going to see spiderman @ loews woodfield!!! FINALLY.



nothing much happened today except that i woke up and some other stuff. work, melon, more work, drive, wildwood, drive, art store, home, now off to woodfield for a 10pm show!



my wildwood boss tim passed the dallas willard test today. what a relief...



introduced my mom to lost dogs & claire holley today. tomorrow i will unleash the eb&theuhq on her.



today's soundtrack--

amelia's boot--erik brandt & urban hillbilly quartet

blue--joni mitchell

after the gold rush--neil young

mercury--american music club

faith & devotions--the violet burning

waters ave s.--damien jurado

some mix--q magazine

summershine--VoL

life of david--michael knott

ask me tomorrow--mojave 3

i just got home from working at wildwood. no, really, i actually did some work this time instead of just hanging out w/ the boys. i put together a MAILING today. yipee! now i feel like i'm earning my french fries and cucumber rolls. (tim feeds me well) i have to admit that i really wanted to watch the veggie tales w/ the boys...i love that singing cucumber doing that poor tomato song...but tim cracked the whip and i was in front of the computer for at least 18% of the evening. actually, tim's really nice. he lets me use the bathroom and everything. i just can't drink while on the computer.



so today is the 24th anniversary of the day that my 40 year old dad took his family by the hand and flew us from seoul to tokyo to honolulu to chicago. that day in the airport would be the last time we would be in korea together as a family. i wonder what was going through my dad's head as a 40 year old husband and father of two young children crossing the ocean to a land he'd never been to where he had no job prospects and the people spoke a strange and foreign language that was all tongue twisters to the native korean speaker. he left behind a hard-earned career as a respected investigative newspaper reporter, and my mom left behind all those whom she loved and cared about. i was just excited to be getting on a plane going anywhere. being a few days shy of six, i knew as long as my dad was going with, i didn't have anything to worry about.



it's been an interesting road for our family since that day in 1978. i think about my dad even more now that he's not here anymore, and wonder what a difficult time that must have been for him, to bear such a heavy responsibility as the head of the household. i'm glad he took the risk though, because let me tell you, typing in korean is not as easy as typing in english, and i would've had to learn all those chinese characters that the grownups use.



well, i'm running back to the apartment to be reunited w/ some cds that i'm really really missing (joni mitchell's blue, neil young's after the gold rush, all my ocean blue, american music club & red house painters, neil halstead, mojave 3, etc etc etc.) i actually need my secure id so i can work from my mom's house tomorrow (the job that pays bills).



soundtrack for today--

half-mast (pre-release)--steve thorngate

faith and devotions of a satellite heart--the violet burning

words for loss for words--beki hemingway

real men cry--lost dogs

glass top ships--jacobstone

from here--antara & delilah

alright. there's some weird stuff going on here...i'm in the process of upgrading my webservice, which means a new url & some other stuff. so that means things may load more slowly and some things may not load at all. and then i'm using my dad's computer that's got a korean windows o.s. and it pops in korean characters every now and then even when i'm trying to type in english. so that's the story in case things feel a little weird around here. my initial reaction is to fix it ALL right NOW. but i won't. so there.

this was written yesterday and i forgot i had it in my notebook:



it's tuesday afternoon. i'm at a little park across the street from tim’s house because he's MIA...he probably didn't expect me this early. i don't mind though cuz it's sunny and warm (relatively speaking) and i love just sitting at a picnic table soaking in the sun with nothing in particular to do. what a perfect scenario for a nap. which i desperately need.



you know, if i closed my eyes and used a bit of self-deception, i could almost imagine that i was in california. i mean, the sun's pretty warm right now...and the sound of tires speeding over asphalt—it's almost like the sound of the ocean roaring, no?



oh...i just saw a picture...gotta grab my camera [editor's note--"the picture" i saw is the one up at the top of this post]...



ok. i'm back. and on the swings. i LOVE swings. swings are good.



