Now that we have finally come up with a name for our band, we want to make some t-shirts for our next party. “Naked Mike” t-shirts. The problem is I don’t know what to put on them. We had someone offer to do the t-shirts for us, but the problem there is that they actually meant get the shirts made once someone else did the design. So now I have been thinking about ideas for a shirt design and I can’t think of any. I have busted out my dusty sketchbook and started playing with ideas. Holly said she will try to come up with some ideas. It would be cool to have a few different designs that we could sell to people if they wanted. Or maybe just to be able to give to our friends. Either way, sometime in the near future, I will be posting some “Naked Mike” designs. I’m excited. I am loving this whole band thing. I look forward to every practice we have. I get super excited when I know we will be playing for people. I think our next party will be late next month or in May. I can’t wait. But we are definitely having a 4th of July party. If I can find any way to record us and have it sound halfway decent then maybe I can post something. Otherwise, you all will just have to imagine that we are really really awesome. He he.

Easter is in two days. It will be interesting. As of now the plan is to go have a picnic at a local park. Hopefully it will not rain on Sunday. Tomorrow, we will be getting up early (9:00 am) to dye Easter eggs. Holly has to go to work tomorrow at around noon and I must leave for work at 4:30 pm. So if we do not dye the eggs in the morning, then we will not get to do it together as a family and that would be a bummer. I look forward to the picnic on Sunday. We will have food and some balls for Gavin to play with. Holly’s aunt Beth and her son Chris (and I think Her husband Reed) will be joining us for the picnic. It is a bummer to have to spend Easter with them, but then again that is why we are having a picnic and not a dinner at our house. Anyway, Gavin will be able to run around and throw his ball. I asked Nate if he and Chelsea would like to come. We will see. Tomorrow I am going to call Gabe and see if they are able to come. Not likely. Either way, I think I will bring my guitar and play some tunes while watching Gavin run around. It ought to be nice. I hope it doesn’t rain. It has been rainy all day today and is supposed to rain a bit tomorrow.

I think I want out of the manager business. I would really like to go back to being a captain and running the projection booth. I could go for that. Then I could put in more karatedepot hours and I wouldn’t lose money. The problem is insurance. I need the health insurance. My problem with writing in this blog is that my mind tries to cover too many things. I can’t focus on one thing. It goes from being with Holly to playing music to dancing to Holly to Gavin to moving to quitting work to music school to a new house blah blah blah. I don’t know where to stop or what to elaborate on. Then when I do I re-read it and it sounds stupid or to annoying to have other people read. I don’t know. I think this is my third attempt at writing something in here. So I want to have our band play for the public. I want to get a gig at Gordon Biersch (a restaurant/brewery in Honolulu). Gabe and Nate don’t think we are ready, but I think with the right song selection we are. Even if it is not Gordon Biersch, I want to play somewhere for someone. I think it is natural progression. Before when I used to sit in my bedroom and play guitar I used to want to play with other people. Now I play with other people and I want to play for people. What will I want when we are playing for people? Tomorrow is Monday. I think maybe I will try to get to work early and see about going somewhere with Holly. Like the beach or something. I got a phone call from Stacy today (Rob’s fiance). They have started the vigorous planning of their wedding. They told me what the actual dates for the wedding are. The first and obvious thing she asked me is if me or Holly were planning on going to the wedding. I told her that Holly and Gavin would not be going because Holly will be right at the end of her last semester of school and could not afford to miss classes. But then she asked me if I would play guitar at their wedding. Naturally I told her that if that is what they wanted then certainly I would. Which is fine with me. The rest of my band won’t be there though, so I guess I’ll be playing with myself. Do you have enough to read yet? Would you like me to write shorter blogs? Do you want more pictures? Does a long blog deter you from reading it? Please let me know. I would hate to think that because my blog was long, that you or anyone else won’t read it. By the way. We have finally come up with a name for our band. Dum da da dummmm……”Naked Mike”

