New Job

November 6, 2000

Today was the first day of the new temp job. This company, Comdata, apparently focuses on taking care of the financial aspects of trucking companies, mainly smaller ones. They just launched some new membership program for the companies to get discounts on gas and tires and trucker related stuff. My job is to call all the companies and tell them about it.

Well that's all fine and well. Today we sat around and waited for computers to work. They never did and I have my doubts that they will work tomorrow. They replaced them, then none of the computers worked, they had problems setting them up on the network. Pitiful. It seems to me if you're going to hire people you'd want to make sure you had something for them to do. Tomorrow I'm bringing a book. I just got angry listening to the guy who was supposed to make everything work talk about everything but work. I know where to get my haircut and where to buy a computer and I also know that potatoes apparently are the closest thing we have to a fountain of youth (who knew). This guy has a lot of garbage sitting around the trash bin in his mind. Well I just got sick of listening to it.

That radio job through Doug called. They just wanted a resume so I gave them my web page address over the phone and that was it. I guess if they like it they'll call. I'm not worried. I guess that job is a producer of a radio show, like Roz on Frasier, the TV show. I don't even know if I want to do that. But if they want to offer me a job more power to them. I'll cross the bridge at that time.

In other news tonight at church they had a new-comers class I went to. I have been going to Vineyard here in Nashville. It was ok I guess. No groundbreaking information. I guess it's nice to know they are serious and mean what they are doing. There are still some strange things about that church but there isn't anywhere else in Nashville I feel like I need to be at right now so here will do for now. I just want to play drums there and I think there might be an opportunity to do that.

Roommate Gone but Jobs on the Horizon

November 3, 2000

Sorry it’s been a couple days since I wrote in here! Much water under the bridge. Willy, my roommate has moved out. We had, let’s call it a disagreement. He thought he shouldn’t have to pay his half of the lease termination fee, I thought he should. Long story short and leaving out a lot of details, we finally agreed to each pay half since if we didn’t the apartment complex would come after both of us since both our names were on the lease. If you want any more details than that shoot an email off and I’ll be happy to clarify.

At this point I have no other roommates lined up. Once the lease terminates on December 30, 2000 I would like to either live in a 1 bedroom apartment by myself or move in with a family and live in their basement or something like that. Ideally I’ll be on a tour next spring. Life is just KNUTS!!!

In further news my last day at BMI is today. I fought every which way to get 40 hours a week out of them and the most they’d give is 35. So Monday I start a new temp job for 40 hours a week, for higher pay and I don’t have to wear a tie! You women have no idea how exciting that is..the no tie part. That will be a nice change.

Doug from WAY FM sent me an email today and said that a recording of my version of Eli's song "Stand" (Mine was called "sit") got into the hands of a DJ in Mississippi. He loved it and is going to use it on his radio station. If that happens again I'll to look into getting it published! All the same it is very exciting.

Third Day Concert

October 30, 2000

I had a great weekend. Well Saturday anyway. Just as a warning I’m going to brag a little in this one, but it’s my journal so if you don’t like it don’t read it!

Over a month ago I volunteered to help at a Third Day concert. I was told I had to be there from 6 am to 6 PM on Saturday the 28th. So I show up and the crew was there and of course they all recognized me and said Hi and they were glad to see me again. This made me feel very good since it had been over a year since they saw me. We got to work and I jumped up and started shoving stuff off the truck into their hands. This made them happy cuz I knew what I was doing. Sounds stupid but that helps even if you’re unloading trucks. Just how to handle heavy cases and stuff like that. We went in and started setting up. All the light trusses and speakers and sound boards. By the end of set up I was joking around with the Lighting Director and my friends who worked monitors and band tech and it was too fun.

All the other volunteers helped do merch out front but I stayed back stage during the show and helped to everything from pull backdrops away and give water to the bands as they walked off stage. For a couple songs I walked out and gave guitars to Mac Powell, the lead singer.

I love Third Day because the band seems to be 100% what they are on stage as they are off stage. All of the band talked to me, remembered my name, asked what I had been up to, thanked me for my help. They were very nice and I have every amount of respect for them in the world.

