I saw the naked man.

Tomorrow morning we head to Dallas for the wedding of my good friend Steffanie. I realized today that when I was writing about my friends from high school, I never got to Steff. That is a shame, because she is one of my very favorite people. I’m fuzzy on the details of how Steffanie and I got to be friends. We met in the 8th grade when she showed up at volleyball practice. Her parents had just moved from across town and she had transferred schools. She wasn’t there very long… after a couple of weeks she went back to the school she’d come from to finish out junior high. I don’t remember much about those times, but I do remember seeing her at volleyball tournaments and speaking to her. When we went to high school, there she was at volleyball practice again. She and I became friends pretty quickly, and she later told me that she approached me early on because she remembered me as being one of the only people who was nice to her when she was at our junior high. Honestly, I find that hard to believe, as I was not terribly nice in junior high. But I’m glad I was, because Steffanie is a joy to have as a friend. One of my favorite things about Steff is that she does her own thing. She, Melanie, Kelley and I ran together throughout high school. We all played sports the entire time, but Steff quit early on and got into all sorts of things. Dancing lessons, musicals, travel, languages. If she wants to try something, she tries it. If she wants to go somewhere, she goes. If she wants to change her major 14 times, no problem. Go from long brown hair to short spiky blond? Absolutely. There was drama in high school, as there always is, but we somehow avoided it. I may have struggled with everyone else, but Steff and I never had trouble. It was like our friendship was somehow above that. At the end of the day, we just wanted to swim and eat candy and watch movies on her parents’ big fluffy couch. My friendship with Steffanie was like a calm in the storm sometimes, and I am really thankful for that. Steffanie and I stayed good friends through college. Real friends, not friends who went to high school together and kind of keep in touch. We had similar frustrations with school, something that was a sharp contrast to the college experiences of our other friends. Steffanie became someone I could be real and honest with – not someone I felt I had to be my ‘old self’ with. We bonded over not knowing what to do with our lives, conflicting desires to stay home and go away, problems with the people we’d grown up with. I’m thankful to be able to say that I consider her a better friend now than I ever did in high school. Even though we don’t talk terribly often, when we do, it’s like no time has passed. I can say with full confidence that we would be everyday friends if we were in the same place. She’s the kind of friend that you can tell your meanest thoughts, and she won’t hate you. She’ll just laugh because she probably thinks the same way. I am thrilled to be a part of Steffanie and Jack’s wedding this weekend. I don’t know Jack well, but anyone who makes her that happy can’t be bad. I will put on my pretty pink dress and my strappy black shoes and pray with all my might that I don’t trip and fall on my face in front of everyone we know. And we will dance and drink and laugh, all to celebrate Steffanie. Because she is fabulous.

I didn't write a million posts today.

Blogger has been giving me all kinds of trouble this week. I couldn’t get things to post correctly until this morning, and now everything I’ve tried to post this week is up. Strange.

You know grey is my favorite color...

My favorite radio station, Lighting 100, is celebrating their 16th anniversary this month. To celebrate, they play a string of songs from a year in their history every morning. I really enjoy it, because sometimes it’s a little nostalgic, and sometimes it’s a glimpse of what I would have been listening to if I hadn’t been so lame at that point in my life. This morning, the year was 1994. In 1994 I was in 8th grade at Kimbrough Middle School, and slowly making the musical transition from the music that defined my junior high years (Boyz II Men, Shai, Mariah Carey) to the more rock-oriented tastes of early high school. I had a boyfriend named Randy who I broke up with after a few weeks because our names rhymed. I played volleyball, ran track, and played percussion in the junior high band, something I would quit after that year because sports were cooler. So. Year: 1994. Song: Mr. Jones by Counting Crows. I remember the first time I heard that song. I was at the 8th grade spring dance. I had just finished slow “dancing” with a guy named Lance, who I had only danced with because my friend who had a crush on him dared me to. (How do I remember these things? I also remember that Lance rode his bike to school and drank milk at lunch while the rest of us were chugging giant sodas.) Mr. Jones started, and everyone went crazy. Clearly, I was missing something. I loved it. It became my new favorite song on the spot. I went out the very next day and bought the cassette, and drove my parents crazy listening to it over and over and over again. It occurred to me this morning that August and Everything After has been in my regular rotation for twelve years. TWELVE. I can’t think of any other music that has consistently been a part of my life for that long. I pulled it out at work today and have already listened to it twice. It has some of my very favorite songs: Anna Begins, Sullivan Street, A Murder of One. But Mr. Jones, while possibly overplayed to many, will always be special to me. That opening guitar will always make me want to turn it up, roll the windows down, and sing at the top of my lungs.

