Hell Week

I just had the worst week in a long time. Some good things, but mostly bad.

I suppose start with the good.

Last Sunday I recorded the bass tracks. It was a lot of fun, but really hard at the same time. I've never been a great bass player, and I wrote most of the parts on guitar. But when it came time to play them on bass, they were a lot harder than I thought. The strings are thicker and harder to press down, the frets are spaced farther apart, and the neck is longer. So after about 30 minutes of warming up, I got to work. Got most of them down in one take, including Anthem (the video from a few posts ago), which was the one I thought I would never get in one take. There are some quick changes that I thought would screw me up. But once my arm got loosened up, it was no problem. I listened to some rough cuts of the songs all put together, and I can honestly say I am happy with the results. Wyatt wants to redo one of the vocal tracks, and then we're done. We sent Aaron's dad the other tracks and he is working his magic on them. I think we're redoing the vocals on Thursday, and the rest of the tracks should be done on Friday, so it shouldn't be too much longer.

Lynn and Doug ended up needing me from Monday to Wednesday, so it didn't interfere with the recording, which was nice.

However, on Sunday (well it started late Saturday) the transmission went out in my truck. No first gear at all. GREAT. I worked it out with my brother that I would take his car on Monday and he would take my truck to the shop to look at it. So I load up his car and head up to Lynn and Doug's house. Get up there with no problems, but when I get there I see Doug's car is still there. OK. Maybe I'm early and he leaves in a little bit. Well I go inside and he informs me he isn't flying and they don't need me. GREAT. AGAIN. SO now I'm pissed off. I reworked my plans to be here, drove an hour up here, and now I'm not needed. I wasn't sure what to do, so for the time being I hung outside in the sun listening to music with the cousins. Again, I decided I had nothing else to do, so I stayed up there until Wednesday.

Around nine that night, Erik calls me and says my tranny is in bad shape and not to drive it. OK. But he needs his car back for work the next day. GRRR. So I drove home at about 10, dropped off his car, and then went to the BP to talk with Aaron. He said I could borrow his civic again, which was awesome. So when he got off, we went to his house, grabbed the civic, and I took off back to Lynn and Doug's. I could have just gone home, but I was in a shitty mood and wanted the drive to think. Finally got back up there around 2 AM.

Tuesday was no better. Hung out during the day, and then went to James' baseball game in the evening. He's really good, but I've never seen one of his games, so that was nice to see. His team was annihilating the other team, which was great, but then my uncle called the other team a 'bunch of slack-jawed fagots'. WHAT!? It took all the self control I had not to throw an elbow in his face. I was pissed. So I walked away and smoked a cigarette.

During all of this, I was texting Paul talking to him about his car. It hasn't worked for about a month, and we've been trying to schedule a time for Erik to look at it. Well Paul is getting pissed at Erik, because he isn't finding time to look at it. Erik has had a lot of side jobs lately, so he would tell Paul maybe Friday, or maybe Sunday kinda thing. Well Paul didn't understand the word maybe, and is all worked up about it. So he starts bitching about it to me. After a little bit, I said, I'm not going to sit here and defend my brother for something he has no control over. He just says, LOL it's no biggie. HUH? He just spent the last 15 minutes saying how angry he was at Erik, then he says no biggie? I just said whatever, but then he comes back and starts bitching about me. Saying the next time I need help with a stereo or whatever, he'll be busy. Seriously? So now I'm being punished for something my brother did, when he didn't even do anything! He just kept bitching and bitching, and finally I just said I don't know why we're fighting, but I'm done. So now Paul isn't talking to me. I figured I would give him a couple days to cool off, but he still won't answer my calls. Urg. So I was in a shitty mood for the rest of the night.

Wednesday nothing exciting happened, so I came home. My mom left for the cabin a little before I got home, so I was home alone. My dad was leaving from his job site in Wisconsin on Thursday to head up to the cabin, and I was going to go up on Friday.

