No Promises

...and I'm sure no surprise at the fact that I wrote not a word throughout the entire 2 1/2 months of the last contract or even the last month of this vacation. Each was full of many experiences. Many wonderful moments. Many tests and challenges. I'm not going to say I'll write more about each later. Maybe I will. Maybe I won't.

No surprise that I'm writing only now, on the eve of another departure. Contract Three. This one will be five months, which will be the longest to date. Being in love with someone you get to share the days with out there makes for a different experience all together. That safe place...a person to trust and talk to. It doesn't make the difficult times fly by as one would hope. As one always hopes for miracles. It does make them bearable. Five months...and if things keep heading in the direction they are going in, it will only be in preparation for eight month stay I may be looking at if we do another contract together.

The thing that interests me at the moment is how entirely ready I am to leave. I've packed just about everything. Some weight must be shifted from one bag to the other and some small personal items picked up and added to the weight, but other than that it's looking pretty good. I'm up, tired, sore, but with this feeling like there's "so much to do". I sat down to make a list of things left to do, and found that I had nothing to put on it.

Well, one month home. The longest in nearly 5 years. Time to go back to work.

(written a while ago)

Sail Away Party

Well, that's almost that. This is my last post as a resident of Seattle. Though I'm sure I'll not bother changing addresses because a. I won't have one and b. I generally forget about things like that. It's no one's damn business anyway!

I'm about to shut down the computer and drive it over to the storage unit. We have rehearsal today with the sub trumpet player for the Sextet show tomorrow. That'll be from 2:30-3:30pm, then I'll have to try to make one last stop to drop off my amp. If I don't make it I'll just leave it on Robby's bed!

Well...I promise to at least write once or twice while I'm in the ocean this time. Provided nothing happens like last time...the stranded on a desert island and all that!

Love ya Seattle...see ya in a while.

Mike and Kim's Wedding: The short story adventure series complete with illustrations

Preface

Sunday, 6:30am…the alarm goes off. Damn, this is early. Roll out of bed, crawl into the shower…sleep for just a few minutes more. Luckily my hand turned on the cold water to wake me up from some pleasant dream that I’d have been way to happy to keep having right there in the cool and moist embrace of my cast iron bath tub. Go! Shower, dress, chug some coffee. Meet up with Nasty Nate at 7:45 to head to the U District Budget car rental to pick up the Mercury “El hugeness” for the ride out to PT today. 9:45am. Everyone in and we’re on the road! I’m not driving…I’m riding bitch in the back seat. It’s cool. I’m very little. And…off to in and out of sleep for the ride down. No, I’m listening and I hear all of the stories and conversations on the way down…it’s just that my eye lids are too heavy to hold up right now…it’s pretty warm in here and after 2 hours my ass starts to hurt a bit…but we’re almost there!



Mike and Kim got married on Sunday July 12, 2008 at this beautiful park in Port Townsend. It was a perfect day neither too hold nor too cold. The sun was shining and the friends and family were gathered…



There were “games”. We were told this in advance; however, none of us were quite prepared for the “hit the orange with the potato in the panty hose tied around your waist hanging between your legs” race that took place.



Nasty Nate rocked it out during the first few heats…his hand gently gripping his panty hose, swing that potato with dead on accuracy shooting off like a rocket across the park. He was beaten out later by Mike Catts who went on the win the series with an around the tree and under the truck shot that sent the crowd flying off their park benches. In a later interview Nasty claimed that the reason he fell to Catts was because his orange fell to pieces after his first few rounds of whacking…



Awww… aren’t they a cute couple? Here is the big announcement for the serving of the personal mini wedding cakes. Of course these ended up in each of their face a few moments after this photo was taken. It kind of gave me flash backs to cake fights in the crew bar…or maybe flash forwards since I’m headed back to the war of left-over-flying-food in just a few days!



Mike announced that it was almost time to do the “wedding thing”. They all went off to change and I headed to the place to get out the guitar and get ready. We all gathered on the gazebo and did the thing. Oscar’s speech was great. There were a bunch of other words thrown about from friends and family, the kissed and we all went “Awww!” Then we went back to hanging out in the park.



After a while we cleaned and packed things up and all headed into town to meet for drinks at the local brewery. I ended up riding home with Mike Dodge to keep him company, never getting to cash in my “bitch ticket” that I had earned on the way down in the rental. But that’s okay. Mike and I had a good hang drinking some coffee at the ferry terminal, chatting and listening to good music on the way home. It was a great day for sure!

Congratulations Mike and Kim!!! We love you!!!

