NINventure Kansas City!

The backstory:

Kourt and I had wanted to maybe do more than one NIN show on this tour, but after thinking about it and looking over our finances at ticket purchase time, we decided to be responsible adults and just do the one show nearby. The cost of travel and lodgings to any of the other nearest shows would have been prohibitive.

Recently, however, we ended up selling Kourt's second car. The Jetta had been sitting, neglected, in the driveway for over a year, waiting to be fixed and cleaned up and sold, and when we finally got it ready we actually got a lot more for it than we expected. Yay for low mileage! So, when Trent tweeted about raising money for Eric, it just so happened that we had some money left from the car sale.

So Kourt called me up that night saying she needed me to talk her out of spending money on something, because that's what she does when she's not sure if I'll agree with a large purchase. I'd been off the internet for the most part for a while, so I hadn't seen Trent's posts, but when she told me about it (despite the fact that usually I'd balk on spending $300 bucks on... well... anything) I couldn't really see a downside to donating.

I probably should have been really excited from that point on, but to be honest I've been really trying to stay off the interwebz and spend the time I needed to spend on my to-do list. I've got some high-priority stuff to focus on. So it didn't really hit me until last weekend. And then on Monday night it finally REALLY hit me, and I went directly from "I get to meet Trent!" to "Holy shit, I'm going to meet Trent..." I had absolutely nothing to have autographed except the hat I put Rob's AIR patch on, and that just didn't seem like a great idea. I had no idea what to say. And I was fairly sure I'd say something dumb to embarrass myself.

By Tuesday night, though, I was back to being really excited. Kourt and I stopped at a local independent record store and had a nice convo with the NIN fan behind the counter. We ended up picking up copies of TDS and The Slip to have signed, which were a) the only NIN CDs they had and b) conveniently appropriate. Kourt had been a NIN fan from way back, but lost track of what Trent was up to during the long down time after TDS. I became a fan just before The Slip came out and got her caught up again.

The NINventure:

We went to bed at midnight on Tuesday night, thinking we'd sleep a full eight hours and be on the road by 10am. Unfortunately, I woke up at 4:30 and could not get back to sleep. It was weird and frustrating because I hadn't gotten any sleep after work Monday night and only about 2 hours of napping in during the afternoon on Tuesday, so I knew if I couldn't get myself un-excited and get a few more hours of sleep I'd be in trouble driving back after the show. I finally managed to play games on the web until I got tired again and caught about 2 1/2 hours before finally getting up at 9:30.

Kourt had to do some stuff at work before we could leave, so we stopped by there and didn't actually get on the road until 11:30. (We're never on time with these things, so we weren't surprised.) I'd picked out a tank top to wear and brought my With Teeth hoodie for when it got cold or rained, and realized about halfway into the drive that I probably should have thought out my wardrobe better. Hoodie on, I was too hot. Hoodie off, I was freezing. But whatever, as the weather got shittier I just resigned myself to being in the hoodie.

We arrived at about 3. There weren't many cars in the lot yet and only a few people by the gate. We milled around the gate area for a bit as more and more people showed up for the meet and greet, watching deliveries come in and out and the staff setting up the presale tents. At about 3:30 or so they lined us up to get our presale tix and had all the donors stand under a tree to wait. (I wondered if they weren't trying to get us struck by lightning to thin our numbers a bit.)

The meet and greet:

At this point Deighe and Casee showed up with their husbands, so we got to talk a little before they got the donors together to take us inside for the meet and greet. We only got to chat a little while, though, because they then lined us up to have our bags searched and get our hand stamps (for $300 donors) and purple stickers (for $1000 donors). After everyone got through security (with only minimal confusion, I might add) JT came out to tell us how things were going to go. Based on the stories of those who had gone to previous meet and greets we were expecting a more unstructured event, but the sheer number of people involved have necessitated a more structured approach. We were told to have one and only one item to get signed and that we'd be lined up to go past the band and meet them and get our autographs. After that we'd be lined up again, and each donor and their guest would have their pic taken with the band as a group.