You ever wonder why I haven’t posted a blog in 2 1/2 months? My last post was on Dec 9th. The reason I haven’t posted is because I was abducted by aliens from Shag Island, Canada. That’s right. They live in Shag Island, Canada because they thought they could study the sexual tendancies of humans. Why they abducted me, I still don’t know. Anyway, I’m back now. I have to say, I just have not been in the mood to post. Oh well. So here I am months later. I have worked uber hours, had a root canal, spent billions, ate tons, played lots of guitar, gave lots of hugs and kisses and slept quite a bit. That about sums it up. There have been a few momentus occasions I suppose. (not in chronological order) 1. Holly and Mary are getting their book published! They are awaiting a copy of the contract in the mail to look over. 2. Burns Night. This went well. I didn’t mess up the dancing. Yay. We drank great scotch. Yay. I got to be the Haggis bearer. 3. Gavin’s 2nd Birthday. It was a wonderful day. We ate cake and opened presents. Well, Gavin did most of that, but we helped. He very much enjoyed his cake. He loves whip cream. Yum. 4. Christmas was great. We had a wonderful fake tree up which Gavin loved to help decorate. He really got into the presents and how to open them and what not. Although on his birthday we learned that you have to give him the less interesting presents first, otherwise he will not want to open anymore presents. But it was good. I got off from work on Christmas morning and Christmas Eve. I still Don’t know how I pulled that off. 5. New Years Eve was really fun. Our “band” threw a New Years Eve party at Gabe’s house. We played music through the night, set off tons of fireworks and drank some guiness and champagne. Although I felt bad because Gavin couldn’t take the fireworks. He was balling his eyes out, so Holly and Mary took him home early and spent New Years Eve at home. I believe Holly was in bed before Midnight. That was our band debut. I’d say there were 20-25 people there. And I don’t recall anyone slandering our music so that was good. By the way, we still don’t have a name for our band. 6. The Opera. It is opera season here in Hawaii. There are 3 operas in a season. Holly went to two of them and I went to see one. Naturally Mary went to all three with her dad (with either Holly or I tagging along). Holly went to see “The Flying Dutchmen” and “Turandot”, while I went to go see “Susannah”. I think Holly got to see the better of the operas. It was nice though. When Holly went, I stayed home with Gavin and got to do things like go to the park, go to the mall, play with trane sets, eat at Koolau Drive In, etc. Gavin us just a wonderful litte boy, and I love to spend time with him. Apparently at the first opera, Holly ordered a Mai Tai for the intermission. She thinks this was a mistake. After losing 40 somd odd pounds and not eating much that day, the Mai Tai seemed to have got her drunk for the second act of the opera. But she said she enjoyed it none – the – less. 7. Nate’s birthday. Nate is the bass player in our band. His birthday was just recently (Feb 26th). His girlfriend threw him a “surprise” birthday party at D&B’s. We arrived at like 7:15pm (the earliest person arrived at 6:15) for dinner. I think we were seated at 8:15pm and didn’t get served our dinner til like 9:00. It was a good night though. We ordered the little surprise birthday thing for Nate even though he warned us that if we did, he would quit the band. Ha. He can’t do that. His mom just bought him a $300 acoustic bass for christmas. So we sang Happy Birthday to him. Then we all went upstairs to play video games. I only spent $10 on games. That is hard to do at D&B’s. 8. Aloha Winter Weekend. This was a week of stress and worry. I was in charge of the Sunday night Ceilidh acticity. I had to order the food and make sure a room was booked and set up the room with chairs and tables and what not. I was very lucky though, because I had lots of help from other people. Mary helped out quite a bit as did Melissa. The weekend was great. Holly and I went to the Friday night social at a Sushi restaraunt and enjoyed yummy food. Then we went across the street to dance. I spent the night only dancing with Holly, despite the fact that this was a dance SOCIAL. I don’t ever get to dance with Holly, so I took the rare opportunity of us both being at a dance activity. Saturday morning was instructional classes which I really enjoyed. I like the dances that he was teaching and I appreciated the fact that he really showed us the correct & precise way to do some of the figures that were taught wrong to me. Saturday night was the Ball. That was pretty enjoyable. Holly, Gavin, Mary and I all went. Gavin was upset to be going because he had just suffered a horrible tragedy of dumping 7 or 8 gallons of lemonade all over our living room. Holly was still not feeling well from being sick, so she was not thrilled about going. Mary was making Holly go and freaking out over everything like she does, and I was trying to deal with it all. But after a little while of being there and talking with people and eating, and Gavin breast fed, then things seemed to be ok. The night was fun. We danced and ate chicken and ice cream and talked the night away in our most formal of formal wear. Then of course comes Sunday. Sunday morning was more instructional classes until noon. That night was the Ceilidh. I was worried about this night, because I didn’t know if I ordered enough food. How should we arrange the room? Where should we place the food? What will be my Ceilidh act? Should I have planned some form of entertainment? Blah blah blah. But of course all went perfectly well. There were fewer people than we expected, but that did not stop us from having a wonderful night of food and entertainment (and scotch which was not supposed to be there because we rented a room from a college. Shhh, don’t tell anyone). I’ll leave it at that. There are a few other things like my root canal, and the suspicious meeting with the big bosses. If you really want to know about them, I’ll post more about them. Hopefully it won’t be another 2 1/2 months before my next post. But you never know.

This whole blog thing is good. It is an easy way to keep in touch and have an outlet at the same time. Although I tend not to use it as an outlet too much. I should. When it comes to writing my blog, I usually think about nothing but seeing my friends again. Then I end up writing about what happened in the past week or two. It has never been easy for me to express my feelings about anything. Not to anyone. Writing has been my outlet for a long time. Sometimes I will spill everything on to a piece of paper, read it over, then shred it. Lately I have not been writing much of anything. I don’t know why. I pick up the pencil and paper, then suddenly I feel like it’s a chore. So I stare at it for a bit and put it down. Then there is my blog. It is a chance for me to be able to write things down and share with my friends what is happening in my life and how I feel about it. This is not what is happening. In a way I am scared to do that. Scared of what, I don’t know. Even now I feel like deleting this all and writing something else. It is so easy with a computer do delete it all. Then no one will ever see this. But here it is. My blog. I will try to post more and be a little more personal than “things are good today. Work is long, blah blah blah”. I love and miss you all.