After work yesterday, I drove home and made a huge platter of nachos for dinner, which Brett and I ate – as usual – in front of the TV. (Brett won’t eat at the table, which is why our dining table is pushed against a wall in the kitchen and doesn’t even have chairs in front of it, and serves mainly as a place to put the microwave and pet the cat.)

After dinner I read for awhile, then left for rehearsal. Since I’d left too early, I pulled into the 1-Stop parking lot, parked behind a U-Haul, and warmed up by singing along with my iPod for fifteen minutes. I haven’t fully warmed up vocally in YEARS. Amazing how rusty the instrument can get. I have very little resonance in my head anymore; keeping a warm tone in the sinuses is not really a natural thing to do and takes a lot of, well, practice. Fortunately I have a big ol’ resonant NOSE so my tone’s still warm enough. (Snort!)

At a quarter after seven I pulled up at Jonas’ and went inside. Kevin was playing hand drums but other than that it was just Greg and Jonas as before. We practiced until about twenty after ten, and I had a really good time. Jonas is a leeeeeeeettle bit controlling but not too horribly so, and I’ve worked with Greg before so he makes sense to me musically. By the time we were finished I was more warmed up than I’d been in ages and remembered that I love singing, dammit. There’s a portion of my head range that’s really thin and tinny, and there are still some places between ranges where I don’t have a smooth transition, but hope is not lost. I could be back in vocal shape if I just kept at it. The voice is, after all, just a muscle. Maybe I’ll start taking lessons or something.

We practiced four songs, and I really like two of them. The other two are okay, but since I don’t write myself I rarely spend much energy not liking songs someone’s actually bothered to bring into the world. We spent about twenty minutes jamming on a part of one of the songs with the keyboard’s built-in drum track going and that was a wee bit cheesy, but all in all I had a really great time and am looking forward to hearing the finished project on CD in a couple weeks. Hopefully they’ll let me post a couple MP3s here on goblinbox.com.

On the drive home I got pulled over by a Stater because I have taillight and license plate lights out. *sigh* Once again, I’ve only got $30 in my checking account so hopefully lights are ?ber cheap. Brett told me to go see Chevelle Matt at NAPA today and that if I was really lucky he might even put them in for me.

I haven’t been pulled over in ages, but this guy was extremely pleasant… probably because I was in a great mood and was all, “Hi! Howareya?” when he approached my window.

“I pulled you over tonight to let you know you’ve got a taillight out,” he began, and I promptly smiled at him and said that I was glad he’d taken the time to let me know.

Ugh.

I’m such a dork to cops, mostly because I’m afraid of them, but I’m always totally friendly and nice and respectful and the few times I’ve ever been pulled over I’ve never gotten anything more than a warning. Which is what I got last night: a fix-it ticket and a wish for a pleasant evening. All in all, not a bad cop experience. It’s a good thing I never speed, because I was totally rocking out to the iPod and had no idea how fast I was going when his lights came on behind me!
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