Christmas with Noah!!!

My family and I were very fortunate to have Noah visit us for Christmas. Here's some delightfulness from the first day:



And the next day:



And Christmas Eve (the "Hide Eeeeeeeee" game never gets old!)

I Do Not Have A Connective Tissue Disorder!

Easter Sunday was a complete blur, that began at church with my parents and ended watching an old high school friend in the national tour of Sweeney Todd. She was amazing.

Back in early October, my orthopedic diagnosed me as hypermobile with arachnodactly, which basically means that my joints are freakishly flexible and I have long fingers and toes. I also showed other symptoms that led him to believe I might have Marfans Syndrome. Marfans is mainly not that big a deal...except for the part where your joints basically fall apart due to looseness of connective tissue, and also your heart kinda explodes.

So this was something to look into.

I booked an appointment with a highly sought-after geneticist immediately after that diagnosis, and this geneticist was not available until today, March 25. That's a long wait to find out if you're gonna die soon.

After filling out an extremely thorough questionnaire (which I mailed in several months ago), with details on the history of my entire family, and another lengthy interview by a fellow today, the esteemed Dr. Rimoin entered the room, moved a couple of my joints around, listened to my heart, and basically gave me his blessing with a clean bill of health. That was quick.

He said he doesn't know what's going on with me, but it's not Marfans. And for that, I breathe a sigh of relief. Especially to know that I'm not passing it on to sweet little Noah.

And now, on to the next thing. At 7:45am tomorrow, I am to report for jury duty in the Los Angeles Superior Court. I really hope we don't go to trial, because I have to play the Kids' Choice Awards with Miley in a couple days. In order to avoid the jury, Ben says to be antisocial, creepy, and talk really slowly. Oh, also to glare at people like The Crow. I'm working on it. Something tells me "antisocial" won't be too hard at eight in the morning.

Jumping Through a Series of Fiery Hoops

Okay, here's what happened.

Wednesday

I lugged my (surprisingly heavy) MacPro into the Genius Bar. The Genius (in name only) looked through the error logs on my computer. He pointed out to me several lines that referred to the processor, and said, "Wow, see? It looks like your processors are the problem." He continued to scroll through lines and lines of errors.

Minutes later he showed this to another (much more knowledgable genius) who said, "Those aren't errors. Those just show that the processors are enabled."

Genius #1 said, "oh." And I started to see what I was in for.

They tested, poked and prodded my ailing machine until Genius #1 said, "Well, here's the thing. It looks like there are problems with the hardware", (absolute duh), "but we can't really figure out what those are."

I asked, "Can you just replace the whole machine then?" To which he replied, "No. Your machine is custom," (just because I added an AirPort, which is a very common part that comes in all their laptops, just not usually in the desktops), "so you'll have to take it home and mail it to AppleCare."

So I dragged the stupid heavy thing back out to the parking garage and called AppleCare from the car. After about 15 minutes on hold, I spoke with a kind man who thought it was so sad that I got such a troubled Mac. However, he couldn't help me. He had to transfer me to his supervisor. After another 35 minutes on hold, Mr. Supervisor Adam picked up.

He was not as nice. In fact, he was downright passive-aggressive, and actually seemed angry I was even inferring there was a problem with a Mac computer. Instead of trying to help me diagnose or fix the computer, he was extremely defensive throughout, and kept trying to convince me it was a "software error." I said, "so you're saying that every single program I run on this computer, all of which are made by Apple, are just randomly having errors? You're not willing to consider that it might be caused by an underlying hardware issue?" He gave me a diagnostic test to perform, and told me to email him the results in the morning. He was tired and was going home. So I did that.

Thursday

He woke me with a call me at 8am. The results? Guess what -- it was a hardware issue. After reviewing my email, he declared the machine an "out-of-the-box failure." I love this term. The car was doomed before it ever left the garage. All of a sudden, Adam was very apologetic. He knew I was leaving town for San Francisco on Friday. So he said they were going to email me shipping labels, and he guaranteed I'd get them in a few hours so I cold send that sick puppy out.