The luckiest dreamers who never quit dreamin'...

Last night I had a dream that we bought a new house. One of the contingencies of buying the house, however, was that you had to move in with the family who currently lived there. The family that lived in the house we bought? The Seavers. From Growing Pains.

Blast from the past.

At lunch today, I was sitting at a stop light when I noticed the car in front of me. A bright yellow Ford Ranger with light covers. I immediately thought LAME, because I am a snob. But then I thought, wait a second. I’ve seen this truck before. Maybe not the exact truck, but one eerily similar. Driven by a guy a dated in high school. I met Ryan the summer before my senior year. He was the brother of my friend’s boyfriend. We were the same age and had been in the same class for years, but had never met. We’d all been swimming at my friend’s house, and as they were leaving he asked for my phone number. I was thrilled. I gave it to him. He called that night, and we talked for hours, in that way high school kids do. I remember really enjoying myself – it was fun to talk to someone who’d been in the same place and knew all the same people, but had had such a different experience than I had. After that, we were dating. We spent a fair amount of time together, swimming and going to movies and baseball games and such. He would pick me up in his white Ford Ranger with the light covers, and off we’d go. Whenever we got to our destination, he would take the light covers off and put them in the cab so they wouldn’t get stolen. I didn’t really understand the point of them, and it annoyed me to have to wait for him to take them off (and put them back on) every time we got in and out of the car, but it wasn’t a big deal. What was a big deal, however, was how we had NOTHING to say to each other. We said everything there was to say during that first phone call. We would literally sit on the phone, not talking. Sit at the table, not talking. Movies became our saving grace. After a couple of weeks of silence, he called me. Ryan: I think maybe we shouldn’t date anymore. Brandi: OH MY GOSH, me too. Ryan: Really? Brandi: YES. We ran out of things to say two weeks ago. Ryan: I KNOW! Okay, good. So no more dating. Brandi: No. Ryan: Awesome. Brandi: Yes. To borrow from Seinfeld, it was the world’s first truly mutual breakup. When school started again, we ended up in the same English class. We were friendly, but we had some kind of unspoken agreement to pretend like the summer had never happened. One day, our assignment had been to bring in a poem to read to the class. After that was done, we played I Never. (We had one of those teachers who wanted to be cool.) One guy got up, took a slow turn around the circle, then said, “I have never kissed anyone in this room.” I looked around the room, wondering if anyone had kissed anyone else, when my eyes landed on Ryan. My friend Melanie was elbowing me and laughing. I had completely forgotten we had even dated by this point. I looked at him, he looked at me, and we both shook our heads. Crisis averted. I heard he married a girl that lived down the street from me, and I hope they are happy and doing well. It’s funny that I thought of him today, as there is an off chance he might be at the wedding on Saturday. I wonder if he remembers any of that, and if makes his wife wait for him to cover and uncover the lights on the truck every time they leave the house. I hope not.

I am something something something...

