As it turns out, it wasn't true. Kia dealership wrote us and apologized, but they accidentally quoted us for the base model manual transmission model, as opposed to the automatic model we were told. The best they could do for the automatic is $253 a month. $80 more than the other offer. So, back to the drawing board. Seemed too good to be true, and the dealer was obviously distracted by something or other. I don't believe he did this on purpose, because we were at the step of getting the contract to sign and now everything is back to square one. I definitely am hooked on the idea of having a new car, and I like the Soul, but we are going to have to play some poker here. We called 2 other dealerships yesterday, and it seems that we might be able to play them all against one another to get the best deal. We could of course drive my Volkswagen and just hold on to that. Crazy. What a long drive that would be. I don't believe it is in our best interest. Isn't that how you know that you are aging?
I have decided that I need to talk to our mechanic, Joe. He will tell us what to do. He will know. Wednesday morning I will bring the car up to him. He will know whether to sell it or not, how much it is worth, and whether it would make it to Phoenix or not.
Today I spent the day recording with Michael Arenella's Dreamland Orchestra at Peter Karl studio in Brooklyn. Happy to get a chance to record with the group I have been playing with since I first moved to New York. Michael keeps all of the charts true to the original 1920s recordings. Was entertaining when we got to chart number 9, one of the band members started saying "number 9, number 9" like from the Beatles song. Michael didn't get the reference, and when he was told is was the Beatles, he said "ah, that is from before my time". This from a guy who knows every band, musician, hair style, mustache grease, etc. from the 1920s and drives around in a vintage Chevy. Amusing.
So we are moving, and getting ready for a baby. Did I say that Nicole is due on June 2nd? She has had a great pregnancy, and we are anxiously awaiting the next step. The welcome to the madness. The end of the quiet! Things are quiet right now! Unlike the past 5 years of our relationship, these days I have cleared my schedule, and I come home every evening to sit with Nicole and wait. We watch whatever is on the channel that we ended up on, and make dinner, read, and plan! The planning is what we are both enjoying right now. I had the initial idea that we wold leave our jobs, move to Phoenix without an apartment or a car, and see what happens. Nicole quickly made me realize that since we do have a baby coming, we might want to plan ahead. She just turned to me and said "I think I am going to have a temper tantrum I am so uncomfortable". Pregnancy rocks.
So, again - we need a car, and apartment, and student loans. I have a 2001 Volkswagen Jetta, and we originally planned to drive, with the baby, across the country following Nicole's brother's wedding in Niagara Falls on August 5th. When I brought the car into my mechanic for inspection, I realized that if the car would make it across the country, it probably wouldn't last much after that. I think the car would be happy to retire to Phoenix, spend its final days rolling around the streets and sweating, but I don't think it is willing to, at this point, move to Phoenix and really be a willing participant in our daily lives. It's doctor bills are outrageous, and has 165,000 miles on it now. I have a feeling that it could find a good home here in New York with someone who needs it occasionally to drive out of the city, trek to the beach in Jersey, and maybe help a friend move some Ikea furniture from the Bronx. I need to list the car soon - time is moving quickly, although slowly. At least I know it will move very quickly once this baby is born.
We found that there are good lease deals on this car called the Kia Soul. Kind of looks like a breadbox on wheels, but that is ok. It is big, will be safe, and will be completely covered by a warranty. I have never signed a lease deal before. Turns out it takes some bargaining. It seems that they will offer us a pretty good deal, but we need to keep driving it down. At the moment they have come down from $208 a month with $2000 down to $171 a month with no money down. They could go even lower for the manual transmission, but we decided that we would rather have the lowest level automatic transmission. In case you are wondering, this is all not like me. I look for the cheapest, and the most rugged option available. I am a hippy underneath, and it bothers me that I always have the desire to undercut my desires. Part of this blog is therapeutic for me - I need to write about what is happening so that I can make sure it is real. But it is real. Also real is that my credit score is really good - 802. A few years of paying off my cards every month has really paid off. And I have a feeling the collective bad credit in the country could help me/us if I can keep this up. Big if.
I have decided to begin a blog to track my upcoming life adventure. Currently I am sitting at home, as my cat Super eats the remaining flecks of Grape Nuts from my cereal bowl. I am taking the day off from work, and enjoying it immensely. In an hour or so I will leave to go to Brooklyn to record with Michael Arenella's Dreamland Orchestra, a band I have been playing with off and on since I moved to NYC in 2002, almost 9 years ago. Come the end of June it will be 9 years.
