'Trails' and Tribulation

It finally happened. After over half a decade of practicing on Schrubb Drive, we had the cops called on us. It couldn't have happened on a worse day too, as we had special guests on site to witness our majesty. But it was all interrupted when, after a stirring rendition of "Ghost Train," there came a knock on the door by a local 'boy in blue.'

The copper gave us some rigamarole about "pissing contests" (his words), feeding us basically the "I'm cool, but I'm a big prickly cock too" line which is pretty standard from quiet suburban area 5-0 bronze. And that was that. With a single republican swipe, the fat assed old sow diagonal-neighbor murdered The Sailing after 7 or so years of space rocking.

Of course, it should be noted that our practices have been a little bit... louder as of late, this due to the fact that we had to move from the stanky basement to the wide-open living room upstairs for medical reasons. So yes, it probably was louder than usual, but there's no reason the old whore couldn't have at least left a note or tried to talk to us about it, without wasting some poor dickhead cop's time.

Even when the brass was standing right there she refused to talk to us, like we were all going to start bleeding acid on her like a Xenomorph or something (see below).


So what now? Well, until we can make that stanky basement livable once again (and possibly sound proof it as much as we can) we can't practice at that house anymore. Luckily The Sailing are blessed with some of the greatest friends and colleagues any band from any town could ask for. Specifically the boys of Captain of Industry, who with absolutely zero notice were able to reserve a room for us in their secret practice space downtown.

On Saturday, Kirkland, Gus, and I assisted "The Coop" and Nathan of Captain (damn, that's a lot of capitalization) in clearing out the long-unused room in the practice space that The Sailing will be utilizing. While down there we discovered a cat who had given birth to a litter of 4 or 5 tiny kittehs. Knowing first hand what unattended cats in a practice space can do to the living conditions there, we successfully removed them from the space. To accomplish this, we employed the abilities of Gus' gal Rachel in putting the kittehs in a box, and then the the abilities of Michael Kirkland in frightening the mama cat out the door. The kittehs were taken to an appropriate caregiving facility, and the space was once again reclaimed for humanity.

So now it's Monday, and we hope to move in all of our shit tonight. This is weird, since for the last 7 or so years Tuesday and Thursday have been ingrained in my skull as 'fâtum days.' There was a stint in 2003 that had us practicing on Wednesdays - but never before have I had a 3 day block of no practice in the middle of the week. It will be interesting to be certain. But the important thing here is that we can now get to serious practice grinding for the summer tour. Oh! That reminds me! I need to write up a big update for thesailing.org's front page ;)

STAY TUNED SAILSMITHZ!

p.s. - Got my Vindicator's Dreadweave Cuffs, and by the end of tonight I (by all means) SHOULD have my Vindicator's Band of Dominance.

In FFXI I'm very very close to hitting 17 with Scholar, which means that I'm 2 levels from getting it out of the forsaken hell hole that is the Valkurm Dunes (aka teh n00bocaust).