So, we headed down into the venue and around the side of the stage to the back of the venue where there was this... shack. Well, maybe not a shack, so much, since it wasn't enclosed, but it was a covered storage area of some sort. Kind of weird. A few people at a time were led up the ramp into the sheltered area for autographs. Kourt and I were about a third of the way through the line, which moved pretty quickly. Brett and Leo were there, standing around just being Brett and Leo.

I let Kourt go first, but honestly I didn't hear much of what she said to the guys. Robin was first at the table. We had a kind of awkward conversation. He's rather soft-spoken, and I was rather at a loss for anything to say. To be completely honest, I think the guys in the band are extremely talented and great performers, but I'm a NIN fan because of Trent, and I don't have any real emotional attachment to whoever he's currently paying to play the live shows. It's the lyrics that have gotten inside my head, really, and they don't have anything to do with that. I don't really even remember what I said to Robin. Something came up about if we were from KC or not, I remember that much. His hair was fantastic, though.

Justin was next, and he thanked us for donating to help Eric. I thanked him for doing all this to help raise the money, especially since this was going to be my last NIN show and it made for a really great way to kind of bring my live NIN experiences to a close. He assured me that I'd really love the setlist, and I said I was sure I would.

Next was Trent, and I was really surprised that I didn't completely clam up. I introduced myself, and he said, "This is your last NIN show?" I said yeah, and then said that we'd wanted to have him sign our car but that security wouldn't let us bring it into the venue with us. He laughed, and then said, "You car?" I explained that we'd painted the stripe from The Slip down the sides of our car, and he said I should send them a pic. I said we had the pic on our camera and we were going to show him, but Kourt had it. And I thanked him for doing the whole fundraising thing.

They had Ilan last at the table, and I thanked him for doing all this and said I was looking forward to the show. Really quick convo. His hair, too, is really fabulous. I kinda wanted to touch it.

I joined Kourt in the second line and we Twittered our excitement while we waited. I was just happy that I'd not only managed not to completely embarrass myself, but that I'd actually gotten Trent to laugh.

When they finally got everybody through the first line, Rob came out to take the pics. They lined the band up against the brick wall that, I assume, was the back of the venue itself. When Kourt and I got up to take our pic Kourt stood inbetween Trent and Justin and I got inbetween Trent and Robin, saying that "we should put Trent between the lesbians." Justin started cracking up, and Trent tried to keep his "serious picture" face on but couldn't quite hold it with Justin shaking with laughter on the other side of Kourt. He let out a... chortle? It was funny. Once Rob had gotten the pic, I said we were going to use that pic on our Christmas cards, and Trent said that, yeah, we should do that. I kind of wanted to thank Rob for the patch I'd put on my hat, but I didn't want to hog time when there was such a long line behind us.

Once our pic was done, we went back down the ramp to line up on the little sidewalk leading back around to the seats, but after a few minutes it started raining on us and they let us come back up under the shelter to wait while they finished the pics. We kind of hoped once they were done that we could catch Rob and talk to him, but once they had us all photographed he got us together to film a little video for Eric, and then he left. They took the $1000 donors on to where they'd get dinner, leaving the rest of us standing around waiting to be taken back out.

And we waited.

And waited.

The young security dude said he didn't know why it was taking so long, and that he didn't want to go ask because he'd been assured that they'd come back for us when they were ready. I thought they were probably waiting until the presale people had been let in, but when I tweeted that Casee tweeted back that the presale line was already in. Eventually JT showed up and thanked us for our patience and assured us that it wouldn't be much longer. And after about another ten minutes he came back and let us into the venue.

The show:

Kourt and I made our way first to the bathroom and then to the merch table. I got the olive green shirt with the white logo on the front and the "Wave Goodbye" logo on the back without the concert dates on it. Kourt got the black shirt with the dates and the turquoise green logo. By then we were kind of hungry, too, so we split a funnel cake. Funnel cake isn't really on my diet, but as Lisa said, NIN/JA day is splurge day!

Our seats were even better than we expected. Nine rows back, center section, by the aisle on Robin's side. By the time we sat down, it was FUCKING FREEZING! I ended up putting my new shirt on between the tank top and the hoodie just for the extra warmth. We tweeted while we waited for Street Sweeper Social Club to start, and made some small talk with the people around us.

