Oh…hello all. Welcome to my random thoughts. It is Wednesday and I just got done getting my tooth drilled for an hour.  The numbness is going away and my face feels like it is going to fall off.  It is funny having half of your face numb and trying to drink something or eat something because you can’t feel or taste on that side of your mouth…hopefully I didn’t bite my cheek off.  I am 1/3 of the way done with getting a root canal, and if you haven’t ever had one, try to avoid them by going to your dentist regularly and brushing your teeth every other hour (they hurt a lot).

Well, I was able to make an awesome trip to Rocky Mountain National Park on Saturday.  It was so much fun.  I was accompanied by Dan, Dana, and a high school friend Lauren Brumbly.  We made the hour and a half trip to the mountains and found a nice mountain to climb.  Our first sight in the park was that of Elk; everywhere.

EEEEELLLLLLLKKKKKKK

Then we made our way to the base of the mountain and looked at the board to find the best way to go.  As we started we passed a half dozen people riding horses who had just come from the top of the mountain and they said that this was the hard way up the mountain, but we knew that we could crush it.  So we continued up the mountain and tried not to step in the horse do-do.

The Map Board that told us to go up.

We stopped halfway up the mountain to eat some sandwiches that we packed (we knew it was halfway because some girl told us and it was devastating news because we though we were a lot further).

Our eating spot and Dan's ability to set the timer on the camera

We finally reached our destination and it made the trip even better.  The top was beautiful even with a bunch of clouds everywehre.  We had fun taking “senior” pictures and throwing rocks off the top and then we headed back down just before the rain started.  It was a great day!

The top of the mountain

We made it!!!!

My awesome pose

I am sitting in my own starbucks on a nice Friday night…yes I said a Friday night. This means that I don’t have a social life and that I love to work.  I had a little too much play the last two weeks with my trips and all, so now it is time to get back to the drink making and song writing.  Work is something that you need to love doing.  I say this because doing something that you don’t love for 40 hours out of your week doesn’t fulfill anything but the bills.  If you dread going to work, then maybe it is time to do something that you love to do.  I am finding this out more and more, and I can’t wait to only do music for my career.  That is my goal for right now.  Every time I have a show I just want to keep playing until my fingers fall off or I start bleeding…that may be a little extreme but I would do it.

Well, I have to get back to work. Keep on Keepin On!

Me being phsyched to be at work!

(Beat box rap) Phhhh chick Phhhh chick…my name be Mike and I travel round the country.  I go on planes and travel to different counties.  From Michigan to Florida I hit up the streets, and then make raps and lay down sweet beats.  Now I know you think this rap is the best, but it’s good to be back in the wild wild west. M-dawg out.

I have been traveling the last couple of weekends seeing family and friends, and it has been awesome!!!  I flew back from Tampa last night and arrived with amazing weather and mountains staring back at me with the sunset looking like a fire.  I had a really great time in Florida because I got to see my friend Steph before she goes to Africa for a couple of years with the peace corps.  Then I spent a day with my cousin Kristen…it was a great time.  I rode horses, played with three year olds, played rock band, and beached it up.  The weather was nice and enjoyed the company down there.

We had a show last Wednesday night and it went fantastic.  We headlined our first show at the Meadowlark in downtown Denver and had four different opening acts which left our set to go on around 12:40.  It was a really late night, and we actually stayed up until my flight left.  I was impressed with the people who stayed for the entire show because it didn’t get over until 1:30 in the morning.  They were troopers and I thank you for staying those of you who were there and are reading this right now.  I know that those of you who don’t live in Denver would have stayed that late too…

Well, we are getting more shows and recording some more tunes.  We are hopefully going to have them up on itunes pretty soon and then you can all purchase them.  Well, have a wonderful blunderful dunderful day, night, afternoon.

mike

It has been a long time since I have updated my blog.  I have done some traveling, hanging out with people I haven’t seen in a while, and playing music. It all started by having a band practice on Wednesday night that turned into an all nighter/me trying to sleep on the couch while everyone else stayed up, however I ended up sleeping for like an hour.  Then we went to Cracker Barrel for breakfast in the morning and we were all a little tired…but we made it to airport.  Now when you’re flying you usually know what airline you are supposed to fly with and when it leaves, but I’m not like everyone.  I thought I was on American Airlines, but they didn’t have me in their system and they didn’t have a flight to Grand Rapids.  Then they informed me that I was on Midwest Airlines and it was leaving in 30 minutes.  I hadn’t even gone through security yet, so I was a little stressed.  I got through security by going through the metal detector 4 times because I had change in my pocket and I had forgotten about that.  I got to the gate safely and boarded the flight.  While I was on the flight, I had to listen to a baby scream for 3 hours…it was a pleasant flight.

