Just a singer in a rock and roll band...

All of those months of playing Rock Band 2 have apparently paid off. After some silliness on Facebook last Friday, I was asked if I wanted to sing Seether's version of "Careless Whisper" with a band called Throwing Goat at their next show. The band is a fixed group, and they get volunteer singers for each of the songs in their set. "Careless Whisper" was the one remaining song in the setlist, and since I know ALL the words to the song, the only thing I had to do was learn the new melody on the verses.

Oh, that and get over my intense fear of public performance. :)

The latter part is somewhat amusing. I did theater in high school and goofed around with it in college. I taught for 2 1/2 years while I got my master's degree. And I did a community theater show 4 years ago. But I am TERRIFIED of public performance. Even getting up to sing on Rock Band in front of my friends is nervewracking.

Needless to say, band practice last night was a bit terrifying. My supervisor at work (the one who roped me into all of this) is in the band, but she's out of town right now. I get along well with her husband, and practice was at their house, but I didn't know anyone else in the band till I was introduced to them last night. I dragged Jeremy along with me for moral support, of course, so there were two people there who I know.

The practice went relatively well. I know the song. That part was easy. But Jeremy told me afterwards that he could tell just how tense I was almost the whole time I was singing. I felt like I relaxed a bit after the first few run throughs, but I was still nervous. (I also had never used a mic that wasn't connected to a game system before last night. Apparently I was barely audible for most of the practice, till they told me that I really did have to be right on top of the mic.)

Now bear in mind, this was with 5 people I don't know. In July, I will be singing in front of a crowd of probably 100+ people. EEK!

Jeremy and I did come up with a plan, though, that involves me finally doing karaoke later this month. We may even go tomorrow night if we can get our errands done quickly. I don't know that it will necessarily make me more relaxed initially, but at least it will prove that I can sing in front of more people and not die from it. Beer may also help, but I'm not inclined toward that option.

Mostly, I think it's just practice, practice, practice, and hope that the stage fright thing gets a little better as time goes on.

Blergh...

It's Monday, but it feels like I'm due another weekend already. The weekend wasn't entirely non-stop, but it was enough so that I still could use another few days to feel like I'm well rested.

Stayed in on Friday night and got some crocheting done, which I continued on Saturday. Now if I only had managed to take some pictures, I'd be getting somewhere... :) Saturday night I was also at home, but did silly things like laundry and playing Rock Band 2. That is actually what most of my Saturday nights look like when Jeremy is at D&D. :)

Sunday was another One Hit Wonder game, this time Mutants and Masterminds, run by Jeremy. We had to make our characters in advance, because character creation is difficult. Then on Sunday morning, I realized something neat that I could do with my character, but it involved building a second character. Luckily, I just tweaked one of the book templates, but even the tweaking took longer than I wanted it to. The game was fun, though the rules did tend to bog things down. And the three of us playing really didn't make particularly compatible super heroes, as Craig and I were totally fine with just letting things go, while Thaddeus was more of the true hero type. :) Still, the game was fun, and I didn't get too much crap for not reading superhero comics. :)

Oh, also on Saturday, Jeremy made the mistake of showing me Katamari Damacy. I had heard about this game, and it seemed like the type of game I might enjoy, but no one ever let me play it before. I think I know why. It's addictive. While we were eating lunch on Sunday, Jeremy told me that he was going to play a quick game and then finish working on the Mutants and Masterminds game. My response: "Not if I get to the PS2 before you do." :) The game is thoroughly pointless, but totally fun. It also led to us looking online for action figures from the game, me thinking I could crochet one, and then realizing that Jeremy wanted a version that was about 2 1/2 inches tall. I had to say no then. There ARE some things I can't crochet. :)

Wow...

It's been a crazy week, and I haven't managed to carve out any time to sit down and blog. At all. Hopefully next week will be much more productive in terms of writing. :)

So let's see here... recap of my week.

Monday sucked like only Mondays can suck. Basically everything I wanted and needed to do ended up getting deferred when my microwave crapped out right as I went to reheat my leftover pizza. Ugh.

Tuesday evening was spent getting Jerome moved into his new place, and necessitated a lot of carrying heavy stuff. No fun!

Wednesday involved moving more stuff (and no, it's still not completely done) and playing phone tag with Jeremy so that he could cook me dinner. :)

Thursday, I had a work trip to Olympia for the day. Got home nice and early and discovered that my vacuum cleaner really can't deal with long hair on slighly plush carpet. *sigh* Then I made dinner, and Jeremy and I went out shopping for my new PS3 and TV. Expensive shopping trip, but TOTALLY worth it. Rock Band 2 looks amazing on my new TV. :) (Yeah, most of what I bought was so that I could feed the addiction... I am the ridiculous person who buys a PS3 because of one game that I can't live without. :) )

And today, we have End of the Work Week Wisdom from a new source, who has been getting a lot of mention in this blog. :)

"History is written by the victor. Have the historians beat the crap out of each other, and then base your facts off of that."
--Jeremy's suggestion on how I should decide which historian had the facts correct.