Well, after waiting all day, those shipping labels never arrived. Around 3pm, I decided to raise hell. I called Apple and spoke to an employee, who said that the labels need 24 hours to process. I said that Adam promised them to me today, and that I was headed out of town. So I had her transfer me to her manager, who told me the same and passed me off to another department. I spoke to an employee there, then his manager. This went on. Seven transfers and an hour and a half later, I was told flatly and definitively, "you will not get your shipping labels today. Adam must not be informed as to our policies here. It is an automated system and it takes 24 hours to process these labels."

So I went off, saying things about how I would never buy an Apple product again, how this is a terrible way to run a business, etc. It wasn't pretty and it didn't really get anything done. Or did it?

The phone call ended. I wanted to throw my new Treo at the wall and see it smash into pretty pieces (Don't kill the messenger!).

Minutes later, I received an email with shipping labels.

I set up a home pickup with FedEx for the next morning (because I wasted the afternoon on that marathon phone call). They had a box to check for time of pickup, so I specified that they had to get here by 10:30am at the latest. We were leaving for San Francisco at 11:30, and I figured this was enough time in case they were late.

Friday

We were packing gear like madfolks. Once everything was ready, I checked my watch. FedEx never showed. 10:30 at the latest, and it was almost noon. Nothing.

I called my sweet parents, who live a few streets over, and asked them to take the computer to a drop off location, since we had to get out of town now if we were going to be on time for the Jonathan Coulton show. Lovely people that they are, they agreed.

We hit the road. Around 1:30pm, when we were in the middle of the desert on the 5 freeway, I received a phone call. It was the FedEx guy asking, "where are you? I'm here to pick up a package."

Are there competent employees? Or is that an oxymoron?

Pretending It's July

It's 2:15am. Other than lunch with my friend Jan, I've spent the entire day working. Yes, I decided to celebrate Valentine's Day this year by flat-out ignoring it.

I've finished upgrading my studio to be fully Mac, and now I'm learning Final Cut and Logic and the other eight or so programs in their respective suites. That's a lot of learning, which equates to a lot of hours staring at a screen.

My parents were sweet and dropped by with a salad, some fruit and a little heart full of chocolates. So I took a five minute break and ate. Treating myself.

But this is probably for the best. I have my custody mediation downtown tomorrow, with Nicole joining us on the phone. It's stressful, and depressing, and absolutely ironic in its scheduling.

So I'll just keep working and try not to think about that.

Sneaky Sneaky

Previously, my parents and all of my Mom's sisters joined the tour in Vegas. My Aunt Nancy actually lives in Phoenix. So the sisters all flew back with Nancy, and now that the tour has come here to Arizona, they decided to take me out to dinner.

My parents took me over to Nancy's penthouse, which happens to be in the same building as Senator John McCain. He lives a floor below her.

When we got there, the plans had changed. They prepared a lovely spread of healthy yummies.

L to R: Aunt Elsie and Aunt Nancy

They busted out some sparkling cider, which we drank out of the largest flutes ever created:

I was then told that this was all for me! For my birthday. Belated. They had been planning it all along. They brought out all my favorite foods, concluding with boston cream cake that said "Happy Birthday Mike!"

They gave me the best birthday gifts EVER:

You really can't go wrong with that! They knew I wanted the Rock Band bundle, but of course the box is humongous and impossible to get back to LA, so this is much better.

I was really quite surprised and delighted and many many thanks to my family for the clandestine plotting and devious scheming. I loved it.

L to R: Aunt Jessie, Mom, Aunt Ivy, me, Aunt Elsie, Aunt Nancy

Leaving the Lights Behind

We just finished a wonderful three-day run in Vegas. The longest run we've had on the tour. It was nice to stay in one place for awhile.

So what happened while we were in Vegas:

1. Stacy got a bronchial infection. Currently coughing up neon green.
2. Kay passed out and hit her head really hard on the floor. Freaked us all out.
   
3. Almost all my aunts were in town, as were my sweet parents. Family reunion!
   
4. All the Hollywood Records and Disney execs came to show #1. Scary. We were told to bring our "A" game. So we did.
   
5. John Mayer came to show #2. Cool.
   
6. Johnny Depp came to show #3. Very cool.
   
7. We spent a night clubhopping, as Cowboy the rigger got us an amazing VIP booth at Moon and VIP treatment at some other clubs as well, and Jamie complained (in an entertaining way) the entire night.
8. We had a big jam session in the desert, at drum tech Benoit's house, funking out with Aly and AJ's band. Dancers on drums, guitarists on bongos. A very fun mess.
   

