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June
12, 1998
retrieving my van
I woke up early today to help my wife get our youngest son off to school today, despite the fact that I arrived home early this morning around 4:30am. After my wife left for work, and after I dropped off my son to his kindergarten class, I called my dad to see if he could pick me up and help me retrieve my minivan, which was left in Mission Viejo. My dad said he'd come for me around 11am. My oldest boy was out of school for the summer and he went to his aunt's house up the street to play with his cousin. Meanwhile, I was going to try and catch some sleep. But, I could not get to sleep. I was too pumped up about going back to Mission Viejo to retrieve my vehicle. So, I got on the computer and tried to update some journal stuff, and check email. It was weird... I tried lying down again but could not for the life of me fall asleep. I ended up going back to the computer, this time changing a few things to my poetry site. My dad arrives around 10:45am. We go to a nearby Sears to buy a brand new battery so that we can bring it up to Mission Viejo and install it into my minivan. This way I could drive the minivan back to San Diego. We had pretty much determined it was the alternator that was kapoot, and the trip back to San Diego would take about an hour, and that our new battery would have at least 2 hours of "juice" to drive home without a working alternator.
It was drizzling a bit when we arrived in Mission Viejo to switch batteries in the minivan. We tested the engine real quick and it sounded good. So we made the trek back to San Diego to deliver my minivan to a mechanic. When we arrived in San Diego we went to the same mechanic that installed the alternator that gave out, being that the alternator was still under warranty. My dad dropped me off at my house around 2:30pm, which gave me a bit of time to rest up again and get ready for the gig tonight at Tio Leo's. The gig at Tio Leo's went well. My drum solos seemed to be getting better again, meaning I was beginning to feel more creative in what I was coming up with as far as ideas. Let me tell you, the spontaneity factor is very important when trying to pull off these drum solos. I mean, you can "feel" if you've gotten the audience's full attention or not. Tonight, it seemed like I got their attention alright. I think I did good considering I had a pretty busy day taking care of my minivan. Tonight Warren let the band know that it was highly probable that we were going to score a deal to travel to Japan for a 3 month tour. Wow! What an opportunity. But my only immediate concern was how it would affect my family, the wife and kids. I mean, 3 months is a bloody long time to be away from your wife and kids. But I guess navy servicemen do it all the time, and for longer periods of time at that! Well, it's a good opportunity and my wife and I had already discussed this before, and she's behind me 100% as far as going on tours to Europe and Japan. The band seems to be getting busier this year. We've finished one mini tour, have another 5 day mini tour coming up, and we'll be in New Orleans at the end of this month. On top of that, our CD is selling outside of California so that is great news too! At this point in time, I'm curious as to what the future holds for Big Time Operator with all these sudden developments in our schedule, and how these developments will be affecting all of us in the band. |