Moooovin’ on up

Hey everybody. I’m writing to you from my new digs in North Oakland, CA, which partially explains my state of mind. Hopefully the boys have kept you engaged enough to function and get your SWLLC fix. I spent all weekend moving and let me tell you, there’s nothing like having a truck to use because my 2-door civic just don’t cut it. When moving in college I often had images of clown cars as well as the Grizzwald stationwagon flash through my mind trying to fit 25 boxes into 20 square feet of space in addition to making room for a driver.

Moving into an apartment…well it was more like doing that three times over and still having a bunch of stuff that just isn’t going to fit no matter how large the vehicle.

Enough about me, should be a good week. More updates to come, in the meantime I have to go buy a shower organizer *shudder*

In the last 24 hours I’ve experienced a lot. The most impressive task completed was driving from Chicago to Washington D.C. in about 14 hours. After doing the 20 hour drives, anything under 15 hours kind of seems like a walk in the park, although it was raining and awful outside plus I don’t trust Jack (never trust a bass player) to get us more than 20 miles without a near death collision. Aside from the drive, Misha and I watched and listend to the Chicago Symphony play Mozart’s Piano Concierto No. 23 in Chicago’s Millenium Park. It was so inspiring we decided we’re going to cover it from beggining to end so keep looking out for that. We also had the best breakfast of the trip so far in this tiny place in Pennsylvania. After finishing the meal our waitress felt so comfortable with us that she asked if we had found Jesus Christ. She mentioned that we are like truck drivers, we never know if we’re actually gonna reach our destination alive or not, but if we find Jesus Christ than we’ll know that if we don’t make it to our destination at least we’ll make it to heaven. All this in less than 24 hours!!! And you wonder why we grow and matrue so quickly. You just can’t buy life experience like that.

This morning we all woke up in the shadow of the Wilco hotel, 370 feet off the ground and in the living room of our long-lost cousin Erin. Nitzan was still sweating hard from a bad dream he’d had about his dog getting shaved and amputated, Jack was downtown running off his morning oats, and Misha was further cementing his reputation as the LLC’s strongest sleeper.

We played Schuba’s last night with the indefatigable Eric Hutchinson, who managed to steal both the hearts and noses of the greater Chicagoland area between the hours of 8 and 11pm, then went out for our usual ritual of carousing, getting lost, trying to figure out where we’re going to stay for the night, and ultimately reparking the car minutes before sunrise and rolling the dice to see who gets to come out and plug the meter at 8:59am.

It’s been a good 24 hours in the land of Rick Nielsen, and I’d be sad to go even if we weren’t all about to drive through the night to get to DC in time for tomorrow’s soundcheck.

This is the American dream, people. Right here. We’re living it. Take notes.