musicianshi{t|p}

I went to see Rocco Deluca recently at The Social.  I really love that guy.  I first learned of him through the rockumentary starring his record labels celeb owner/(misguided)operator, Keifer Sutherland.  Keifer guides the band on a run of shittie venues that are not well marketed playing for bar-hopping-music-”listeners” that are in their late 30’s/early-mid 40’s.  Not that the music that Rocco and his band play is not easily enjoyed across the generations, but when you starting out and getting people to “start” listening to a band, you don’t go to bars where are the yocals are expecting to see some local good ol’ boys do covers of the same songs they listen to every other night on the damn digital “kickbox”.

There are some rather funny parts of the dvd, even though I think it should have had more “music”… the best are the drunken nights of celebratory music and beer that lead Keifer to regularly lose personal property, namely cellphones.  You kind of wonder if the entire cast of 24 (or better yet, The Lost Boys) get prank calls at 4a.m.  His pore choice of venues kind of echo what friends and family seem to utter throughout the documentary:  that even famous actors sometimes have no clue what the fuck they’re doing from one day to the next.

And the best insight of all into Rocco’s songwriting is summed up in one single question about his harboring anger towards his ever fleeting model mother and musician father which left him being raised by a grandmother.   He responds that he is not angered by his mother leaving home and his father traveling, the interviewee then proceeds with:  “The where does all of the anger in your lyrics come from.”  Rocco smiles and says slightly, “Well, then, maybe I am.”

I got to shake Mr. Deluca’s hand in a quick meet and greet after the show.  You can tell that he is tired and would probably rather not be bothered by all the passerbys, but he stands smiling none the less.  And he should be tired… he played an intense show and one that is exhausting to watch:  he feels what he is playing and knows what he is singing like no other… it is as if he is reliving it in every chord he plays.

I had to laugh out loud when I heard a guy trying desperately hard to impress a girl that he was with:  “all he was doing was playing chords with a glass slide”.  This shmuck was obviously not only not getting laid, but not paying attention to the lyrics, watching the musicianship or paying attention to any of the entire show.  I guess he was too busy checking out his lady friends ass, because, well it was worth checking out.  Rocco Deluca is/was not “just” playing chords with a glass slide, he is playing a sound that not many artists have ventured out to master:  Appalachian/rock/blues/funk with just enough pop to get on the radio if that comes their way.

I’ll be honest I hate “bands” that have a person’s name:  John Mayer, Dave Matthews… I don’t know why, it just annoys me.  Rocco Deluca is a name made for hanging on a billboard sign outside of a venue, but luckily it even works with “…and the Burden”.  “The Burden” also seems to work, because you kind of get the sense that his music is a way to make the carrying of all of the burdens in his life lighter and easier to pack away while on tour.

Zen Sarcasm

This is an excerpt from a bulletin post that I read from my sister-in-law, April.

If you think nobody cares if you’re alive… (try missing a couple of car
payments.)

Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. (That
why when you criticize them, you’re a mile away and you have their shoes.)

If at first you don’t succeed… (skydiving is not for you.)

Duct tape is like ‘The Force.’ It has a light side and a dark side, and
it holds the universe together.

And my favorite: Never miss a good chance to shut up.

I think I should have this as a wallpaper on my PC, so that anytime I’m being annoyed by someone for a rather lengthy time period, I can accidentally keyboard shortcut to my desktop and see if they get the picture… Chances are… they won’t.

It’s kind of funny the things that I have forgotten about work and really just people in general. Like, for example, isn’t it funny how you can start yawning, looking at your watch, start doing something else like reading email and people will still banter on. Or I just love it when someone asks “Are you busy?” and every single time when you respond “Yes, a little” they will still proceed to talk for forever.

Another funny one is when someone walks up to your desk and your listening to voicemail or steadily reading an email or some kind of document, they’ll start asking questions and expect responses like they didn’t notice the phone attached to your head. I was listening to a work related voice message where the guy was giving me 2 different phones numbers, hours that he would be available, his different login/usernames and the different login/usernames of people under him that I could use in my use-case scenarios… so I’m clicking buttons on the phone to login, to reward, to pause… all the while writing down phone numbers and such. Through all of this I have someone at my desk asking me questions the entire time!! LOL… It was quite funny, but ya’ know… what can you do but laugh, ya’ know?

I used to work with this guy who is no longer at our company, but he used to bring up my emailing all the daggone time… soooo annoying. I even overheard him talking to my boss one time like “every time I look at her monitor she’s emailing someone!” and then again to me “you send more emails than anyone I know.” The funny thing was that for those few months I was working on several projects where I was building in emailing features and had literally thousands of emails coming every day that I was debugging. I also send a lot of emails because I friggin’ communicate with my end users and my POCs and ya know what… I really think they love that about my projects… the communication involved!

Anywhooozle… when it comes down to it, I believe that some people just like something to complain about. No one wants to look for anything positive. They want to see the negative… because that’s more fun to talk about… the bad stuff.

I know my last few paragraphs seem like a bad rant, but its all out of humor. I’m not so bothered by these things… it’s just funny work stuff that everyone deals with. I love the fact that I am back to work even I do feel like I’m a part of a live Dilbert comic strip. I know that people talk and we all have our quirks, but that is one of the things that makes work life so much more interesting…

I am excited to be back to work and actually feel like I have a few close friends this time around. I feel like I have gotten closer to Wanda and Eric and can see a few more relationships blossoming. I hope that things stay on the upside and I am really excited about all of the upcoming projects and work that hopefully will come my way.

my life.

So this week was my first week back to work.  It was great!  I decided a couple of months ago to try to go back to the place that I worked before I got sick.  It just felt right.  And I think it was a comfort thing for me as well.  I was a little nervous about going back to work after all that has went on, but everything just kind of fell back into place.  You have no idea how worried I was.  It is just SOOO nice to feel human again… to be back to work makes me feel like all of “that” is in my past.

So… just to catch up on the changes:

In summary:
5 hospital visits (about 31 days total)
2 blood transfusions
2 IV PicLines (16 weeks total)
11 days without walking
3 months on a cane
2 months of Home Health (changing IV’s)
2 months of Physical Therapy
1 $24,785 hospital bill (among others, but that was the worse)
$30,000 credit card debt
$40,000 hospital/medical bills
4 cases of pneumonia
1 collapsed lung
2 clogged blood vessels in lungs
1 staph infection
1 case of anemia
1 Endocarditis diagnosis
1 Autoimmune Hepatitis diagnosis
1 Hepatitis diagnosis
2 liver biopsies
2 cases of Peroneal Neuropathy
1 case of Ulnar Nerve Palsy
15 pills a day / 1 IM shot a week

1 life that is starting to feel similar to the old me = PRICELESS  HaHa!!!

I cannot even begin to express in words what being back to work means to me.  I have always loved programming and working in the computer industry.  I remember several times lying in hospital with the heart monitor cables, the IVs, watching someone else’s blood travel into my veins, that I just prayed that one day my life would be back to normal and all of these hospitals walls would be nothing but a small piece of tapestry in my minds memory and that is now coming to be REAL.

I really like the people that I work with and just having the opportunity to be the old “Christie” and not the sick Christie just KICKS ASS.  There are exciting things in my future and hopefully  none of which include hospitals, pills, IV’s, or nurses (crossing fingers!).  And for the first time in a while I feel like that future belongs to me and not to my doctors  or my health or my immune system… it is back to being mine.