During lunch I was talking with another of the volunteers. Come to find out he just started his own independent label and has one artist who is recording an album. But they can’t get the drum tracks to line up. They need a drummer. What to do what to do? We traded numbers and he seemed all interested because he knows me as Craig the Polite intern. I hope something happens there. How Nashville moment can you get? Meeting a label owner backstage at a show and being an available drummer who can fill in and help get a studio emergency solved. I’m not holding my breath or anything, because I know the nature of the business! But…if something goes right…if the planets align correctly. MAN O MAN!

After the show was over I helped tear down and was tearing down the drumset and directing other volunteers and telling them what to do. The crew kept thanking me for sticking around. I helped them all load the truck again and they were off.

I worked 20 hours straight and every muscle in my body hurt. I slept all day Sunday from about 3:30 am to 6 PM. I needed it! I’m still in pain today but what can you do?

Work Blessings

October 27, 2000

So I was supposed to find out about the job Thursday.   It is now Friday.   I found out today that the department upstairs can’t hire another person to take care of their extra work.   I walked downstairs to my boss and told her I would be leaving next week unless she could think creatively about how I could get my full 40 hours.   She pulled some strings and I am now allowed to work 40 hours through next week due to a large order we have to fill.   After that I don’t know.  So I guess I am on hold AGAIN!   Surprise, surprise!  

I voted.   When I went to do that early registration thing they just said “You can vote today” and I said “sure, whatever”.   So that’s solved. I now have the full right to whine and complain about everything wrong with politics.   Well, as soon as Bush wins.   ;)

BMI Explodes and Elections

October 24, 2000

Yeah so they are pulling some crap at BMI. Monday they told me they wanted me to work 35 hours a week instead of the 40 I have been working. This is a problem for me since I need money more than I need oxygen. I told them so. They said "tough"—in not so many words. Rather than quit right there I walked upstairs to a different dept that I knew wanted their people to work overtime. I asked them about ending my shift at 3:30 and then coming upstairs and finishing my time there and working to 7 or 8, thus creating a second job within the first job and everyone is happy and I don’t have to drive anywhere. It could work perfect. But they said they have to ask the bureaucracy and its going to be some huge mess. Ill find out Thursday. If they won’t hire me, I will quit BMI. I’m just a smarmy file clerk here anyway. I’ll temp for more money for the hours I want and call it a new stage in life, or on the flip side, another dull temp job.

In other news, I have been chasing down the stuff I need to make sure I am able to vote. I’m sort of tiffed cuz everyone keeps yelling at me "you have to vote you have to vote! If you don’t vote I’ll write you out of my will and steal pieces from your puzzles and hate you." So FINE already people. I never planned on not voting. I’m going to vote, gimme a freaking break! But nothing happened. Noone sent me any vote info, noone told me what to do. Everyone expects me to vote but noone tells ya how. Its like pushing a kid off a diving board and as his body plummets to the water screaming "Hope you know how to swim!" So I asked around last week and everyone said "oh its too late, you can’t vote now. Boy are you stupid." But, me, holding my head highly aloft, kept looking. I know I registered when I got my drivers license. So I called the voting board or committee or whatever it is they have and was told I have to do something called early vote or something and Ill get my registration card 3 weeks later, which is after the election. Which means obviously this "card" that everyone has been over-promoting is needless and useless. You just show up and vote as long as your registered.

People always say America is screwed up, but at least we can vote and we all have a say. But there are no clear directions on what to do to vote. And apparently what I learned today is that even those rules don’t matter cuz you just show up and they let you vote. This is the most foolish waste of time. Honestly the only thing I want out of voting is complaining rights anyway. I wasn’t allowed to complain about Clinton because I didn’t vote for that one. But now, I have the God Given American granted right to complain about politics! This is a new era for Craig Comedy. So that is why I write this. To complain about the voting system. It stinks, its far from perfect, it needs reform, I don’t like it, it makes me feel dirty.