Our section was just about half full when SSSC took the stage. They were phenomenal! Some people stayed seated during their set, and that blew my mind.

After their set we went up and had a smoke and then went back to our seats. The break inbetween SSSC and NIN was a lot shorter than I expected, which was fine by me. With no crowd jumping around, the temperature was really uncomfortable.

The setlist started with Now I'm Nothing/Terrible lie, which I was hoping we'd get. Then right into Discipline, March Of The Pigs (which is really odd to see live without being in a pit, I have to say. I couldn't jump around as much as I wanted to, because when I did I ended up taking an armrest to the thigh, which is rather painful.), The Frail and (thankfully!) The Wretched, Piggy (Nothing Can Stop Me Now), The Becoming (which was the one song I most wanted to hear live -- it's my all time favorite, and I was blown away), Burn, Gave Up, Echoplex, The Fragile (yay!!), The Way Out Is Through, Wish, Survivalism, Physical, The Hand That Feeds, and Head Like A Hole. For an encore we got Hurt, which was kind of annoying because it seems to be an open invitation for idiots to yell dumb things like "happy birthday" and make obnoxious "woooo!" noises. My only complaints during NIN's set were that the idiots behind us kept talking really loud about stuff like the girl's insistence that she could sing the songs better than Trent because his voice was worn out. Oh, and the couple beside us who kept having to squeeze past us again and again for more beer and bathroom trips. Seriously, how many fucking cups of beer do you have to drink during a show? You miss shit while you're gone, and by the end I can't imagine they were able to remember much of what they saw. But whatever, their loss. And the dude in front of me kept swaying side to side and blocking my view, so several times I had to kind of straddle the armrest between Kourt and I so I could watch Trent over her shoulder. But still, none of that was enough to really impact how perfect the whole show was.

After NIN we went up and had another quick smoke, and tweeted that any of our twitter pals who wanted to grab a cheap dinner after Jane's should meet us at The Slip Car. We went back down to our seats and waited for Jane's Addiction, which I was hoping would really impress me.

I guess I just don't "get" Jane's. It was a good performance, but I can't say I enjoyed it half as much as SSSC. And their fans are annoying. Everyone was drunk, I was starting to get a contact high, and there was a lot more flailing around than seemed warranted by the music. Oh, and because of the shitty Missouri weather, Dave wasn't even shirtless. About two-thirds of the way through their set Kourt and I made our way back up to the lawn area to sit down where doing so wouldn't be disrespectful to the band.

After the show:

By the time we left and met up with Casee at The Slip Car, Deighe and her husband had already gone back to their hotel. We made plans to meet at the Waffle House near their hotel to hang out and eat. However, it took Kourt and I a good hour to get out of the parking jam and finally find their hotel and then ride with Casee and her husband to the Waffle House. We had a good time hanging out over waffles and eggs and such, and finally got back on the road home by about 1:30. I was exhausted, but still running on residual excitement to keep me awake for the drive. Finally, a trip that didn't include any drama or catastrophies!

Once Kourt gets the vids and pics edited and uploaded I'll post them on here. We got some good stuff, which is the upside to having NIN start their set in daylight. Usually once a concert is done and we get home I have this sort of withdrawal thing. Post-show depression or something. But it's like I have closure on the whole thing. As much as I'd love to see another show, I'm totally satisfied with this being the closing chapter on my live NIN experiences.

It couldn't have been a more perfect day.

So Many People are gonna miss you guys...

This may be a bit late in coming, but I've been too busy lately for this to have settled in my mind, I guess. But since it's finally sunk in and I've finally got time to blog about it, I have to say I'm a bit of a sad panda.

I'll start from the beginning, and I guarantee you this won't be a short story.

It all started December 3, 2007, just after midnight. I had the night off at the convenience store, but it was the middle of the holiday season so I had a ton of stuff to do at the shop. I'd planned to stay all night. Lindsay had come over to chat. Kourt and I had made plans for a middle-of-the-night dinner, so as soon as Lindsay left I headed home. I listen to the radio in my car because I have an old Oldsmobile that isn't equipped with a CD player, and at that point I usually listened to a local station that plays lots of 80s music. I'm not sure why, but that night I switched over to one of the local rock stations for the short commute home.