Epilogue

The next morning the alarm goes off at 6:30am… Damn, this is early. Roll out of bed, crawl into the shower…sleep for just a few minutes more. Luckily my hand turned on the cold water to wake me up from some pleasant dream that I’d have been way to happy to keep having right there in the cool and moist embrace of my cast iron bath tub. Go! Shower, dress, chug some coffee. Meet up with Nasty Nate at 7:45am to return the Mercury “El hugeness” to the U District Budget Rental place. The day a head…the mission completed.

Notable

Goddamn! There have been several things/events/happenings that I feel are noteworthy enough to have an entire blog entry dedicated to their own occurrence. However, the most noteworthy thing of the moment is that I perhaps did not eat enough mushrooms tonight. But, who can tell...it may still prove itself to be the perfect amount.

Just to get it down...I may or may not come back to these things individually in the future...

1. Apparently nothing was written about the Portland/Camping trip...well that was awesome. There are a bunch of pictures on my facebook page!

2. I served on Jury Duty for 2 days. Sat through a trial and found an old woman guilty of possession of crack cocaine. Not fun, but an interesting learning experience.

3. The Sextet played at Egan's on Saturday. It was fun. There were a lot of people there for Egan's. The whole band is great. Playing with Beth and Jim is amazing and I learn a lot!

4. Sunday afternoon some motherfucker stole my stereo, or rather Leng's stereo out of my, or rather Leng's car in my fucking drive way while Rob and I were in the house with the front door open and neighbor's gardening and walking about! This made me very angry and I've run out of the house at 3am with a bat in hand several times since...and yes...I think I'd use it. Fuck people!...has been my attitude since. Fuck them and the lack of community in which we live...so no...I don't have a fucking cigarette. Get your fucking lazy ass motivated to make your own way on your own shit or fucking die doing the world a favor as you do! This is just a tease. This I'm sure will be it's own thing followed by a piece on peace or some shit...because that's the way it all goes in my head from day to day! Or rather from hour to hour!

5. Mike and Kim got married in Port Townsend yesterday. It was a beautiful day and a beautiful wedding for two of the most beautiful people I know! They are an amazing couple! I only know Kim through Mike but she always seems supportive and sweet and is always out supporting his gigs and they always seem happy when they're in the same room together and it's great. Then there's Mike! Well he's just one of the biggest musical influences in my life...and all there is to that. That will be some romance piece later!

6. Today I moved a bunch of shit into the storage unit and set up my monthly pay plan. I leave in 4 days. I ate mushrooms but not enough, so it seems. I may just go to sleep in a minute.

Finish the beer and one last smoke. I like land. I like the ocean. I love Music.

Progress

All right! I just moved a bunch of stuff into the storage unit. As I was loading up the cart in the parking lot, reaching into my car for the last box, I turned to see the cart, full of all of my stuff rolling down the hill towards 15th avenue and all of it's crazy traffic! I ran, box in hand, and saved it only a few feet from the street! A bit of running never hurt anyone.

I bought a new suitcase at Fred Meyer. Mike had given me one but it's a bit too big...I could fit in it, but I'd rather have a seat on the plane. This one is sweet and it was 40% off! Oh yeah!

Tomorrow morning I'm taking the train to Portland...(can't believe in four years of living here I still haven't been). I'll have most of the day to wander around by myself, and then I'm meeting up with Jen's sister and we're headed to Long Beach(?) to the family campsite right near the ocean for the weekend. Crazy fireworks and bears! Yes bears, though I'm sure there will also be some beers. Rumor has it the Haeners may even make an appearance! Stay tuned for photos and random ramblings from the Adventures of Me

Michael Owcharuk Sextet

Live @ The Upstage
June 20, 2008
Port Townsend, WA



Beth Fleenor and Jim Knodle



Nate Omdal



Michael Owcharuk and Brandon Gibbons



Group Shot!
photo taken by jesus

The F#%K Chronicles: Volume One

Fuck #1: I’m sure if I actually manage to keep this up this will only be the first of many in the FUCK Chronicles. Can you even swear in a blog? In fact I don’t even think this is an actual Fuck. It’s more of a practice Fuck. Or even an obligatory Fuck. That kind of Fuck you force yourself to have because you instinctually feel as though you should be having a Fuck but you’re not. Will blogspot.com exist when I’m 70? Probably not in any recognizable form, but let’s imagine that it will. I see myself sitting next to a wii fire place, holding in one hand my wireless controller, which is more likely at that point to be a computer chip implanted under the skin, leaving the hand free to hold a beerijuanaproteincokepluseverythingyaneed future shake, placing logs in a virtual woodstove for ‘exercise’ gaining points for the amount of cyber-heat-degrees I can produce to run the power plant in my virtual 2nd Life third world while my ‘1st Life' first body sits in front of my air purification conditioning device in my lower level living cubicle in Capitol, the last clean city on Earth. Sitting there reminiscing of the time in my late 20’s when it was still safe to go outside and when sometimes it got cold and we had real fires in real fireplaces producing real heat for no purpose other than the fulfillment of our selfish desire for physical comfort. ‘Capitol’ is of course a reference to a world in an Orson Scott Card novel and heat of course is a reference to something we used to need before Global Boiling became the environmental issue that united the world under one common goal…the unconditional survival of the human species, back in 2017. The other hand is typing our daily blog entry. This particular one is called Fuck Chronicles: Volume 83,157.

