oh my.

I am so exhausted lately, but I really haven't updated in a while. I really have just been working, and when I'm not working I have been putting some violin tracks down on Gonculator's upcoming cd, which is amazing. I'm pretty darn happy to be doing it, too.

Needless to say today I worked, then went straight to the studio, then came home and baked two cupcake cakes for my mother's weekend convention that she has (and is leaving for tomorrow). I really could use a few extra hours. But we have two really awesome shows coming up, and I go back to Nashville in a little over 2 weeks, so I'm constantly looking forward and thinking that soon we'll be playing out again, and then I'll be on vacation :)

Love Hill in Nashville, TN

I think one of my all-time favorite places outdoors would be Love Hill in Nashville, TN. I am a big outdoorsy kind of person, but in terms of just being outside and taking everything in, this place really makes me happy.

Just about every time I visit Nashville, Michael and I always try and spend some time at Love Hill. It isn't an incredibly well-known part of Nashville, but it's basically a small plot of land at the top of a residential development where you can see the entire Nashville skyline at eye-level. It's an amazingggg view, and we've tried many times to catch a sunset out there, but we're always about 5 minutes too late. Regardless, there is nothing like that place, and there are never too many people around. Hopefully we'll have a nice picnic there in a few weeks when I'm down there again.

Oh, for three more hours

With an extra three hours, I would most definitely split them evenly between getting more time to write and sleeping. You can never get enough sleep, and when I don't get my 8 hours I certainly feel it in the morning (cough, like today).

Does anybody else think those match.com ads are awkward?

...they almost make me feel self-conscious. Like I'm being watched. By that dude who's pretending to be looking at you through a webcam.

Anyways, my day has been CRAZY today. I feel like I've fit too much into one day, and yet I haven't really accomplished all that much. I went to work this morning to find that I wouldn't be in the office and would instead be working outside putting plants out and watering them (and I didn't really dress the part considering I had other errands to run today). But I did get a heads up I would be out there right before I was leaving, so I managed to wear those fantastic AA socks I mentioned in a previous blog, only to be reminded after work that I didn't bring a change of socks. So yep, they're still on.

I worked until 1, ran across the street to a dr. appointment (I changed doctors; I need to have a 'meet and greet,' then a nurse appointment, THEN a physical... all on three separate appointments. Oh well, at least it's close to work), then I made my way to Fayetteville to get a violin bow rehaired. I made my appointment with them at 3 because they close at 5 and I wanted to make sure they had enough time to do it. So, in the meantime I decided I'd go shopping, because I had nothing better to do and I want to get a new dress for Michael's graduation. Now, if any of you know me well, I am not really a shopping kind of girl. I like having a plan of action, a list of stores I need to go to, and then get it over with as soon as possible. This was not the case today, as I had to wait for my bow to be done... so I took the Shoppingtown Mall by storm. And let me tell you, it's a pretty sketchy and desolate place with not a whole lot of options. I actually found a nice one though, only to discover they don't have it in my size, which creates a whole different conflict: that I would need to go to Carousel to find out they have it in my size. Which... is much, much worse. I avoid that mall like the plague. Unless I'm going to see a movie, in which case i love it because of the awesome seats.

So yeah, I'm random at the moment because I've just downed a large coffee at panera, waiting for Jon and Tim to get out here for sushi! I'm bumming that I guess a lot of other people couldn't make it out tonight, but I figured I'd still head out because I was here anyways. So yeah, this is me wasting time before I can eat some good dinner. I went to... all the stores in this vacinity as well. No luck. Many thanks to Panera for wonderful coffee and free wifi. And also to my GPS, which I have successfully mounted to my windshield and just looks marvelous. I shall never be lost again.

Oh, to be in Germany

Over this past summer, my band and I were asked to do a tour of military bases through Armed Forces Entertainment. We were scheduled to play at Baumholder, Manheim, the Edelweiss Lodge and Resort, Grafenwoehr, and Spangdahlem. With only 1 day off. It was pretty much a dream vacation, and I was just looking through some pictures I took the other day. First off, to be able to play for military personnel and their families was a huge honor, and we made so many friends and still keep in touch with many of them. But besides that, it was our first trip to Europe, and we traveled to and from everywhere in a tour bus with the most amazing driver who allowed us to make as many stops in as many places as we wanted.



