Return of Jim-i

I am done moving. I am not going to apologize for my delay since the last post, although it was weeks, because I had a lot going on in my life. I am going to try to be brief because I have to go to work, but there's a lot I want to post about. First of all, I moved back to West Jeff. Not so thrilled about it, but there are good points. I just got internet back to my desktop last night, hence why I have not posted until now. Hopefully I'll have Ti-Vo (Yes, real Ti-Vo this time, not DVR) by the end of the month. For now I frantically record The Daily Show and The Colbert Report every night, and get Reno 911 and Venture Brothers when I can. Ah, well. Such is life. I realize I watch too much tv anyway and it would probably be better if I never get another Ti-Vo, but then what will happen to all the characters I know and love? It would be devastating. Maybe I can try not watching any new shows this year. Wow, I almost typed that with a straight face.
Last week my 18 year old brother was in the hospital. He had appendicitis. His brief stay strecthed to four days because of complications and internal bleeding. He is doing fine now. We were quite a bit worried for awhile. My mother knew a guy who was sent home from the hospital and ended up dying a little later of internal bleeding that the doctors didn't catch, so it was such a relief to figure out why he wasn't getting better and do another surgery to fix it. Just be warned that a loved one of yours doesn't end up in the same situation.
I read two fantastic books this month. I read more than two books, but two that blew me away. The first was Life of Pi, about a boy who simultaneously practices Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism, and then he gets shipwrecked and his family dies and he ends up on a life boat with a 450 pound Bengal tiger for 280+ days. It was such an interesting read, with a bit of a mind fuck at the end. Check it out. The second was Motherless Brooklyn, about a guy with Tourettes who was taken out of an orphanage to work for a detective/mob man/car service owner. When the guy is murdered, it falls to the main character to figure out the case. I don't read a lot of detective or mystery novels, but this one was great. It was our Otterbein Alumni Book Club book of the month. Speaking of the group, I am not the alumni 'in charge', which basically just means I am going to have to notify members of dates and stuff. During the meetings no one is in charge. We all discuss and contribute. We're thinking about doing a Book and Beer thing, where we have our group meeting, then go to Old Bag of Nails afterwards. Hopefully some of you alumni are reading this, and will be intrigued enough to check it out. Actually, everyone is welcome, alumni or not. The next meeting, the September one, will be early on Wednesday, August 30th at 7:30pm in the Courtright Library. We are reading The Girl in the Hyacinth Blue. You should come!

Qop! (from The Onion)
Republicans accuse Senator Joe Biden of running for president for political reasons.

The Book! Buy It Now!

It's been a busy couple of weeks. Sorry I haven't posted. I have been seeking employment, part time for now, full time for summer. I still need to pay my rent after school lets out, unfortunately. These extremely high gas prices have not helped one bit. Sigh. Two and a half more years until we get the idiot out of office. But today's topic is not current events. Jon Stewart and Saturday Night Live said everything this week that needed to be said. No, today's topic is my book.
Book One continues to meet with favorable reviews. The discussion with the Otterbein Alumni Book Club went fantastic. I sent copies of Book Two around to my brave volunteer proofreaders, so Book Two will be completed soon. The current estimated deadline is it will be ready to go to press by the end of July. I also have a couple of people considering cover ideas, so hopefully it'll be nice and snazzy. I have also wrote six chapters for Book Three, so it will be fast on the heels of Book Two. I am considering another project or two in between Book Three and Four, but I haven't decided yet. I will of course keep you posted. But the bottom line is, if you haven't bought An Actor's Nightmare Book One yet, go buy it! Now! Seriously! Please?

Qops! (courtesy of Veronia Mars, which promises to have one hell of a Season Two finale this week)
Keith Mars: [happy] Who's your Daddy?
Veronica Mars: I hate it when you say that.
Keith: This is important, you remember this, I used to be cool.
Veronica: When?
Keith: '77. Trans-Am, Blue Oyster Cult in the 8-track, foxy, stacked blond riding shotgun, racing for pink slips. Wait a minute, I'm thinking of a Springsteen song. Scratch everything. I was never cool.
Veronica: I don't know which bothers me more, "foxy" or "stacked".

Van Clemmons: Mr. Echolls, I was wondering if I could have a word?
Logan: Anthropomorphic. All yours, big guy.

Cliff McCormack: [to Logan] My name is Cliff, and I'll be your, "If you cannot afford an attorney" attorney.

I Was Right

I am pretty humble, so even when I am on right I rarely shout it from the rooftops. I do admit when I'm wrong. But this time, I was absolutly right. As yet another friends told me about her experience confirming my theories, I feel it is finally time to declare it definitively.

GEESE ARE EVIL!!!!

