This Yellow Taxi Cab In Which I Ride

I am in the middle of many projects. All of which are in various degrees of completion. Some are just ideas that have yet to become any sort of tangible thing. Others are part of bigger projects (getting my house ready to sell). I'm awful at completing tasks. I'm great at starting them and bringing them to a point of some percentage of completion, but once the end is in sight, I tend to find some reason to start something else. Right now, in fact, I have put painters tape on about 90% of the back door window. The other day, I put two coats of paint on my front door. It needs one more. Which task should I do? Paint the front door? Continue working on the back door? Earlier last month, I got working on revamping my website. It was a task I had wanted to do for about a year. I have a good portion of it completed. Right now, I just need to get some new photos and a photo slideshow/viewer and the site should be done. I'm happy with how it has turned out. I also had an opport...

The songwriting process. Wake up feeling inspired. Shower. Sing lyrics in shower. Dry off. Get dressed. Go to work. Forget lyrics. Try to remember lyrics at work. Too busy. Can't remember lyrics. Go home. Do chores. Try to remember lyrics. Can't remember lyrics. Eat dinner. Tired from long day. Pick up guitar. Strum various chord progressions. Stare at blank piece of paper. Two hours pass. Continue to strum various chord progressions and stare at the blank piece of paper. Put guitar down. Watch movie. Go to bed. Wake up at 2am with excellent lyrics in your head. Write down lyrics on notepad next to bed. Fall back asleep singing lyrics to self. Wake up. Re-read lyrics written from last night. Tear off paper from note pad. Crumple paper and throw crappy lyrics away. Repeat.

What am I doing with myself? I have no idea. It's funny how out of the blue a focus comes to you and then it disappears just as quickly leaving you with less direction than you had before. Seven or so months ago, I was attempting to learn some new cover songs for my solo gigs. I was planning on putting the original stuff on the backburner while I worked out some familiar covers to get some paying gigs. It wasn't exactly the greatest plan. I wasn't in love with the idea, but I felt the need to use my musical talents to gain some easy cash. Money has been tight and I don't want to get an extra job. How can I make money without getting a second job? Play music. It made sense. Suddenly, I found myself playing in a band. I hooked up with a couple musicians and we began reworking some of my original songs into band songs. I welcomed the detour from the previous plan because I really wasn't that excited about playing cover gigs anyway. A band was something that I had...

This is a great opportunity to bash a woman I went out on a date with recently. God, I love blogging. I also love being totally honest! We met on a dating site in December. I believe she contacted me first. We exchanged messages almost every day and both had a lot to say about each other's interests. It was a good start as far as meeting someone on a dating site goes. We advanced to telephone contact and texting and set up a date. We met for coffee at a chic little coffee shop in Albany. Coffee went well, despite the typical awkwardness of a first meeting. We decided after coffee that we were hungry and went to look for a place to eat. We found a cute little indian restaurant and had some curry. Everthing continued to be going well and I was beginning to dig being around this girl. I didn't want the date to end right there and neither did she. We went to a nearby bar to play darts and watch the football games. Stacey (yes, I'm using her name; I don't care if she som...

I'm posting this here because I attempted to send the following message to Ride Aid via their website, but after I hit send, the page refreshed as if nothing had happened. So, I don't even know if it was received. Plus I like airing out my frustrations on the blog thing here. So, the background info is that I went to Rite Aid to get some Allegra. There was a sign for 17.99. I didn't read the whole sign. I had to wait at the register because my allegra rang up at 19.99. Turns out you have to collect points to get certain discounts. I think this is bullshit and I don't have time to figure out some convoluted and pointless (ha!) point system in order to buy things at ADVERTISED discount prices. Here is the letter I sent (or at least, I attempted to send it) to Rite Aid: Come on, Rite Aid! Seriously? A point system in order to get advertised discounts? I went to your store today to get some store brand Allegra. I enjoy the convenience of running in and out of your s...

It's Thursday night and I should be at open mic at Caffe Lena. However, the roads are pretty bad thanks to two hours of intense snowing, followed by, freezing rain. I'm also trying to fight a cold that has been steadily winning since this past weekend. I'm also freezing to death. I have the heat on a little higher than usual and I'm laying on my bed, which has an electric blanket under the sheets, but I'm still chilled to the core. Not too long ago, I posted about a renaissance in my life. Since that post, I have done some cleaning out -- if you will -- of my possessions. I sold my couch. I sold my TV. I am attempting to sell or give away a plethora of other things. This confuses the heck out of people. Most recently, a co-worker suggested that she was worried that I was giving away all of my stuff because I intended (she may have been joking) to commit suicide. My response to this was: "If I was really going to kill myself, I would be giving away every...