Erik said there were some bad sensors in my transmission that needed to be replaced, and that should fix the problem. So he ordered them and it became a waiting game. Aaron said I could keep his car for the weekend which was very nice of him.

Thursday night I went to see TOOL. They're one of my favorite bands, and this was the fourth time I've seen them. Erik, my friend Josh, my friend Matt and I all went. We had floor tickets, so we got there a bit early to get a good spot. As we're walking into the arena, we see seats on the floor. OK? Turns out, it was assigned seating on the floor. We checked our tickets, and we were 8th row, dead center. Sweet! Turns out it was still worth it sitting outside for 6 hours to get tickets. We missed the opener, which was fine, and about 30 minutes later TOOL came on. I can honestly say this was not only the greatest TOOL show I've ever seen, but it was the greatest concert I've ever seen. The lighting was new and amazing, and they played a lot of songs that we've never seen live before. It was definitely the best thing to take my mind off my shitty week. After the show, we dropped Matt and Josh off, and went home.

Friday, loaded up the car and went up north. I was about a mile from Lynn and Doug's house (it's on the way) when I started to notice a brown mist on my windshield. I was close enough to their house, so I stopped there to check it out. I lifted the hood and see oil EVERYWHERE. SHIT! Then I noticed that the oil cap was gone. Nowhere to be seen. Now it's 3 PM on the Friday before the 4th of July. Trying to find parts might be a problem. So I borrowed one of their cars and went to NAPA. Nope. They could have one shipped by Saturday morning, but nothing today. Crap. So I went to O'Riely's (would have been my first choice, if I knew where it was first) and luckily they had one. So $5 later, drove back and put it on. I checked the oil, and I didn't loose as much as I thought, so I topped it off, and then sprayed down the entire engine bay with brake cleaner to get rid of the oil. All in all about an hour delay.

Oh yeah, when I was up at Lynn and Doug's earlier in the week, I lost my license, but didn't realize it until Wednesday when I got home. I only used it once at the gas station up there, but Doug went and checked and they didn't have it. I stopped there to clean my windshield, and figured it couldn't hurt to ask. When I did they said someone had already been in and they didn't have it. But then another cashier asks what my name is, and then she holds it up. YAY! Turns out they looked in the wrong drawer. Oh well. At least I got it back.

The rest of the drive was boring, just how I like it when I want to think. Got up there around 6 PM, and we went out for dinner. It was me, my parents, and my grandparents. Erik doesn't really come up anymore when everyone else is there. He'll usually go up with friends when it's empty.

On Saturday, Lynn and the kids showed up. Doug had to fly. James also brought a friend, Jay. Then all hell broke loose. Our cabin isn't huge, and having 10 people there, 4 of which are high energy teenagers, is intense.

Over the weekend, my dad and I re-carpeted our pontoon, because the old carpet was 26 years old and rotting away. Was a huge ordeal, and we both got covered in the high strength adhesive. We could barely move our fingers when we were done. And since it's outdoor carpet glue, it isn't water soluble. So we had to bathe in gasoline. It's a good thing I like the smell of gas, because I smelled like it for the rest of the day. The rest of the weekend we hung out and had a good time. It was great to watch the fireworks over the lake too. I would have liked to have been out on the boat, but we had to let the glue dry. So we watched them from the deck instead.

On Monday everyone went home, and it was nice to have some peace and quiet again. No problems getting home this time, and at 11 I met up with Aaron to give him back his car. We both drove to his house, left one car there, and then he drove me home. Erik got the sensors for my truck over the weekend, and got them installed. Fortunately it fixed the problem, and my truck is as good as new.

I just got a text from one of my cousins saying they might need me tonight/tomorrow, depending on if Doug can get home or not. So now I'm just sitting around waiting to hear from them. I really hope if they do, they actually need me.

Well that's about it. My week from hell. But I survived it. Hopefully Paul will get out of his funk and answer his damn phone. God, I hope this week is better than last week.

143

_Kevin

TOOL - Schism