How Much Longer?

I’m right in the middle of prepping for midterms. Three of them, one on top of the other more or less. Plus I have the first of three term papers due. Oh, and have I ever mentioned that I work full-time and spend almost three hours a day commuting?

So you can appreciate how much it frustrates me and pisses me off that I had to spend almost seven hours yesterday evening getting ready for 2009 festival ticket sales, which started today.

Let me repeat that. I spent almost SEVEN hours. SEVEN. How does one spend SEVEN hours on such a ridiculous task? I’ll tell you. I had to hand-code most of our SQL database from scratch. Then I had to do at least 90 minutes of troubleshooting and tech support on the message board specifically, locating missing files, chasing down coding errors, and that sort of stuff. Once that was all done, I massaged the ticket purchase page which had to be updated to reflect this year’s dates and prices…which sounds easy until I realized that the verbiage was so altered by the time we shut down ticket sales last year that I needed to dig up an old copy of the page. Ugh. I hate digging through archives. After the ticket page I had to get our store back up so that people could, y’know, buy shit. That took forever, as I had to create all new PayPal buttons for everything, and then had to monkey around taking photos of a couple of items I’d forgotten to get snaps of and get all that crap uploaded, straightened up, and testing right (even then, the page for the mugs is still borked to no end. Needless to say, I’m leaving that one for Jared). I also did some general cleanup of the site, updating links and such. And THEN I had to send out the newsletter, update MySpace and FaceBook, after which I passed out in exhaustion on my bed at 2 motherfucking 30 in the morning. (and THEN had to get up at 7:30am so I could catch up on chores and homework)

To be quite honest, I’ve never hated the festival more than I do right now. The fact that I wasted hours of study time and homework time to dink with all this tedious shit is fucking ridiculous. Is it not?

And now that ticket sales have begun, it just doesn’t end at all. My life is going to once again be complete shit until August. There are so many things people will never realize about running the damn festival. Since Jared and I are actually, y’know, employed and such, we don’t have the luxury of languishing all day working on festival stuff in one lump of activity so we can have our weekends and evenings free to be social and enjoy our lives. No, we pretty much give up our lives for most of the year, and people have the nerve to get offended or snotty when we tell them to take a flying leap about their tiny problems. Really? You think that you wanting the film night to be in North Bend is really THAT FUCKING IMPORTANT?!

All that being said…I still love it. And until Jared and I can find someone competent to run it with us, I can’t even begin to entertain the idea of retiring from the festival. So I’m here to stay. Half stuck, half enamored. Fully exhausted.

My Density

At least I got a lovely surprise when I woke up this morning. Today is the 18th birthday of my favorite radio station, The Coast/KOZT. No, that’s not the surprise. They’ve been talking about it for a while, so that would be a huge DUH for me if I was surprised.

Every Sunday from 8am to 10am, they host their own program called Breakfast With the Beatles, wherein they play all kinds of fantastic Beatles stuff. It’s become a Sunday morning ritual for me to get up early, get my coffee going, and then hunker down in front of the computer to browse the ‘net and listen to BWtB. Today was definitely no exception, since I had to get up to do stuff anyway. I logged into the station a few minutes early, and caught station co-owner/DJ Tom Yates talking about how it was when the station came on the air 18 years ago. He’s waxing nostalgic about moving hardware and the station being down for several days while it went from its previous incarnation to KOZT. And he mentions that for the three days it took to change everything over, they rigged it so that listeners would hear one single song playing over and over again for those three days, as a way to get people to notice there was a change and to usher in a new era for the station. He pauses, takes a breath, and say “That song…was the theme to Twin Peaks. And here it is for you again…on our 18th birthday.” and then he launches into the instrumental version of “Falling”.

I admit. I’m a sappy idiot. Because I was so surprised and elated, I got tears in my eyes.

There is nothing weirder than hearing the theme to one of your favorite TV shows that hardly anyone cares about playing on your favorite radio station. Surreal. That would be the word.

I started to wonder if this was some sort of cosmic sign. I’ve always said that I belonged on the coast more than anywhere else on this planet. Maybe this was my confirmation of that? Some way of letting me know that I’m on the right path. Hm.

OK, shut up. I’m sleep deprived. I deserve to get a little kooky on everyone.

On a side note…anyone care about the Super Bowl today? No? Good, thought it was just me. All it will be is yet another excuse to get together with friends & family so we can eat and drink and ignore the halftime show. Oh I do appreciate Bruce Springsteen. I just don’t care about him today. If I’m even awake by that point in the day, I’ll be amazed.

Happy Sunday, folks! Rock out with your cock out…