After much debate about whether it was a justifiable expense or not, I went ahead and bought a van.  It’s not a new van, in fact it’s pretty old and needs a good amount of work done to it before it’s road worthy, but I feel confident about my decision.  Next year I plan on doing a lot of touring so it makes sense.  My goal is to get it fixed up little by little and have it road-worthy by spring.  I will tell you one thing: parts for one-ton vans are way more expensive than what I’m used to! Sheesh.  I had a muffler put on it already and that was around $200, which is way more than I’m used to spending.   At any rate, I’m gonna blog about it from time to time, just in case people are curious about the experience, or want to share their experience fixing up something like this.

Recommendations for a name are also welcome.

Word is blog

Yesterday I got news that my good friend and fellow Rhyemsayers artist Eyedea (Michael Larson) passed away. I’m still processing this and very much in disbelief that he is gone.  This was my dude and I’m kinda fucked up right now.  I’m not at the point where i can even really reminisce or do shit like that yet.  I’m really just mourning the loss of one of my dudes who died way too early. He wasn’t even 30.

Here is a star-tribune piece on him: http://www.startribune.com/entertainment/music/105151444.html?page=1&c=y

“…when you young kids burn them draft cards, you’re saying to us ‘old fools, one day old fool you gonna get this country in a war and we not gonna fight for you, which means you’re gonna have to fight it yourself!‘ But we old fools got news for you youngsters, before we ever have to fight our own wars we’ll quit havin em.”- Dick Gregory (from the Light Side: The Dark Side)”

“You youngsters got a big job today. You gotta ask a lotta questions.  The one question you gotta ask loud and clear is a simple question. That question is, if democracy is as good as we tell you it is, then why in the hell are we running all over the world trying to ram it down peoples throat with a gun? And the day you youngsters work to make this democracy work right for the first time, that’s the day we can bring the guns home. Because you see, anything good you dont have to force on people–they will steal it.” Dick Gregory (from the Light Side: The Dark Side)

Word is Blog

During the first month I stopped drinking, the most overwhelming feeling I had was the need to talk.  I’ve got plenty of friends that drink a lot, but I didn’t really feel like any of them were at the same place I was at with it, so I felt cut off; almost as if I had drawn a line in the sand that I couldn’t cross out of respect for them.  The last thing I wanted to do was to come off preachy or like I was better than anybody else just because I had managed to stop drinking for a few weeks.  Hell, everybody that drinks has taken time away from it, so what made my time away any more significant than theirs?  I couldn’t decide either, so I kept quiet, and just wrote about it here, still not talking to the people around me much about it.

After a while I realized that not talking about it might not be healthy and I decided that maybe I need to go to a meeting.  It was the only option I could think of that pretty much guaranteed that everybody in the room would understand what I was going thru. So I made the call.  I described what I was feeling to the lady on the phone and she told me since I was going on my own and had stopped on my own that it would best if I just went to a meeting where I could sit and observe first, just to see if it’s for me or not.  She asked what side of town I lived on, and when I told her, she told me there was actually a meeting going on about 2 miles from my house in about 45 minutes.  I wrote down the address, and thought about it for a few minutes.  Then I decided to go.