دوستت دارم

We got a cat!



Last weekend, Esra and Baris had a cat follow them home. She was a little girl kitten who clearly had had an owner, since she was already litterbox trained and wore a collar. But after a week of posting ads outside, at the vet's, and online, there was no response from the owner. They couldn't keep the cat themselves, but they had gotten attached to her and didn't want her to go far, so they asked if we could keep her. It worked out really well -- Andrea had wanted to get a kitty, and now here was one practically falling in our lap. She's a really sweet, playful kitty. Her name is Kurabiye (Turkish for cookie) and except for some destructive episodes, she's been a total pleasure to have.

Andrea's job hunt began in earnest this week. She applied to a school down in Lake Shore -- it looks good but very intense. She has the job offered but she hasn't yet decided to take it.

I reconnected with my university life. I saw my Persian prof., had tea with Ustaz Farouq, and began regular lessons with Ustaz Mustafa. I've spent a lot of time deliberating what courses to take and where to focus my efforts first, considering all the languages I need to be competent in.

We also spent some time with Ariel. We had dinner together, then the next day went thrift-store shopping up on the north side. After getting a desk, some lamps, and some other useful things, our apt. is finally starting to feel comfortable.

After a rough start, in which emotions were raw and tempers short, things started to settle down. We got our phones and internet working and were about to get our gas turned on. We had met our neighbors and I got in touch with my professors. Ramadan began and I started taking Arabic lessons with Ustaz Mustafa.

We also got some furniture. We went down to a local thrift store which holds lots of cheap stuff and found two chairs, a couch, and a bookcase. They agreed to deliver on the next day, but when they showed up, Andrea saw that the stairway was blocked by someone who had just varnished their table and had left it out to dry. She gingerly moved it to the bottom of the stairs so that we'd have room to take up our couch and other stuff. I wrote a note to put on the person's door, but when I went down, the table was already gone. I assumed the person had come out and taken his/her table. I left the note anyway to explain what had happened.

That night we were busy scraping the paint off my built-in bookcase and began to paint the one we got from the thrift store.

The next day I got a call on my intercom. It was the neighbor below us.

"Hello, is this Kamran?"
"Yes..."
"Yeah, I had that table that you moved..."
"Yeah..?"
"It's GONE."

After talking, Andrea suggested we go back to the thrift store -- that was the only place she could think it might have gone. I was unhappy with the idea, but after some sighs, I drove us down. Sure enough, there it was. The movers had taken the table out with them on their way out. We returned the table and in return got invited to watch some jazz with our neighbors up at a free concert in Millennium Park on the weekend.

Our social life started to get better at that point. We saw some jazz, visited Esra and Baris over the weekend, and on Sunday went up to the TACA (turkish american cultural assoc.) party up in the north side. While we were there, we drove over to the Arab neighborhood on Kedzie and picked up some good supplies. Suddenly we were equipped to smoke shisha, bake bread, and cook a mean dinner.

Sat, August 23rd

Arrived in Chicago. Same old drill -- unload the car, heave all the boxes up, look around with no idea where anything could or should go. I was pretty unhappy for this part. Nothing was in its place, and I didn't even have a place to put it in. We had no phone, no internet, no gas, so we were living off of microwaved eggs and fruit salad. Every day we got a few more things put up, got a little closer to feeling like we lived here. Even though the weather was great, I didn't go out much.

Today I left Colorado. The final pack took longer than it should of, mostly because of me. I hadn't packed up a lot of my stuff yet, and I was really sluggish in getting it all put together this morning. I was honestly really sad to be leaving, and as we pulled out and I looked out at the mountains heading down for the last time, I suddenly started sobbing. I'm really attached to my home, and it was so wonderful to be back here, even if it was only temporary. Now I'm back on my own, just me and Rea.

I spent the day at Chris' house for my fiddle camp. It was really good. I feel like I have tons of stuff to work on, between the sheet music, recorded tunes, and things that Chris had me look at. It's mostly just the trick of finding time and a place to practice.

I was there till super late. When I got back, Andrea had already packed the car and was in bed. Wow. We're leaving tomorrow.

Today I was supposed to have a lesson with Chris but she had to move it back due to family stuff. So, we scooted our whole schedule back -- Instead of this weekend, we'd leave on Wednesday after my lesson.

Which was probably a good thing, since Andrea's computer decided to crash. Specifically, her hard drive decided to fail. Fortunately, Dad had just had his hard drive fail and had bought some good data recovery software, so we have the resources to recover her data over the weekend.

This morning Erik, Rea, and I headed up to Dave/Lauren's place. It was a good day, with frisbee, movies, chatting, etc. I also drove over to Boulder and spent a few hours with Dee, who I hadn't seen in 2-3 years? It was really nice. I think we still click the way we always have.

...

Very thoughtful these days. It's like watching my life go by, different stages and friendships and ages flitting in front of my eyes. None of it was really attached to me any more the way it had been... I dunno. I couldn't explain how I felt coming back home and now I can't explain how I feel leaving it.

