Oh so much.

Well well, the holiday weekend is winding down, and I have much to report and mull over.

First of all, happy first anniversary to Nate and Jen. One down, and here's to many more to come.

The fourth was great -- good time, good peeps, good eats, and I got to see a lot of stuff get blown up. It's a not too secret fact about me: I go crazy for fireworks. That being said, the fourth of July is one of my favorite holidays, even if it was in the 50s that night, and everyone was dressed in layers.

I spent a good deal of the day Saturday watching "Deadliest Catch". I don't know why, but it's one of my rare TV addictions. I can watch that program damn near all day, and that's pretty much what I did. Fortunately, the Discovery Channel does the marathons of it, so in those rare days when I do become obsessed with it again, I can pretty much watch an entire season in a single sitting. Watching it, I got to thinking, though. These guys absolutely love what they do. For most of the guys on the program, crabbing is a family tradition, but still. Think about your job for a second, think about what you hate the most about it, then think about these Alaskan crab fishermen. Literally every day they could easily die as a result of one little thing going wrong. They work in frigid temperatures, and the average day's work is in the neighborhood of eighteen hours. They are away from their families for weeks, sometimes months, at a time. But still, when they start doing what they do, they are really caught up in the moment, and once that first big catch is brought in, they pretty much go apeshit, regardless of if it's their first year on the ship, or if they've been on for twenty years. I watch these guys, and I don't honestly know if there is anything that I love enough to want to it for the rest of my life like that, let alone something that puts you into stage on hypothermia as part of the job from time to time.

Tonight I went with the fellas to see We Are Scientists play at the Independent. Amazing show, and even the opening band "Cut Off Your Hands" was pretty damn respectable. I suppose seeing the show kind of coincides with the news that my new band is finally beginning to take shape. Everything is still in that awkward "we all want to be in a band together but don't know any of the same songs" stage, but that's just part of the game, really. I've got some stuff I'm working on, but here's the big problem that I have faced for a number of years: how the hell does one go about writing lyrics? I guess that's a reasonable part of the reason I have been playing instrumental music all these years, but still, I would think that I listen to enough music that I could pick out some themes in the bands that I like and sort of hope to emulate, but the main common thread I can find is that none of them really make a lot of logical sense. And that is absolutely no help to me. So I'll close this up with a question for you, and I hope to get response from musical folks and non-musical peeps as well. When you're listening to music, what makes the lyrics "good"? Is it more a matter of the melody or the words? Are harmonies a major factor? Because I have to be honest with you all for a minute here: I really feel like that is a big barrier to my songwriting at the moment. Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.