I guess it’s a pretty big sign that we’re officially parents when I pass up seeing Crowded House, one of my favorite bands, who stopped in Phoenix for their first official tour date (besides a couple of warm-up dates) in eleven years . . . but we will be going to see the Elmo Makes Music show next weekend. Ah, the things we do for our kids - Crowded House would have been half the cost of Elmo!

Amanda has expanded her vocabulary to an astounding degree in the past couple of months, which makes it a lot of fun doing pretty much anything with her. She says “bye-bye” to everyone and everything, usually several times, and often during dinner will exclaim “Mama! Mama! Hi!” and wait for a response, then turn to me and blurt out “Dada! Dada! Hi!” Dogs are now “dawlaks,” birds are “birlaks,” but cars and cows are pretty distinct - however, we’re wondering if she’s from Boston because car has the distinct Boston accent: “caw.” The most amusing, however, is that while she can clearly pronounce “mama,” “dada,” and calls my dad “poppa,” my mom is not whatever form of “grandma” she could pronounce but instead is something along the line of, and I write phonetically here, “buhlooblyshbloo.” Hey, a name’s a name, and when she calls out “buhlooblyshbloo,” you know who she wants.

I picked up a pair of gloves for, believe it or not, the glovebox in my truck. It seems I run into situations where I need some gloves and never have them with me, so I got a cheap pair to keep with me, thereby proving wrong the Death Cab For Cutie song “Title And Registration”: it is not inaccurately named now. (Lyrics here for those unfamiliar.

Let me tell you, I am sadly excited to try out Turtle Wax’s Liquid Clay Bar. I’ve been claying the cars once a year or so and it is no exaggeration to say that if you want the absolute best wax job ever, this is a vital step. Claying removes a bunch of junk that cannot be removed by washing alone, as the clay picks up road-borne contaminants that mar your finish. When you’re done, you literally have a glass-smooth finish. The problem with clay is that, if you drop it, well, you’re done - use that on your car and you’ll likely rub dirt into the paint and scratch the hell out of it. Well, Turtle Wax has come out with a simpler solution (literally) that, from reviews I read, actually does exactly what clay does, and many claim in less time. So I grabbed that and a bottle of what many are claiming is a great new high-tech wax, Meguiar’s NXT, for what I hope to be a faster wax process than the - I kid not - two day, four step process I’ve had to go through (clay, and then three step Meguiars wax process.) We’ll see - no matter what, it’s what I’m doing to both cars because they both need waxing badly. Sounds like a pretty exciting weekend, eh?

One’s a comedian, one’s a violinist, but don’t tell that to fans of the comedian, who are apparently too daft to actually read genre labels and are certainly too stupid to click on sound clips to check out what they’re buying. DGMLive reports that former King Crimson violinist David Cross’s albums on Itunes are currently getting a bunch of bad reviews from angry comedian David Cross fans who apparently blindly buy anything with his name attached. He’s a funny guy - not for everybody, but he’s certainly got a unique take on events and stupid things that he encounters. He’d probably find this pretty funny - and he’d probably have a few harsh words for the violinist David Cross’ music.

On the upside for comedian David Cross, his publicist should love this - get his name on anything possible. Perhaps . . . squagels?

(Warning: headphones needed - but stick around for the part about squagels that starts at about 3 minutes in. Seriously hilarious.)

Don’t be oppressed by the tyranny of round!

I’m in one of those, for lack of a better word, funks. It’s taken me a couple of weeks to realize it, but it finally hit me tonight. Except it’s like a reverse funk, where it’s just too much of everything going on at once. Too much information, too much here and there, too much . . . ruckus (”could you describe the ruckus, sir?”) Today felt like too much too much, I realized tonight, just now, really. I spent half the day stressing out - I’m not kidding - about whether or not I was going to get the extremely limited edition of Porcupine Tree’s new album, Fear Of A Blank Planet. Long story short: a tiny run of a luxurious package and a bunch of assholes buying multiple copies to keep sealed and displayed on their shelves and a tardy me placing an order for said limited edition equates to doomed prospects. Can I just say I hate collectors and the collector mentality? Buy things because you love them. Buy things to open, play with, and enjoy, not simply display in their original shrink wrap. Their monetary value may come from being pristine, but their sentimental value comes from being tangible.

But, good news, I may have tracked one down, but I won’t know until I hear back from the one online store I found that claimed they had them in stock for very decent prices (forget Ebay, they were going for ridiculous prices already.) Anyway, the stress I placed on getting this special edition took me away from simply enjoying the prospect of new music, which is just dumb, but it kind of illustrates to me that I’m just not focusing at all right now. I’ve been seriously neglecting this site even while I’ve maintained a kind of silent resolution to write more here, so I’m going to get back to that.

Most of all, I just need to get my head unstuck, get it unwrapped from all the tight cords of discontent and confusion that I’ve gotten enmeshed within lately. My biggest problem is that I’m a consumate researcher and I’m not content until I feel I’ve thoroughly dug deep into everything I can on whatever happens to be in my mind at the moment. Right now it’s this Porcupine Tree album, for the past couple of weeks it was the upcoming Genesis remaster/remix box set (which has been a convoluted debacle in itself that I will detail at a later date.) It’s always something, and since I’m a music fiend, it’s almost always something music. So on nights like tonight when I get a moment to think, I am hit with what you all are probably thinking: this is crazy. I need times like this, or I might turn into one of those damned collectors - it wouldn’t take much. Just a tiny push in one direction, just a bit more obsession and a little less clarity . . .