I like the way he thinks. :)

Ugh...

So we finally bought our new Rock Band guitar last night, only to get it home and discover that it wasn't working. UGH! We will, of course, be getting a new one, it's just a pain in the butt.

So instead of rocking out, we watched "Doomsday," which was a surprisingly good movie. Well, not entirely surprising, because Malcolm McDowell was in it. But yeah, this is that preview that you saw with the Mad Max looking movie with Malcolm McDowell in it. I didn't remember the preview until I realized he was in it... I really thought I had no clue what this movie was about, even. :) Oh, and it's not a zombie movie, per se. The "zombies" are way too smart.

We also started watching "Torchwood," which I've been anxiously awaiting as a way to fill the time until season 5 of Doctor Who starts/is watchable in the U.S. I can't help it, Captain Jack Harkness is just so damn charming. :) Of course, the show is already maddening, because there's stuff that Torchwood has that I'm like "nuh-uh, they can't have that, the Doctor has that..." So yeah, trying to watch all of those first two discs before I leave for my trip, but then I'll be going nuts waiting for the next discs!

My brain, it is turned off now.

Okay, so technically it's not completely off, but I've been walking around for most of the day thinking that it's Thursday. More specifically, that it's LAST Thursday. When I was at UW and saw the paper saying it was the 27th, my brain went "pshaw, that's not possible." Only it is.

This is largely because for me, it may as well be Thursday. Tomorrow is my Friday already. How awesome is that?! Of course, getting through tomorrow, with the amount of work I have stacked up on my plate, is another matter entirely. This is all of the work variety, as most of what we need to do still before leaving is easy stuff, like packing. Can't do that till Jerome does the laundry tomorrow, so therefore not on my radar yet. :)

Today, my only remaining duties? To figure out what we have that we can eat, since we decided to skip grocery shopping in favor of more Rock Band 2 last night. :) Luckily, it made sense to not go grocery shopping, since we don't wanna load up the fridge with stuff that will go bad before we get back. However, it may make for some interesting meals for today and tomorrow. I foresee a lot of eggs in our future, as they're one of the few things we have that needs to be used up before we go. :)

Recap!

So I haven't been legitimately BUSY this week, I've just been not on the computer as much as I usually am. You can blame the vast majority of that fact on Rock Band 2. It's pretty sweet. :) I've been directed to start learning to play guitar on there, however, as apparently Jerome wants to sing sometimes. :)

Other than that, I haven't done a whole lot. I only crocheted a bit on Tuesday night, when I decreed that we should watch a movie so I could get SOMETHING done. Of course, I only worked on Christmas gifts that night. :) I'm planning to get a bit of craftiness accomplished over the weekend, though I'm not sure how much of it will be for my shops, and how much of it will just be for fun. Either way, though, it'll be good to get something done. :)

We're also getting ready for the trip to Illinois for Halloween and Bryan and Vanessa's wedding. My dress is cleaned, and I figured out which shoes to wear with it. Jerome's kilt needs to be washed, but that can go in the regular washing machine. And he's got Tuesday off to take care of the last minute laundry and such, so that I can pack when I get home that night. :) We also found out we get to LARP while we're there, so that's an exciting addition to the trip... and I think Cindy and I will hit the after-Halloween sales on Sunday, since the wedding is early on Saturday.

Once we're back from that, I'm not in town for long before I run off to Kansas for a week. This is the trip to NOT the good part of Kansas, though I will get to hang out with one of our friends from Seattle who moved to Lawrence while I'm out there. So that makes it a little better than middle-of-nowhere Kansas. :) And then after that trip, I might actually be in Seattle until Christmas... of course that's just wishful thinking, I'm sure. :)

Oh, and End of the Work Week Wisdom?

"They ate all the cupcakes. They're going to come out and be like 'oh, that was a bad choice.' They'll have icing smeared all over their faces."
--Me, explaining why Apocalyptica took so long to take the stage last night

And speaking of, I'm not sure I like Showbox Market.
1) The only place where you can be up higher than on the floor is in the bar area.
2) The only place where you can sit is in the bar area.
3) The bar area is COMPLETELY packed during an all ages show.
4) The floor BOUNCES when people start jumping around.

Honestly, it's prettier on the inside than El Corazon, but I'm really prefering El Corazon. They at least have a narrow little wall that's raised up that I can sit on. :) Of course, having seen Showbox Market, I'm really dreading our excursion to Showbox SoDo, or as Anandi calls it, "ConcreteBox."

Rock gods live here now... :)

So yeah, I picked up Jerome from work yesterday, we picked up Rock Band 2 and dinner, and then went home to rock out. :) Oddly enough, we're pretty darn good at this game so far. It's mainly been me singing and him playing instruments, with an occasional switch to him singing and me playing guitar. I think I need to practice with the guitar though, as I was having a lot of trouble with it. I can consistently get high 90% (if not 100%) on singing, but I was like 50-something percent on guitar. *sigh*

Of course, now this means we have to play like EVERY spare moment, cuz it's new and exciting. So I'd best get some housework done before Jerome gets home from work, or it'll never get done... :)