I got home in good time and was able to catch up with family and friends and then I left Friday morning for the U.P. (for all of those who aren’t from Michigan, that is the Upper Penninsula/the forgotten land).  I drove for three and a half hours and made it to St. Ignace for my show.  I played for a high school banquet.  It went really well and we followed up the dinner and entertainment with a game night.  We played Awana games, the price is right, boggle, family feud, and some others.  The night was over at three in the morning.  I went back to the house I was staying at and fell asleep very quickly.

The next day consisted of going and visiting my grandparents, four-wheeling, listening to stories, go-carting, batting cages, driving range, and freezing my butt off.  We did a lot of things and then finished off the night with watching Cool Runnings, and I played a lot of my songs for some of the high-schoolers.

I left early in the morning on Sunday and made it home for Mother’s day.  We had a great time hanging out with family and laughing a lot.  Then we took great Sunday afternoon naps.  I got up from my nap and got ready to play special music at my church.  I didn’t have my number done yet, so I worked on it.  I arranged Nothing But the Blood of Jesus with my looping pedal and some crazy things.  I played at my Church and it went really well…I realized how much I have missed those families that have played a vital role in my high school years.  It was great to catch up with a lot of people.  Next time I hope I will be able to spend more time with them.

I am writing this from the plane back to Denver.  I almost missed the connecting flight in Milwaukee but got there right before they closed the door.  I am really exited to get back and play some shows.  We have a show on Wednesday and we are really excited because it is our second show with the whole band, and we have a couple of new songs that we are playing.  Well, here are some pictures from the weekend.

Me on the plane with my cookies

Me and my mom on Mothers day

Happy Jack

Rory being Rory

Playing at the banquet

Hey all out there in internet land!!!  I am just posting this new video that I made when I was bored the other day.  Let me know what you think.

CLICK HERE

I know what you are all thinking…I am watching F.R.I.E.N.D.S. which led me to write about friends.  That is not the reason why I want to write about friends…actually I have been discussing friendship in my class for the past few days which has been a pretty good discussion.  When I was doing a little research before my class I came across a video that talked about friendship, but the thing that blew me away was that the video was all about what we can get out of a friend: basically using someone for our own gain.  That wouldn’t be a very good friend to have.  Another part of my research that stuck out to me was this quote: “The history of a person’s spiritual pilgrimage can usually be traced from the history of that person’s friendships.”  It kind of hit me square in the face, figuratively, because of the truth that is in it.  I looked at my friendships and tried to assess the spiritual climate when with those friends, and I can definitely see how my friendships have had an impact on my spiritual life.

I also got to thinking that I already have over a thousand friends…I have facebook.  That is all I need right; a social networking website that will fulfill all of my catching up, sharing memories, and chatting without actually seeing the people or knowing them.  They are my friends still…(there might be some sarcasm in there).  It is interesting to think about how many of your “friends” would go out of their way to do something for you or if you would go out of your way to do something for them.  A friendship is a relationship that gives and takes from both people.  It’s not just you taking or having someone make you smile all of the time, but it is caring for the other person and helping the other person in need.  They would also do the same thing back to you.  It works pretty well…I feel like I am preachy, but choosing your friends is a very important part of life because they really impact the way you think.  Well, I’m done, but you should do something for one of your friends today.

mike

The Dan's and I hiking in the mountains!

Hello World Wide Web…long time no talk.  I have had a pretty fun, exciting, random week that had its fill of various events.  I will first start with the weekend of recording and the events leading up to the weekend.  We played at a Junior Senior banquet for the school where I teach.  It turned out to be a pretty good show too…but there was a catch in the show; actually two catches.  The first one was that it snowed about a foot an hour and the second catch was that i had to do the morter dance (you can see the morter dance here however it’s not the one I did at the banquet).  Well, since it snowed so much and where we were going received 3 feet of snow in 5 hours, we were unable to go to the cabin that we had planned.  We decided to go to a house that Bethany was house sitting and record there.  We got all of the drums tracked and then we had to get out of the house because they family was coming back, so we decided to try and go up to the cabin.  We got to loveland, which is 45 minutes away, and Tim went to go get the key and the rest of us went to shop for food at walmart.  We finished shopping and it turned out that there was no power up at the cabin and Tim’s grandparents didn’t want us going up there at all.  Then, we headed back down to Amy’s house and set up the recording stuff in her kitchen.  After all of the shinanigans that went on, we were able to record just about everything that we had planned.  It turned out to be a great weekend and we captured it on video…here.