The default song in my head lately has been “Vindicated” by Dashboard Confessional. This is strange, because I’m pretty sure I’ve only heard the song once, a couple of summers ago on that concert show Pepsi used to do. I remember liking the chorus and being impressed that the kids knew all the words to what he said was a new song. I also remember hitting Rhapsody the next day to hear it again and it not being available. Currently they only offer a 30-second clip, so I’m sure I haven’t heard it there. I don’t listen to any radio stations that would play Dashboard. In fact, the only other Dashboard song I know is the one about how your hair is everywhere. And even that song is only in my head because I sing it to Miles all the time. I’m clearly not a big Dashboard fan. I mean, I get the appeal. I worked with teenagers. But at the end of the day, he kind of sounds like a guy who is a little too old to be whining about his problems all the time. I don’t have time for that. And yet, my brain insists on holding onto this song. I don’t even know the words, really… in my head it goes, “I am vindicated/I am something something something/ I am blah de blah la la la doobee doobee doobee do”. I had to use the 30-second clip I have available to me to see if I even had the melody correct. (I did, in the off chance that you both know the song and can’t decipher my blah blahs.) Where is this song coming from? Why is my brain obsessed with it?

Round here we stay up very very very very late...

I can really work myself into a tizzy. Last night as I was falling asleep, it occurred to me that I had sent out a package from work yesterday that was missing some pieces. The missing pieces were entirely my fault; I had just plain forgotten to include them. I wasn’t sure if the recipient needed the package ASAP or if it was something I could rectify by sending the rest today. In my semi-conscious state, I managed to convince myself that this was of ultimate importance, worthy of being fired over, and started working on ways to explain what happened and get things taken care of before anyone realized what had happened. These plans included lies of varying degrees and blaming the mishap on everyone from the receptionist to Fed Ex to the guy who fries up the fish down at McCreary’s. If I was going down, they were all going down with me. I kind of started to panic. Then I started getting upset that I work in a job that doesn’t mean anything and gets me all worked up over something so dumb. I decided the best thing to do would be to just go to sleep, but everyone knows that the last thing you’re going to do when you TRY to fall asleep is actually fall asleep. Aaron and Miles, thankfully, were blissfully unaware of the situation. I guess I finally fell asleep, but I woke up around 2:30, and again at 4:45, and again at 6:15. Each time it took me forever to fall asleep again, and my brain was racing the entire time. What if they did fire me? What kind of job would I look for? How would I explain why I left my last job? What would my parents think? When I woke up for good at seven, I was trying to figure out when my boss on the east coast would be getting up to go to the gym so I could call her and tell her what was going on. (What I planned to tell her depended on what time it was: the truth or one of my fabulously intricate lies.) I made it to work without incident or embarrassing phone call, but I still had that knot in my stomach that something was about to go horribly wrong. I emailed my boss and the recipient of the package to explain what had happened (I even told the truth!) and see what they wanted me to do. Of course, there was no rush on the package and I could send the missing pieces today with no problem. They wouldn’t have even known they were missing if I hadn’t brought it up. No big deal. Which, if I had been thinking (or at least fully awake at any point), I would have known all along. I spent ten hours completely freaking myself out for absolutely no reason. At all. I need to go back to bed.

This is awesome.

Monty Python's Silly Walks Generator.

Miles. Again.

