Maybe weekly updates are more realistic

It's like that week after a visit to the dentist where you floss every day or after you get a gym membership. Once you miss a few days, realizing you have broken your sacred oath, what's really the point?

I was updating daily for a while there and then I just got busy. It's hard to want to write recreationally when you are doing it for a living, plus the Brody household is on high alert being 3 days past Maxi's due date. Excuses we got 'em.

I sent the last 20 minutes trying to find work that needs doing. Got nothing. So here's what I have:

Recent Celia-isms:

She has learned to follow up her post somersault "Ta-dahs" with "thank you, thank you."

The other day she was climbing up a bench and Sheri said to her "How come you're getting so big?" to which Celia replied, "How come you're so short?"

Brought her new keyboard with her in the car to pick Lily up at the vet to play her some songs. ("What song you like, Lily?")

Naming decisions

After much deliberation and deciding on Maxine as Celia's little sisters name, we spent another few months getting nowhere with picking a middle name. I lobbied for "Mum" which did not go over, I was then going for Etta and Billie, after hearing a Nina Simone song I thought that went with the general theme I was going for...

So Maxine Simone Brody. It sounds good. Grade school (middle school, high school) tormentors would be happy about that one.

I guess that's all for now. Oh and here are my new "business cards"(won't really be using them) are pasted below. I may have a few of them made, send your address if you want one.

Oh and we are about to go try to take Celia to the movies for the first time. Then swing by Andy and Sarah's wedding reception. Congratulations to them. (Especially for getting the destination wedding idea to work and avoiding the commotion)

Adding it all up

Did not want to do this. Was lying on the couch and the thought of posting a blog appealed to me like washing a sink full of dishes or planned socializing.

So, I was evaluating my day and I couldn't really think of anything to write about that was good that happened to me. But I guess it is all relative. Blessings: count those shits.

I posted on facebook about a week ago about seeing a guy, who lives an indeterminate and anonymizing proximity from my house, fall face first over his railing onto the sidewalk after drinking all afternoon. If anything about his sunday afternoon porch party had evoked wistful pangs of a by-gone day-drunk, seeing his buddy trying to get him back in the house put a damper on that.

Don't get me wrong I'm not taking any delight in his misery.  He and his wife have always been nice people.

When a certain spouse of diminutive size and indeterminate ability to "mind her own" reported back from her duties as Chief of Concerned Neighbors Battalion One, turns out our man down had been asking for his wife through his daze (she was out with her friends for the evening.) We both thought it was kind of sweet that after his "boy's afternoon" had turned ugly, he just wanted his wife.

A few hours later it had to say it:

Me: "Sheri, that's the only thing that could make me wish I still drank."
Her: "What"
Me: "Being able to give you the joy of coming home to me drunk with broken shit on the front porch."
Her: "Oh, I bet that would have been great"
Me: "Actually probably not. I'll bet he's lying down and sleeping it off. I'd still have been going."

So yeah, I know those jokes were in poor taste. But whatever slight appeal they had went down sharply --  not just over the past week after seeing broken pottery staying in the same spot in the yard -- but more today when I saw dude's wife packing up.

Apparently times have not changed over the last 7 years, there is no new breed of uber-tolerant care-free women who come home on a sunday night and say "Oh you silly boy" to boyfriends/husbands with blunt head trauma and a high BAC.

It's a fine line getting into a neighbors business, like I said they have always been really nice, and if I see a spot where I can subtly offer a sympathetic ear I will. We're different in some respects: I don't drink beer and I'm not good with a chainsaw. In some ways we are incredibly similar: I just want my wife, too.

My point being: when I started to look at the good things that happened today it had to start with counting my blessings for the shit that didn't happen to me. My wife didn't pack up and leave. I miraculously opened up week-old mail from directloans and saw that a copy of my 2012 tax return was due today, so I got that in on time.

Other good stuff happened when I really stop to think about it. Got my registration for "Brody Law LLC" from the Missouri Secretary of State. My father-in-law looked at that house we are thinking about and did NOT find any major flaws with it and even thinks it's a good deal.

But the best thing that happened to me today? That's a tough one.

It would have been a tie.

First Place goes to waking up and seeing that video of Charles Ramsey who rescued those girls in Cleveland.
Second Place goes to Celia playing with her horse figurines in the backseat of the car and getting one of them caught in her hair.

I have to give it to Charles because chances are he will never be on TV again. Chances that Celia will get another plastic toy lodged in her hair before the end of the week are good.

Creamer is for closers

Busy day. Here are the highlights in order to try to post this before midnight.

She is definitely her father's daughter: Woke up to most over-the-top, aggressive (border-line violent) version of "Jingle Bells" ever sung by a 2 and a half year old.

Looked at a house. Aside from some flaws that I am hoping are fixable liked it.