I didn't know it at the time, but I tuned in just in time for "The Evolution," which is a full hour of metal. Generally, it's crappy metal. Sorry, E-Man, but you play some awful shit on Sunday nights. But I forgive you because on December 3, 2007, you played So Many People by Neurosonic at the exact moment when I was driving home.

Of course, you didn't bother to tell anyone that's what you were playing. I had to go home and google the lyrics to figure out what it was. And that's exactly what I did, which is also really unusual for me. Usually when I hear an interesting song on the radio I just make some kind of mental note to look it up later, and then promptly misfile the note. This time, though, I made Kourt wait while I googled the song before we left for dinner. My search turned up the video:



After dinner I came back to the shop and googled Neurosonic again, thinking I'd look up the rest of their music and see if it was any good (because we all know having one good song isn't necessarily indicative of the quality of the rest of the catalogue). I listened to the samples on iTunes, and then went to their MySpace page to see if they had full-length songs on there. And to my surprise the first things I saw on the top of the MySpace page as it loaded were:

December 3
Springfield, MO
Remmington's

My first thought was that they were a local band, and the radio station had played them because they had the show coming up, but no, they're from Canada. And I suppose they probably included the song in the playlist that night to promo the show, but the weird thing is that the concert was sponsored by the OTHER rock station in town. The venue also happened to be right across the street from my shop. At first I figured it would be imprudent to spend the money on a concert ticket, especially since I had to work that night and would only be able to see a couple of songs at most, but for some reason I clicked through to the details about the show.

Because it was sponsored by 106.7, it cost $1.06 to get in.

Of course I went. Only got to see two songs, but they were awesome. Oh, and later that night they stopped at the convenience store to fill up, and I got to have a very short conversation with Jason Darr as I was ringing up his purchases.

Anyway, I was totally hooked. In the spring of '08 they opened for Puddle of Mudd, and Kourt and I went all the way out to Oklahoma City to see them play. They fucking rocked. Plus, I got pics with all of them, a signed poster, and big sweaty hugs from Troy and Jacen.

I also almost gave them all the flu, but luckily I think I never heard anything about them all coming down with anything.

We didn't even stay to see Puddle of Mudd.

After that tour they kind of disappeared, periodically posting short updates on their MySpace page and releasing one more video, but no more tours were announced. I hoped they were in the studio working on another album, since they'd been playing some new material in their live shows when we saw them.

Meanwhile, I got sucked into the world of NIN. To be honest, Neurosonic had a lot to do with that. They got me listening to that rock station more often, which happens to be the only one in town that consistently plays any NIN at all. And Darr's a huge NIN fanboy.

Anyway, the announcement recently appeared on their MySpace that Neurosonic is no more. Troy and Darr both got married (lucky girls, whoever they are) and Shane and Jacen both have other projects going. I was really hoping that once the NIN/JA tour was over and the dreaded "break" hit us, I'd have new Neurosonic to keep me occupied for a bit.

But I guess not.

Anyway, I'm sad to see them go. They were fucking awesome live, their one album (Drama Queen. Go get it now.) was amazing (seriously, So Many People is probably my least favorite song on the album now), and they're just genuinely nice guys.

Bad pics and mystery waves aside, I think I did okay.

The Plinky prompts have sucked ass for the past few days. I feel like they hit a high around the "zombie preparedness" prompt and then quickly rolled downhill. I didn't even bother with yesterday's. Not only was it lame, but I'm supposed to be busy with Art Walk preparations.

To be honest, I've been mostly busy with napping and fighting to stay awake between naps. That damn truck stop wore me the fuck out. It was definitely an interesting experience, though. They go through an awful lot of gravy:

Tonight I begin Week 2 of my Adventures in Corporate Mergers, and I'm more than ready for this all to be over. I miss my KG. I miss knowing exactly where everything is. I miss being all alone on my shifts. I miss the 3-minute commute. I miss knowing what the fuck I'm doing!

