I’m lying on the couch trying to think of what I should write. It’s been a wild week, to be sure.  I have been super busy with the Southmere and Pacific View projects for Rennie and, naturally, they all decide to start responding to my inquiries about various things they want on Thursday.  I should have done some work today, but I just felt like lazing around a bit.  I talked to Tisha on the phone for nearly two hours and then I got up and went for a walk around the park.  I wore the ankle weights this time and jogged two legs of the walk and man I was tired when I got back in.  I had some cereal (Multigrain Life – YUM!) and got a bath.

I decided I was going to go pick up the mail and go to Long & McQuade and rent a guitar again.  I have been feeling like it for a little while now, so I decided I had nothing else going on (else than the work I should have been doing), so I stopped by the store on Arbutus and looked around for a while.  For the musically-inclined, that store is like dying and going to heaven. There’s guitars, bass guitars, drums, keyboards, bongos – name it and they have it kicking around in there.  They had this really cool electronic drum set that’s basically a bunch of dense rubber discs that you bang on while wearing headphones and it sounds – more or less – like a set of real drums.  I’ve always had a fascination with drums and used to play my Uncle Mike’s set in his room sometimes, though I was never great at it or anything – maybe if I’d stuck with it, I’d have been the next Sheila E – Carly H! lol  I sat down and was banging on the pseudo drums and a guy from the store walked by and handed me a pair of drumsticks.  I started banging away and it was the coolest thing!  I always wanted to go into one of those stores and try out some drums, but never wanted to embarrass myself and this was just the ticket!  I sat there for a few minutes kicking out some beats and then stood up grinning from ear to ear.  Remind me again why I never actually played in a band???

I wound up with this nice young guy that worked there and he helped me pick out a guitar – Ibanez Gio series – and an amp – a small Marshall – and I also got a Line 6 Pod which is basically a little effects thing that lets you change the sound of the guitar to a bunch of presets or tweak your own.  Interesting thus far, though I’ve only had a few minutes to play around with it earlier this evening.

Yesterday was one of the coolest days of my life.  I finally realized a high school dream – to meet Nikki Sixx from Motley Crue.  He was at the Chapters in Metrotown signing his new book, The Heroin Diaries and Laina and I had been planning to go to Seattle to try to meet him before finding out that, lo and behold, he was coming to the store two blocks from my house – suhweet!  Shockingly enough, Tracey said “Oh, I’ll go with you guys” and we went to Metrotown to get in line at 5.  The signing started at 7 and there were already over 100 people in line when we got there. Thank God we didn’t get there any later or it’d have been crazy!  So, at about 5:45 they started taking people from outside the mall in groups and feeding them into a line they had created inside the store that looped around and ended with people at the signing table and then heading out the door from there.  We thought we were going to have to wait outside in the mall because the inside line-up was full, but they came and pulled the three girls ahead of us and me inside while Laina was at Starbucks and Tracey was looking around in the store.  So, we waited the final hour until the signing started at the back of the store line, which was cooler than waiting in the mall.  I have to give Tracey major kudos because she was a total trooper and didn’t whine once the whole time we were there waiting.  And, I know she was there because it was important to me and that made it an even better experience for me.

We were chatting with the girls in front of us – Lizanne, Grace-Anne and Kim – and getting more and more excited as the time drew nearer to the start of the signing.  Per usual, the closer it got, the more my heart started pounding and my face got hotter and hotter.  I was worried for a while that I’d pass out when I got up there!  I’m always like that in situations where I’m waiting to do something, like introduce myself in front of a room full of people at a networking event or meet someone famous.  I get so excited that I feel like I’m going to faint from the adrenaline.  But, to my credit, I didn’t faint, nor even wobble! lol

When I first found out Nikki was going to be doing the signing, I thought of bringing my ticket stub from the Motley Crue concert in Baton Rouge in 1990 with me to try to get him to sign that.  The people at the store said he was only signing books, but I brought it anyhow and it was really cool to realize that I still had that piece of my history from 17 years ago.  When I got to the front of the line, I gave my book to the Chapters guy and kept the ticket stub in my hand and he said “I’m sorry, I’m going to have to take that.” I said to him, “This is 17 years old – it’s from 1990 and I’m not giving it to you – no way!”   I thought they were going to try to keep it or something, but at any rate, I didn’t want them to take it.  When I got up to the table, the lady standing next to Nikki said “I’ll have to take that, but we’ll be sure you get it right back” and then I reluctantly handed it to her and she passed it off to another lady at the other end of the table.  While we were standing in line, a lady from the store came around and wrote each of our names down on a sticky note and put it inside the book so he’d know how to spell our names when it was our turn.  I asked her if we could write something else and she said I could try, so she wrote my name and then I told her to write “Crued in Baton Rouge” which is what my banner said that I made for the concert in Baton Rouge.  I was stoked and was excited about getting him to write that in my book.  But, on top of the whole ticket stub debacle, they also ripped the bottom part of the sticky note off and just left my name.  How lame that they wouldn’t even let me show Nikki my god-damned ticket stub and they didn’t even let me get him to write what I wanted in the friggin’ book!

So, when I got up there, I was flustered about that and I said to him, “Oh, I had brought my ticket stub from 1990 when I saw you guys in Baton Rouge, but they wouldn’t let you sign it. ” and then I told him that I’d actually made a banner and that he had pointed to it during the show.  He smiled and shook my hand and then I walked off.  I got Tracey to video me and Laina getting our books signed, which is so much cooler than just having a still photo of the occasion, though we took plenty of shots of him sitting at the table signing books both before and after getting ours signed.

It was a really cool experience and Nikki has always been my favourite Motley dude, so I’m happy to have finally realized the dream of wanting to meet him.   Meet favourite member of huge rock band that was my idol as a high school headbanger – check!  From here, the only thing that could possibly be cooler in that regard is to meet C.C. Deville and give him the fan letter that I wrote when I was like 13 in which the post-script proposed marriage and included my actual phone number at the time! LOL  Too friggin’ funny!

The one thing I’m a little bummed about was that I wish I’d said something more meaningful to Nikki than that stupid comment about the ticket and the banner. Damnit!  Why do I always turn into a blubbering idiot when I meet someone famous!  I said something lame to Tori when I met her (along the lines of ‘You’re great”) and barely managed to squeak out a “Hi, Gene” to Gene Simmons when he walked past me a month or two ago when Laina and I tried to meet him downtown.  I feel like I want to find an email address for Nikki and send him a message telling him what I really wanted to say – that I really believe that listening to his music and playing my guitar along with their CDs when I was in high school kept me off drugs and out of the trouble my other friends were getting into during that time.  And, I wanted to tell him that I’ve kept journals most of my life and it’s really awesome to have those accounts of your life, be they good or bad times.  FUCK!  Why didn’t I say THAT instead of all that other crap! *whining*

I started reading The Heroin Diaries earlier and I’m going to read some more when I’m done here.  I always seem to find biographical books interesting because they’re the experiences of other real people.  I guess maybe it’s because I’ve kept a journal all this time that I find the accounts of other people’s lives interesting to read.

Tracey’s off tomorrow (second Sunday in a row – can’t say she never does anything I ask her to do, eh?) and we’re going to get up and watch the game, go downtown to go swimming and she’s making another beer can chicken.  Beer?  Hmmmm…there’s one Bud in the fridge. Perhaps I’ll have that so I’m not awake until 3am!

And, with that, I’m off!