blackness...

...in my heart. No, wait. On my head. Yeah, that's it.

It's been about 6 weeks since my hair suddenly went black. I wasn't quite sure how I'd feel about it, but tomorrow I'm going for a haircut, so most of the black will be chopped off. I'm trying to decide if I should dye it again. Maybe this time I'll do the black fingernail thing again, too.

Jon will be at the studio tonight for another rehearsal, gearing up for Saturday's little show. And tomorrow night. And Thursday. We're taking Friday off.

risky business

It's just me and the dogs this weekend, since the better half is in Baltimore visiting a college friend. That means I can lay around on the couch in my underwear eating an entire container of Trader Joe's chocolate pudding while watching 40 Days and 40 Nights, including commercials, on TBS. Cute movie, by the way, though I don't know why I get sucked into these movies on stations that run commercials. Commercials make me crazy. Earlier this evening, the civil warning sirens were going off because of funnel clouds in the area, and I actually took the dogs down into the basement for cover for about 10 minutes. I think they brought back up about 5 pounds of dust each off the basement floor.

When it was crazy windy, I was watching the giant tree in our neighbor's yard bend and thought, if that thing fell like it looks it might, it would crush our place first, then the top floor of the neighbor's place, and the other units in my building might get a branch through a window or something. It was a wee scary. Then again, I am a big puss-boy.

With all the storms, I was thinking I might just hang at the house, but it eventually calmed down, and I went to Trader Joe's for some weekend grub. I had the willpower to not buy a tub of ginger snaps, but not to pass up the pudding. Small steps, Ellie.

that's just sick

I've been feeling a little lightheady/semi-crappety for most of today, and I think now I've got a full-blown fever going. I feel like shite.

We've had a rehearsal or two since the last post. With Jon and I, it's interesting what pieces just fall together and what takes a lot of work to shape. Since 90% of our cd's are full-band stuff, the challenge was to translate it into the acoustic duo format. Some of it works better than others. The ones that don't, we tend to alter significantly so that it does. And some of this is hard because we've never played it live in any format, and we have to learn the song from scratch. Even the covers we choose surprise us in unexpected ways. I guess that's redundant, eh? Well, fuck off. I'm sick, dammit.

Sorry, that's bitch me talking. Oh, who am I kidding, is there any other me? Am I making any sense?

I stopped at Red Eyes this afternoon to check the place out before the show next week. I'm not sure what to think of it. It's in a newish building, and it's a little sparkly. It seems to take some of it's decor cues from Starbuck's, but I can't tell if it's meant to be ironic or not. I think I shall choose to think it ironic. Anyway, it's pretty small, and the layout is a little weird. The stage, nook where we'll play is about five feet across and six feet deep, and sits tucked away in a corner. Not sure how the Salute girls are going to get a keyboard and amps in there. At least Jon and I just have the guitars and one electronic gizmo, though even with that, I think we'll have to stand single file, rather than side by side. That means I'll have to look at the back of his head for the entire set. Maybe I'll tape a nice picture back there. The place is small enough that I'm not even sure we'd need mic's.

Remind me to change the colors on the main Nancys' site menu. I don't know what I was thinking. I wish I had an excuse like "I'd had a serious brain injury earlier in the day, and wasn't quite right.", but all I have is "I wasn't quite right."

We have a blog!

Hey look! We have a blog! You'd never know it by how often we update it.

The Nancys are rehearsing for another acoustic show, with Salute Your Sweetheart, who we played with at the Heartland Cafe. It's at the Red Eye, and it should be very laid back. It's a small place, with a cozy atmoshphere.

The Heartland show was pretty cool. I was in high spirits and my hands weren't shaking like they normally do (it's the meds), but I found out later that Jon was pretty sick that night. I never would have know it by his performance, since he sounded just fine.

One new thing that kept happening that night was that my hands were sweating a little more than usual, and it made my fingers stick to the strings. I'm going to have to try out that Finger Ease string lubricating stuff. Any guitar players out there have experience with it? Pop me an email off the main Nancys site. I also finally figured out how to put the capo in the right place between frets so the guitar stays in tune. Of course, that wasn't until after the show (The Bird was pretty out of tune. Sorry!). I have to put in on an angle, so that the top part is actually on the fret above on the sixth string, and angles toward the lower fret so that it hits in the middle of the fret on the 1st string.

I've rediscoverd Zep's Physical Graffiti. It's been forever since I listed to that album, and on a whim decided to buy the cd. Holy crap on a crust, these guys were just brilliant. And I don't use that term lightly. Not enough can be said about John Paul Jones, either. He's the glue that held these crazy disparate personalities together musically, and I believe he goes largely unrecognized. Even by his own bandmates. After Page and Plant were doing all their stuff in the 80's and 90's, separately and then together, he never appeared with them. I remember seeing the three of them on some awards show recently where they had received awards. I forget which show, but after Plant babbled a bit, John Paul went up to the podium mic and said "I'd like to thank my friends for finally remembering my phone number." Behind him, Plant reacted with a look on his face that said "Whoa, I don't believe he just said that, and I really don't care." It was a sad moment.