Mary's LJ

I hope everyone survived the holidays in a happy and life-affirming fashion!

I worked most of the holiday week, but was off the 29th through today. For NYE I volunteered with RockMed, first at the Warfield where the Tedeschi Trucks Band was, then The Regency where I helped clean up after a Kreyshawn show, then to "Sea of Dreams" which was one of those humongous Rave/party/new age/arty things which ended at 4:30 AM! It was a fun night; I've made a lot of friends in the organization and I enjoyed hanging out with them.

My New Year's resolution this year is a little different: I've resolved to go paperless. I started last week actually going through boxes and drawers and ENDLESS stacks of papers! I bought an inexpensive scanner (www.getdoxie.com) which comes with a nice little software program that will upload directly to Google Docs and set up my Docs with a bunch of folders that made sense for me. I discovered that at least half the crap I had I could just throw away (insurance policy on a car I don't have, for example) and everything I felt was important I scanned and threw the original away. I am down to half a file drawer of things where the original is important, like Deeds, Certificates, Tax Returns, and Licenses, and everything with my name on it is in a three foot high stack to go to a shredding service.

I receive all my recurring bills on line, so I don't have any paper statements coming into the house at all. I gotta say, it's a liberating feeling. After everything is scanned in, I'm going to put it in a zip file and copy it to a thumb drive, so in case an atom bomb hits Google's servers, I still have a copy of everything that I can print out everywhere.

I've also decided to get hardcore about backing up my computer, so in addition to my HD backups, I signed up for a cloud backup service (www.backblaze.com) too. Because of my crappy uplink, it will take about a MONTH to get my entire system backed up, but once it's fully backed up, updates are automatic. It costs $4/month, which is entirely reasonable in my humble opinion.

The next step is to start going through the closets and being ruthless about getting rid of stuff, but you have to be in the mood, otherwise you stew for an hour and realize you only put one thing in the plastic bag! Hopefully this enthusiasm will last past, oh, February.

Cheers to an awesome 2012 everyone!

No matter how far I roam...I will always come back to LJ, and I will always love Green Day.

Just putting that out there.

We're gearing up for another round...secret shows and new songs on the way. I even shelled out the $25 (or whatever...I've already forgotten!) to rejoin the Idiot Club, because, damn, now that I live here, I don't want to miss the next secret shows. C'mon, guys, have one on my day off this time.

So, I'm REALLY excited for this: Billie Joe is going to be in a 2 episode arc on the cable TV show "Nurse Jackie." I saw it on the IC, but Perez Hilton posted about it today. http://perezhilton.com/2011-10-07-billie-joe-armstrong-cast-on-nurse-jackie#.To-goutmtsY

Someone in the comments has some casting information:
[JOHN] (Male, 45) He is a badass, has a tattoo that says 'No Regrets' on his hand, and is a drug user addicted to Oxycontin who meets Jackie one night. He is chasing after the ultimate high. He has kids and a wife who don't talk to him anymore.

Billie's going to hit the big 4-0 in about 4 months, but I'm sure he'll manage to look the part!

Working full time nights is tough on a body, but I'm taking steps to combat it. I signed up for a fitness boot camp starting Monday. Getting started back on the road to fitness is always the hard part, so this should by the kick in the ass I need. Kill me now. /o\

Volunteering for RockMed keeps me busy, but it has its advantages. These are the bands I have seen or will see shortly in a 30 day period:

Don Henley
Jimmy Eat World
Robert Plant
Fitz and the Tantrums
blink-182
My Chemical Romance (Angie, if you're reading this, they were GREAT. Best I've seen them.)
Stevie Nicks
Foster the People
Foo Fighters (More on this to come...)
Neil Young and the Bridge School Benefit


Oh yeah, about the Foo Fighters. I am almost wetting my pants with excitement because the one and only and_ed is coming down from the great white north to visit MEEEEE and go see the Foos with MEEEEE on October 19th. And of course, we will hit some tourist spots including Rudy's Can't Fail Cafe! And Barb is gonna cook for me. My poor stainless steel appliances won't know what hit them. And she's probably gonna make me watch Hawaii 5-0 while she's here too.