Out there somewhere, I’m sure there’s a list of things you’re not supposed to let your dog do. Information about how you are supposed to be dominant and here’s how to make that happen. In fact, I know there is. I read Dogs For Dummies. On that list, I’m sure, are things like “Don’t let your dog sleep in your bed” and “Don’t give your dog food from the table” and “Don’t let your dog completely control you”. They probably have tons of reasons why you shouldn’t do those things. Maybe the dog begins to think he is in charge. Maybe one day he’ll get rid of you so he can eat whatever he wants, including those chocolate graham crackers you won’t let him have (See! Discipline!) because they will kill him. He’ll eat them OH YES HE WILL. We, of course, do not follow these rules. Miles? Is in charge. He’s like Charles, but with better hair. We tried, we really did. We weren’t going to let him up on the bed. We got him a little doggie bed and put it on the floor, where he could see us but knew he wasn’t allowed where we were. When he jumped up on the bed, we made him get down. He was learning that he had his own bed, and that was where he could hang out. But, y’all, his little face is just so sad. Even when he is licking your face and wagging his tail, his eyes are sad. Sad and hard to resist. And eventually one of us (who? I can’t remember. No really. No idea.) started letting him hang out on the bed. Not while we were sleeping, but just while we were hanging around. He’s just so cuddly. Today, that little doggie bed might as well be on the moon for all he uses it. He not only sleeps in our bed, he sleeps between us. He does not appreciate it when you make him go to the foot of the bed. He rebels by lying on your pillow. If your head happens to already be there, well, too bad. That’s what you get. Miles was a shelter dog. When we picked him up from the house of the woman who ran the place, there were probably 15 dogs in the front yard. When she opened the door to bring him out, the barking we heard was unreal. There is no telling how many dogs were in there. The woman told us she’d just bathed both Miles and herself, but y’all, all we could smell was dog. Miles is very laid-back and chilled out, which probably served him well in that environment. That is, until mealtime. I’m sure he had to fight for his food. He eats like he still does. As soon as that food hits the bowl, he is all over it. But his food obsession is not limited to dog food. Anytime you open the fridge, he is there, dying to know what you’re eating, and more importantly, can he have some? He sniffs at the bottles in the door and the food on the bottom shelf. And if you’re cooking, you can forget moving easily around the kitchen. He is at your feet, just waiting for something to fall. (Or for you to hand him something. Not that anyone I know does that.) He has also, somehow, learned to distinguish the sound of the pantry door being opened from the coat closet, even though they are right next to each other. Open the pantry, and his little head pops up and his ears are perked. He’s ready. I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to give people food to dogs. But it’s just so funny. My favorite thing lately to give him has been ice cubes. He works so hard to get them chewed up, but he can’t seem to get it done before they melt. All that work for nothing. It’s like a race. A really, really funny race. He has also been known to eat pretzels, chicken, sausage, lettuce, croutons (those are especially fun because they fall apart when he bites into them and he gets confused) and pizza that was laying in our neighbor’s yard. He eats our food, he sleeps in our bed, his sad little face dictates just about everything we do. I want, I want Miles in charge of me.

I am scattered today.

Sephora opens on Friday! Very exciting. Becka and I will be hitting up the sneak preview on Thursday. Free samples! Today, while I was enjoying lunch at Joey’s House of Pizza, a girl from the salon next door came in, ordered lunch, paid, and left. Then the woman at the register (who I believe is Mrs. Joey) started FREAKING OUT behind the counter. Yelling and slamming down the pizza slice picker upper thing. Then she gets on the intercom and tells the whole restaurant, “The girls at Carol G’s STEAL from me all the time! If you eat here, DO NOT GO TO CAROL G’S THEY ARE THIEVES.” How the girl was able to steal from her and get away with it I do not know, but I already have a salon so I’m siding with Mrs. Joey. Having the girls in the house has been really fun. It’s nice to be reminded what it’s like to be just graduating from college and on the edge of real life, full of plans and ideas and dreams. It’s also a bit of a reminder of what it was like to live in a dorm… our guest room doesn’t know what hit it! But Julie is a joy as always, and the friends she brought are delightful. I guess it’s a good thing I think so, since from the sound of it at least two of them will be back here in the summer! It’s been fun to show them our city and take them to all the best places. Nashville’s not a hard sell. I can’t believe I wasn’t watching Arrested Development when it was on. I just didn’t know. We’re well into the second season on DVD now, and it is by far the funniest thing I have seen in a very long time. We can’t watch them fast enough. And so far, it hasn’t stopped being funny when Aaron puts his hands on my shoulders and says, “Hey, brother.” Neko Case: what do you people know about her? I feel like I’d heard of her before, but never listened until Rhapsody recommended her to me. I think I love her. She has the right combination of country and funky and awesome that I love. I don’t have anything to read. I’ve started a handful of books in the last week, but nothing is sticking. I need inspiration. T-minus 2-1/2 weeks until the big wedding. I have my rehearsal dinner outfit put together (even though I’m still not exactly sure what “texas casual dress” means), I’m getting my bridesmaids dress pinned up tomorrow, and I found really awesome strappy black shoes to go with it. I’m set. Except the part where I don’t have a date. Why did Steffanie have to plan her wedding the same week as GMA? Blech. We had our first game last night in the 4-on-4 volleyball league. I think we have a pretty good team, but we got smoked last night. It was our first time playing together as a team, so we had a bit of a rough start. And of course we played the best team in the league. They had this kind of goofy looking guy who would come out of stinking nowhere with these huge blocks and serves. We were not ready. But we will be, next time. Look out.

