looking at you, part II

Everybody got to deviate from the norm -Rush

Barcelona won, 1-0, so i was happy. Real Madrid is Atletico's arch enemy. Don and i watched it at the flat of a friend of his. It was very animated between Barca and Real fans. It was fun.

Steven Jackson, RB for the Rams is a moose. Seattle is winning 17-10. I wouldn't let Jim Mora lead a girl scout troop, let alone an NFL team. Paul Allen, what were you thinking?

Seahawks went for it on 4th and centimeters and got it. Touchdown Forsett. Even when Jones, comes back, this dude will be the main RB.

I am tired. Twas a busy weekend. I love sleeping.

The Titans just went 99 yards and got a TD as time expired to beat the Cardinals. I hate the Cardinals.

Lunes

Back to work!

Clasico

This has all happened before, and it will happen again
-Battlestar Galactica (2009)

Today is el clasico between Real Madrid y Barcelona. Time stops in Espana when they play. I am still sorting out my room. Thing shave been so busy. End of the month now, so lots of admin. Thanksgiving at Cara's was great. Her metro stop is Delicias, like delicious. So i went to delicious for Thanksgiving. And as always, i carved the turkey. The band is going well. I've been adding some very challenging drum parts at their request. Out attempt to record failed again because of their shitty equipment, but we should get it done next time. The PA was shit and you couldn't hear the voice on a recording, which is kind of important. Got a lead on more students from a friend, which is cool. She was one of the crazies from the past. I think crazy women are stalking me. Help!

Happiness on the Road

Through stroby stations
Too fast to know their names
Too fast to know if we came or will come again

Sleeping towns joined together
By the steel of the rails
Parallel lines
Parallel lives
-Marillion

Happy Spanksgiving people!

Things i am Thankful for:


-That i am alive and healthy
-Kid A (Annie G)
-My new flat and housemate
-That the Seahawks don't play today
-All my friends and family on both sides of the Atlantic
-From Lost to the River (the new band)
-Being an English teacher
-Students with cash
-The new shower head

Proof of lIfe

(picture proving to Mum i am alive)

Blame it on me
Blame it on me
We're all just sugar mice in the rain
-Marillion


All is well. Lots of classes today. Got home round 21:30 and i am beat after being at the concert late last night. I am about to cook the first steak on the BBQ in this house. Woo hoo! I have the window open in the kitchen and i can feel it from the sitting room.


00:18

Steaks were good. Yum! Now i will watch a TV Show on the Internet, hang the laundry, and then bed.

Here Again

And the best thing that you can do is take whatever comes to you
cuz time flies
-Porcupine Tree


i saw Porcupine Tree at the Riviera with Brian tonight, he's an Irish bloke. They rocked! Como siempre (like always). Everything else is fine. Working, living, etc. It's all good. Today was Monica's twenty-last birthday, so went to lunch at La Mucca, an incredible pizza place. To say the Seahawks suck doesn't quite capture the gravity of the situation.

Just another Martes

Laughing out loud with fear and hope
I've got a desperate plan
-Rush

Sitting in bed watching EXIT STAGE LEFT... on my computer, the hour long concert from the '82 movie that changed my life. I am in bed and comfy in my new home. Por fin! (finally!)

Spanish is getting better again finally. I just need to fire some extra neurotransmitters a second and i'll get a little more fluent.

Whenever I see this movie, i think of when i first heard Rush when i was in 8th grade! Joder, i am old.

What else? Frak it - life is finally calm for 8 seconds. I'll just enjoy it, like those freaks at the top of the screen.

back in the game

DOMINGO

Some of my stuff is put away. The bathroom is clean. Shirts are ironed. I stir fried some gambas (shrimp). Tomorrow I have 4½ hours of work from 13:00 until 19:30. My new place is closer to most of the places I work.

Woo hoo! Seahawks stop the cards on 4^th and goal! This is a must win and Julius Jones is out. They have had terrible trouble with injuries the last 2 years.

Housmanzadeh just caught a 68 yard pass. Yeah!

LUNES 00:17

The Cards are on the move. 17-10, Seahawks. Why is Kurt Warner always playing in the NFC West? Leave me alone, already.