Willie Explodes

October 21, 2000

Tonight was mildly amusing on several accounts. I had no plans today. The best days happen when you have no plans I believe. I woke up and Willie was up playing with his computer and we talked and watched TV and just bummed around. I took a shower and just realized I had no plans at all and nothing to do. Yawn forever. I went into the next room and thought "Hmm?we should go to Radnor Lake. It'd be free and take time and mostly it would be free! Nah, Willie wouldn't want to do that. Maybe he would. I should ask. Nah, I'm sure he will do something." So I asked. We ended up walking around Radnor Lake for about two hours. Then on the way home we decide to go shopping. So I buy $40 dollars worth of groceries since we decided to have a BBQ, and for food for next week. We get home and start cooking and Mitch calls. Anyway, Mitch comes over (Mitch is a girl for those who don't know) and we cook and talk. We watched Braveheart. I am the type of person who will just crack jokes all through a movie, especially if I have seen it before. And Mitch is all about cracking jokes too. So we are hamming it up. Braveheart is an easy movie to laugh at cuz they are all such fruits in that movie! Well Willie wants silence, so soon he starts complaining. I BBQd burgers and he BBQd Bratwurst and the burgers turned out great and the bratwurst turned out?well?.wurst. So he all ready had a little bee under his bonnet. He just got more and more mad. Then he spilled coke on me on accident and I got mad and called him an idiot, half out of jest, half-serious cuz he was horsing around. So the movie got over and game one of the World Series was on. This of course sends me into plenty of jokes since sports are of course by, for, and presented by a parade of loons. Willie takes his sports serious. WAY too serious. So little Willie finally left in a huff to go lift weights and watch the rest of the game on a different TV in the weight room. Mitch and I cut loose on jokes about everything in the world and then she went home and life was wonderful. Except we three somehow dirtied every dish in the house and I think most of the neighbors dishes somehow.

For updates sake, Willie still doesn?t know if he's coming or staying or going with the engineering job. I will work full time at BMI and try not to chase the next fleeting thing that comes along. Unless that fleeting thing is a tour, in which case I'm gone like yesterday's unclean socks. But its up in the air anyway, as always.

Job Explosion

October 19, 2000

You all will get a kick out of this one. Yesterday I was out being trained on the engineering job with my roommate, Willie. Willie casually says in passing “the company might move me on to a new city to project manage.” This is a tiny problem for me. I just signed a year lease on an apartment! Willie is my roommate. I just basically quit BMI to come work for this engineering company. And now he tells me he’s leaving. “Well, let me know what happens” I say. What am I supposed to do?

So we finish working and come home and he gets a phone call that night from his boss tell him that the company is having some basic legal problems and may shut down the Nashville project for a month and maybe for good. In any case Willie said that if that happens he will move on to the next city. Thus leaving me with no roommate, no job and a year lease.

Pretty cool huh how I can be screwed so many ways at one time? I had to crawl back to my boss at BMI today and ask if I could go back to full time (I’ve been working part time). I guess I should be thankful that I had the foresight not to quit BMI all together. So the job thing is gonna be ok, except that I won’t be making anywhere near as much money which I need desperately right now, which means my mind is all ready turning to a second job. (No restaurants for me this time!)

About the lease thing, I’m either gonna have to find a second roommate (yeah that was a real winner problem last time) or transfer into a one bedroom. If I transfer Ill be paying an exorbitant amount of rent and I will have to move all my stuff again. I just moved all my stuff into where I am now. That means I’ll need help. I would hire a moving company to do it, but please refer to the fact that I have no money.

My highest hope is that Willie will stay and the engineering will stay. Nothing is final. It just looks very dark. And it looked so good too. Unreal eh? I can’t believe how fast it fell apart. It feels like buying milk at the grocery store and when you get the to counter to check out it has rotted and turned to cottage cheese and broken the container by expanding and its just a slurpy dripping smelly mess, and when it exploded it killed a near by infant. It was milk! Pretty simple idea, but good GOD did it go foul fast!

Keep this in your prayers. I don’t know what’s gonna happen and when it does happen I don’t know how I’ll deal with it. It’s just bad news any way you look at it.