Anyway, between sleeping and almost sleeping, I've done a few productive things. I cut my hair on Sunday. It's been a very long time since I cut my own, but it was getting really long and unruly, and I've been griping about not having the time or money for a haircut for way too long now.

Before:

After:

What you can't tell in the pics is that it's really an asymmetrical bob. Or, well, it was when I cut it. Then I washed it again, and these waves appeared out of fucking nowhere. I really don't remember them being there the last time I had short hair. But whatever, bad pics and mystery waves aside, I think I did okay.

Anyway, I guess I should get back to my Art Walk preparations.

Oh, and the Plinky prompt for today? I get my news from nin.com.

Adventures in corporate mergers

As I've mentioned before, I work at a convenience store. It's a pretty big chain, although nobody outside the midwest will probably have heard of it, unless you've watched the first Jackass movie.

Our company recently bought out another local convenience store chain. People got pissy. They liked the local chain because it was local. And it had a really big selection of food -- stuffed crust pizzas and chicken and sandwiches.... Not the pre-packaged microwavable kind, actual fresh food. Sounds great and all, I know. But first of all, it's not like big bad corporate giant swooped in and forced ma and pa convenience store owner out of business. This is a local chain with something like 40 stores whose owner approached our company and wanted to sell. So the pissy people can shove it.

Also, the pissy people should get a look behind the scenes of their beloved Cody's. The stores were fucking filthy. Kourt and I stopped by one a week or two ago and were disgusted. So it was really no surprise to me that last night when I arrived for my first night of "shadowing" at a newly converted store, the second shift staff had stories of uncovering little piles of dead bugs and such.

When I arrived, things were much cleaner. All the machines had been replaced, the store completely rebranded, and most everything in its place. There was still a great deal of confusion and chaos -- taking over and transitioning this many stores is, of course, going to come with some confusion. We didn't know the passcode for the drop safe, we had to trial-and-error our way into guessing the one and only login code for the registers, and we couldn't find half the things that we knew were supposed to be in the store.

Plus, when the transition team set the store up, they just shoved everything they couldn't find space for or didn't have time to put away into the very, very tiny back room.

(Sorry for the pic quality -- I need to clean the lens on my camera phone.)

That's the back room. All of it. And that pile of crap in the middle -- that's AFTER we started finding space for it all.

If that had been at a store as busy as mine, I'd have been a little pissed off to have to deal with it all. This store, however, is in the middle of fucking nowhere. Seriously, when I went outside to have a smoke I could hear wild animals in the distance. We saw five customers all night. Five. That half hour it took us to figure out how to log onto the register? Not a soul came onto the lot.

Anyway, my two trainees and I started poking through the big pile of crap and found interesting stuff. Outdated stuff. This pic is of the expiration date on a soda bib. Do you know how long it takes for soda syrup to expire?

Neither do I.

We've never, ever, had a soda bib expire.

I heard that before we got there, they pulled several totes full of expired chips and candy off the shelves. Isn't that comforting, Cody's fans? You've been buying stale chips for months and months now. Some of it since last June. How's that for a great convenience store experience, huh?

Not that everything K&G has done with the place seems like the greatest idea, either. Like this:

Now, I know I work in the 'hood and this store is in BFE, but no locked liquor cases? Really?

Oh, well. I guess if you only see five customers a night, it's pretty easy to keep an eye on people.

Anyway, since all the machines and fixtures were brand new and sparkling clean, and nobody came in to mess up our freshly scrubbed bathrooms, floors, or countertops, the three of us were left with pretty much nothing to do but find spots for all the stuff that had been piled in the back room that WASN'T out of date. We found new displays that hadn't been put together and stocked, squeezed the forty billion boxes of drink cups onto the available shelf space, and distributed some of the stuff out onto the shelves. When all was said and done, we had accomplished this:

I know it doesn't look all that much better, but really, that's all the floor space available in that room. All the backstock fits on the shelf, and once they get the outdated product out of there it should be a workable workspace.

I go back tonight for another epically boring eight hours of thumb-twiddling. I'll probably teach them how to clean the coffee pots and soda nozzles, write up some instruction sheets for future reference, and then maybe go out front and see how many coyotes I can get to howl at 2am.