I had my last jam session of the summer with John and Christine. It was really sad to see the period end, but even if I wasn't going to Chicago, this is it; christine's moving up to fort collins this weekend and John's leaving for a contest in New Mexico. We played in Christine's backyard until it got dark, then I hugged everyone goodbye. Rea and I drove over to Erik's so that we could all see Lauren and dave tomorrow. I was feeling pretty despondent.

I had an intense couple of days. I had to get all of our sheet music organized, and on top of it John gave me all of his old fiddle LPs to digitize on mom's new turntable. Records, as it turned out, took much longer than I had anticipated. I was in my studio with a royal mess of papers and vinyl spread out all over the place. Nobody saw much of me.

this is a week that was all about music, as well as being bookended on either side by fiddle contests. On August 3rd I went down to Kiowa with John, which was the first contest I think I had either won or did really well in and began my good streak as a contest fiddler for the next 5-6 years, back when I was 16. I happened to win my division again, but the feel was completely different. It was just me and Syd and John competing in our division -- the old group dynamic had fizzled away. Eischen beat me out in the final round, so I ended up with a 2nd overall place -- which I don't really care about, by then it was 4:00 and we were exhausted and just wanted to go home.

Over the week, I set up a home studio in Dad's office. I knew this was the last chance I'd get to record in a private and quiet location -- all that would disappear when I got to chicago. With a tremendous amount of time and work (and it didn't feel all that much, but I really did spend most of the week in that room) I got a number of demos completed. A lot of them feature fiddle, cello, guitar, and other acoustic performances that I hope to preserve and use in the final takes. Electronic stuff can be recorded anywhere; acoustic's much harder.

Then, on August 9th, I had my last fiddle contest of the summer. It was out in Strasburg, a nice little town in Eastern Colorado. It was a new contest, but it generated a huge crowd. It's amazing to me how much traditional American folk music still appeals to these communities, both old and young. I got to see Ricky and Ahrun, who I hadn't seen in years. John and I grabbed some Mexican food with the Carters and then headed over to Chris' house, where I believe we stayed up most of the night playing music and talking.

Well, time has gone by quick. I've mostly been busy with music, although I had some neat things (such as turning 26) happen along the way that I'll blog about eventually. In the meantime, I want to get to the cool stuff:

NEW MUSIC

by ME

http://haoma.neonphog.com/music/bwren/demos.html

You can find demos of 12 new songs ready to be listened to and critiqued. I'm hoping to move this project into a full album ready to give to friends within the next month or so. To that end I'll try to get the remaining 6-8 songs I'm working on ready for listening by the end of next week. In the meanwhile, ANYone who is interested in eccentric, violin-based rock is welcome to listen to these tunes and send me feedback, from how the songs are played to their organization to their lyrics to their titles. It's all very useful for me. Enjoy!

Dad's leaving tomorrow for Ecuador, so we decided to celebrate my birthday a day early this year. I'm about to turn 26. Wow. I've been journaling in one form or another for ten years now. It's kind of funny thinking that I've generated so much text and yet so little of it is really much beyond what goes on in my life. I'd really like to start an art blog or an essay blog or a news blog or something that does more than simply record my existence. Well, here's some photos of what we did.



Considering that I love Colorado and actually sort of realize how lucky I am to be here for a summer, all I wanted was to go driving up in the mountains somewhere and have lunch with my family. We decided to go up Guanetella Pass and cross over into Georgetown, a delightful little down about an hour away from me.



We had some massive ice cream cones and did a little shopping. In the rare section of the local book store, I found a really funny book -- a travelogue of Egypt written by an English tourist in 1898. It's a really interesting read; the author is definitely informed by the whole "white man bringing civilization to the benighted Africans" outlook, yet he's remarkably perceptive in acknowledging that under British rule Egyptians really had no rights, money, property, or power. Yet it's totally okay, in fact, good. What's impressive is that what he describes from a hundred years ago is more or less how the country looks now, from a class and economic standpoint.

Rea and I got to spend some time with Kevin yesterday and today. I had to be in the area anyway to get my fiddle fixed up and so it was great that we could hang out with him. I have to say, I really enjoyed getting back in touch with him. His family had a reunion that same day we were over, so I got to see him mom performing in a barbershop-style quartet:



We're interested in collaborating musically again. Now I just need to finish up recording my demos so he can hear what I'm up to.

Rea and I went on a beautiful hike with Erik. There were raspberries.