That's all I wanted to say. Book Two just needs a little more proofreading and it will be done. On Monday, May 1st, Book One will be featured at Otterbein's Courtright Library at 7:30pm. You should all come. Also, I am now working two jobs so I am very busy. Just try to get a hold of me. :) And, um, well, I will stay make time to watch Jed Bartlett and Jack Bauer save the world. I guess that's all I wanted to say. Oh, yeah, geese are evil.

Qop!
"We have a contingency plan to invade Canada? " ~ Kate Harper (Mary McCormick), The West Wing

BONUS TRIVIA!!!
According to an interview that he gave to The New York Times, executive producer Lawrence O'Donnell and his fellow writers had planned for Vinick to win the election until John Spencer's sudden, untimely death in December 2005. After that, they decided that Santos losing both his running mate and the election would be too difficult for the audience to watch, and they changed the election's outcome.

James Dailey, The Author

My uncle introduced me to his friends as James Wetzel Jerome Dailey, the author. Boy that felt weird. I'd love to write about something else because I'm sure everyone is tired of my talking about the book all the time, but to tell you the truth, it's about all that's been on my mind. Sorry. The first few days saw some sales, which made me happy. I'm still waiting for the first weekend's numbers to come in. We'll see what those bring. But since I have yet to be out promoting it, I'm trying to think low key for now. Still, it is so exciting. I am going to be featured in Otterbein's Monthly Alumni Newsletter as the alumni of the month sometime soon. I don't know when, but they did the interview already. How cool is that? Plus the Hurt Battelle Memorial Library in West Jeff is setting up an event for me in March, and going to try to get the local high school English classes involved. I'm really excited about that one. Anyone else have any ideas, feel free to let me know! Anyway, that's all I'm writing for today. Take care!

Qop!
Kate Harper (Mary Montgomery), The West Wing: " We have a contingency plan to invade Canada?"

The Day I've Been Waiting For

First off, I'm sorry that I only did two entries for November. I resolve to do better in the coming days. But the big news is that An Actor's Nightmare went on sale yesterday, November 29, 2005. Why is that exciting? Because I am a published author! I had no knowledge of the release date until it was already out, so I apologize for no earlier notification, but hey, get over it, and go buy lots of copies! Spread the word to all your friends! Go to www.amazon.com and type in the title, or the author's name, me, James Wetzel Jerome Dailey. Please tell everyone you know! Also, I am going to be the featured OC Grad of the Month coming up in early 2006. I don't know which month yet, but they asked me and I said yes so I will let you know when I do. They chose me because of my book. Yay! I am also making the book available to libraries, so please encourage your local branch to get copies! Finally, I am starting to try to plan on publicity events, so please, let me know if you have any ideas for me. I will do any event, be it a small book club in your home or whatever. Thanks all and take care!

Graduation

I apologize for only doing 9 entries last month as opposed to my self-requried 10. I also haven't done any this month and it is already the twelth. I have a good excuse. I was supposed to be writing about college memories and graduation. I didn't want to, and every time I sat down to do a blog, that's what I was trying to do. I don't want to relive my college memories. Freshmen and most of sophomore year were great, as well as parts of this year. The end of sophomore year and junior year, and other parts of this year sucked ass. My life was still perfectly on track until the end of Sophomore year, and then it collapsed and never recovered. To illustrate this, here is how today's entry should have gone, had things continued going well after Sophomore Year:
I graduated today with a degree in Music Education! Yay! I have a job teaching a high school band and I am really looking forward to it. My book is published and the profits I'm starting to make are putting an excellent dent in my college loans. I can't wait for my wedding this fall. Things are going great!
Instead, this is how it is:
My graduation today was a joke because I haven't finished my final class yet and I'm getting a degree in something I couldn't care less about. I should have just blown off the ceremony because it meant nothing and all it did was depress me. I want to finish my book, but I haven't had time because I am still struggling to make ends meet with my dead-end pizza job, and my college degree won't help me attain any better work. Plus I have a zillion college loans. Oh, and I haven't been in a relationship for two years.
No you see why I may be a little bitter? It was hard to shake those professors hands, professors that I look up to (Chivington, Boehm, Tirey, Zilincik, Barkhymer) and accept their congratlations gracefully because I feel the last four years have accomplished nothing. They have been an utter waste of my time. I am sorry I skipped graduation parties today I should be attending. Congrads to those who have their lives on track. I am gonna zone out in front of the tv and sip daquiris.

Qop!
"And he got the rock to the top...and it fell back down again." ~Jason Carney, OC class of '05, today's commencement address

Freshmen Year

This week I am following the example of some of my friends and posting college memories. This is Week 7 of my final quarter here at the 'bein, and it is a bit emotional. Here are the memories from my freshman year.

