The poet flew in from Atlanta to rehearse with the band. he is going to take the drum seat for the upcoming tours. Rehearsing like crazy with the boys for the upcoming tour. all day and all night. five hours on, an hour for lunch, five more hours, a bit of dinner, a few more hours. Great times. can’t believe the energy of getting these five guys in the room together to play music. a super group all coming together to play all these songs. Awesome. JP from DC3 and the pawnshop drunks is playing guitar for us due to the recent disappearance of Vancouver. He is totally brilliant on the guitar, and vocals, and has a great personality. [I say that now—flash forward a few months... Hehe. You know how the road gets.] so its like a whole new band. me and father Bloopy the only original guys left now, but you would never know it. Rockaway has taken the seat for the piano man. it was just an amazing weekend. Cool photo shoot. Great jams. Good times. telling Bas later that night, ‘it just goes to show. I could have taken this craziness with half the guys ducking out at the last minute as a bad thing. could have gotten down about it. but instead I just rode it out. looked for the positives and stayed focused on what we were doing, at the task at hand, and at our goals, and it turned out better than I ever could have imagined.

In other news: the Italian stallion finally emailed me back after a long hiatus. A brief note. I don't think she's ever going to give me more than that. I don't blame her. all my back and forth would drive anybody crazy. Gave each other space for a while. More like me giving her space. I am an insane lover. An even more insane ex-lover I'm afraid. And she and I were/are neither really. Never really sure what we were. I beg her to be friends. She says its my fault and that I was the one who walked away. I say I never walked away from us being friends, just from us being lovers. She says same thing. so that's where we sit almost two years later still. Somewhere between never-friends, not-really-but almost-lovers, and common associates. Great to hear from her though.

Tampa bay just won the Stanley cup. It never snows in Tampa and no one ever ice skates there. but they beat the Alberta, Canada team. Only in America.

Ronald Reagan has passed on. Well that is an end of an era isn't it? this event now truly marks the end of the 20th century some have said. It leaves you with a feeling of ‘where is our guiding light now? where is our spark of hope?’

Last screening: checked this movie called gods and generals. Wasn't too good or bad. But just interesting to see another perspective of America’s civil war. As I experienced the film I was reminded of the little war that is raging between Americans in our own time. That being for the rights and civil liberties of our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters. Lets hope it never gets to the point of a civil war of course. But its interesting how far apart we can feel sometimes from people we are so close to in most other ways.