Sheer Terror/Old Firm Casuals Weekend

Shows this weekend were really fun. We had been practicing for 2-3 times per week since October or November, practicing existing songs, writing new songs, working on lyrics together. We all had a lot on our plates, with work, families/marriages, BlackNBlue DJ nights etc. Every spare moment we had was spent in the practice space just playing songs over and over so we wouldn't totally blow it for our first couple shows, and it really paid off.
Friday night was at Thee Parkside in San Francisco. I got off work at 6 o'clock and raced over to the city in time to load in and soundcheck. This is a luxury for me, with Never Healed we pretty much just set up in someone's basement or a bar and play. I usually can't hear anything but the drums, I just have to watch people's hands to see if we're all playing together. After we soundchecked we had some time to kill before the doors opened so we just hung out.
Massacre Time played first, good hardcore from Sacramento area. Knife Fight came up from Southern California, fast hardcore with brutal vocals. Crowd seemed kinda into it, it wasn't really their usual crowd but they ripped as always. We went on next, I was pretty nervous since it was our very first show but we had practiced so much that everything was fine. We played all 12 songs and the response was pretty good, lots of friend's there to cheer us on. I was really afraid of messing up but we really locked in and didn't make any mistakes. Sheer Terror was awesome. Tons of people were packed in the room to see them, people started going off as soon as they started playing. Paul Bearer told lots of jokes in between songs and stories about his past experiences in SF.
We left for Anaheim in the morning with a few friends and got to the Chain Reaction at about 5:30. One of the bands had dropped off the bill so it ended up being Ruckus, us and then Sheer Terror. The crowd was mostly younger kids so it was nice playing to a different type of crowd. They seemed to like us which was nice. Sheer Terror was killer again, playing the hits as well as telling a lot of jokes in between. We drove straight back to SF from there and got back around 6:30, dropped off the equipment and merch and went home. Two shows didn't seem like enough, we all really wanted to keep going! We've got shows booked for June and then we head to the UK and east coast of the US in July. The best part of the weekend was feeling like all the hard work and practicing had paid off, the 3 of us play well together and we're only gonna get better from here.
Here are some pictures:



(Supposed to be posted a week ago but internet has been spotty)

This Weekend

The new band I'm in will be playing our first shows this weekend with Sheer Terror, Friday in San Francisco and Saturday in Anaheim. Tickets are almost sold out for Friday night, get them while you can.

Garden

I've got a lot of my spring planting done so far, a little later than I was planning. I just got into growing vegetables last year, my wife planted a few plants and I didn't like the way she was handling it so I took over the vegetables. (Sounds mean but it turns out she doesn't like the vegetable garden anyway, she prefers the flowers.) They were planted in the dirt behind a retaining wall, really nasty dirt that contained lots of broken bottles, rebar, chunks of concrete and pressure treated planks. The plants did ok, we got a ton of cucumbers, sometimes 2 a day in the summer, the bell peppers only grew to the size of golf balls and one tomato plant got root rot and the other just wasn't very happy. This year I was determined to get my garden in the actual ground and not in the cheap retaining wall dirt. The site of my garden was to be the south fence of our backyard, all I would need to do is remove the sod next to the fence and break up a concrete pad that was ran the width of the lawn. Then I would prepare the soil and put a little fence up to keep the dog out. I began to break up the concrete and watch the sun patterns and I realized the the shadow of my house blocked a lot of the sunlight to the area for a good part of the day and it wouldn't be adequate. My wife wasn't very excited about my other ideas of getting rid of the lawn altogether and just farming the backyard, or having a million containers all over our yard so I had to come up with another plan. The retaining wall where we had our garden last year has 4X4s that the planks attach to, my plan was to remove the top plank in every other section, dig the dirt out of that section, replace the cheap filler with leftover dirt from the front yard that was removed for our sewer repair(another story), add a layer of potting soil and box it in with new wood, creating little planter boxes in the wall. I began this a couple weeks ago but as I dug about 18" down, I started pulling out large chunks of concrete and trash out of the dirt. Turns out whoever put the retaining wall in didn't fill the whole thing in with dirt, they put about 3 feet of concrete chunks on the bottom! All I could do was take enough out to make sure that the roots of my plants have enough dirt to spread their roots and not get tangled up in concrete.
I've got three planter boxes dug and working on the fourth, the wood to form the boxes is going to have to wait until the end of the summer, prices for wood are more than I can afford right now and I've already got plants in the ground that I do not want to disturb. Here's what I have planted so far: beefsteak tomatoes, sweet bell peppers, red onions, scallions, jalapenos, serrano peppers, romaine lettuce, cucumbers, and marigolds as companions for the vegetables.




When the fourth box is ready I'll be planting carrots, radishes, garlic(if it's not too late), and watermelons if I can find the space. This is my second season of planting and I'm still learning, I read as many gardening books and blogs as I can but nothing compares to being outside everyday, looking at your plants and feeling the dirt for moisture. This is something that I had absolutely no interest in until last year, now I love doing it.

New Interview

The Old Firm Casuals have a new interview up at oioimusic. Check it out.

Diet

I've been on a serious diet since mid March, I was inspired by someone on a message board documenting their program in a thread. I pretty much eat the most boring things ever, counting calories, cutting waaaay down on the carbs, smaller portions. Here's a typical day of food for me:

5:15am - 1 cup cooked oatmeal (plain) with 1/4 cup raisins, 16oz black coffee
8:30am - 1 apple
12:00pm - Spinach salad, balsamic vinegar and olive oil dressing, 6 oz chicken breast
2:00 pm - 1/2 whole wheat pita with 1 tbsp all natural peanut butter
4:30pm - 1/4 cup unsalted sunflower seeds
6:30pm - 6 oz grilled chicken, steamed green beans, 3/4 cup brown rice
8:30pm - 1 square 70% dark chocolate
Water all day long

I give myself one cheat meal a week, usually involves pasta or pizza and beer haha. I've lost about 17 pounds in the six weeks that I've been on the diet, not a whole lot of exercise due to work, band, housework time constraints. Not bad. The only thing is I've been burning off muscle with the fat so now my challenge is to try to bulk up while still staying lean. I hit my goal weight last week and I think my body is getting accustomed to this, gonna have to change things up to confuse it.