Glorious potentiality...

Sometimes you open the window to post something and that blank white space is just screaming at you to TYPE SOMETHING, PLEASE OH PLEASE and it’s just too much pressure so you switch to Zappos real quick like and pretend you don’t have absolutely nothing to say. But I don’t. And that is frustrating. Why don’t I have anything I want to talk about? Things are going on… volleyball leagues and wedding preparations and crazy job stuff and church changing. And I could and probably will post about all of these things at some point. But there’s something else that’s bugging me this week. I haven’t been blogging long, but if I had I would probably have several very similar entries to the one I’m writing that I could link to. That would show you the depth of my indecision. What am I doing with my life? I know, I know. We all wonder that sometimes. But y’all, I have been having a quarter-life crisis for the last five years. And I’m only 25. This is a problem. A friend of Chelsea’s is coming to town this weekend. She’s graduating from college in May, and she wants to check out Nashville. She wants to learn about the music industry and see what it has to offer. She also wants “to be a part of something she believes in”. If this blog had existed four years ago, I would have been saying the exact same thing. Instead, I was talking about it to everyone I knew. I’m sure they were fascinated with my idealistic-fresh-out-of-college-ready-to-change-the-world self. I feel like I don’t have any direction. I like my job fine, but it’s certainly not making an impact. I’m not one of those people I hate (like Aaron and Susan) who have known since birth what they wanted to do. There are a lot of things I think I would like to do, but who knows? Why do I feel so much pressure to do something important? I read an article the other day about finding God’s will for you life. She talked about how we all worry about it in the important decisions – where to go to college, who to marry, where to live, what jobs to take. But really, God’s will is played out in the everyday of our lives… how we treat people, the things we say, how we choose to spend our time. He’s told us what is important, and it’s not where we work or what we study. It’s how we live. It seems so simple, yet somehow I always make it out to be so much bigger. Being concerned less with my occupation and more with the person I am relieves some of the pressure to DO SOMETHING. Because I am doing something, all day every day. Not to say that this will be the answer to my struggle… I’m sure I’ll be in the same place again in no time. I kind of live here. But maybe it will help me remember that I am not defined by my job, as much as I feel like I am.

Another hair post.

I got my hair cut today. My coworker said I look like Marlo Thomas in That Girl.

That’s about right, y’all. I’m kind of freaking out.

Sail away with me honey, I put my heart in your hands...