Fun summer activities:

a walk around my hometown of evergreen! (jul 19)



a trip up to boulder, where we saw the artists' festival, I bought lots of frisbees and aerobies, and then we lost one of them in the creek. The next day dave introduced us to Heroes and helped me install Linux on my pc. (jul 20)

judging a fiddle contest in canon city (jul 26)

Well, we had a very successful trip to Chicago. Driving out there was uneventful except for mom booking us a hotel in Des Moines when it was actually in Ankany, and we encountered some frustrations (as is to be expected) with missed/cancelled appointments on our first day of looking. We worked our asses off; by the end of the week we were totally sore, feet covered in blisters, hands and back cramping from all the weird positions we stood in to haul furniture and clean, but at the end of the day here it is, our new place:





It's perfect for what we need. It's close to all the bus and train lines and is in a really cool part of Hyde Park with fun diners and pancake places and Mexican and Jamaican restaurants and a Farmer's Market every Thursday. It has the obligatory hardwood floors, a nice kitchen, and hopefully it won't be freezing in the winter. We also have a door that used to lead to a fireplace that now goes nowhere -- it makes for a great window.

After we found the place on the second day, we had to unload the van (which was filled with all our stuff from Colorado), then go back up to Erick's house to pick up the crap I had left in Chicago before going to Cairo. Of course you can't just show up and take off without a pitcherful of margaritas to ease those aches and pains. We also found a cheap mattress on Craig's List and picked it up in the Hyde Park area. It was one of the hardest objects to move I have ever encountered, and it makes me all the more glad I like this place because I DON'T WANT TO MOVE AGAIN.

Cleaning was also a bit of a hassle -- they hadn't finished the bathroom and kitchen when we showed up, but since we wanted to move in immediately, they gave us a discount on our rent in return for our labor cleaning up. The guy that had lived there before was a total slob, however, and cleaning off the tops of the cabinets was totally gross.





Once it was all done, though, it feels awesome to have a place! We drove back in one shot and since then have been taking it REAL easy. I've indulged my dorky side by erasing my old IBM Thinkpad and trying to install Linux on it -- so far it's doing... okay. I'll continue to work on Arabic and music and other random things as I can, but for the moment I feel accomplished and deserving of some lazy time.

It was a quiet start to the week. I had some Arabic lessons with Mustafa and went down to visit Erik one day. We hiked Green Mountain and had cheap Chinese food. On the fifth, I went to a fiddle contest in Greeley. Took first place and saw my sister there. The next day, Rea and I started looking at apartments in the Hyde Park area and saw some great deals. We made some phone calls and found that, well, perhaps we should be leaving now to pick one of these places up. So, in a last-minute change of plans, we packed up all our stuff and set up a lot of appointments to see some places. This is a week earlier than intended, but hopefully we can get all of our stuff moved out there now and then the final move in August will be simple. Perhaps we can buy some furniture and job-hunt as well.

Yeah, it's been ages since writing. I've done weekly summaries of the last two months, which should be enough for now. The last few days I've done nothing but sit in front of the computer with Andrea and do random stuff at a very slow rate. My photos are finally organized now, my hard disk is mostly cleared of viruses and ready to be backed up again, I've done some preliminary investigation into where I could live, I've emailed a few friends, so on. One thing I was really frustrated by was my inability to work further on my cd because all my equipment is back in Chicago. Furthermore, I had given away the crappy fender that Jed had given to me once he bought Jim's guitar back in 2006. So ever since coming back, I had been thinking about getting a cheap, ideally free guitar. I had been monitoring Craig's List for the last week and found that most guitars wouldn't come much cheaper than $50 unless I was trading... so today this morning I decided to go ahead and get the next $50 guitar that came along. It was SO worth it. I got a very simple fender squier with a single humbucker pickup against the bridge -- no switches, no second pickups, no internal wiring. The important thing is that it plays in tune and has a good, rich tone. From there I can modify it with Garageband. Rea and did a few more errands, stopping by the Arab quarter of Denver for shisha parts, before going home, and I spent most of the evening playing with my new instrument. Tres fun.

The first half of this week went by pretty quickly. Jonathan and I hung out playing video games, and one day all of us went down to the Art Museum to see Avonne. I got together with John and Christine again and we had a great time. We all want to continue doing this for the rest of the summer. Andrea's birthday was this weekend. She got some tupperware from her family and she and I and Dave and Lauren went down camping in the Fairplay area (Fourmile park) for the weekend. We got in some beautiful hikes, then headed back Saturday night to have a celebratory dinner at Beau Jo's pizza. All in all good times.

Weiser was awesome this year. I saw a lot of old faces who were surprised and pleased to see me, and most of the time it was just John and I hanging out, jamming. I got to see Katie and Syd and the McMullens and John Relph and Mike Rolland and Dan Emert and I made a new friend with Deena, a friend of Tom's. I also saw Rex (whom I'd never seen before) and two rising stars in the tradition, Alex and Tatiana Hargreaves. John and I went up in a straight shot in his veggie car, and except for a melted coolant hose on the Idaho border, we did quite well. Jonathan came from Seattle halfway through the week and stayed with us until Friday. He enjoyed the place very much too. He and I left Friday night since he had decided to come down to Evergreen to visit Mom and Dad for a few days. One more 16 hour drive and we were back home, exhilarated and exhausted.