On the Road Again...

How far is it to Waynesburg, PA from New York? All day, friend. All day. And it was a day well spent.

I'm currently out on the road for a week with my good friend Micah Dalton, a guy who you should know if you don't already. I've known Micah for a few years, but we've never really played many shows together. And I've liked him since I've known him, but after spending a day trapped in a small Xterra with him, it's confirmed - he is one of my favorite people in the world. It's no big secret that I'm bad a small talk; thankfully, Micah is one of those guys who likes to talk about deep things (whether we actually know what we're talking about or not).

Tonight we're back in New York - the Bronx, specifically - at the College of St. Vincent. Having never been to New York City before, it's been neat to see some of the city. With any luck, I'll go get to see all the cool people in Greenwich Village on Friday.

Normally, seven hour car rides bore me to tears (as I'm a wuss and can't read in the car for long without throwing up), but after the marathon that was these past two months, it's been nice to have a forced break. It's kind of weird that as people we don't stop working unless we are forced to; I'm pretty sure that's not what we were created to be. I've been doing a fair amount of graphic design work on the side - CD layouts for Ryan Horne and Altar White, posters for the Melting Point and most of the ads for Athena, a womens' magazine here in Athens, as well as designing the packaging for `my EP, the.broken.headphones. It's been fun, but I'm looking forward to a little break!

But perhaps my most exciting "busy-thing" has been Rebuilt Records' yearly fundraiser, Bowl-A-Rama!. Last Saturday, we had a blast with folks coming out, lots of crazy costumes, and about 1200 frames bowled. That's 12,000 pins that were knocked down. Okay, maybe only about 700 of those actually went down - we're not really that good. Matt Reiter was good, though - he posted the score of the day and walked away with a Nintendo Wii! Some folks even bowled 100 frames (or more) on their own - Anna is one of those people, and you can see some photos from the event at her Myspace page. All in all, we raised over $13,000 on the day which will go towards Jon Black's new EP that he'll record at the end of the month in Oxford, Mississippi, cover some overhead, and put some in the bank for some future projects. I was really encouraged by everyone who came out - hope to see you next year!

Breaks are good things - you should take one right now.

Be blessed -
- j