Monday, October 10, 2006

I went out a few nights ago to hang out again with my new MySpace friend to see her friend perform. I was so proud of myself because I didn’t get lost once on the drive there. By the time I arrived at the Revolution Café, AMS and her friends had already polished off a few bottles of wine.

I took my guitar with me, just in case, but didn’t get a chance to use it, although I did sing one of my songs acappella. As a result, I wound up selling all of the CDs that I carried with me that night, which paid for my gas and gave me a little cash left over. Just as before, the conversation was quite lively. There was a new set of friends this time, one of whom was a man who works part-time in San Francisco but lives near Los Angeles. He mentioned that he was working on a documentary that he needed music for but as he’d had a lot of wine, I didn’t take his conversation very seriously.

KBD had her friend BWS come over for dinner the other night. He came by to help her with her web page. “Can you make dinner?” she asked me. “Sure,” I said, always happy to cook and especially to eat! KBD is a vegetarian, so my plan was to grill some shitake mushrooms and serve them with baked yams and a salad. Then her housemate RJD brought home some lamb chops, so I had to revise the plan to include them. I grilled the lamb with garlic and rosemary and added spinach to the mix, sautéed in olive oil with garlic. The meal was a huge success. We all ate like pigs!

The following day KBD and I felt we should do something physical just to walk off some of the food we’d stuffed ourselves with the night before, so we went hiking up the hill and down the hill. First, of course, we stuffed ourselves with more food. We started with oatmeal but by the time we’d checked our emails and made our phone calls of the morning, we were hungry again, so I made guacamole and hummus and KBD made corn chips and chopped some carrot sticks to go with the hummus.

We ate our fill and then had a great walk. KBD took me a way up the hill that I hadn’t been before. I got some great photos. The day was perfectly clear and we could see all the way across to the city.

After our walk, we came back to the house and snacked some more. Then we drove down the road to a neighbor’s who was hosting a moonrise party to commemorate the full moon, which actually happened the night before, but it was so foggy the night before that nobody could see the moon. However, the night of the moonrise gathering, the night was so clear that we could see the moon perfectly. As it turned out, it was also the neighbor’s birthday, which of course meant there had to be birthday cake – a lemon chiffon cake and a lemon cheesecake that tasted like a combination of cheesecake meets lemon meringue pie. There was also grilling going on outside on the back porch, which included chicken, burgers, sausage and vegetable kabobs.

So, a day that started with hiking to walk off all the food we’d eaten the night before wound up ending with the eating of more food! Lucky for me, I’m blessed with a super fast metabolism and can pretty much eat anything I want without having to worry about gaining weight. I may get a stomachache, however, which is precisely what wound up happening a few days earlier after a typical day of gluttony for us.

RJD brought home a piece of salmon. Ordinarily I only eat wild salmon, never farmed, but, as my friend DFG says, one should never “shit in the mouth of a gift horse.” So when RJD prepared the salmon, KBD and I both ate a small piece of it. Then after dinner there was ice cream, which I never eat (well, hardly ever). Then we sat around after dinner and did our usual playing guitars and singing until we all had the munchies again. I opted for the last of the boxed cereal, except KBD had gotten to it before I had a chance to, so there was nothing left but a few crumbs which had escaped the cellophane packaging and fallen into the box itself. I ate those and as I chewed and swallowed the last bit of dry cereal, something definitely not right assaulted my taste buds. “I just ate something weird,” I said to KBD and RJD. “I hope it wasn’t a bug,” KDB joked.

Well, later that night after everyone had gone to bed, I awoke with the worst stomachache and a feeling that said: Get to the bathroom immediately!!! I got out of bed and started to make my way in the dark to the bathroom, not wanting to wake anybody else. Halfway to the bathroom, I started feeling really dizzy. I reached out to grab the doorway of the bathroom and before I could get a good grip on it, I must have fainted, because the next thing I knew, I came to and found myself lying on the floor in front of the bathroom. I dragged myself into the bathroom where I spent the next hour sitting on the toilet with my head over the wastebasket, throwing up whatever hadn’t come out the other end. My body broke out in a cold sweat and I felt so wretched I wondered if I had food poisoning or something. Finally, when there was no more left to come out either end, I managed to get myself back to bed where I collapsed until the morning.

When I told KBD and RJD what happened the next day, they both said, “I thought I heard a thud in the hallway but I thought it was the cats playing!” Fortunately for me, I wasn’t dying or something. KBD felt so bad that she didn’t get up to investigate that she made me a cup of tea and drew me a wonderful bath, with candlelight and scented oils. While I was bathing she made a delicious pot of lentil soup and RJD lit a fire in the fireplace. As I warmed myself in front of the fire and sipped on the soup, I couldn’t help but feel much better.

Tomorrow I’m heading down to Los Angeles for the screening of the documentary that I did the music for. I just got off of the phone with one of the producers. Apparently, they’ve used a lot of the music that I composed. “You’ll be happy to see how nicely your music moves the piece along,” she said. She sounded absolutely exhausted, poor thing. She’s in New York City tonight and is flying back to Los Angeles tomorrow for the screening on Wednesday and then has to get back onto a plane and fly back to New York the next day to finish a project she’s working on there.