So here is the premise (or in other words, here is my life...). I am 34 years old, a musician (I play piano and compose), and I am about to become a father. In some exact amount of days, hours, minutes I am going to become the father of a little girl. I have no idea how many days, hours, minutes I have remaining before that moment comes. In fact, I could get a call in the middle of the recording session today and have to run out. But that probably won't happen. Nicole (my wife) isn't due until June 2nd, so I theoretically have a couple of weeks left. According to a doctor's theory made in September 2010. Very few people give birth on their due date. It is not something you can plan around.
However, there are some things I can plan around right now. For instance, I can plan around the fact that I have accepted a teaching assistant position at Arizona State University in the fall, and that my first orientation day is August 11th. Which means I can plan around having to leave my current job, move out of my apartment, sell my car, try to find an apartment long distance, travel 2500 miles, move my stuff 2500 miles, and all with a new born baby girl somewhere around 2 months old. That I can plan around.
Faure's nocturne #1, is where I am right now. Slightly nervous, unsettled, searching, echoing. I though that writing a blog would be a way I could share this experience with others and myself, and look back on years from now to appreciate the fact that I succeeded in this little adventure. We'll see how that goes.
There are those who say that we are crazy to initiate such upheaval at this moment in our lives, and I am one of them. However, there are times when you realize that you are on the wrong path, and I am dealing with the fact that I have become intrenched in a job which doesn't speak to me or allow me to excel at the things I do best. It all started out well enough. I was ready to leave New York City in 2005, and not even that sad about it. New York is great, I love this city, but I moved here for a world that doesn't exist anymore. The world of Duke Ellington and Dizzy Gillespy, the world of working to pay the bills and staying up all night at jam sessions and jazz clubs, the world of black and white and Harlem.
Working class, struggle, emotional release...yada yada yada. Oh man, it is not here any more. I lived in Harlem for a time, the first few months after moving from Boston. I loved it. Around the corner for St. Nick's pub, fried fish down the street, and Aunt Dot's amazing home cooking. 2 months of bliss. And then you could maybe say I lost it. You realize very quickly in New York that things aren't easy. It is not easy to get from one place to the next quickly, especially when you think that all the burroughs are one city. This place is HUGE. And expensive. My dream of living a poor existence didn't seem to gel with any of my social circles, and I was done by 2005, ready to leave and start again somewhere else. Out of the blue I got this job offer from Sony Music, to make ringtones. Polyphonic ringtones. Like this:
The job was great for a few years until, as you can imagine, technology caught up, and no longer were midi versions of song necessary. Increased phone memory and faster download speeds meant that people could download the ACTUAL SONG. Yeah, the dream was over, but me and my fellow polyphonic engineers somehow still had jobs. We were doing other stuff. I was project managing, and enjoying it. Life was fine. I still sat in a room with 5 other people: Kurt, the electro-pop artist Kap10Kurt (http://kap10kurt.com/), Hiromi the concert pianist, Brian the hard-rock vocalist, Jeff the mandolinist and sketch-comedy guy, and Robert the reggae guitarist and mench. I complained, but in reality I was able to do my work, still play in bands and write music even at the office. But things started to change. I made the mistake of excelling at project management, so that I was moved from Kurt's team to the operations team. They moved my desk out of the back room. I was out with everyone else. I started getting busy busy busy and having more stress at work dealing with people who wanted this job to be a career and their full passions, as opposed to my nice detached group in the back room. I would come home stressed and annoyed with people, and started to feel the pressure to make this my life's commitment. I was told that I would be getting a raise and a new title. That was 2009. I did finally get a raise and a new title - last Thursday. A 2.5% raise.
But a raise it was. But alas, it really has nothing to do with this resent for me. I am going back to school because I am no longer afraid to do what I love for fear that I might fail. I thought that is what I was doing for all of these years. And in a way I was, however I always kept one foot on dry land as they say. Never jumped in all the way. Never trusted myself enough. It has taken me years to realize that I am worthy of living in this world, of providing for myself and giving to others, and that I have something valuable to give. I can truly thank all of the experiences I have had in New York for that realization. Whether it was my experience with Sunroom, or Asiko, or the Rhapsody Players, or almost playing 2 off-broadway shows, or recording, or thriving in a corporate structured environments such as Sony, I now finally believe that I can succeed at my passion. I know that I am not the greatest musician alive, but I also know that with my myriad of skills, yes, I said myriad, I will be fine.I hope to have the time to reflect on these and other experiences while I write about this adventure. It is a quiet night...