I have been pretty miserable since the start of the New Year. This isn't going to be a refective post. It's going to be a post about stomach pain and going to the doctor. I shared this already on facebook, but decided to put it all together in a blog post. Part 1: I went to the doctor this morning for severe pain in my abdomen and sometimes in back. Some tests were ordered. First test, was a blood test. I sat down in the seat and rolled up my sleeve. My mind flashed to images of past needles that I have had stuck in my for medical purposes (and the tattoo). As a child, I was -- as most children are -- frightened to death of needles. However, as I grew, I developed a morbid curiousity with the concept of being stuck with things and so I would literally watch the needle go in as blood was drawn. Of course, I would feel a pin prick and it would hurt a little, but I was always relaxed and played it quite cool when it occured. As images of needles being stuck in my arm flashed t...

Does anyone really change? I mean really, really change. You can sign up for the gym, you can change your diet, you can pay for match.com. No such actions gaurantee that you are going to lose weight or go on a date. You're still fat and single and before you know it, it's the end of another year. A few co-workers, over the past year, have explained to me multiple times how this time they are going to "stick to it" (it being a diet or going to the gym regularly) and each time they explain this to me, I laugh and give them two weeks. I have been wrong. They have lasted three weeks. People who make resolutions (whether they are for New Year's or other times) and then fail at following through on making a change are not bad people. They are not blights on society. However, it continues to confuse me as to why someone who continually fails at the follow through of a plan will continue to justify talking about their new plan. In other words, if you suck at so...

I have had a bunch of pictures on my phone that I have intended to put up here since back at the beginning of the year. At work, I have a torn piece of a magazine photo tacked to my cubicle. I got it from a travel magazine and keep it at work to remind me of nice places that I can go when I'm in a place that is the opposite of that. A co-worker pulled this potato chip out of her bag of sour cream and onion chips. It's in the shape of a heart... how about that? A friend at Caffe Lena cut the picture of me out of one of my business cards and taped it to the fire escape sign. This was done back a while back... it's still there. (*Note: "I'm" on stage.) The same unnamed friend drew this on the open mic list. I drew this at open mic at some point. And added some of the thought bubbles. The aforementioned unnamed friend wrote the description. At some point at open mic night, I discovered a yellow twisty tie thing. I made a stick-figure playing a gui...

I can't even begin to express how desperately I need to live closer to a Panera Bread. This town sucks and there is no place to get a warm soup in a soft bread bowl and mooch wi-fi. I am in the most frustrated of moods right now and nothing in my immediate drive-tooable-distance has what I want/need. So, I'm sitting in my house, freezing (because I need to save some money, so I'm keeping the heat down) and yelling at my cat (because she won't stop jumping up on the dining room table despite the extensive collection of cat deterring strategies that I have employed), which is only resulting in making me more frustrated. So, I open up an internet browser and log into blogger.com to tell you all about it :) Something that I can't enough of complaining about, is the occurrence of women who have obviously put a lot of time and effort into their appearance hanging out with a group of or just one guy who looks like he just got out of his cleaning out portable toilets....

I was driving home from work the other day, listening to 97.7 WEXT, when a break between songs occured. A familiar voice popped up in a brief advertisement for the station. It was a friend's voice. The voice introduced itself and added, "For Local Music All Day, Every Day, Keep it On 97.7 WEXT." The next song then came on. This type of thing occurs multiple times a day when I'm listening to the radio, and even though I've been listen to WEXT for a few years now, I never cease to smile when I get to hear a friend's voice doing the familiar ad. Of course, the station plays a song by a local musician every hour and (unless it is one of the local music shows that plays much more than one!). And being that I'm a small part of the Capital District's music community, I know a lot of local musicians. I hear their songs on the station frequently and when you are in the care with me, I will completely cut you off mid-conversation and turn the radio excitedly...

I wrote a letter to Mayor Jerry Jennings. Dear Mr. Jennings: I am writing to you to express my support of the Occupy movement in Albany. I am unable to attend the peaceful protests in person due to my work schedule, but am in full support of the message that members of the movement are presenting. I will spare you with a rehashing of what the movement is all about; at this point, I am sure you are well-versed with the complaints/messages that Occupy members are expressing. I would like, instead, to talk a little bit about myself and why, as one of the 99% (or 98% depending on who's sign you read), I feel helpless. I obtained a Master’s of Arts in teaching degree about four years ago. I chose not to teach, for reasons that you don’t need to hear, and currently work for the county in which I live. I bought a house that I have owned now for five years. Because of the current state of the economy, I am selling my house. My mortgage increased by forty dollars a month over the ...

It seems like every time I sit down to write a blog entry, my train of thought is interrupted by one thing or another and I end up with a paragraph or so about some-such-thing that never gets posted. Most of the time, my thoughts are interrupted by people. I get a text from my dad, or a friend meets me at the coffee shop. Don't get me wrong, these aren't bad things by any means. In fact, I suppose that my lack of complete thoughts (blog entries) is due to socializing with people (real, live people) instead of communicating what I'm thinking through words on your computer. So, instead of you hearing about my life via my blog, you are hearing about it in person or over the phone. Cool, right?