-Didn't want to go to college, didn't want to do marching band.
~Within moments of arriving at OC, loved college, loved marching band.
~Missed my old friends had hung out with them all summer, hung out one saturday in october, and suddenyl had lots of new friends.
~Nate sleeping on my dorm room floor for a week
~being in a squad with jenn and amber and someone else...don't remember who.
~watching All in the Family until my roommate old me to flip to news on the second day of classes: Setember 11, 2001. Not concentrating in class, being scared, canceling afternoon classes.
~Hanging out with Heather Deem over in Davis
~Dinner with Jami Letizia and her band directors, and Roy and Amber and K
~Being pregnant with Liz's baby
~Dating K for exactly one month
~Julie encouraging me to date K, and me trying to help her with a boy she didn't get
~bowling and winding up asleep on the floor with Julie
~Dating Julie for 5 1/2 months
~Esther's 21st b-day party
~Going out to dinner and getting the 'contract' signed with Scott, Evan, Erin, and Timmy J
~Playing soccer with Absurdly Green (Julie, Kristen, etc.)
~Scott coming out of the closet to me
~Brian Grey was only 20% gay
~Hanging out with Brandon
~Falling asleep during concerts
~Pledging Kings. Enough said. :)
~Seeing OC win nationals in basketball with Liza, Nora, and Julie
~Trip to Colorado with Julie, Nora, and Steph
~Having sex on the grassy knoll with Kristen (not really)
~A roommate I never talked to
~Skiing with Julie, Steph, and Jeremie. Sleeping on Steph's parents' floor.
~King's formal with Andy
~Hanging out at the Kings house, being depressed sleeping there
~Roy and Boogie getting me to drink Smirnoff for the first time
~Boogie introducing me to Kevin Smith
~All of us in Boogie's room finding out how to be male porn stars
~"Losing my virginity" to a King's panel
~Evan composing the Jimmy Dailey song
~officially moving into the King's house with Evan, Boogie, Doug, Ivan, and the others.
~My black Santa Claus
~late nights on the Kings porch and walking t Dairy Queen drive through
~Dating K again come summer

That's all I can remeber at the moment. May do attional memories at the end of the week.

Also, it is Question Week in my away message. Today's question is (Feel free to answer it):
It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood, a beautiful day for a neighbor. Won't you be mine?

Qop!
"So we talked all night about the rest of our lives, where we're gonna be when we turn 25...keep on thinking things will never change, keep on thinking things will always stay the same. But we leave this year and we won't look back, no matter hanging on cause we're on a different track."
~ Vitamin C, Graduation Day

Long Freakin' Update

I am so sorry that I have not updated in so freakin' long. I guess I had better things to do. :) Let's see, last weekend I went to a couple of Christmas parties and directed the WJHS Alumni Band in a one hour outdoor concert. It was too freakin' cold. Then during this week I worked and finally got into 24. I am almost done with freakin' Season One. I still believe I can finish all 3 seasons before the new one premieres. We'll see. Then this past Friday night I had freakin' fun at a party playing Apples & Apples, then went and saw Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortuante Events. It was really freakin' good. It drew some stuff from the later books that happened during the first three but weren't explained until later (I think there will only be 1 movie :(), but It was good. I saw it again on Saturday. Then I directed the 3 hour WJHS Alumni Band concert at Flyer's, which was pretty freakin' fun. Then I went to Lisa & Michael's party, which was freakin' freakin' awesome!!! I got pretty drunk, but I had so much fun hanging out with all those people, including some I haven't seen in awhile. Then I sat here and added lots of freakin's to my journal entry just for fun. :)

Rip Van Jimmy

Wow. I have never slept so long in my life! But first maybe I should catch you up on my life. The first couple of days this week were pretty standard - work, dinner out with friends, and tv. Thursday I went out and bought a new car, since mine is dead. A 99 Dodge Intrepid. Whatever. It runs. :) Friday I had another wonderful date and I slept like 3 hours and headed off to alumni band saturday morning, totally exhausted, but it's hard to skip when you're the director. I got my hair cut, and then I came home, very tired. I crawled into my bed about 1pm. I was soon asleep. It is now 8am on Sunday and I just crawled out of my bed. What in the heck caused me to sleep 19 hours! That is insane! Now as soon as my contact resettle on my eyes, I think I'm going to go do something productive!

This Update Has A Happy Ending

So I need to update quite a bit. It's been an eventful week. I finishied my exams on Monday and my last project for the quarter on Tuesday. It was a paper about Music and the Holocaust. Very interesting, but if I start typing about it now, I'd put in half the paper, so never mind. :) It's a relief to be done with classes for awhile, but now it actually is fully sunk in that I will be leaving Otterbein in two quarters. It is extremely sad. I will very much miss it.