The architecture, the history, the castles, everything. It was such an amazing experience, and the only down side (if you could call it that) was that we only had one day in every town we stayed in, and with playing a show every night we really only got about 2 hours of sightseeing a day at best. We did, however, have one day in Garmish, and it was easily the most amazing day of vacationing I have ever had. We all got up early to walk into the town, and we shopped, took in the sights, and got an amazing lunch at the coffeeshop. Then we rented bikes from the hotel we were staying at and rode through the Alps. It was nothing short of a dream day.



I hope to go back there again with a couple of weeks to do nothing but sight see. And I will most definitely spend more than 4 months trying to learn German before I go back.

Getting stresseddddd

Okay okay okay. So I know that I don't work full time, and I know that I'm doing the thing where I'm "in a band," but I am just going to throw out there that it so doesn't mean that I'm not incredibly busy and stressed. As a matter of fact, because of how uncertain one's future can be being in a band, I'd say I have quite a fair amount of stress to deal with on a regular basis.

I've been going nuts sending out as many emails as I can to follow up with people I met from SXSW, and I must say so far I've had a few responses, but I'm not really expecting to hear back from many for a while. Timing is very difficult when sending emails out to people, and I know that many of them had an influx of messages sent after the festival, so I thought I'd wait it out for a bit and see where that landed me. I suppose we'll just have to wait and see.

We are also working on another tour with Armed Forces Entertainment to head out to Southwest Asia in Septemberish, and there is a TON of paperwork associated with that. I'm so excited about it though, and we love touring with them and having the opportunity to play for the troops. Just with all those little 'bumps' in the road lately, trying to get everything in order is just that much harder at the moment.

We're heading back into the studio tonight, and thankfully I'm about over being sick (I think) to the point where I can sing again. Yay! Gonculator will be in the studio from Wednesday to Wednesday the following week so we're really trying to wrap up these preproduction tracks before then. Then we'll be PRACTICING for our May 1st and 6th shows, and gearing up for what's ahead with AFE. In the meantime I hope to be working the rest of the week, and I'll be heading out to Fayetteville on Wednesday to get my violin bow rehaired (and maybe get some sushi if everyone's still planning on it?).

Now, onto the treadmill to Gossip Girl my troubles away.

Oh, and I got this sent to me in an email from my boyfriend:

I'd like to thank him for providing the comic relief to my girlyness and stress. I don't know why this made me laugh as hard as it did, but there you go.

Putting it all out there

Well, a whole lot has happened over the past week. I happily discovered Plinky though, so that has aided in me skirting a lot of issues and just posting fun blog prompts on the web :)

Kaleena and I have been down with some seasonal cold that's going around, so unfortunately we haven't really been able to do a whole lot of recording. And, as I'm sure some of you know, we are currently sans drummer for the next lil bit (though don't worry, we have all our bases covered and have made a lot of headway. Our album will still be out as soon as physically possible, and we'll still be performing with a drummer). Basically we've been really busy trying to work around a few bumps in the road, but there's nowhere to go but up, so that's what we're trying to do. It's Aaron's birthday today, and we'll be recording tomorrow so hopefully that will be a fun birthday-ish hang; hopefully he's feeling better as well.

It's been a pretty interesting span of time to say the least, and I guess a lot of it is just more 'growing up' lessons. Between all the internal stuff that's been going on, realizing I've been out of school almost a year already (!!), and just trying to further analyze myself and where I'm going the old noggin has been real cloudy. Totally no fun. But, like I said, we have a lot to look forward to, and although at this point I'm kind of getting used to things not working out I'm trying to become more of an optimist. Things can only not go your way for so long, right? Here's to having things change next week, pretty pretty please.

In the meantime, I've been doing more work at Hafner's (more grateful than ever that I have such an awesome job), and have been really trying to just focus on this release. It needs to happen, and it needs to happen soon. I'm so confident in the music and the band as we stand, and I feel so strongly that we can do some pretty awesome things. We just need a few more pieces to fall into place. It's so hard not having that control that you did when you were at school; being able to want to get things done, and then do them yourself. But, this isn't a college town anymore, it's the real world. This is me putting on my big girl pants and staring the world in the face all sassy-like.

Until then, it's just me and a whole lot of pieces, but every day I think I do my best at shuffling them around to see where and when they might come together. Oh, and until then, I'm sick of cliches and promises. Now I'm done being angsty. Let the Plinkys commence once again.