Shave and a Haircut...

Two bits of news. The first is that we got a new computer. It's pretty great. Runs like a dream and looks beautiful. I've never actually bought a brand new computer before. Feels weird to be on the cutting edge. It has a built in camera with which I can take hilarious pictures like this of myself. And the new Apple keyboard is a gorgeous feat of engineering and design. It's about 1/4" thick and the keys are all separated from each other and stand up about 1/8 of an inch from the metal base, so there's nowhere for corn flake crumbs and mysteriously long hairs to get lost. Keys have a satisfying and gentle "plip" to them. I am gonna miss those Helvetica Compressed Oblique characters they've had for so long, though.

The other piece of news is that I've given up coffee. It was my last addictive vice, and I finally decided it had to go. I'd rather feel the way I'm supposed to feel, instead of tricking my body into feeling the way I'd prefer it to feel at the expense of it forgetting how to feel that way by itself. However, that said, I am so far generally quite sluggish and full of aches and pains I didn't know about. It's quite amazing and frightening how different two cups a day has made me. I'm not sure how long it'll take to get through the withdrawal period, but it is slowly getting better. I find the differences between nicotine and caffeine addictions very interesting. One of the big tricks to overcoming a nicotine "habit" is to notice that the feeling of "needing" a cigarette is not actually any kind of physical pain or even really discomfort that you can locate anywhere in the body, but just an intense DESIRE. Whereas caffeine withdrawal seems to be the opposite: I have no primary desire to drink a cup of coffee, except insofar as I know it would relieve all this physical pain and exhaustion I feel.

OK, there is actually one more piece of news, which is that The Lodge played their second show on Saturday, and it was superior in every way to the first. Having made our debut, there was less pressure and fear that we might blow it, so we could spend more energy just rocking out. We all had a really great time, and so did the audience. I'm kind of itching to play again as soon as possible now. Here's a frustratingly short clip, courtesy of Cliff's mom's cell phone.



- Andrew