Misty watercolor memories of the imaginary buildings I designed

I've been scanning and uploading all the many, many pictures I've been keeping in boxes and assorted albums from earlier portions of my life. Somebody seriously needed to pry the fucking camera out of my fingers in college. I'm surprised I didn't bankrupt myself buying film.

Yes, I went to college before people had digital cameras, kids. In fact, we didn't take laptops to class (we didn't have them), nobody I knew carried a cell phone, and most of us didn't have a computer in our dorm rooms. We didn't have wireless anything. I remember switching from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95. In fact, I took a class during my freshman year where we learned to use the internet!

But I digress.

Anyway, I've had hundreds and hundreds -- probably a couple thousand, but I haven't counted -- of photos sitting around in storage, and I recently decided to accept the reality that I'm never, ever going to get around to putting them all in proper albums. So I'm storing them digitally, so at least they're indexed and accessible.

And the most recent pile of pics I scanned into my photobucket account were pics I took of my architecture school projects through the years. A few are linked above. I might be kind of biased, but I think I did some pretty cool shit.

No more tornados, please / I kinda want to buy my Neurosonic tickets now out of spite!

If you've read my blog on my store page from Monday, you know my store flooded in the first round of storms that came through. I was in here hunkered down while tornados ripped up everything around Springfield -- like they always do, never really coming close to downtown. I'd sandbagged the back door of the store, which is what we have to do in heavy rains because of how far below street level the back of the store is, the inadequacy of the drains, and the fact that everything back there seems to be constructed to dump water and debris directly into my stairwell. Well, the rains came up so fast and hard at about 7:30 that the stairwell got about 18" of water in it, which is far higher than we have ever had to sandbag before. It gushed in around the door and flowed through to the front door. No damage, luckily, but definitely a pain in the ass.

Thinking things were pretty much over for the night (once I squeegied water out the front door for a half an hour, leaving solitary puddles to mop up), I headed to the Kum & Go. Second shift had endured a short power outage and dealt with some water of their own, but things were under control when I got there. I figured the shift would proceed as normal, since usually these kinds of storms kick up in the evening, tear shit up for a while, and then move on up I-44.

About 2:30am I was counting down the registers and doing shift change. There were a couple of police cars in the lot, three paramedics in the store, and one customer. Two girls came in out of the rain (which had just suddenly kicked up), totally drunk and saying they'd walked from Ziggies because one of the girls refused to let the other girl accept a ride from a creepy stranger, and they didn't want to get a cab. They proceeded to make complete idiots of themselves for about fifteen minutes before finally heading down National. On foot, because by then the rain had stopped.

Evidently that was the calm you always hear about right before a tornado hits.

We were there at the counter laughing about the girls when the rain suddenly kicked up again. Hard. Winds, too, to the point that the rain was going almost horizontal.

Then it went something like this:

"Oh, man, those girls are going to be sorry they didn't get a cab." ::wind starts blowing doors open, can barely see through the rain:: "Um..." ::everyone backs away from doors:: "Guys, I think maybe we should..." ::80 mph winds slam both doors open, debris appears out of nowhere, definite feeling the windows were about to shatter:: "AAAAAAHHH!!!" ::everyone runs for the back room::

Okay, nobody actually screamed, but we ran like hell. Everybody but one of the EMTs, who was in the bathroom convinced he was about to die a very undignified death while peeing.

I don't know if it's been confirmed, but whether or not it actually touched down I'm pretty sure it was a tornado that demolished Harry Cooper Supply, skimmed over the Kum & Go (luckily), and then hit the AT&T building, whatever other warehouse it tore down, and the Krispy Kreme. I know the only reason we didn't lose all our windows was that the doors open either way on both sides of the lobby, so the wind just threw them open and the pressure didn't build up enough. We lost power for about five minutes, the EMT who was just getting off duty had her car window smashed by a flying trash can, we lost most of the panels from our sign, a bunch of the metal face plates on the gas pumps were torn down as well as one of the endcaps, and a crapload of insulation and wood from Harry Cooper ended up in our parking lot.