So, I’m going to get into bed now and get a good night’s sleep because I don’t know how much sleep I’ll be getting over the next couple of days since I’m sure that after the screening, I’ll be doing some hanging out and networking with the industry people at the screening and then of course I have to say hello to my LA friends while I’m there. It should be lots of fun!

More soon...

© Daughter of the Sun. Reprint by permission only.

October 3, 2006 - I’ve been in Northern California for nearly two weeks now. I’m staying at KBD’s home once again, in the house overlooking the ocean and the rolling hills. Today I saw two deer grazing right outside the kitchen window. I felt a long way from the overcrowded, noisy streets of New York City. More...

September 10, 2006 - It’s almost midnight and here I sit in front of my computer still. I didn’t go out today. I don’t know if it was cold or hot but I do know that it was sunny because I sat near the window as I worked, so that I could feel the sun on my skin. More...

August 20, 2006 - Friday night was my performance at The Alphabet Lounge. There was a nice turnout, although about one third of the people arrived almost at the end of the performance. More...

July 7, 2006 - Yesterday was my show at The Talking Stick. I thought I’d get some photos of my performance but unfortunately TDJ arrived just as I’d finished my last song. I only performed a few songs. More...

July 3, 2006 - I’m in my own bedroom at TDJ’s apartment. My own little slice of Heaven. I’m sleeping on an air mattress on the floor in what is technically TDJ’s office/recording studio but who cares. I have my own bathroom and I can sleep as late as I like. More...

June 30, 2006 - I think I’ve worn out my welcome with NAP. Fortunately, I spoke with TDJ yesterday and his other houseguests have departed, which means that starting today I can stay in his extra bedroom. He’s my only friend in California that I haven’t met through MySpace. More...

June 24, 2006 - So I’m in Los Angeles, the city of broken dreams and make believe. I’m staying with a wonderful family, thanks again to MySpace. NAP is a singer, a wife and the mother of two absolutely adorable (and exhaustingly rambunctious) children. More...

June 8, 2006 - I am loving life right about now. I’m in Northern California in a little town near Sausalito with a population of about 200. I posted an ad on Craigs List saying I was willing to exchange administrative services for room and board and, lo and behold, I got two responses the very next day. More...

May 3, 2006 - I just got in from playing in the subway station. I like the F line at the 23rd Street station... More...

April 24, 2006 - I found a numerology site and, according to their calculations, I’m at the end of a cycle. I‘ve past the harvest and I’m about to lay down new seeds I guess to prepare for the coming Winter. More...

April 10, 2006 - I’ve been spending a lot of time online, working on my MySpace page, making new friends through MySpace as well. By the time I get to California, I’ll already know lots of folks there. More...

April 2, 2006 - I can’t believe it’s April already. The year is nearly half done, although some more optimistic than I am at this moment in my life would say the year’s barely begun. It just seems that time is marching along faster and faster each year. More...

March 23, 2006 - Not much new to report. Still laid up with my broken toe. More...

March 16, 2006 - What a week it’s been! A broken toe, post-Philly drama, TTT came into town, west coast tour in the works, April concert to plan, new band. More...

March 10, 2006 - It was a pretty smooth drive with almost no traffic even though we left the city at 5 o’clock. We reached Philadelphia at about 8 o’clock. It reminds me of a lot of other small towns I’ve been in, like Troy and Albany. More...

March 8, 2006 - This evening I’m off to New Rochelle to perform at a Habitat for Humanity fundraising event. I’m taking CDs, which I will autograph and sell and donate half the proceeds to Habitat for Humanity. They’re going to New Orleans to rebuild some of the homes that were destroyed by Katrina. More...

March 2, 2006 - I am so over the cold and ready for the Spring. It’s hard to believe it’s right around the corner. The groundhog saw his shadow last month, which supposedly means Winter is hanging around a bit longer but I remain ever hopeful. More...

February 25, 2006 - Another late night… What else is new? I performed at Bellizzi’s tonight. Two sets. I ran through my entire arsenal of songs and even threw in a cover of Cyndi Lauper’s song, “True Colors.” I don’t really like doing covers but the woman who hired me for the night asked me to and you have to give the people what they want, especially when they're paying. More...

February 19, 2006 - Another all nighter… My plan was to get into bed by midnight at the latest but I wound up staying up and setting up my page on MySpace. It turns out there’s another artist with my name (Setra) who’s already on MySpace so I couldn’t use my own name. I had to sign up using Daughter of the Sun instead. It took a while to upload the music and the photos, once I figured out how to do it. More...

February 16, 2006 - Hurray! The snow is almost gone! Just the way I like the snow. A lot of it comes down, it stays for a few days and then it melts and is gone; and not a moment too soon. I ate the last of the food today, which means I have to go grocery shopping tomorrow. I haven't weighed myself but I have a feeling I've gained at least a couple of pounds. More...

Snow - I have about five days’ worth of food, and I’m prepared to hibernate until the snow melts. My car is parked across the street but I don’t know which mound it’s under. It was kind of nice being home alone and doing whatever I wanted to without having to answer to anybody or even speak to another person. I turned off the ringer on the phone and just spent some time with myself. More...

Guero's - I just got in from Guero’s. What a night. First off, it turns out they didn’t have a PA system, an amp, a microphone or microphone stand so I had to pack up all that stuff and take it with me. I lugged it all a block and a half to where I’d parked my car Monday evening and when I got to the parking spot where I’d left my car, my car was nowhere to be found. More...

More Journals