So Matt’s flipping through the stations unable to find anything on network TV (no, we don’t have cable) that suits him. After lingering on “Big Brother” he moves on to PBS where a trumpet concert is taking place. He turns to me and says…

“Hey, it’s your friend.”

“Chris Botti?”

“Yeah.”

He quickly turns the station to ”House.”

I need to take this opportunity to defend myself. That one album of mine was an impulse buy because I couldn’t quite decide if I thought Chris Botti was hot or not, and I needed to look at some more photos located in the CD sleeve to ultimately decide. Yes, moderately hot. But also kinda creepy. And he is neither my friend, nor does his album get dignified by frequent spins on the stereo.

Thanks. I feel much better now.

Lately I’ve been finding myself missing the piano. I played piano for years and years, and I have to admit it’s the one instrument I worked the hardest at. So naturally, it’s the instrument I play the best. During my high school years, especially my senior year as my mom was battling breast cancer, heading off to piano lessons was therapeutic. For about an hour and a half of my life, my phenomenal teacher treated a bratty teenager like an adult inspiring me to work hard but also kick back and enjoy life a little.

For the past four years we’ve lived in second floor apartments with close neighbors, making owning a piano a challenge we did not care to address. After moving Matt’s Hammond organ a number of times, we decided to stick to highly portable instruments… like guitars, and lap steels, harmonicas and… upright basses (?). Matt even got rid of the drum kit which was a painful, but practical loss.

I keep seeing them advertised on Craigslist, these cheap $50 pianos that people want to get rid of. What I would give for one, I cannot quite express. But seeing as we buy a 6-pack of beers for the boys downstairs every time we have friends over to jam late into the night, I have a feeling our getting a piano would singlehandedly sustain the liquor store around the corner. And become an overwhelmingly expensive pastime.

Another thing I’ll just need to wait it out for… til we’re ya know… rockin’ the suburbs.

When Matt was an itty bitty high school student, he saved up his hard-earned lawn mowing cash to buy this Takamine. He has loved her immeasurably since. From time to time I will take his guitar out of it’s case and plop it in his lap as a well trained dog would do with it’s leash. He is usually in the middle of writing some programs for one of his cases, or reading a book by Shusaku Endo, but when I hand him the Takamine everything else falls by the wayside and for the next hour of my life I am giddy with delight while he plays through “461 Ocean Boulevard” and we annoy the neighbors.

I think when I shot this picture I caught him right in the middle of “Steady Rollin’ Man,” which he very much is.

From Daily Daguerreotype

Time for some shameless self-promotion. If you have two seconds to rub together, why dontcha head on over to the Bloggers Choice Awards and help a sister out by voting Verbal Intent as “Best Blog About Stuff.” That’s right… that’s what we talk about over here… stuff. Here’s a little example…

We finally found the motivation to put Matt’s car up on Craigslist having  just received our registration renewal in the mail. So if we can sell his car by the end of July we’ll save the $41 registration fee. Just think of all the things we could do with those 41 dollars! I could go to Target and get lots of pairs of flip flops! Maybe throw in a cannoli for goodwill, and my love tank would be overflowing. So our fingers are crossed that the car will sell.

While not busy eating raw fish in Japan and making more money than he knows what to do with, John points us to a tragic misfortune in the Midwest. Guilty party: muskrats.

And have you been listening to Bob Schneider? I am so late to this party, but I can’t stop listening. Three thumbs up. Actually, threve.

Finally, were I the type to deck out my celly with hot bling, I would totally get this siamese cat cell phone charm.  Weird, I know. Perhaps another “poor Matt” moment?

Don’t forget to vote! Your reward is a slarve from Berlin.

And boy was she right. My sisters and I all married nerds which

1. makes them all easy to shop for (can we say Barnes & Noble giftcards?) and
2. means they all get along well with our dad, Executive Chief of Nerds.

I dated a good 10 guys before Matty finally came along, and the lesson of “marry a nerd” was proven true. During my stint in the rat race I experienced all kinds of guys, which can easily be defined by Police songs:

• The Psycho – “Every Breath You Take”
• The Masochist – “King of Pain”
• The Revolutionary – “Spirits In The Material World”
• The Believer – “Roxanne”
• The Romantic – “I’ll Be Wrapped Around Your Finger”
• The Professor – “Don’t Stand So Close To Me”

The one that really swept me off my feet, though, was The Nerd who has a longstanding obsession with space odyssey, and has requested that I shoot his remains into the atmosphere to the tune of 1,000 trumpets upon his untimely death. Fittingly, he is “Walking On The Moon.”

Matt’s an amazingly goofy and wonderful person – and a phenomenal songwriter to boot. The very first song he ever wrote and recorded for me goes like this:

Hot pursuit
I didn’t even know the time of day
Ran so fast and I looked the other way
Now you and I are becom’ an institute
Take it please
Read between my lines
I can’t escape
The shape of things will finally take shape
We go together like crackers and cheese

Try me now
Ask me anything you want to know
Grab my feet and don’t ever let go
‘Cause I’m flying high and won’t be coming down

Can’t refute
What you’ve got is giving me the chills
When I take away the frills and thrills
You still send me afloat in my spacesuit

Grab my hand and we’ll walk across the world
I can watch you watch your life unfurl
I am yours and you could be my girl
I am yours and you could be my girl

LADIES, MARRY THE NERD!

Ok ok ok… I’ll try to not go on and on about music ALL the time, especially out of respect to our large number of new visitors this month from near and far. But I have to give you my response to the Clapton show.

We arrived as Robert Randolph was opening the gig and he was lovely and pleasant and a fun entertainer. And then WA-ZAM! He sits down at his pedal steel and plays the opening riff for “Voodoo Child” AND MY FACE MELTED RIGHT OFF! Reincarnation #1.

Then Clapton comes on stage and what does he start the set off with? None other than “MOTHERLESS CHILDREN”. Reincarnation #2. Before the end of the first measure, I’m pretty sure Matt was not only weeping but had also soiled his pants. People, my husband was not even this happy ON OUR WEDDING DAY!

He played stuff from Journeyman and No Reason To Cry. They even did the piano part from “Layla.” Possibly my favorite moment in the show was his tribute version of “Little Wing” which has so much collegiate significance for me. For those of us who will never have the opportunity to hear the greatest guitarist of all time in real life, we got pretty close to that moment last night (#3, of course). And then they ended the show with an encore version of “I Got My Mojo Workin’” with Robert Randolph once again rockin’ his pedal steel, which of course is a Matt & me song from his days playing in Smokestack Lightening.

It was a great show. Seriously up there. And Matt and I both realized about halfway through that this probably marked The Show that meant we had now gone to more shows together than apart. Aaaa… wedded concert bliss.

I took some snappy video of the concert with my cell phone but it looks like a psychedelic mind trip, and I don’t want you to think I was smoking pot with everyone else there. Plus, you don’t have time for my ILLUSIONS.