Caedmon Falls and Telephone Polls

October 17, 2000

No word on the Caedmon’s Call thing. I tried to call Doogie today but his number must have changed cuz its busy all the time. So Hopefully he will call me. See..what did I say? Typical Nashville Scenario!

I started the new job on Monday. I am getting the hang of it. There really isnt much to it. Measure telephone poles. I’ll know whether or not the job change was worth it when I get my first pay check.

I am still working at BMI two days a week in the mean time. They want me to stay and Im happy to get a sure thing paycheck so here am I.

As I wrote this entry I got a call from the Nashville Scene about my stories (posted on my home page http://www.freeyellow.com/members2/craiggreenwood/tobe.html)He said they are not looking for any first person columns now but to send him a sample anyway. Well that ride was fun while it lasted. Maybe Ill hit up the NY Times. Whatever!

Ok I guess that is all for now.

More Christian Music

October 11, 2000

Big day today all the way around. For starters I quit BMI pretty much out of the blue. Even I didn’t see that one coming. My roommate works for an engineering firm and he makes…just a tad more than me. And I’ve been having all these financial struggles so all of a sudden it got real juicy for me to be hired on there. I will work for him as a subcontractor which requires ending BMI and the second restaurant job I took, which is fine cuz I was getting less and less interested them both. Although BMI did have a nice employment benefit package. Anyway, I guess tomorrow is my last day.

Then later today I went to a Caedmon’s Call concert. I was going for two reasons. I had spoken with their manager (who happens to be the drummers wife) and wanted to meet her for future job potential. Also Nichole Nordemann was playing and I really like her music. Caedmon playing was a nice bonus too I guess. And Justin McRoberts did his thing. I think Nicole blew them all out of the water and she just had a lowly piano. Not even piano. a keyboard! Anyway, Im trailing. I was getting very tired as the concert went on and just wanted to go home but I was told I could meet the manager after the show if I stuck around. So, remembering how on the newsboy’s tour we loved volunteers, I stuck around and started helping wrap cables and basic tear down stuff. Then lo and behold in walks Doogie. Doogie is a guy that was on the dome crew on the newsboy’s tour. I didn’t work with him directly but we knew each other and I have seen him a couple times since the newsboys tour ended. We talked, I asked if they were looking for more crew…he slyly looked around to see if noone was listening and said “actually…. maybe…. we have a guy…well…c’mere” I guess they are thinking about firing a crew guy and leaving him in Houston! So sad for him….do you hear something? Could it be opportunity knocking?!? Maybe not. It’s all Nashville talk…which is Greek for “LIES”. But me knowing Doogie….he took my number and I have his number also…..if they do ditch their crew guy….I’ll be very happy. Where was this say, oh, JULY!!!!!

Anyway, that’s my news. I quit my job to do engineering and now might possibly be back on the road. There’s your official prayer request!

Christian Music Business

October 9, 2000

This weekend was exceptionally dry. And I’m not talking weather. Nothing big happened. It was a holiday and I had Monday off which just added to the boredom. I did help out at WAYfm Monday and Tuesday morning though. I haven’t done anything there since I left for the newsboys tour other than volunteer at a few concerts they promoted. But the host of the show, Doug, went to London with sparrow records to promote a bunch of new artists and Karla, the other host stayed in Nashville and ran the sound board. They needed help answering phones and pulling CDs and all the old intern stuff I used to do. I was happy to go do it, except its at 5 am! Oy ve! I did manage to hook up volunteering at the Third Day concert this weekend which should be interesting since I used to work for them! In any case at least this coming weekend will not be as boring as this last one. I am also going to go to a Caedmon’s Call concert Thursday. Hopefully not alone, but in any case I’ll be there, bells and whistles and the whole sort.

I forgot to mention I started writing some column stuff…like Dave Barry. It is on my web page at http://www.freeyellow.com/members2/craiggreenwood/tobe.html so go visit if you want a short chuckle, snort, or possible guffaw.

My work is done here!