One more time. Ahh­h­hhh… Sunday.

I always try and keep Sun­days free from too much eco­nomic activ­ity or social oblig­a­tion. It is a big help to my men­tal health to be able to sit at home and accom­plish per­sonal tasks, catch up on domes­tic work, prac­tice music, or just relax with a book. And now that the semes­ter has ended for me, I feel par­tic­u­larly light in spirit on this Decem­ber Sunday.

I should start with yes­ter­day. Yes­ter­day morn­ing I drove to Tryon, worked for my favorite clients and made good money before going to my grandparent’s to social­ize and work on my grandfather’s new iMac. Awe­some com­puter, really fun and easy to use and work on. Then I drove home, changed into a fes­tive red and black get-up and went to MoDaddy’s to hear a band that I met last March. The Two Man Gen­tle­man Band, from New York City played two killer sets while I drank whiskey and sang all the words I knew. I love their CDs, and the guys (Andy and Fuller) are great peo­ple and very tal­ented musi­cians as well as snappy dressers (knick­ers!). I had promised them enter­tain­ment of the musi­cal vari­ety and after­wards we went to my friend Woody Pines’ house for a party pop­u­lated almost entirely by musi­cians. Woody has an awe­some old upright that has a great action for honky tonk and blues, and I sat down at it and kept it hot for nearly 3 straight hours. Some­times I ques­tions my musi­cal abil­ity, but not last night. I killed it for three straight hours, with only the brief of whiskey breaks. It felt awe­some. Like most peo­ple, I have a lotof  musi­cal poten­tial; it’s nice when it breaks through the clouds once in a while. And the clouds have been break­ing more and more often lately.

The past two Sun­days I have taken myself out to the Dripo­la­tor Cof­fee­house, pur­chased the New York Times and ate a nice big brunch of huevos rancheros with my usual dou­ble Amer­i­cano and Emergen-C. I try and look my best (not always easy after a busy Sat­ur­day night) and be socia­ble with the other Sun­day brunch­ers, and I always leave feel­ing like a mil­lion bucks. It’s a really great way for me to begin the end of my week.

I’ve had lots of new begin­nings and mile­stones these past cou­ple months. Lost an old friend/lousy room­mate. New roo­mate Henry (of the Fire­cracker Jazz Band and Squir­rel Nut Zip­pers) is an incred­i­ble musi­cian and wants to play music all the time at the house. There is so much I have to learn from him. On Thurs­day, I fin­ished my penul­ti­mate semes­ter in my soon-to-be decade-long pur­suit of an Asso­ciates degree.  Prob­a­bly have 1 A (Music The­ory I) and two Bs (Lit­er­a­ture Based Research and Cul­tural Anthro­pol­ogy). Not bad, but prob­a­bly not enough to bump me up to a 3.0 GPA, which I des­per­ately need to keep my UNC-A hopes alive.

I’m also launch­ing a new busi­ness and slowly get­ting out of the in-home com­puter biz. Not going to be a lot of long-term money in that, but I’m glad to pick up some ran­dom ser­vice as it’s usu­ally easy-money. My new busi­ness will hope­fully launch Jan­u­ary 1. I’m really excited about it — I feel it’s the begin­ning of some­thing really big for me.

Oh and some­body threw their shoes at Pres­i­dent Bush today in Iraq.