do not try this at home

seriously.
do not try this at home, because it's really not any fun at all.

so, I'm doing this kind of spur of the moment interview with former Violent Femmes bassist Brian Ritchie. and Brian turns 50 on Sunday so time's getting to be somewhat of a premium.
and the difficulty, or one difficulty, is that Brian now lives in Tasmania, not Wisconsin so about the time I'm going to bed he's getting up and vice versa.
plus he travels, parties with Engelbert Humperdinck (not kidding there; he's a busy and popular man) so we'd gone well over a week without finding a suitable time.

but Brian e-mails that he's got some availability and we try to do the Skype thing and it doesn't work (bad delayed audio) and so I try calling through my Gmail phone and that doesn't work any better and so we're trying to do the written chat thing even though every other interview I've done for both projects has been oral, not written, and so the tone is, well, different.

but I'm typing questions and Brian's typing answers and since we started without much notice I decide to run to the kitchen to grab a Mountain Dew while Brian's answering, and in my hurry to return, my effort to make sure there is absolutely no lag in the "conversation" I run back into the other room and kick the shit out of a heavy wooden footstool (actually it's an antique commode with a pillow on top).

surprisingly I cuss more in the previous paragraph than I did at the time, but make no mistake, it was painful and looked even worse (photographic evidence above).

so we walk to the emergency room (just in case it's, you know, empty), walk back home when the emergency room's not empty, spend a good portion of the night looking for orthopedists or podiatrists within walking distance for this morning (since my GP, who I like, doesn't have an x-ray machine in his office and doesn't open until 3 today).

and then it's time to, you know, get back to work, or at least try, so I'm dealing with the various iPods (I have three now and we use four between us (don't ask)) and the iTunes library says that the iPod I own that's in the process of dying (which is why I just bought a third) is corrupted and must be restored.
so I restore it. and it still says it's corrupted. and so I restore it again.
etc. etc. etc.

and so then I decide to actually update the iTunes software whose advances I've been rejecting for several weeks and a screen pops up saying that I don't have enough room on my hard drive (which started out at 750 GB) to update iTunes software.
and this, my friends, is scary, scary, scary as hell (speaking of which, the podiatrists I end up visiting are Dr. Axman and Dr. Savir (pronounced Severe)).
so if the panic of having a broken toe, a broken interview and a corrupted iPod isn't enough, now my Mac hard drive is so damn full that I can't even update my iTunes software.

what's that thing that Charlie Brown used to say?
AAUGH!

and my beloved is watching Parenthood in the room with the footstool/commode which, like Weeds, stresses me out in a rather off the charts fashion, you know, to see these relatively smart, relatively identifiable characters do the most stupid, self-involved shit ever (like accosting another parent over your child not receiving an invitation to that parent's child's birthday party).
meanwhile, back in the other room, after updating the iTunes application now says that not only the dying iPod is corrupted but my other two iPods, the brand new (though scratched and gashed), week-old 160 GB iPod Classic and well as the newish nano (with built-in microphone) are also corrupted.
which would not only mean no more recording on these devices (you know, like for interviews which, if you haven't figured out, is pretty much what I do) but no transcribing from these devices since these devices are, you know, corrupted.

thankfully, just before I threw the Mac (with little or no available hard drive space) and the three corrupted iPods out the window, my beloved (who had earlier walked with me to the emergency room and then later conducted the search for nearby podiatrists that accept our insurance) removed the iPod holster from the cordage (is that a word?) so that the iPods now connect straight to a cord rather than a stand-up holster, and the whole corruption problem (well, except for the dying iPod which can't be read or filled or . . . ), at least for the time being, went away.

not so with my broken toe or the hard drive fullness and this and that and the other thing, but at least we don't have a car that we're used to parking on the street because the movie Tower Heist (with Ben Stiller and Casey Affleck and Eddie Murphy and Alan Alda and Tea Leoni and Gabourey Sidibe and Matthew Broderick, but don't expect Alan Alda to show up in my neighborhood because he plays a rich guy who lives in Manhattan, not Queens) is filming on our street at week's end and they've not only already constructed lighting and camera platforms on the roof of our building as well as neighboring buildings but they've pretty much taken up the entire street as well (i.e., so do not even think of parking here for a week), so at least in our pedestrianship we slipped that particular noose.

amen.