I have to share this wonderful tidbit I overheard yesterday.

I had left work and was heading to Salem to practice with the band. I had to stop for gas and went to a place in Framingham. I no longer carry a credit card, so my paying at the pump days are over for the foreseeable future. That means I had to go inside to pay.

As I’m standing at the counter paying my $20 there were a few people carrying on a conversation. They were all in their early 20s or so. They looked like the stereotypical high school drop out types that one would imagine hanging out at a gas station while their one employed friend works. I’m not saying they were bad people, or douche bags, or whatever. Just saying they fit the stereotype.

One guy is talking about the environmental impacts of painting your house. I got the impression he over heard Rush Limbaugh once and decided he too was an ultra conservative hate-all-things-that-are-remotely-liberal type. He was talking about how the paint you’d use on your house is crap today because of “the environment.” Not environmentalists. Not regulations in place to protect the environment. “The environment.” That in itself was funny enough to mention to these intranetz, but it got better.

He said something about how paints used to be rugged. He said, “have you ever seen an old barn that was falling down but the paint was perfect? You don’t see that today. Paints used to be more rugged. They didn’t care about the environment. It had longativity.”

Longativity.

I laughed out loud. The kid at the counter looked at me funny. I couldn’t help it. The douche bag actually used the word (or should I say, “word”) “longativity” in an attempt to make himself sound smart and knowledgeable.

long-ah-TIV-eh-tee

There you have it. The stupid-person-tries-to-sound-smart-and-makes-up-a-multisyllabic-word-that-in-fact-makes-him-look-even-dumber-than-he-normally-looks word of the day.

Feel free to use it in a sentence. I have no idea what it means because it isn’t actually a word, but just stick it into your conversations wherever you want.

Longativity.

Jen needs a healthy dose of good luck today. There are a couple of important things going on and I want all the positive energy in the universe (how new agey of me!) to be backing her up all day.

Send your happy thoughts, good luck wishes, prayers (where applicable), and red head vibes (where applicable) to my babie today.

I love you Jen. Knock ’em Dead!

I refer to the imminent sort of reunion of Break Even.

Last night was the second and final rehearsal. Was that pressure we were feeling last night? Can’t be, we never felt pressure when we were playing in bars, how could we feel pressure when playing in the guitar player’s back yard?

I think the set list will be 12 songs. Steve’s step son will play drums on 6 of them… I think, Steve’s daughter will play on one other, and Jeff will play the rest. Also, Jeff’s soon-to-be-step-son will play guitar on one song, but we haven’t practiced with him.

My playing is garbage, utter garbage. Why should things be different? I got caught up in the fun last week and tried to play as fast and crazy as I could and basically ended up falling all over myself. Last night I tried to just spin out little melodies and ended up either repeating myself endlessly or falling all over myself. I suck. Really I do.

Practice #1 was chock full of train wrecks. Last night we managed to avoid a few of them but still had a few. Saturday we’re going to have to deal with some. I think it’s inevitable. I’m not complaining, it’s still going to be fun.

We’re only playing two original songs. I shouldn’t give anything away, but I will. This is one of the original songs we’re going to play.

We’ll see how it goes.

I hope everyone had a fun and happy 4th of July. The day we celebrate the fact that we are no longer British.

Boats are always good to photograph too. There was a marina near the beach and I took a few… dozen.

No, it’s a Wharf, not a Worf. No Chief of Security of the USS Enterprise here.

This is a beach near our friends Jamie and Michael’s in Nahant. We walked about two blocks to get here from their cookout. I am jealous. I want to live a few feet from an ocean.

This is also my new desktop background at work. I’m sure you’re thrilled with that tid-bit of knowledge.

This is the fountain just outside of the pier at Old Orchard Beach in Maine.

I could look at pictures of waves all day long.

Lucky you!

This was Friday morning. The clouds looked terribly ominous… except for that one little patch of blue sky.

The thunderstorms held off until about a minute before the fireworks started.