I took those with my cell phone, and they really don't adequately capture the scene, but whatever.

The good thing was, though, that I had an ambulance crew and a half there with me, so if anything had happened I wouldn't have had to wait for a dispatch.

So, you know, I was really glad when my shift ended. I was exhausted by the time I fell into bed.

Then yesterday (and here comes the big rant -- I thought maybe if i let it stew overnight I'd be less pissed off, but no) I go to my store only to be ambushed by my mother over wanting to see Neurosonic in Oklahoma City in March.

See, a few months back I ordered a K&G polar fleece to wear at work. Well, actually, I mistakenly ordered two, and couldn't return the extra. I was going to post it on eBay or something, but my mom volunteered to buy it instead and rip out the logo stitching, since they really are very nice jackets -- thus the $55 price tag. She wrote me a check. I thought I deposited it right away, but evidently I forgot about it because she called my Sunday night saying that it hadn't cleared her bank yet. I found the check still sitting in my purse and, Monday afternoon, told her that I had located it and would deposit it. She said, "There, now you have an extra $55." And me, like an idiot, said, "Yeah, I can use it towards those Neurosonic tickets."

After 32 years in this family, you'd think I'd know better.

See, I've had to borrow quite a bit of money from my parents to get Fashioned By Jaye running. I still borrow just a little here and there to fill the gaps. I don't get much money for myself. The only reason I was able to buy Kourt a Christmas gift, dye my hair, and go out for New Years (the subject, of course, of another of mom's little financial lectures) was that Kourt's parents sent me a monetary gift for Christmas. I mooch food off mom and dad on a regular basis, and otherwise I mostly eat Kum & Go food that I don't have to pay for. We've eaten out recently only because, again, Kourt's parents sent us restaurant gift cards. They bought us Guitar Hero III as well, or else we still wouldn't have it. I buy gas and cigarettes, food and litter for the cats, household necessities, and occasionally fast food or snacks at the Kum & Go when I feel like I've got the five bucks to spare. Other than my work uniform and the stuff I got for Christmas (thanks to Kourt's parents sending a gift card), I haven't bought clothes in probably a year. Haven't made an iTunes purchase of over a dollar in at least six months. Honestly? I didn't even buy Neurosonic's album. I got it from Lindsay. Every concert I've seen in the last couple of years -- a grand total of 2, mind you -- were on either Kourt's dime or her parents'. If it weren't for Kourt's parents, I wouldn't really have much in the way of non-necessities, and Kourt can attest to the fact that I really don't like accepting so much stuff from them. Really, the vast majority of my money funnels right into the store.

But evidently I don't know anything about making sacrifices or setting priorities or any of that. I'm not entitled to occasionally do something I really want to do, even if it's not expensive, unless Mom approves, because she basically owns me. And, of course, there's no way in the world she would understand why going to a concert might be something I really want to do.

I'm 32 fucking years old! What the hell?!?!

And the money I've borrowed is a loan. A loan. Like, we have a contract and an amortization schedule and the whole nine yards. No bank would be able to swoop in and tell me I couldn't buy tickets or spend gas money to see a concert. It's not like I wanted to be indebted to my parents like this, and it's not like I'm not trying like hell to get to the point where I'm not under their financial thumb. And I know that if I was this gung-ho about going to see some gospel quartet in concert, she'd just buy me the tickets and give me the gas money, because that's an entirely noble thing to want to do. Rock concert? In a bar? Nope, can't possibly be worthwhile.

I know I pissed her off pretty royally, too, though, because the last thing I said after a twenty-minute yelling match was, "You know now that you've brought it up and we've argued about it, even if Kourt bought them or somehow I got the tickets for free, you'd never believe me that I didn't just go buy them myself, which is exactly why your kids don't tell you things!" Which, yes, was a teensy bit meaner than I usually get when arguing with her, but also very true. And no matter what happens, I'm sure we'll have this fight all over again in March, 'cause there's no way in hell I'm not going.

I don't know why I didn't just do the smart thing Monday afternoon and say, "Yeah, that's $55 you won't have to lend me this month," buy the tickets anyway, and then make up a story to tell her in March about getting them for free or really cheap or somebody else buying them.

