Going out

It's kind of weird for me that just a couple of years ago, I went out a LOT. I mean, I don't like to drink much and I hate large crowds of people, so it doesn't really make any sense that, for a long time, I was a regular at a bar. But, I had a core group of really good friends who liked to hang out, listen to some live music (or in some cases, perform live music), smoke, drink and have a good time. So, I adjusted.

Then, came graduate school. I scoffed when someone told me that being in grad school meant that you had no social life, but now I think she was right. I have to read so damn much and read with enough comprehension to write papers about what I've read...I have almost no spare time at all. This semester, I'm taking two readings classes and one seminar. The readings classes require a book a week, with a book review as the deliverable product. The book review only has to be a page or two, but you still have to read the book. That's 14 books per class. The seminar is a little more difficult to reduce to numbers, so I'll just say--the deliverable is a 30 page seminar paper, so whatever amount of reading one has to do to research that. In short, I'm going to have my nose in a book even more than last semester.

Last night, my good friend, Gloria Cortez--bad-ass guitar player--had a first gig with a brand new band that she's playing with. As usual, when you're friends with musicians, the call goes out to attend the first gig--first for the band, first time at a venue, whatever. So, I went out to Jack's Backyard last night. It was fun for about 45 minutes, maybe an hour. After that, I just wanted to go home...or pull the book out of my bag and start reading. Whichever.

By the way, the band was pretty okay. Gloria rocked, of course. The drummer was decent, the bass player was okay, the singer even did a pretty good job--although her voice was giving out a little at the end. I could see them playing again. I just missed my singer friend. Oh, she was there...and I got to talk to her and hug her and stuff, I just miss listening to her.