Second day into my blog upgrade and so far so good. Looks like my spam is being filtered a lot better now (or maybe spammers just take weekend holidays?) so for the moment I’m going to leave things as they are. If it gets bad again I guess I will just have to go back and add a verification code or something.

Today we picked up a rent-a-car and drove out to Ikea. I drive like maybe two times a year at best now and every other time it is in a different country it seems. I don’t even pay attention to what side of the road I should be driving on anymore. I just go where the other cars are going or at worst, just get out of the way of any cars aimed straight for me.

Anyhow, belive it or not today was the first time I have ever been to an Ikea before. The one here in Tokyo is a big warehouse (are they all like that?) and I have to say it was all really cheap and they had some cool stuff. We mainly just went looking considering we couldn’t fit any new shit in our apartment anyway but we did pick up some food there. Pretty fun.

So tomorrow it is back to work. Oh, and the wifey has a birthday coming up this Wednesday so everyone be nice and wish her a good one!

The princess took an afternoon nap today which meant it took us forever to get her to sleep. She finally passed out while I got up to get a cigarette and the wifey was passed out too right along side her when I came back in. I debated with myself for about an hour if I should wake her up or not but she just looked too peaceful. I figure she needs the extra hour or so for a change.

Anyhow, I spent my time upgrading WordPress and I think I finally got all the kinks worked out. To be honest, I probably had about a million other better uses for my time but the blog was on my mind tonight, now it’s not, and so there.

Now maybe I can go get a little sleep.

Welp, we finished up our show at Shibuya Eggman the day before last. We were a bit flaky in parts but I think overall the show went pretty well, especially considering it was on a weekday, it was the first time playing there, and well, considering we haven’t played out in 6 months. The venue was pretty cool — slightly smaller than I imagined for being as famous as it is. The lighting was rather awesome. Much more intricate than at any place I have played at so far.

As for the other bands, everyone was really talented, but the genres were kind of all over the place. I was rather suspecting that before we went in though. A good few of the bands were rather experimental and the others were mainly pop/rock. We were probably the louder, more mixed band playing that night. One band, Adabana, drove in all the way from Tokushima, which is in one of the southern islands of Japan, or in other words, really fucking far away. We got to chat with them a good bit before the show and they were all really nice guys — and a really fun band. I really wished we could have gone out for drinks afterwards but there just wasn’t time for it unfortunately.

Good news was that we had a really good turn out for a Wednesday night (thanks so much to everyone who came!) and the floor was decently filled by the time we got on stage. Also, the Eggman staff seemed to like us (or at least not hate us?), and suggested there were some future events coming up they would like to pass us an invitation to after our recording settles down a bit. So yeah there.

So, from here it’s back to recording and songwriting for a bit. I also have some merchandise, website updates, and etc. I want to cover in the next month or so. Busy as always, busy as always.

As for personal life, things have been a bit hectic with the house, baby, work, and everything else so I have been a bit slack about posting updates and keeping up with everyone. To be honest it doesn’t look like it is going to get much better anytime soon, but I’m going to try not to be so much of a stranger.

Oh, and the spam on this blog is slowly killing me. I’m getting like 400-500 spam comments a day at this point and really just don’t have the energy to erase/blacklist them all everyday anymore. I think I’m going to update WordPress just to see if that helps but if not, I’m either going to have to disable comments or setup one of those irritating computer generated verification code thingys that I have been trying my best to avoid for the last year. Being that I’m a bit of an attention whore, I will probably go with the verification code if it comes down to that. We will see.

Wow, I have been so busy the last few weeks. Met up with the architect about our floor plan on — uh — Saturday I think, and went in the studio for a recording on Sunday. And there was a lot of stuff in between but time has been flying by me so fast I can’t even keep up. Yesterday was a holiday here so I stayed home with the princess so the wifey could go out and get a haircut. And then the three of us went for a little walk in Daikanyama, which was really relaxing. And really needed.

Other than that, I have been trying to get together the design for some fliers for the upcoming fit show and taking care of a million other little things. Got another rehearsal tonight and then a short one on the 3rd. And from there, it’s show time.

Now I guess I should try to go be productive or something.

Well, Gifu, and getting to meet up with the family was fun, but it seems I manged to nurse my not-quite-a-cold into a fever which popped out today around lunch. Luckily I had a bottle of Advil on hand, which I’m probably about to dip into again.

Good timing of course though, because that means I should be all better before our meeting with the architect on Saturday and recording on Sunday. Right? Right?

I only wish I could be this entertained by a tissue box.

Keeping up with our trend of having absolutely no free time whatsoever, this weekend the wifey and I are heading out to Gifu to spend some time with the family (and to get a few chores done that we need to cover over there). Well, actually, the wifey is already there — or almost there. She’s on the bullet train with hopefully a decently well behaved princess (if such a thing exists). I have to work late tonight so I’m going to take a train in tomorrow morning.

Oh, and I’m sleepy.

Nothing too eventful going on this week. The princess has been a bit sick, which of course is no good, but the wifey is of course getting the blunt of that. Everything else is pretty much there. We’ve got practice tonight and we hope to run through our set like six million times in preparation for the show next month along with trying to prepare for a recording at the end of this one.

And um, yeah, that’s about it for now.

And I have six million (I like the number six million) ideas running around in my head today, which is no good considering my brain is very, very tiny.

I wanted to see if I could get this whole post in the subject line but it didn’t work so I guess I will just have to go about this the traditional way:

Saturday, we dropped off Anna at the nursery so we could go to see the architect about working out our house plans and actually hear what he was saying for once. Since we had about an hour or so to spare before, the wifey and I fit in a miniature date. Quite fun, but I have to admit, it felt a bit odd to just be on our own for once after all these months. At least initially anyway.

The meeting with the architect went better than expected and we got quite a lot accomplished. We’re still not done with the floor plan yet, but it is not too far off. Anyhow, we got a call from the nursery that the princess was running a fever so we sprinted back to pick her up. She was, and was in a rather crappy mood, but luckily it wasn’t anything too serious. She was pretty much fine after an hour or so back at home.

This weekend we actually got to watch not just one, but two movies! Amazing! It seems we can actually pull it off now with the princess being older. That is, as long as we start after we put her to sleep — and of course stop the movie like 4-5 times in the middle whenever she wakes up. We saw “Man on the Moon” on Saturday night and “Biohazard III” on Sunday night. I liked both personally. The Biohazard series has always been a bit mindless, but I’m not too much of a snob when it comes to movies. I enjoy about anything as long as it can keep me relatively interested.

Otherwise, we had a steak lunch on Sunday and went through a bottle of wine, which put me in a perfectly good mood to finally finish my taxes. I always get so much more done when I am drunk. I think I need to get drunk at work from now on.

More photos here.