Got a new client.

Went into Kansas City to check out an office share space for "Brody and Associates". The front desk guy gave me a brief tour... with Sheri and Celia (the associates). The first thing he showed me was the coffee shop which is in the process of being opened.

"For now there is free black coffee" :him.

"OK, cool" :me.

"When we open the black coffee will still be free." :him.

"So, we pay for milk and sugar?" :me.

Weekend Update

I was going to take the weekend off. I actually had a few things planned to write about but they would be a little more involved than I am willing to start right now. Instead, this:

I put my contacts in today since leaving the house before noon was involved. (Sheri and Celia and I went to "Art in the Park" with Celia's friend Roxie and her mom, Suzie.)

Celia was just in the bathroom and I guess she found my glasses on the counter. So she ran out into the living room with them.

"Here, daddy."

"Oh, thank you."

I then pretended to put them on (thinking she would just run away and get into something else.) Seeing that she wasn't going anywhere I tried to make a show of it and put them on upside down without unfolding them, going for the cheap laugh.

She just stood there watching me and said, "No, Daddy, that's wrong." Then proceeded to climb up onto the couch and put them on "properly" (unfolded, still upside down with lots of smudges on them.)

That's all you get.

That Heavy Metal Music the Kids Like These Days

That Heavy Metal Music the Kids Like These Days

I am trying to keep my word on the daily posting front, this could get really boring for you if I keep posting about what I am up to today. I could tell you about what it was like watching "Brave" for the 200th time with Celia or I could expound on regulatory risk factors for mortgage brokerage start-ups. From there I could have Celia tell you about risk factors related to the movie "Brave" with insights such as "Be careful, horse. SLOW DOWN. You can get a big owwie." We'll skip that for today.

In the formative years of my musical tastes, where you start to associate the kind of music you like with the kind of person you are (or are thinking you will become), I hated Heavy Metal. At least I hated the idea of it. 

I went to stay with my cousins in Manhattan for the summer when I was 13. My cousin Robbie and I were not getting along, I liked Duran Duran and the Police and he liked Motley Crue and Ratt. From his perspective anything "new wave" sucked, from repeated exposure to Motley Crue's video for "Smokin in the Boys Room" -- metal sucked way more... the music was terrible and they looked stupid playing it. Before I went home that summer, I saw the cover of "Metal Up Your Ass" and was convinced metal was idiotic. 

Over the next few years, as I got into punk rock and hardcore, I hung onto my strong aversion to metal. I could not understand how someone could like punk/hardcore and metal at the same time. Fast-forward to my first summer after high school. Driving around with Buck and Jim Reynolds, I was completely won over by Slayer.

A decade later, it struck me weird when Drowningman would get reviewed in metal magazines. Truth be told any "hardcore" band at that time was more influenced by Slayer than Bad Brains.

My point? RIP Jeff Hannem. If it weren't for that "metal," that music I hated as a 13 year old, my band and many others never would have existed. 

Because some of you are reading this -- and also to relieve the sole-sucking boredom of the work-related writing I do -- I am going to try to post something every day. Or as close to it as humanly possible...

It's snowing in May in Kansas. In Vermont I expected it, here I am genuinely offended. I front-loaded my work week, missing out on nice weather earlier in the week.

Brought Celia to "Music Together" class this morning, she was pretty subdued. However, the teacher finally recognized a bit of her genius when she started arranging the toy drums into a drum-set. It made me nervous that she might be showing too much interest in the drums, this will need to be taken into consideration when house-hunting in case she ends up living in the basement until she is thirty-five.

But anyway, the teacher was impressed. Imagine if she had heard Celia's original composition "you be careful tiger"she was working on last night.

Busy Signal article in May 2013 issue of Terrorizer

With the re-release of the first Drowningman record, this blog is being mentioned in magazine articles and linked on websites. Since I haven't updated this in about three years, seems a fitting time to start.

I guess I have a few updates.

I did get married.

I am still living outside Kansas City. 

I did graduate from law school (Business and Transactional certificate earned "With Distinction.")

I did pass the bar. 

My wife and I are expecting our second daughter in 3 weeks. 

I do have a two-and-a-half year old daughter who inherited a very loud and piercing scream.

Life is pretty different on the surface than it was 15 years ago when that first Drowningman LP came out on Hydrahead. In a lot of ways, I am still the same person as I found out after spending a few months out of law school trying out jobs that made me miserable. 

I now work from home, consulting with businesses and have been lucky enough to add quite a few clients who are artists/writers/musician.

Javin and I got together to do an interview for Terrorizer in March when I was back in Vermont. It had been about a decade since we had hung out, talk did turn to playing music again, but we'll see if that comes to pass. We've talked a few times since I got back from our trip, and honestly it was just good to catch up with my friend.

So what have you been up to?