And now we're on the bus, trekking to Phoenix for a day off. Sweet sleep, how I've missed you.

Adventures in Middle Tennessee

Yesterday, we arrived in a gloomy, wet Nashville. Ahh. Just as I left it.

My sister Christina and her husband Doug live here, and my parents flew down so we could all enjoy Thanksgiving together. Christina was really impressed that we're staying at the Loews Vanderbilt, saying it's really swanky. It is. However, the view from my room is not:

We headed out to Christina and Doug's place in Antioch, and met their delightful new kitten, Samson. He's pushing the boundaries of cute:

He's fluffy and adorable, but of course my cat allergies prevent me from enjoying him close-up.

Last night, we ate at a Persian restaurant. It seemed sort of like a combination of Greek and Indian food, but I'm sure I'm missing the gentle nuances of the cuisine. It was good. However, I could have done without the "Yanni: Live At the Acropolis" video playing next to our table.

This morning, Thanksgiving Day, I was scheduled to have a business meeting at Starbucks with Dave Jaworski and Skip Franklin of PassAlong Networks, as well as the always delightful Samantha Murphy.

I Google-mapped out the directions and left precisely enough time to get to Samantha's house to pick her up. As I was pulling onto her street, she called me to say she'd be out in the driveway. Right on time! Her house was 45 Bel Air (number changed for obvious reasons), I saw 43 and 47. No 45 in sight. Where 45 would be, there was a patch of grass and a sad little hill. After chatting about this, we deduced that I was all the way out in Murfreesboro. This was basically the boonies, and totally wrong. I didn't understand how this could've happened.

Samantha borrowed her Mom's car to head to the meeting, cause there was no way I'd get back there on time.

She gave me the beginning of the directions to get back, and said she'd call me when Dave and Skip arrived, cause they're Nashville geography experts, basically.

They called me about 20 minutes later, and through some grand miscommunication, they thought I was heading into Nashville, when I had already passed it and was heading out. They advised me to continue in the same direction. I rattled off the names of exits I was passing (Old Hickory, Briley Parkway) and everything seemed cool. I later found out that both of these streets loop all the way around Nashville, and I was seeing the wrong Old Hickory and the wrong Briley Parkway.

By the time we figured out what was going on, I was almost to the Kentucky border. And to make things worse, I found out that the Starbucks where we were meeting was five minutes from my hotel. So I'd been driving for an hour and a half for no reason at all.

At least the trees were pretty.

Samantha and I later investigated the problem. I entered Bel Air instead of Belair, and even though I entered the zip code (which should have put us in the right neighborhood), Google Maps got it totally wrong. We tested it again and duplicated the same bad results. MapQuest, however, got it RIGHT. [Note to self: Never use Google Maps again]. Sam and I both agree that zip code should take priority over spacing of street name. I'm tempted to write a letter.

But I digress. I finally arrived at the meeting, and it was lovely. Dave Jaworski even recorded a podcast with me (let me know if you find that anywhere).

Samantha also joined me at Christina & Doug's place for our Thanksgiving dinner. My family cooked up a delectable meal that I'm still digesting many hours later.

It was so nice to spend some quality time with my sweet family. It seems like we see each other less and less these days, and I really missed them.

My sister's so awesome. I just love her.

Oh...my Mom said something hilarious that I'll never forget. Just nonchalantly and in the middle of a discussion, she tossed out, "As a mother, you try not to get involved, but..."

Samantha and I laughed for quite a while about that one. I still chuckle when I think of it. My parents are awesome, and a constant source of entertainment for me. And they just happen to be the most generous people I've ever met. So that's convenient.

In other news, my cold has umm...sunken. It's not in my face anymore. It's moved down to my chest, which is unpleasant in a brand new way. Now I've got a crazy painful cough, which sounds...beefy. Really hoping not to cough during the show tomorrow, which my family is coming to. Maybe I'll be nervous for a change.

Just realized that I'm really overusing ellipses in this post. It happens.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYBODY!

(L - R: Gerry Schmid, Violet Schmid, Mike Schmid, Christina Pflueger, Doug Pflueger)