I am really sleepy today. Why so sleepy, you ask? Because I was up late at the DAVID GRAY SHOW. That’s right, people. We finally saw David Gray. And it was worth every frustration, every annoyance, every disappointment. It was amazing. First of all, it was at the Ryman. Which I love with my whole heart. We went to the box office on the day the tickets went on sale, and we had great seats down front. It was the first time I’d sat on the floor – we usually get balcony seats, and I have to say that I prefer the balcony. You can see the whole stage and I think the sound is better. But we had great seats, and it was cool to be so close. Aqualung was the opener. They play a couple of his songs on Lighting 100, and I’d listened through his album a few times, so I knew I would like him. But I didn’t know how much I would like him. He has a really pretty voice (I’m a sucker for pretty), and even though his music is mellow he puts on a great show. I think a lot of people were hearing him for the first time, and they were not disappointed. He was a perfect opener for David Gray. Who, can I just say, is amazing. We are big David Gray fans at our house. But even though we were predisposed to love the show, it really was fantastic. He and his band transition so easily from big-blow-you-away sound to stripped-down-acoustic, and they pull it all off without a hitch. Highlights for me were “Sail Away” and “Please Forgive Me”, two of my favorite songs of his that were given the full-band-audience-participation treatment. At the end of the first… set? I’m not sure what to call it. The band left the stage and the crowd cheered them back on (I did not participate, as I am still not a fan), but when they came back they did almost as many songs as before they left. Anyway, after that break, David Gray came back out on stage by himself and did an acoustic set. Far and away my favorite part of the show. He did older songs, from the pre-White Ladder Days, including “Shine” and “Turn Out the Light”. Then the band joined him and they did a few more, including “Long Black Veil” from “the man of Gray to the Man In Black”. I’m not a big Cash person, but it was pretty cool. The closer was, of course, Babylon, and they rocked it. I’m not generally one to notice stuff like this, but the lighting at the show was really cool. There was a white screen in the back, but instead of showing video on it, they used it for lighting effects. There were lights on the stage set up so that when they were turned on, you could see the shadow of one band member at a time on the screen, and they kind of faded in and out of each other to give everyone a chance at the spotlight. It was a really cool effect, especially for us… we couldn’t see the people on the back of the stage, so we were able to see what they were doing on the screen. Very cool. It was especially fun being at the show with Aaron. David Gray is one of his very favorites, and he was just thrilled to be there. And I was thrilled to be there with him. And now I need a nap.

Square Peg Alliance.

Last night Aaron and I went to the Square Peg Alliance show at 12th and Porter. Y’all. So cool. We got there right as it was starting, and I was frustrated because I thought we’d have to stand. But we were able to snag two stools on the balcony, right up front. Excellent. (I know these artists don’t get the recognition they deserve, but sometimes it really surprises me how few people really know them. I have a hard time understanding why other people don’t care about the exact same things I do!) It was a great show for me. I got to see my favorites, the people who have provided the soundtrack to my life for so long. I also got to hear music that was new to me – names I know, but songs I don’t. It’s funny when you go to little shows like that… I didn’t know anyone in the room, but somehow we all had a bond in knowing and caring about the same music. Highlights:

• Sandra McCracken singing “Springtime, Indiana”, one of the few Sandra songs I know and the one I love the most. She said she’d intended to do something new, but with the fabulous weather we’ve been having she had to do that one. Very sweet and so, so pretty. I love her.
• Derek Webb singing “A New Law”. I haven’t gotten into the new record much, but I heard him do that song at a One Campaign event in the summer, and it really stuck with me. It really made me evaluate the way I dealt with the youth I was working with at the time… what am I really teaching them? To live a life of true faith, or how to get by in church?
• Andy Gullahorn. A song about how to write the perfect country song. Dedicate it to the working man, and spell it out so he can understand. So funny.
• Andy Peterson and Randall Goodgame singing a song from the children’s album they’re working on. Included a crowd full of pirate noises.
• Randall Goodgame and his wife singing “Bluebird”. I heard this song for the first time at the Christmas show, and it is just so pretty.
• KATY BOWSER. Y’all she was far and away my favorite. I’d heard her name before, but wasn’t familiar with her music at all. It is right up my alley. I want to buy everything she’s ever recorded.

During most of the show, Andrew Peterson was sitting right next to us. I am so lame… I really wanted to say something, because his music has meant so much to me over the years and he is one of my very favorite songwriters. But I feel dumb. Because I would sound like this: “Hi I’m Brandi I love your music so much thank you for making it this one time I took my dad to your show and he loved it too and thought you guys were great musicians love and thunder is my favorite I’m so happy to meet you do you want to be my friend we live right around the corner y’all could come over for dinner maybe we could play trivial pursuit I probably listen to you once a week oh and thank you for the Christmas album it is so beautiful I gave one to everyone I know it is really great to meet you thank you for such pretty music!” I’m not a crazy fangirl. (Really.) But I think I would get nervous and start talking high-pitched and fast, and I don’t want to embarrass myself. So I just sit there. Lamely. Anyway, it was a great show, a great night, and a great deal at $5 a person. I hope it’s something they keep doing; I’ll be there every time. Some days I’m really glad I live in Nashville.