three 4 three

rah.

Today began as depressing as a day can begin. Rainy, cold, and a trip to Chicago's Cabrini Green Public Housing Complex.

Okay, the kid ("DW") stayed home rather than come back to A**endale on October 29th. He turned 18 on Oct. 30th and then became his own legal guardian. It gets complicated. His full scale IQ is 50-ish. He can barely read, if at all. On top of that, his mother, who was his legal guardian until his birthday is so passive about recognizing what the implications are if he decides to stay home (NO therapeutic or vocational services, no structured or therapeutic setting to help him progress to a situation in which he might have some autonomy.

Anyway, I went there with two staff from the cottage. In the two bedroom apartment there lived DW, his mom, older sister, a few of her kids (ages 3-10-ish), some other kids, and kids of those kids. Probably nearly 10 in the two-bedroom apartment. Mom's face had been badly burned in a childhood house fire, and looked like a muppet wearing lipstick and a wig. Of course DW was clueless as to what might be in his best interest as far as utilizing resources avialable to him (now or never), but his mother had nothing to say, just as she'd always been. Excessively passive. So that's it. He'll just stay there with the family and culture that he knows, living day to day, until he winds up homeless, in jail, or dead.

I fixed my itunes issues today. It took about 20 or so hours all together to eliminate the duplicate files and "dead" tracks that didn't have a file of music that was valid to play from. I gots 4,342 songs, or 10 days worth of music to get happy to.

I rehearsed with Greg, his girlfriend Jen, and Greg's bassist Jim for our dive bar cover band set for this Saturday. the deal has been pegged as "office party". We'll be picking on an imaginary "Phyllis from Accounting" throughout the set. I had fun. Wish we had more preparation time to have figured out more and better songs. Driver 8 sounded pretty rad. Jen's voice has some Kim Deal qualities to it. Rad indeed.

After a few beers during rehearsal, and a few more after going out to Kuma's Corner on Belmont, I'm quite tipsy at this time.

I'm off tomorrow, and I'm very very happy about that. I will share more relevant and interesting things with the world on tomorrow's blog.

I have a lot of mail to open and books to read and music to listen to. None of that sounds appealing at this time.

xmas. ungh.

new years. ungh ungh.