so for some strange reason, denison witmer's song "you got me good" keeps running through my head. it's not exactly my favorite denison song, so i have to wonder. i think it might have to do w/ stuff going on w/ bruce & me. i'm not going to explain the song, but the chorus goes something like "you got me good/ it's understood/how you got me good." i know i may be the one leaving and all, but i think in the end, i'll be just as hurt and wounded as he is by this whole ordeal. nevertheless, i still want bruce to be hapy & find himself a nice christian woman like he wants. i really feel like i let him down because i seemed like that nice innocent christian girl when he first met me, but little did he realize what a terror i could be. and even i had no idea that i wasn't a nice innocent christian girl like everyone thought i was. ok, i had my doubts, but you gotta understand, i REALLY thought i was, but it turns out i'm not. honestly, i don't have much desire to be nice, and i'm still shying away from actually calling myself a christian, even though i probably am. i'll admit to being "part of the fold" as tim told me. i guess i'm the sheep that keeps chasing the butterfly and wandering around and getting lost. i still have issues to work through regarding christianity as a "religion" in the organized sense, and the church in general, esp. the mainstream evangelicals. they really drive me up the wall (most, not all).



anyways, so in all sincerity, (no, really, i am being sincere) i hope bruce fares better without me (i.e., and with someone else).



ok. fast forward to right now. after writing that blog yesterday afternoon, rand (my pastor) called me at my mom's house later that night, and we talked for a long time about what's going on w/ bruce and what i'm going to do. i told rand i don't really want to wait any longer to start the legal proceedings, but he thought i might be under too much emotional stress from my dad's death to be making that kind of a decision right now. even though i don't think i'll change my mind w/ the passage of time, because it's rand and i know he has a lot of wisdom, i'm going to wait. at least a little longer than i'd planned. i've already waited 2 months longer than i'd originally planned for the divorce. but i can wait some more. it's not like i'm wanting to be free to start dating or anything. i actually told rand that i've been so disillusioned by this whole marriage experience that i can't imagine being in a relationship again. in some sense, i'm scared to death of that type of a relationship. yeah, i'm broken i guess. for the first time in my life, i'm alone. but also for the first time in my life i truly feel like i'm for real, not a fake knock-off of some cookie-cutter christian girl wannabe. i really want to be ME, even if it's kind of a mess right now. i've said this before, but i'll say it again, and i'll keep saying it—except for my dad dying, i have been genuinely HAPPY, JOYFUL ever since i moved out on my own. i've learned a lot about myself, and i really like how god created me to be. i'm still finding out what that is, of course, but i'm not like discovering truths about myself and then despairing at what i'm finding. and working w/ tim and having the benefit and total blessing of his presence in my life esp. now when i'm missing my dad so much is a miracle love bomb from god himself—i have no doubt in my mind about that.



so this morning before going to work, i feel like listening to damien jurado's song sarah. so i put it on, sing along & dance around, and it turns out my mom likes damien jurado. then i put on ticklepenny corner and she likes them too. i find that amusing. she never listens to anything besides vineyard worship cds, but i've been playing a variety of stuff around the house lately, everything from claire holley to the 77s to the violet burning to simon joyner to the 6parts7, so i think her ears are opening up to other realms of musical possibilities. wouldn't it be funny if my mom turns into this indie folk-rock chick? ha ha ha! i think my dad would find that funny. by the way, that picture is of my office in case you're curious as to where i spend my days in pursuit of paying bills.



soundtrack for past few days:

blinding bright--stickman jones

waters ave s.--damien jurado

sunday's best--ticklepenny corner

life of david--michael knott

chambers and volumes--jacobstone

3...6...9...seconds of light--belle & sebastian

ask me tomorrow--mojave 3

figure 8--elliott smith

your favorite music--clem snide

real men cry--lost dogs

s/t--claire holley

all i can think about at the moment is getting me some painkillers...my head feels like it's in a vice...my coworkers are getting worried about me as i have been banging my head against the wall in hopes of relief from this curse called the Migraine. god help me...i'm out of drugs...the pain stretches from my right temple all the way down the back of my head, down the back of my neck do my right shoulder. it's only a span of less than a foot but it feels like a galaxy of pain to me. i have so much to do...

