because of a new group that came in (Gina, Berwick, and Lonnie), and also, I assume, because of Kellen and James. We also had synkitty, Kathy & David J, hektikat (back from her world travels), hollyk (out from her cave), Brian, Albert, stuberyl, and Honey.

Honey was there on a date with Hanan. Woo!

10 rotations, 'twas.

Then, 'cause I'm nice like that, I drove someone to a job site in Hayward, came back to April's around 4:00am, talked with Synthia, went home to sleep for a few hours, then retrieved someone back from Hayward.

Later in the day, I was woken up by a cryptic text from Dev, which turned out to be a request to cancel the show because of too few takers. Given I had no idea he was actually gonna go for one, I sleepily agreed and rolled back over to sleep some more. We theoretically will be having one next Tuesday.

tankgirl_13 appeared in the afternoon, and we hung out, had dinner, and watched Princess Mononoke. We were gonna go to Timmie's show at TD's, but she got a call to go see Darren, and I got a request for company from Kiri. So I went and picked up Her Kooshness at her mom's new place (niiiice house), and we went and had tea, after which I made it over to TD's.

Angela and Darren were there - physically, at least. I have to give Darren props for hanging out in a gay bar - he's very stereotypical macho American male.

The amusing thing was running into James, from the June 6th party. He took my card (Woo!). I also had Timmie give me an advertising spiel, which wasn't what I was there looking for, but oh well.

A bit of Carrow's, then home, and sleep. Wednesday I woke up to a shipment from Australia, and started to try to incorporate it. I always bite off more than I can chew - one of the discs would have been fine, but two was just too much, especially since I had a visit from Angela in the middle of all that. Conversation slows me down.

I was supposed to get up to the Cat Club at 8:00pm, so I could be set up and ready to go at 9:00pm. What with finishing off and printing discs, I didn't get started going until 7:30pm or so. Traffic up the peninsula was remarkably light.

Which, as far as I can tell, was Murphy setting a trap. Traffic stopped cold as soon as I got into the City. Where initially, it looked like I'd get there at 8:15pm, I didn't fight my way to the bar until 8:35pm. Then there was no parking in front of the club. So I circled around to 8th.

The place I thought was a spot was motorcycle parking. I got distracted, and seemed to get myself stuck in ever widening circles. I didn't manage to park until something like 8:55pm, after getting lost in the wilds of the City.

Fortunately, I unlocked one of the rear doors before locking the front door on the running vehicle...

The Joshua/Grace group was milling around outside, and Randy and I put them to work ferrying my stuff into the bar (poor Grace got stuck with my cable backpack). What with running around like an idiot, I got everything hooked up by about 9:20pm - only to find that my system had stuck partway through the boot cycle. Fortunately, a power down and reboot brought it back.

It took a couple of songs before I had the sound reasonable, or at least relatively lacking in feedback. Poor Anita had to last through my fiddling with the controls in the booth, trying to find the knob that would lower the monitor speaker (we point it straight at the singers, and it was set loud enough to cause problems).

Interesting night. We started with the Joshua/Grace group and jannypanlj, but not too long after that, Anthony showed up, with a huge group of people - it was his birthday. We also had a bunch of walk-ins, including this group of Irish guys that just would not stop bugging me to have them sing - or, as they got drunker, give up the mic. Things were relatively civilized until 11:30pm, when the J/G group took off home - and the alcohol really started to kick in.

I made it through 3 and a half rotations before they herded everybody out at 1:50am. 37 individual singers, at least according to my chart. The bar was packed (I kept waiting for someone to knock over the equipment), and I got to see what felt like almost everyone that had been to Julie's - Shondra and Jessica (Shondra preferred the sound at Julie's, which was actually cleaner. I still need to do a lot of work there), Evan, and Hollie, just to name a few (Hollie didn't sing, but she kept walking back and forth in this vinyl catsuit...). We just need to get Matt to come in.

The cute girl quotient was, in fact, quite high. One of them, Ellie, apparently lives next door. Very pretty redhead, nice voice.

Apart from the Irish, everyone was pretty well behaved - and the Irish weren't nasty, just annoying.

The bar did very, very well. So I did very, very well. Tips were excellent, and were completely eclipsed by the amount I made off the bar. I spent some time trying to make sure Patrick knew that next week will likely not be as stellar, forgetting that Patrick, unlike most bar owners, isn't a fool.

We're still considering alternate places I could set up. I'm tempted to move my stuff into the go-go cage...

I got out of there at 3:00am, minus a mic condom (twits kept taking them off, and one disappeared into the ether), stopped off at April's for sustenance, and came home, where I incorporated the third disc in the shipment. That took until something like 6:00am - and then I woke up again at noon.

I'm velly tired, but I have errands to run. Dammit. Maybe an hour's nap...

I got a quote for advertising services from AT&T today. Considering it. It pays for itself if I get just one extra party a month from it.

Mood: calm