So Wednesday I worked 8-8 as it is the busiest night for pizza in the year, plus cooked three turkeys, pies, and all the fixings for about 100 people. How fun is that? Then I picked up my little sister from her basketball practice and went out to my aunt's house fully expecting to have more Thanksgiving prep to do (but not really wanting to as I was tired). Luckily my two littlest brothers had been there and did all the cleaning and table setting and stuff. One was still there. My uncle arrived about the same time I did (not the one that lives there - he was driving his truck and didn't get home until 5am! but the one from Kentucky that I don't get to see that often). Then his wife and their twins came home (sans their little sister) and we all played Euchre and talked and drank until late (I was overserved!). My aunt had bought Smirnoff for me. Devil. I have cut back on drinking but I would have felt guilty when she bought it for me if I didn't. So I got up kinda late (10:30ish) on Thursday and helped her in the kitchen getting ready for the big 35 member family feast. Then of course the feast, all my mom's family showing up (we're all very close), good wine, good food, good conversation. I finally left about 10pm and headed home, where Tim & I arranged our apartment for the tree.

Friday I had to work 8 hours, but the worst part of Friday was when I found out my car repair is going to be $2000! So it's not getting done. I don't have the money, the car is only worth about $3000. Problem is I still owe $1600 on the car. So I don't know how I'm going to afford a new car while staying paying the old one. I tried to tak my dad about it, but he's still a total asshole sometimes, which is a shame because we haven't fought in awhile and it was nice to have a little peace with him. Anyway, I am still driving his pickup and I have no idea what I'm going to do.

Lucikly Friday night is the capper and was very fun. I went to the zoo with someone and then we hung out at Steak and Shake until 3am. I really don't want to say much more because I don't know where anything is going, but I am happy that the one and a half year streak is over, and that I had so much fun with this person. It made me completely forget about my other problems and she is extremely cool. Anyway, talk to you all later!

Last Football Game

After 8 years, a significant portion of my life is at an end. Today I marched my last marching band game. It was pretty sad. As I sit here, band uniform pants still around my ankles because I'm too lazy to kick them off, it has finally sunk in that I will be done with this school in June. Granted, I am not hitting the real world next year. I will be finishing my music education certification at another school. Still, I will have a degree in June and I will be out of this quiet, peaceful village. I don't want to leave. I was drug here kicking and screaming...shit, now I'm slipping into Garth Brooks lyrics. Anyway, I don't want to leave. I didn't want to leave West Jefferson, and I couldn't be happier that I did, 97% of the time. I'm sure it'll be the same next year. And yet, with only a week left in this quarter and only two more quarters after that, I realize that I am going to miss it very much. To the next step.

Graduation Day

"So we talked all night about the rest of our lives, Where we're gonna be when we turn 25,
I keep thinking times will never change, keep on thinkin' things will never be the same,
But when we leave this year, we won't be coming back.
No more hanging out 'cause we're on a diff'rent track and if you got something that you need to say, You'd better say it right now 'cause you don't have another day.
'Cause we're moving on, and we can't slow down. These memories are playing like a film without sound...
We'd get so excited and we'd get so scared, laughing at ourselves and thinking life's not fair."

These lyrics haunted me my entire senior year of high school ("Graduation Day" from Vitamin C of course). I would pound out the melody on the piano, whispering the words, tears running down my cheeks. I didn't want to leave high school, but I was so excited to be done. I wanted to go to college, but I dreaded leaving my friends. It was the most exciting and sad time of my life. Until now.

I found out this morning I can graduate in June. It's going to be a huge effort, no easy time. I am going to drop the education part of my degree, and just get my Bachelor's in History. I have mixed feelings about this. I will definitely be playing the song all year. I need out of Otterbein. I am going to owe them way more money then I'll make in several years. I will be paying loans forever. I am going to take the degree and go, but what next? I don't know what one does with a degree in history. I started out in the Music Education program and I wish that's where I was now. The decision to quit was not mine or I would still be. I kind of feel like a failure going in four years from Music Ed to History Ed to plain History. I will probably have a Music Minor but we'll see. Now what do I do? What will next year bring? I guess I could see what kind of job I could get in 'my field' of history. Or maybe enroll at OSU or somewhere cheap to finish my music ed stuff. Afterall, I already did nearly two full years of music ed classes. Maybe finished music and history. I doubt I'll have the problems there I had with a certain member, maybe two, of Otterbein's music faculty. Again, feeling like a failure.

And yet I am very excited to know I will be out of here in 9 months. Big party. Mark your calendars. I'll let you know where it will be when I know.