so to elaborate on point 1 of my comment from 3:40am today ("back up your files!!!!!"), my personal laptop crashed thursday night without any warning. i was actually in the middle of typing out my blog entry when it just inexplicably turned itself off. i took that as a sign to go to bed and didn't think too much of it. i tried booting up the machine, and started getting these weird messages about windows having to shut down to protect the computer. i'm thinking, dude, there's nobody trying to do anything to you, and what good are you if you don't boot up cuz how the hell am i gonna access my files? i get a little more worried because i've never gotten these messages before (i have windows xp home edition, if this means anything to you. i recommend highly AGAINST xp home.). i am thinking about the thought i had recently that i should really burn all my photos onto cd roms instead of taking up all that hard-drive space. (i have several thousand photos probably by now, and they're ALL on my laptop.) what an idiot i have been! no backups for all that work! not to mention that the photos i took in the month of april are closely associated with my dad because he was in the back or front of my mind on all my photo shoots that month. i start to panic but go to sleep hoping the computer will wake up from its nightmare cured by some miracle. well, no such luck, and i am told by dell tech support that to recover my data, i will have to hire a professional data recovery service (which often charge by the megabyte--i have 22 gigs used on my harddrive), and by saturday afternoon, a full 36 hours after this ordeal first began, i am on the verge of a nervous breakdown. i had managed to burn cds in 80MB increments in between crashes, until the repair i try to do to windows totally shuts down the machine until all i can get is a black screen with a white horizontal stripe down at the bottom. pushed to a point of desperation, i do what mike mickan the i.t. guru used to do when i worked in the evanston vineyard church office. i layed hands on my laptop and prayed. i told god i wasn't going to make any deals like 'if you fix my computer, i promise to____________.' i don't do that any more, but i just told him i was desperate and that if he needed references to go talk to my dad. i ran the repair one more time and left the darn thing alone for like two hours. when i came back and turned on the machine, i almost had a heart attack because it booted right to windows. i immediately got to work and burned the remainder of my photos on cd-roms. i know all you skeptics out there think it's just a coincidence, but let me tell you, i deal initimately w/ computers, and i've dealt intimately with many a crappy computer, so i KNOW how these things go, and i have no doubt in my mind that god in his infinite mercy was giving me a chance to back up my files because i told him i'd totally lose my mind if i couldn't get my photos back. the computer basically kept working until sometime this morning, after i had pretty much backed up everything i needed to. so now dell can send me a new hard drive like they offered--i don't mind anymore.

point number 2 ("i love uncommon ground!!!") refers to friday nite when i was too stressed to go do the promise ring show considering it was practically sold out and was going to be at the empty bottle, which had given me some grief photowise for the bright eyes/the good life/mayday concert. so instead i went out w/ my cousin kris & connie for dinner and then coffee & dessert @ uncommon ground on grace & clark. there was some acoustic music going on, like on most nights, and we hung out and enjoyed the music of gabriel reed and aj fink (of jacobstone) while sipping our respective beverages and sharing a slice of raspberry cheesecake. it was a real stress buster, which i totally needed to get my mind off my toasted laptop. i actually really enjoy acoustic music. for some reason gabriel's voice reminded me of a younger version of loudon wainwright but i could have just been out of my mind so i wouldn't believe a word i say. aj did remind me of eef barzelay though (clem snide) but in a totally anti-clemsnidish kind of way, which i don't know what i mean by that. maybe it's cuz clem snide wear suits when they perform? whatever.

ok. points 3-7 refer to the 6 parts 7-swearing at motorists-764hero concert i went to at schuba's on saturday night. now getting there was an ordeal in and of itself. in my craziness w/ my laptop that day, i'd totally forgotten to prepare my self. an hour and a half before the show was going to start, i found that i had a half-full battery in the camera and the other fully-charged battery was nowhere in sight. knowing my trigger happy tendencies w/ my camera, i frantically ransacked my apartment looking for that elusive 1"X2"X0.5" hunk of camera power juice while i tried to power up the remaining battery the best i could. i finally resigned myself to being a more selective and disciplined photographer for the evening, but knew i was doomed...so i drive off for schubas, and at armitage & ashland, i happen to reach into my armrest/compartment and there gleaming in the streetlight is my missing battery. something finally goes right! then i get parking like 1.5 blocks away from schubas. cool. then i'm the first one in line and and get first dibbs on my territory for the night. i am well settled in by the time the 6 parts 7 get on stage, and i go on to shoot a most enjoyable evening. to be continued...