Never mind. That’s obviously a drunken ramble of sorts. Not based in any sound facts. Of course there won’t be any kind of ‘keyboards’ in existence in any year after 2017. They’ll be eliminated along with anything else that might require the physical use of any part of the body in the Technology Because We Can Revolution of the year 20nottoolongfromnow. Silly. I nearly rambled myself into forgetting the point of this whole entry. Yes, I believe there was one.

Leaving…that’s it. It started with this conversation with Alex tonight, walking through the neighborhood after the barbeque. He asked me how I was feeling about ‘all this’…It might be the first time I’ve been asked. The roomies flipped me the tiniest bit of shit I could ask for and have been cool. But they don’t ask and anytime I may try to talk about it…which usually starts with, “This is weird” or “I may be a bit freaked out” all I get is the “You’ll do fine”. In fact that’s probably the only feed back I’ve gotten from anyone…anyone. At the moment, though this is the first time I’m letting it all out, I want to yell some shit like…”Of course I’ll be fine, I’ve always been fine, through everything, all of it. In fact I usually do better than being fine…especially in the last year and a half and ESPECIALLY in the last 4 months…but that doesn’t change the fact that it feels fucking weird and I may be a little freaked out! Fuckers.” But usually I don’t think that…out loud…in my head…like a thought.

It’s natural and fitting that he would asked. It made me think of the fact that I’ve been here for four years, and that I moved out here a lot because of Alex, and all the growing up we’ve all done, and how he’s one of the few people here or anywhere that have been here for all of this most recent leg of the journey. And that that is exactly what it’s been. A leg in the journey. Even if I come back here and settle in to something…meaning getting a place again and staying here and working again…maybe a year will have gone by, maybe three and I’ll be different and it will be a different time. I’ve lived in this house for four years. It’s the only place I’ve lived in Seattle. And I can’t remember myself before I lived here. I was different.

And now I’m packing up to move out and be gone for…a while. It feels like a strange sort of limbo. I feel like I never really came back. I didn’t. I knew it right along. I just sent my body here to get my ‘stuff’ as rid of as possible and dealt with otherwise. I don’t live here anymore already. I just…live here sometimes? That’s what I’ve been saying in my head. It works for me.

Not having a home. I need that for a while. I remembered what I wanted when I came here. Just a music stand and a mattress. It’s funny. I have a music stand and…I have a mattress. But I never got what I wanted. Not yet.

Sunday Mornings

It was early Sunday morning. When I say early, I mean by musician’s standards. The gig starts at 11am. When thinking of Sunday morning, you must also consider Saturday night…which more often than not turns into Sunday morning for these guys. Sometimes things can get a little tense here at Café Bambino.



“Listen man, I’m sick of you bitching about Maiden Voyage. I like that tune and I want to play it. By the way…you smell like beer and you look like crap. Why don’t you do your hair for me the way you used to??”



“Oh man…here we go again. Every week it’s something else. It’s amazing they haven’t killed each other yet.”
“Yeah. Last week when you were on vacation they got into it about who was going to get the last spinach and feta croissant. Kevin whipped out the bow and started beating the crap out of Brandon. I had to throw iced coffee on the both of them just to break it up.”



“No man! If I’ve told you once I’ve told you a thousand times…I freaking hate that tune and I’m not playing it. Don’t make me tell you again or so help me…”



“Okay, okay just relax. Since we only have two more weeks together before you leave again, I’ll pretend that you’re still in charge, even though last week you clearly relinquished all the responsibility for this gig over to me. We can play whatever tunes you want. Okay Mr. Cranky Pants!”

“Thank you Kevin…that’s very kind of you.”