Also, if you like indie pop-rock, may I suggest you check out Foster the People? They are awesome. Someone uploaded their CD on YT if you want to listen: http://youtu.be/Fvq7VMcifKk

In other fandom news, my obsession with Adam Lambert appears to have the staying power of my obsession with Green Day! o_0 It's going on 3 years now. For those of you who don't follow his every tweet with bated breath, his second album will probably be out in Jan or Feb 2012, but he may have a single out as early as next month. (IT'S ABOUT FUCKING TIME DUDE!) He remains as adorable and presh as usual, especially with his equally adorable hot Finnish twink of a boyfriend. q.v.:

Posting on LJ is just like working out. Getting started is the hardest part, right?

Gosh, is it 8 January again?

Yep, it's my 3 year LJ-versary. And I so cannot imagine my life without it and YOU all in it.

It's also been forever since I posted. I'll start with the fandom related stuff first.

I'm continuing to get excited about the upcoming Green Day album. It's been mentioned on all the year-end here's-the music-coming-in-2009 reviews that I've read, but no one has a title or release date yet. The article in AP magazine did give some tentative song titles though, and some enterprising and clever web savvy geek took that information and ran with it. Over on GreenDayCommunity a newly registered poster looked up the web registrations of all the song titles from the article, then noted a whole slew of domain names registered on the same day by the same law firm.

So here's what we got from the AP article:

21st Century Breakdown
Know Your Enemy
Viva La Gloria
Before the Lobotomy
Christian's Inferno
Last Night on Earth
March of the Dogs

And here's what we got from our GDC sleuth.

21 Guns
My Drama Queen
Edge of the Earth
Last of the American Girls
American Eulogy
Little Drama Queen

Still no title though. Given Green Day's penchant for secrecy, it probably won't be released until it leaks (and I'm sure it will.) The sleuth thought it would be American Eulogy, but I really doubt it. I don't think they would name it so similarly to their last album.


In QaF/pretend boyfriend news, Gale Harold appears to be recovering from his near-fatal motorcycle accident, but his return to Desparate Housewives is still only hoped for. He is reported as saying that he would be returning to the set this month, but we've gotten no word that he actually has. We're all keeping our fingers crossed. The good news is on this past Sunday's episode there was a 10 second clip of his voice (on an answering machine) that was recorded after the accident. Of course, it's been made available to listen to over and over again...not that I'd ever do that. :-) http://www.gale-harold.it/audio/Jackson-voice-on-answering-machine.wav
(Thanks to www.gale-harold.it & buzziecat for finding it.) Some people have stated that they think it sounds like he was over-enunciating (as if he were having problems speaking) but I think that's WAAAAAAAY too much over analysis.

They are clearly setting up the plot so they can either keep him in or write him out as needed -- his character Jackson has been offered a job in a new town. But as someone pointed out, this particular episode was being filmed when he was still in the hospital, when the prognosis was still quite uncertain. I'm just soooo anxious to see him back again. In the meantime, I am spending far too much time reading 8 years of accumulated QaF fan fiction. Makes it difficult to explain when someone asks what books I've read lately.


I've been unable to completely resist the great sucking force that Supernatural seems to have on LJ, but only to the point where I enjoy the show, read the occasional fanfic, and look at pictures of pretty boys. I read about a major spoiler on a TV site and was chatting with and_ed about it a couple nights ago:

[21:57] and_ed: as I said to thelackey, there's a deplorable lack of brain cells in this fandom
[21:58] revid: Ahaha and extra helpings of batshit.
[21:58] and_ed: nah...its gonna be a weird fantasy/dream sequence/something
[21:58] and_ed: exactly
[22:00] and_ed: I don't understand why people can't just relax and enjoy the ride, man. They can't be enjoying themselves when they're having fucking coronaries over every little spoiler
[22:01] revid: Too much time on their hands.
[22:01] and_ed: I guess
[22:02] and_ed: thelackey said the stupidity is a result of all the porn. LOL Cause really...what does SPN fandom have in droves? Wank...and porn. More porn in this fandom than in anything else I've ever seen, too...and I come from a BOYBAND fandom.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA


So in personal stuff...I spent Xmas in Colorado with my sister, which was quite pleasant. I'm trying to sell my house, which is not so pleasant. California real estate is just a blood bath for sellers these days. Great news if you're a buyer, in that home prices in San Francisco are down 30% in one year. Less fun if you're a seller. It's also a slow time of year, of course. Got some interest and showings, but no offers. Also, it's a giant pain in the butt keeping the house so freaking clean all the time. :-)

Not much other news. New job is OK. The cats turned 13 this month, they're OK (though not real thrilled about the strangers traipsing through their territory.) Weight, post holidays? Uh, not so good. Must.Start.Diet.

Hope you are all well.