This weekend has been a busy weekend.

Hot Water

We have no hot water at my house for the past two days because the heater broke. I set the heater on fire several times while trying to restart the pilot light, but I think it was broken anyway. Apparently  the control box is gone, or so I overheard a workman saying to Jim, our landlord, and it will probably cost $350 to repair. But the repairman kept saying he'd never seen anything like this before (which is a load of crap - the guy sounded like he was in his forties, and repairmen have seen everything by then) and I'm worried that he was taking advantage of Jim's poor command of English.

The girls are all taking cold showers but I had a spongebath this morning. It is the middle of winter and the water is only a few degrees above zero, so there is no way in hell that I am cold showering. I think I actually washed more thoroughly than I would have in a shower, anyway. And I got to pour a bucket of warm water over my head, which is a truly joyous experience.

I considered not washing until the heater was fixed, but after just one day without a shower I could smell myself, and that alarmed me.

Comics and Paintings

I have almost finished writing my comic, which i thought had to be 10 pages but is apparently 12, which is nice.  It means I can flesh-out a fight sequence to run over two pages, and not have to resolve everything with the volcano being nuked. I'm thinking of getting rid of the (Benevolent) International Jewish Conspiracy because I've decided the Andonderos are good guys, and I don't want to have to deal with complex ethical and moral dilemmas and accusations of Anti-Semitism. I'm too lazy.

I also had an idea for the cover - a circle divided into three triangles with an image from each of the comics in each segment,. But that's kind of lame.

I also got to work on the painting my sister asked for as a birthday present. It's a portrait of her based on a photo I found in my wallet - not especially good, but it looks like her and it's only half-done anyway. So that takes top priority since I have to finish it by Thursday. Unfortunately I've given her too broad a nose - although she does have a fairly broad nose.

"Jamming": It's not just for fruits anymore.

I went and "jammed" with my friend kate on Saturday. it turned-out much as I'd expected. i showed-up with a bunch of simple pop songs to play, we sat around trying to figure-out the beat to "What Do I Get", and then went and recruited a bassist from down the street. he was extremely good, and I kept fumbling and felt useless. Then he went home and Kate's friend Bodge came round, and he blew us all away with his interpretations of Pink Floyd songs and amazing ability to play request by ear. So I ended-up turning my amp off and playing Velvet Underground songs to myself  while he and Kate did all the jamming. To compound all of this, I had a pocket-amp that fits in my backpack and he had a marshall-stack larger than my mother.

I retrospect, I should have tried to organise some compositions or something. We could have done some great Animal Collectivey jamming if they hadn't been so into noodly stuff and I hadn't lacked all self-confidence.

Then I went-home and figured-out how to solo on powerchords and learnt a really cool riff and felt bitter about not being able to do all that earlier. I have added the main riff from "Black & White" by the dBs to my repertoire, and am pretty happy about that.

I should get a job.

Also my friend Raz totally has a band. "New Hawaii" is the good one.

Tags: cold showers, doujicon, jamming, paintings
Current Mood: indescribable
Current Music: Battles - Mirrors