The beginning of the End

ME: Well, isn't it a bit early for you to be up and about?
MYSELF: Why yes. Yes I suppose it is a bit early, though I do play at Cafe Bambino in an hour from now.
ME: Ah yes. So what did you do yesterday?
MY: Well let's see...I slept quite late. Friday night was a failed attempt to take it easy and go to bed early. Usually when I try, it's worse of than it would have been had I just gone about the partying. So...Friday night lasted until after 6am Saturday morning...though the last hour or so of that was spent organizing some things in the room after everyone else had fallen. I often have difficultly sleeping after surprise summer blizzards like we had that night. So I slept until 1pm.
ME: Wow! 1pm. That's quite late for you.
MY:: If now is quite early then I'm not sure if 1pm could possibly be quite late...I just don't think there is enough time between them to necessitate the use of a word of such extremity as "quite". But whatever. After a while Rob got up and cooked us breakfast. Did a lot of sitting in the sun and reading and writing yesterday. Then I got some stuff at the place of shopping and then did a bunch more organizing in the room. Almost there. Last night I went through most of the Cd's. That's a huge project in and of itself.
ME: Yeah and one that hasn't been done in quite sometime. Say, how's the coffee this morning?
MY: You know how it is with that little coffee pot. The first cup is always good...then the next always taste like ass. I think it's too small and so it burns fast. If you grab a cup now it should still be QUITE good!

Lost at Sea

So I planned on writing to you world...truly I did, but on my third day aboard the MS Sensation there was this terrible storm! Lightning strikes surrounded the ship, and the waves! Oh, the waves...we tried to fight them, lord knows we tried...but the ocean is just too powerful for men, her arms came up over all sides and swept it clean.

After that it was dark for a long while. It seemed I lived a thousand years in blackness, each moment taking an eternity and passing in a instant. Eventually I awoke, coughing up sea weed and salt water, face first in the sand, skin on my back raw from over exposure to the sun...



On a beach that extended only a few miles in either direction before turning back into itself and revealing the endless blue canvas where the ocean meets the sky meets the ocean meets the sky meets the...

Many days and nights I waited. Of course during the days I explored the island, gather food, made a nice little shelter near the beach and chased monkeys through the jungle, and during the nights I sat alone around a giant bond fire on an empty beach trying to stay within the circle of light cast by the flames. It seemed that the dark spirits of the island were afraid to cross into the light. Sleep only came in tiny fragments here and there, mostly through the day when the spirits were away.

I discovered many ancient buildings...ruins from a lost civilization...a lost...time.









And then finally, just as I was starting to get settled in and making friends with all the demon spirits of the night, just when they started to let me play in the demon games...



...I saw it out there, in the distance. Slowly, as the sun made it's journey across the sky, it grew larger and larger...until there was no denying what it was, but how could it be...it was impossible but it was happening right before my eyes. I did consider for a moment the fact that I had been washed overboard, unconsciously swept through the sea and dropped on my face in the sand on some deserted island and had been living off of bad pizza and coconut rum juice and hadn't slept for weeks? Months? Years...for fear of my new found friends, the scary demon spirit monkeys...yeah maybe I was a little insane...and it occurred to me to not believe it, even though "I" was "seeing it" with my own "eyes"...I even thought for a moment that I had died at sea...and this was a sort of purgatory...a place to sit a go crazy thinking about nothing but sand and jelly fish and how my only pair of boxer shorts had just the other day been swept out to sea as a was frolicking in the waves!...but no...it was there, it was real, they had come back for me. I was saved!

Setting Sail

It's hot in Orlando. I'm writing from the Mariot lobby computer. I got up at 5am this morning...made some great hotel room coffee and practiced for an hour. Just had some breakfast and I got about an hour before I head out to the ship. It was a wonderful last night on land! Hello ocean.

Packing (the checklist method)

Closing the suitcase and saying it's all good to go, that's the hard part. How can I not be forgetting something that I can't possibly live without for the next three months? I can't even walk out the door less than three times on the way to the mail box.

Basically we have three departments, plus the instrument.

Department 1: The garment bag. This $2.99 Value Village purchase is now home to most of my wardrobe! Tuxedo and accessories, 3 white shirts, 1 black pants, 1 other nice pants, and 1 fancy night time jacket, also a Value Village purchase...Check.

Department 2: Rolly suitcase. $4.99 at Good Will. This is holding all leisure time clothing, sox and undies, pedals, cables, and books...Check.

Department 3: The carry-on. Backpack. The usual. Cd player, cds, books, journal, important documents, 1 pair black pants, 1 black shirt, in case of a fashion emergency!...Check.

Instrument...Check.

Cheers to tonight, the last night of sleeping in my bed for a while.

The Final Stretch...(part 1)

This is it...in seventy two hours from now I will be well on my way to Dallas. From there it's off to Orlando for a lonely night in a strange hotel...a comped dinner, one last sleepless night on land, a comped breakfast, and a free ride to my new 855 foot, 70,000 ton floating home...The MS Sensation! How's the song go?...'all my bags are packed, I'm ready to go'. Some mixed emotions, some sleeplessness, a cute girl I'll miss snuggling...and a whole lot of excitement! Stay tuned world for...Tales from the Caribean