Well, I met a girl in West Hollywood

I ain't naming names

She really worked me over good

She was just like Jesse James

She really worked me over good

She was a credit to her gender

She put me through some changes, Lord

Sort of like a Waring blender

-Warren Zevon

17-17.

Late third Q. I am in my home watching football. Yeah!!!! One of my favorite weekend things to do. That and jamming on Friday.

More music to unpack to:

Happiness on the Road, Dec 15, 2008 - Marillion
Juvenalia - Liz Phair
Live Frogs, Set II - Les Claypool
Plays Live - Peter Gabriel
Barbieri and Bowness

22:35

The Seahawks got romped. Life is a bitch sometimes. Adios Temporada 2009!

Got in about 21:00. New classes were great. Time to cook and eat and go to bed. I am unearthly tired. So much change so fast. All new Metro lines to take.

I have read two of the Sookie Stackhouse Novels, which TrueBlood is based on. Freaky, funny supernatural mysteries about vampires, shape-shifters, werewolves and crackers. I know all four of those groups.

The New New World

water on the moon

I am moved in, but far from unpacked. It's 15:00 and i can't get out of bed! And i went to sleep at 1:30! So tired. SO much fighting and moving and unpacking and searching for domiciles. Don is visiting family in Holland. I need to clean a bit too. The place is a bit dirty and could use a good cleaning, but nothing too bad.

Must motivate.


Tonight's the night -Neil Young

Music to unpack to (for the 2nd time in a week and a half).

Flaming Lips - Embryonic
Marillion - Somewhere in London


The only good thing about a miserable patch in your life is that you realize what great friends you have. So special thanks to Cara, Maria, Fernando Laura, Zowie, Lee, Susana, Fernando, Kev & Heather, the woman FKA as Kathy Dunn, Mum, Don, Monica and Brian. Not sure how i would have done it without you. I would have had a lot more of someone else's blood on my hands - that's for sure.

It's 15:22. Let the cleaning begin.

The Seahawks have to win in Arizona to have any hope of salvaging the season. They have not won on the road yet. This is not a good sign.

The Me has landed

I am at my new place. I am exhausted from moving and think i re-injured that pulled cartilage in my chest. It's happens a few times a year. I've been lifting a lot and going up and down a lot of stairs. Time to head to Cara's and get my laundry. Then band practice from 20:00 to 23:00. Then time to sleep, i would think. Two moves in ten days. A new record.

you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking
-Pink Floyd

i am Jaybo, hear me roar!
-El Dude

never boring

On top of it all, the shower head was broken off when i stepped in to take one. It's like living in a slum. So...i went to Cara's and took a shower. And washed some underwear (The washing machine is broken too!) Then i went down to Getafe and had dinner with Maria and watch the Seahawks squeek out a win vs. the woeful Detroit Lions. I crashed in her spare room. It was surreal to be back in Getafe after all this time. It had been a year and a half!

Thanks to Mum, who called, Kathy who emailed, Monica, Susanna, Cara and Maria. Thanks to all of those who have helped me out during this rough time.

It will get better. It has too. Friday i move in with Don. That should work well.

Cara went to Sevilla for the day, so i am hanging out here. Showering here too. Our shower is just a metal hose now.

And I'm hovering like a fly, waiting for the windshield on the freeway -Genesis

I got a new phone. I will email the # to you all, as well as my new address. Charlie, my slumlord, said he will give me my deposit when i leave on Friday. If he doesn't, i get Fernando, who is a cop, involved.

Was my life ever boring? What i wouldn't do for a little boredom. I'd kill Charlie, that's for sure. :)

Abyss

christ of the abyss

No one gets out of here alive -Jim Morrison

I feel utterly lost. My phone broke last night. What else can happen? I shudder to think. Everyday brings new horrors. My current and soon to be past room mates are from Napoli - Italy's asshole. No wonder why they are so obnoxious and too stupid to close a refrigerator door. This Internet connection is slower than a tortoise doing a back stroke.

The path is clear
though no eyes can see
the course laid down long before

And so with gods and men
the sheep remain inside their pen
though many times they've seen the way to leave.
-Genesis

And so i am cut off from most of my friends, and it's a long weekend. Can't replace it til Tuesday! Nothing but noisy Napelaton assholes to listen to. But i found a few numbers in email. I'll make some calls from a pay phone. Get me out of here!

