Good times: getting stood up and being sober

The last few days hasn't completely smelled like roses. I royally humiliated myself in symphony rehearsal Tuesday night by not being able to read for shit... the director made me play about half a dozen bars of a march by myself a few times, and I managed to fuck it up a few times. Put me in a powerful crappy mood. Next, Mandy and I had planned to do dinner last night, but I sort of got stood up. I say sort of because she gave me the impression that would happen after symphony by saying she didn't know if she could come over or not and that she'd call me. So when I got a call from TJ around 9:00 last night, I figured that plans were off with Mandy and just went to TJ's. On a good note though, I checked voice-mail while over there, and Mandy left an apologetic message, saying something important had come up and she didn't mean to ditch me, etc. So since I at least got a call, and she sounded like she actually meant it, I'll re-extend the dinner invitation and see if she's hip to it.

Last night was unusual in a way. TJ and I hung out, and were stone sober by choice the entire evening. He had called me over, but announced that he had decided not to drink at all, an endeavour in which I elected to join him. He even suggested that he might try a drink-every-other-day plan, which I applaud. He figured that he'd been ass-out drunk for at least the last 10 days straight, and that his body couldn't take much more of it. We also know that staying up till the wee hours of the morning piss drunk reduces one's ability to accomplish anything the following day. This could be the beginning of our scale-back-the-drinking-before-school plan, which there has been much talk but little action on. It was interesting to sit around TJ's and watch movies, but not have any crappy canadian beer, or any laden-with-liquor mixed drink... just a few glasses of sierra mist soda.

Of course, the real challenge is to take the extra energy I have from not being filled up with alcohol when I went to bed and do something productive today. Like practice. And clean.

It's forecast to drop down to about 10°F for a high tomorrow, and may dip below 0 tomorrow night... and I read possibly down to -25 or so in Jefferson and Lewis counties (Watertown area). that's fucking cold. It's been fairly cold an snowly of late anyway, so I've been making myself feel better by comparing our weather to that of Fairbanks, Alaska. Nestled in a valley in the central mountains of Alaska, it routinely gets down to -25 in january, with highs not even achieving 0. I found a webcam... the so-called ArticCam, pointed somewhere in downtown Fairbanks. You can go look at it still be dark at 10AM, or dark already at 5PM. They currently have about 4 hours and 15 minutes of daylight. in Barrow, right on the shores of the Arctic Ocean, the sun never rises above the horizon line all day, from late November until late January. It's great fun to see a more extreme place like Alaska in the winter... try it out, it'll keep things in perspective. Although it tends to make me want to visit, but I'm odd like that.

Have at it: Fairbanks, AK News-Miner ArcticCam

I've got the recording session at Don's tonight, around 6:00. After that, who knows. Probably drinking at TJ's again. Cause you can't expect us to go two whole days without getting hammered, can ya?

Who asked you anyways?