I got an email today from KevintheBassPlayer (that's his full name) that my homepage had some dead links on it. So I went over to the ol' llij.net homepage and realized that I hadn't clicked on pretty much any of those links in 3 years or so. I decided to weed out almost everything and simplify, simplify, simplify.
The web seems to have changed so much in recent years. Many moons ago, people had their own homepages with links to the things they found cool, and nowadays most folks just have blogs with del.icio.us lists to catch all the links they dig. Seems like "vanity pages" of old are falling by the wayside, and that inidividual websites are just pretty presentations of blog content and flickr account content.
If that's the case, then why the heck am I doing everything manually and all old-school? This is especially puzzling, mostly because I do keep a fairly regular blog over at livejournal, and I've been using flickr to host my latest photos. So why do I have so many web presences? Do I really think I'm that important? Do I really think my readers (all two of them) wouldn't follow me over to livejournal?
I don't know. This llij.net blog seems to have much different content than my livejournal. I feel like I talk about bigger stuff here-- for some reason I feel justified in my navel-gazing when I'm the one paying for the domain. Weird.
So! Speaking of navel gazing, let's get to it. :-) To make up for some time here, let's do the listo.
I'm not going to Burning Man this year for a variety of reasons, but first and foremost is I simply don't have the mental and emotional bandwidth. I could take the week off from work no problem, but Burning Man doesn't feel like a vacation to me. Between renting an RV, packing enough food/clothing/shelter to last me a full week, cleaning out the RV once we return it, schlepping all that gear via plane, finding a place to camp, staying out all night every night for 6 nights straight, it's too much. It's great fun and it's a powerful thing, but dude, it's just too much. My new job is kicking my ass, and if I'm gonna blow $4500 on a week-long thing away from work, I'm gonna come back relaxed and refreshed, goshdarnit.
Matt and I are coming up on the two year mark next month, and that thrills me beyond words. I know we got off to a slightly bumpy start (all my doing, really), I'm happy to say that things are going swimmingly. Holy crap, so this is what a normal, healthy relationship feels like, where people actually communicate easily, groove, giggle, snarf, mesh, all that. I even love his family-- and it's totally genuine. Pretty awesome.
Things have been picking up a bit on the Industrial Jazz Group front. I can't believe I never blogged about our tour of The Netherlands when we were invited to play at The Hague Jazz Festival (all expenses paid for all 16 of us-- can you believe it?). They shuttled us around like rock stars, it was really quite amazing. We played with SpyroGyra, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Percy Sledge, Al DiMeola and a bunch of other folks. Pretty incredible indeed. Anyway, some of my blog entries over at Live Journal (1, 2) sum it up nicely; but Durkin does it best over these three entries. (1, 2, 3.)
Speaking of The Industrial Jazz Group, we've also been invited to play at Midpoint Music Festival, which is in Cincinnati in September. We're gonna have a few other dates around the peri-midwestular area... I'll keep you posted.
In the last bit of news, Danielle came out to visit from Arizona. I met her and her family down in Atlantic Highlands NJ at 7:30am and we took a party boat out to go fishing. This is a family tradition for her, and it was cool to be able to tag along on their quality time. It was a 1/2 day trip, so we were back in the marina around 12:30. I kidnapped her and we headed to Wilmington-- I wanted her to meet Matt and we were all gonna get some dinner together. On the ride back, we popped in anold Evelyn Situation CD and sang along-- I admit that behind my sunglasses I was crying a little. Those songs still mean so much to me (and apparently still to other people-- I still get random emails from old fans about the band-- can you believe it?), and that time in my life represents such an important phase for me.
On the same topic, I was emailing Paul (our old guitarist for The Evelyn Situation) and I mentioned that Danielle was in town and that we'd listened to the old stuff in the car. He said that he was bummed that we weren't able to hang out, and it would have been cool to listen to them all together, because he really loves those songs, too. It really is amazing that we are still so enamored with these amazing tunes after so long. (Shit, I'm still enamored with the tunes Durkin wrote for his 1986 rock opera. That man's got da skillllllzzzz.)
OK, I'm getting all mushy and sentimental, so we'd best cut this off. Nobody likes a histrionic Jill.