After the weekend, I was able to get back to classes and Starbucks/real life.  The weekend, however, made me want to quit and just pursue music….but I have to pay the bills somehow.  But I was able to play sand volleyball on Thursday night which was a blast and go to a rockies game last night.  We had awesome seats in the third row in left field.  They were playing the Dodgers, so we were sitting right behind Manny Ramirez…everyone’s favorite player.  I found out that a lot of people highly dislike him and called him very bad names.  I felt bad for him at the end of the game.  Here are some pictures from the game.

A guys head

Manny!!!

The Huge Scoreboard

We just had an awesome weekend because were able to celebrate Jesus’ resurrection!  What really makes me excited is that we do not serve a dead God; no, we have a risen Saviour who is our advocate and our cornerstone!  That really pumps me up.  Another thought that I have been thinking about is that we can celebrate Jesus’ resurrection whenever we want. We don’t have to do it one weekend a year (which usually includes buying cute dresses for the girls, and dressing up a little more than usual), we should, in fact, do it every day.  How awesome would it be if we trained ourselves to think that way. I know that sometimes I don’t think about it, and when I come back to thinking about this glorious Resurrection it makes me bummed that I wasn’t thinking about it.  I hope that made sense.  Anyways…My Easter was pretty good.  I attended our morning service and then went back home to make lunch for myself.  Then I had to work seven hours at good ol’ starbucks because I forgot to ask for it off.  It was also a bummer that I wasn’t with my family.  There is something about being with your family on holidays and you don’t miss it until you’re not there.

I get to go back to Prom this Friday because “Churchill” is playing at the banquet for my school that I teach at.  We are the entertainment for the night, and we are really excited because it is just going to be the four of us (Tim, Amy, Bethany and I) and playing a really acoustic set with the bass drum.  After that we are going to be heading to the mountains for a writing and recording retreat for the band.  We are really pumped for that because nothing can top getting work off and playing music while in the mountains.  I will keep you posted on our progress.  We won’t, however have internet or a bathroom (yes, you can live without the internet and a bathroom).

Well, I hope that you can do something random today like buy a meal for a homeless person, write a letter to one of your friends, or dress up like a big chicken and give hugs to passerbyers.

mike

We had our first, full band show on Tuesday night.  It was awesome.  We played at the D-Note cafe in Arvada Co and it turned out to be a really cool venue.  It had a nice stage with monitors, speakers, and microphones…just what we need to play our music.  We invited everyone we knew and even people that we had met that day.  I was thinking that I should have made small fliers for Starbucks and hand it out the window for every person to come to the show (I probably would have been fired, but it is a good idea).  The entire venue was “sit down at tables” type of venue so that means that everyone was sitting down at tables.  There was about 60-70 people there which actually filled up most of the tables.  They told us that it was the best showing that they had ever had on a Tuesday night.  We also had some members of the group Meese there and they gave us some good feedback about our set.  It was very encouraging.  After we were done the booking guy for the venue told us that we were his favorite band and that he wants to get us in ASAP.  It was a good night.  Here are some pictures from the night.

This is us setting up and getting all plugged in

I was moving and playing so fast that I was Flash

You can see four of the five members.

This is Bethany rockin it on the Keys

Monday mornings usually consist of people waking up slowly because it is a start of another work week and they had too much fun over the weekend.  The fun I am talking about would be that of having serious chess tournaments, shovelling snow, cleaning their house so it can get dirty again, or finishing their taxes.  Those are all really fun things…i guess. But when the alarm goes off in the morning, most people don’t know how another Monday has come so quickly.  It was kind of like that for me this morning.  I got up very slowly and then tried to take a shower and found out that we didn’t have any hot water so I skipped that part of my morning routine and then I studied for my class that was about to teach.  I got in the car, after scrapping the frost off, and listened to the mind bender of the day: Women prefer to have this blue while Men prefer it to be white.  That was it.  That was the question.  I didn’t get it right, but it turned out to be the color of their bedroom…I don’t know where they get this stuff, however you are now smarter after reading that.  I made my way to school to find out that I didn’t have to teach because they were doing SAT testing and it of course took over Bible and Science class; the only two subjects of the day.  That means that I don’t have to teach until Thursday.

We also have our first show tomorrow night with our full band.  Our full band includes Tim (vocals and guitar), Amy (cello, bass drum, vocals), Bethany (Piano, Bass drum, vocals), Jerod (Bass, tambourine), Joe (drums), and me (guitar, mandolin, tambourine, vocals).  We are playing at a pretty cool venue downtown with a nice stage and a big dance floor.  Our music isn’t very dance oriented but who know, I may hop off the stage and cut a rug or two…it would be a sight to see.  We are hoping to see a lot of people there.  I will give you an update on how it went in my next blog with some pictures and stuff.  I don’t know if I have mentioned it but we did put a new song up on our myspace.  Check it out here.  Have a great day.

mike