Had I more time, I’d write up a post about our zoo expedition last weekend, but I’ve run myself out of time once again. Lots of pictures and lots to talk about, but, alas, no time to do so at the moment.

Instead, I’ll just offer a relatively rare audio file to celebrate Easter - Marillion’s “Easter.” It’s not really about the day so much (it’s a love song to Ireland, really, and if you want a bunch of info on what it’s all about, here’s a good place for more) but it’s still called “Easter” and that suits my needs. Plus it’s a great song (if it has some dated sounds, please keep in mind that it’s nearly 20 years old) and I’ll do what I can to help expose the band to more people at the moment - their new album is just days (or weeks, depending on where you live, like us in the US) from appearing on store shelves, and those of us who ordered it from the band’s special connection are just starting to get theirs and are freaking out at how great it is. So here’s a little Easter egg from me to you, dear Reader:

Marillion - Easter - 8mb, live version from Christmas In The Chapel DVD available at Marillion.com

• Anyone stopping by (here or on any of my sites) on Wednesday might have noticed a nice message, something to the effect of “Account Suspended” in big, bold letters. I spent a nervous day trying to figure out what I’d done wrong, called my host on the way home on my cell phone that never drops calls. Mid-way through the conversation, finding out what went wrong and how to fix it, what do you know? My call got dropped. Regardless, I found out what happened, at least - apparently some spammer used one of my email addresses for a phishing scam and it got reported to my host, who immediately shut me down (understandably.) What’s not understandable is why they couldn’t simply send me a damned email telling me why I’d been shut down, instead of the cryptic email that stated that I’d “violated service agreement terms.” Okay, but what terms?!

  I got back on the phone with tech support tonight, got my site turned back on (with outgoing email suspended as a punishment for this problem - big deal, I never use it anyway) and found out that I desperately need to update my old sites (unproductivity and thebeautifullull) to the latest Wordpress because someone may have exploited a security breach in one of the PHP files in their ancient Wordpress installs.

• Also big news, in case you don’t check my music/etc. site, I’m keeping up with American Idol as of this post. Yes, I’ve finally fallen victim to the steamroller that is AI. I’ll be keeping my thoughts on each week from now on posted on the site, so be sure and check in after each episode to see my thoughts.

I wasn’t prodded so much today, but poked many times - 72 times, to be exact. The allergy specialist I saw today drew out a bunch of numbers with an orange erasable marker on both of my arms and then proceeded to poke at my arms with tiny little needs, most of which I couldn’t feel, a few of which I did, and a couple drew a bit of blood. And then everyone left, telling me not to touch anything on my arms for 15 minutes, which didn’t seem so bad. “No scratching,” the nurse said, and closed the door. No big deal, I thought. But a few minutes later, it felt like someone lit my arms on fire, and I very badly wanted to scratch.

I occupied my time with a breather they’d left me, hooked up to a machine running some kind of vaporized asthma medicine. The doctor didn’t suspect asthma but wanted to check anyway. This wasn’t much of a distraction, but it was something - balancing the mouthpiece in my teeth was at least some kind of diversion, since I couldn’t read the book I brought (it would be too far away to read comfortably.) But how I itched and burned - I was definitely allergic to something, or many somethings on my arms.

After the fifteen minutes were up, the nurse and another assistant came in and, unfortunately, didn’t clean me off immediately. Instead, the nurse grabbed a clear ruler and began checking each number’s corresponding area, measuing the redness and swollen area. When all was said and done, she wiped away the remaining residue, the numbers, and then mercifully applied a generous layer of aloe vera. The itching went away for a bit.

The doctor pronounced it simply: “You’re allergic to pretty much everything!” Trees, weeds, pollen, grass, and - sadly - cats. I came home and took the cats for a ride, dropping them off in the desert and said goodbye with a gentle hug each. I’ll really miss them. I loved those cats, they’ve been with us for 8 years now.

All right, fine, I didn’t do that. It’s a pretty mild reaction to them, nothing that can’t be managed with drugs. And, in fact, everything will be managed with drugs for now, but he suggested seriously thinking about going with a program that, instead of working to take care of the symptoms would instead take care of the problem itself. And that sounds great, doesn’t it? The only problem here is that it’s shots. And lots of them. Two a week for a few months, then one a week for the rest of a year’s time, then it tapers off over something like a 5 year time span until your body has built up an immunity to the things your allergic to. But I don’t like the idea of being stuck on allergy medicine for the rest of my life, nor do I like the idea that if had to stop allergy medicine, I’m right back where I’ve been - feeling awful. Not only that, but the good doctor said that more and more they’re learning that there’s a close correlation between allergies and migraines - and it makes good sense in my case. I’ve had increasingly bad allergy problems and my migraines have also grown increasingly bad (until I got on my meds last year - which I’d also like to get off of.) So it’s pretty obvious what the best choice is likely to be here . . . I just have to come to grips with getting needles in my arm for years to come.

For the time being, it’s somewhat fun to say to people when they ask how the appointment went, “Well,” and gesture out a window, “I’m pretty much allergic to all of that.”