13:30 and they are still asleep. Hooray! The shower is free! I kept thinking Noviembre had to be better. It's been much worse. I am tired in my soul.

Fuck it. Never surrender! I think, therefore i can. Or something like that.

Dum dum dee dum, dee dum, dee dum - can't wash this! It's showertime!

Quoting MC Hammer - this is the lowest moment of my life!

City of the Damned

There are times the past few months when i have thought that maybe i had upset the natural balance of things, that i should have died in May, but didn't. It's been a brutal few months since then. Surreal. Bad luck in bunches. I have gotten to the point where i don't want to get out of bed because i'm afraid of what new horrors await me on a daily basis.

And then i snap out of it.

I am moving again. This flat is a shit hole and the landlord is a slum lord. No Internet, and now even after i bought a cable, its dodgey. The electric circuits always blow. And the washing machine doesn't work. I just need to work out getting my money back for the deposit. He's been a dick about it so far. Maria's friend Fernando works for the Guardia Civil (police), so he's going to pay Charlie a visit.


Charlie! They took my thumbs!
- The Pope of Greenwich Village

I found a cool place to live with a friend of Joe and Susanna's, Don from Boston. He was listening to Genesis, Selling England..., when i walked in and seems like a nice guy. So that's the good news.

In 2.5 hours i will be at Vincente Calderon Stadium for the derbi between Atletico and Real Madrid. It's going be chilly!

Congrats to the Yankees. Thanks for not letting Philly win again.

Alive, part 9

(Kid A, first day of pre-school)

I have moved in. It was chaos. But i am in. Now i need to unpack. But i am still working, so busy, busy. Just wanted to let u know i am alive. The Italian students i live with seem very nice.

But the landlord is a guttersnipe and paid for the cheapest router ever, so we had to move it to the kitchen so i can get Internet. If he doesn't pay to fix it i will leave. And have him killed.

Never fuck with a child whose father abandoned them when they were young. They'll eat your frigging eyeballs if they feel it is justified. I just love the taste of eyeballs and Tobasco in the morning.

Is Annie the cutest thing ever? I think i'm an excellent father figure from 5,000 miles away. Note to self: adopt kids in Africa.

I've become a rolling stone
i don't know where to go or what to call my own
-Asia

After The Fall

It's been one hell of a week. I woke up at 6am on Thursday to pee and Chema was leaving. But he had said we would go on the 5th 0r 6th to sign the contract. He was leaving me a note marked URGENTE! and it said to fax the owners of the flat (which is the city) my details immediately. I was half asleep. I don't get up for work til 6:45. When i got back after work there was no phone number nor the agency name. What a jack ass. I called Maria and she said she'd go with me on Friday. She found them on the Internet thru the fax number. I went in with her on Friday and they said that Chema never mentioned i wasn't a citizen and that i had to be out by tuesday. It is city owned and has to be to a Spanish citizen.

Joder!

Surprisingly i didn't vomit. And Chema, cheap son of a whore that he is, had the Internet cut even though he said that it would be on til Monday when they came to put it in my name. So i couldn't even use the Internet to find a place. So i went to to a locutorio and looked at some places and wrote down the phone numbers. Then i went to band practice. Then i got a wee bit drunk. And i called a place the next day, saw one it and took it. Big enough to hold my drums and i have two private rooms and my own balcony. Viva la barbecue!

It never hurts to have some blind dumb luck. Never.

I'd rather be lucky than good.

-Mum

There's 2 other guys (Italian students) who seem nice, and then maybe a fourth. But it's like my own place except i share the kitchen and bathroom. It's Metro Palos de Frontera(edge of the frontier!). Very central and close to the bohemian neighborhood Lavapies (wash feet!). Cara is now my neighbor. So now i will have lived in the North, East, and South. I'm not gonna live in the West. Fuck that. When i move out i leave Spain. Probably in July. The clock is ticking. The Spanish Exile is coming to an end. It's time. I'll have a great time til then, but it's time for a change. It's been almost three years.

Three years! What the what?

21 - 10 Dallas. Frak! I am in J&J watching cuz i have no internet. God damn you Chema. But Karma will catch up with you. It always does.