God, it's like being in junior high and high school all over again. Back then I chalked it up to me hitting puberty at the same time she hit menopause (oh what fun it is to have parents old enough to be your grandparents), but really I think she's just like that. Encouraging and supportive right up until you make a choice she wouldn't make if she were in your shoes, at which point she steps in to make you conform to her way of thinking. I told her that, too. She ought to still be nice and pissed off when I come into the store tonight.

It's not like I don't appreciate the fact that they work in the store with no pay so that I can work a second job, because without that help I'd have been totally screwed a long time ago, due to quite a few circumstances I had no way to forsee (it's not like I didn't spend extensive time writing a 60 page business plan or anything). But most of the time I don't even feel like I have control of my own business anymore. Not to be discriminatory, but a 70-year-old couple would not be my first choice for employees, from the standpoint of the store's image. She shares way more of my life story with customers than I'm comfortable with, and feels way more entitled to making off-hand decisions about the business than any real employee would. But I don't have to pay my parents, so that's what I'm stuck with.

I guess on the positive side, she does clean like there's no tomorrow and I know she's not stealing from me.

Anyway, I've come to the conclusion that dealing with the stress of working a full five days at the Kum & Go (life really got a ton easier when I dropped down to four nights a week) is better than the stress of being financially shackled to my mother, so I'm putting myself back on the "work myself to an early grave" track. The less free time I have, the less excuse I have to deal with my mom. So there's two bonuses.

Maybe with the raise I'm getting, I can get her off my back totally.

A stormy day in the life of the entrepreneur

The adorable, quaint old building in which Fashioned By Jaye resides is great in so many ways. It used to be the home of Sass' Jewelry -- from about the turn of the century until I belive the mid-60s or so -- and was built in the late 1800s. It's sturdy as all hell -- even after sitting vacant and abandonned and water damaged for decades, it's structurally very sound. It's got those great display case windows in the front. We love the vaulted ceiling and the mezzanine space. If you haven't seen the old safe in the back of the store -- rusty and unable to lock now after decades of water damage, but still a really neat piece of history to look at -- come in some time and ask to see it. It's the kind of safe that you'd need to keep Bonnie and Clyde away from your diamonds -- literally.

But it's also below grade in the rear. If you've ever come in the back entrance of the store off the parking lot by the bus depot, you know just how far below ground level the back part of the store is. Makes a great tornado shelter. Also makes a great swimming pool if it rains too hard too fast.

And boy, did it rain too hard to fast tonight.

It's flooded in here before. Actually, the first time it flooded was the weekend right before our grand opening. I was sitting in my tent at Cider Days on Walnut Street, watching the little concession-stand-container boats float down the river that was running down the street, when my landlord called to say we had a bit of a water problem in the store. That was a bit of an understatement. When I got to the store, we had about an inch of water in all the back rooms. Thank goodness most everything I had back there was stored in plastic bins, and my landlord (who's really great) had moved anything not plastic up out of the danger zone. No harm, no foul.

It's actually a good thing it happened then, because from that point on we knew to make sure nothing sat on the floor that could possibly be damaged by water. We've also devised a sandbag system for the back door, where most of the water tends to flow in. It's worked pretty well so far.

That is, until about 7:30, when the rains and winds kicked up really hard. I was on the phone, assuring everyone that I was okay sitting here in my little brick and plaster cave, when I turned around and saw the water. I'd sandbagged the door, so I was a little taken aback that the water had come in anyway, especially the amount of water I was suddenly standing in. I headed toward the back door to see what could have possibly gone wrong.

The water was coming in around the sides of the door, about a foot ABOVE the sandbags.

Of course, there was no stopping it.

And thus the FBJ River was born.

I just spent about a half an hour pushing water out the FRONT door with a squeegy, so much of the standing water is gone. Nothing's really been damaged, but I'm already exhausted and the night is still young. Let's hope there's no more flash floods coming our way.

I hope everyone makes it through tonight's storms okay.

I’m no conspiracy theorist, but...

...it is awfully weird. They were at it on Thanksgiving, too.

Google "chemtrails" and decide for yourself.