There is a small hallway, in the coffee shop in which I sit. The hallway joins the back two sides of the coffee shop. The following illustration should provide you with a better idea of the layout that I’m talking about: The red rectangle thing at the bottom is the entrance to the coffee shop. The purple rectangle thing is where I am sitting with friends. The green rectangle thing is the door to a bathroom (the bathroom breaks up the coffee shop and creates a hallway where that red circle is). While sitting here with friends, we noticed that the bathroom is out of order. An employee kept walking in and out of the bathroom with tools. Many people walked up to the door, noticed the out of order sign, and walked down a back hallway (as shown in the illustration) to the other bathrooms. This occurred for quite some time until the employee suddenly came out of the bathroom quickly… a puddle of water followed him. Soon, a bunch of the employees had the hallway blocked off with “Caut...

Over the past two years, I have gone through a lot of changes. Some might say that I have done a 180 (I love it when people say 360 when they mean 180 -- idiots) as it pertains to where my life was headed. I certainly don't think that this 180 talk applies to my own situation... in fact, I can very easily trace how every moment in my life has lead to this exact one... Pfffffffttttttthh... Yeah right! Wouldn't it be hilarious if I was the type of person to get that sentimentally philosophical about life? Ha! I am, however, continuing to "change." Unless, "adapt" is a better word. "Grow?" Okay. I'm voting for "grow." I am continuing to grow. The next step in this growth process is to sell a whole crapload of my belongings. Not important stuff, like my toothbrush and bed; rather, I need to get rid of things that I own that aren't used. And there are a lot of such things. This is not a new concept. In fact, I have been thinkin...

I am at Uncommon Grounds in Saratoga listening to my iTunes on shuffle. I'm trying desperately to remove the god awful lyrics and music from my brain that have been stuck on repeat for the last few hours. It's shortly after the Saratoga Lip Dub wrapped up filming. I got to be a small part of it along with a great group of Caffe Lena folks. I'm a big fan of lip dubs. If you are unfamiliar with what a lip dub is, Wikipedia is your friend. So is Youtube. I have actually had the idea of doing a lip dub in Saratoga for some time, but since I don't have the funds or the pull with any organization that has the funds, I have not been spreading my idea. A group with the funds and the pull and the backing of the Common Council went ahead planned out an elaborate lip dub on Broadway in Saratoga and invited many Broadway business and Caffe Lena to be a part of it. I got involved when I was asked by a Caffe Lena performer if I would like to show up and be a part of it. He didn...

I have not been blogging for quite a while. Mostly because my blog has been somewhat broken. Actually, it was my website that was broken and it wasn't posting the blog on the homepage the way it had previously. I attempted a bunch of different "fixes" and eventually decided to use a java script widget as a replacement for the php that had been there. I'm sure little of that makes sense unless you are a computer programmer of some sort. I'm feeling quite "blahhh" right now. I'm stuck at home being on-call for work and on-call has been rather full-of-calls tonight. My allergies have been acting up... it's that time of year. I took Benadryl Monday night on top of my normal allergy meds and then felt like a zombie for the past two days. When you are on extra, zombie-inducing allergy medications, it's hard to focus and write songs. It's even harder to focus and write songs when you are trying really hard but failing at not itching your eyes ou...

There seems to be something wrong with the blog transferring to the homepage of my site. I'm not really sure why. This is just a test post to see if things will correct themselves with a fresh posting.

I have been a lousy blogger. It's been like a month since my last posting. Although, it's my blog... so, technically, I can blog whenever I want and no one can tell me I'm being lousy. So... there. It's getting late on a Wednesday -- a work night. However, tomorrow is my Friday since I took the real Friday off this week. I'm getting a four-day weekend out of the deal and I'm pretty darn excited about it. I took a mini vacation from work about a month ago, but ever since I've been back, I've been slammed with crisis after crisis. Things have finally begun to normalize and I actually caught up on stuff that I was way behind in. So, I earned a long weekend! I like taking Fridays off because Thursday is Open Mic Night at Lena's and at the Circus Cafe. Without having to work on Friday, I feel more free to enjoy myself. No restraints on needing to be in bed by a somewhat decent hour. Woo! Friday, I'm planning on grabbing some camping supplies (a really...

When I was a wee lad... when I was a little kid, there were times when my dad would take me places (grocery store, ice cream place, his work, etc) -- typical type places where a dad would take his kid -- and on such occasions, we would run into people-that-my-dad-knows. Being a courteous person, my dad would introduce me to such people. Sometimes, my dad would say, "Hey-hey, (person's name). How are you? This is my son (James)*" And my dad would turn to me and say "(James), this is (person's name)." My dad would then explain to me how this person is someone-that-he-knows. Most of the time, some light conversation would ensue while I drifted off into some dream-like/euphoric state of mind. However, there were times when my dad added that this person whom he just introduced to his son "is a Ball-Buster." A "Ball-Buster?" At some point, my dad had explained to me what a "Ball-Buster" was. It's someone who "busts balls....