Hey yall, this is Dan, my guitar instructor. He plays with a trio named Coal Train. You can hear them at www.coaltrain.net (sorry, Ayla is sleeping so I can't figger out how to insert a link... gotta cut and paste the old-fashioned way) I have worked (played?) with him for just over a year now. I think I will take lessons forever because I keep getting these amazing teachers, and I have sooooooo much to learn!

MomboQ.

Oh, Maya, I went to their CD release party last night at the Hangar. Opening for them was a young man from Bloomington who goes by "Chicago Farmer." Wow. He has opened for Coal Train before, but this time the crowd was ready for him and he rocked the house, all by himself with an acoustic guitar. I approached him afterwards to ask him if he knew you guys. He actually lifted his eyebrows and said he had heard of you. I spoke of perhaps at some future date when he can book as main intertainment at the Hangar, maybe hooking up with you for an opener.... He said he would check you out online and get in touch, but he is very humble and I don't think he thinks he is big enough yet to pull another band in behind him. I think maybe not now, but for real after he has played here a few more times. The crowd was eating him up!

Anyway, just a hope and a prayer. I am still working on it!

Love, mum

I believe it was our late Patrick Henry who once said, "Give me a realm without obnoxious teenagers who can't spell, or give me death!"

Adopting this phrase as their credo, our forefathers selflessly flung their lives into the metaphorical (though sometimes literal) fire in order to deliver us a country free from the iron-fist oppression of mind-bendingly painful internet surveys and bands like Made in Mexico. They triumphed. It seems that the nation's youngsters of 1780 busied themselves with blacksmith apprenticeships or sewing, not posting their boobs so that all may see or blasting out "brown-acid-doused, freeform post-punk," whatever the crap that is.

Their victory was long-lived, yet short-lived at the same time. Over two hundred years later, the terror known as MySpace dragged itself from the muck and mire of Tom's mind (WHO IS TOM ANYWAY), coalescing into a hellscaped playground for some of our public school system's finest failures, internet predators, and bands with such incredible accolades as "they kind of don't suck, maybe. I mean I think my sister likes them."

Thankfully, my dear family, we have formed something of a resistance group against the cold, loveless institution known as MySpace. Someday, somehow, we will find a way to loosen its Judo-esque grip on humanity.

Until then, I have a bunch of World of Warcraft to play. Tell me when you guys have a good plan going, okay?

~Ayla

Okay, okay, I think I got it. I found the dashboard thing and the home page and all those instructions and faqs and stuff. I feel like, whew, a pioneer or something...

now, off to find a picture... mbq




well, now I have an html soup of some sort. I hope it posts as a picture. If it does it is Ubu. I don't know why it was taken...

here goes!


Well, that obviously didn't work. I am losing my hair! Let me try something else....

well, now we are getting somewhere! success, sort of, but it makes me look the fool when it puts the picture up on top where it looks like it was there all along. Well, it wasn't!

Livn N lern'n... What fun!

momboQ.

Hello from southern illinois! It is cool and chilly and my feet are cold. My nose too. I don't know how to do this yet. It took me two days to figure out how to sign in, but i still did it the long way around by posting a blank comment. It's like, I can't find the control panel or something...? I just noticed I am typing in the edit html tab, but maybe I should be on the Compose tab, but if I tab there will I lose all of this? Not that it would be a great loss; just a puddle, really, now that I think... so next is pictures. And, I didn't even know they put camaras in the computer screen. Creepy but cool, you know?

So I am very busy solving the mysteries of the universe. Somebody, please slap me!

momboQ.

Ok. It didn't disappear. One down and 999999999999999999999999999999999999999999
999999999999 ~ well, you get it.

Onward and upward!

This is supposed to be a picture. And maybe it is, somewhere in cyperspace. More later. Gramma

Hi everone!

Welcome to our new family blog! Its like a cyber family reunion and I will be bringing the virtual potato salad.

Essentially this is a very simple website that we can use to keep in touch. We can write long letters, short comments, invitations, updates and best of all, pictures. Lots and lots of pictures...we just have to figure out how. I like this better than myspace because it is more specific to our family and we don't have to worry about creepy myspacers doing whatever it is that creepy myspacers do. No spam, no strangers, no corporate affiliations (except Google), and, uh, no Tom. Who is he anyway?

So here's how this will work. Everyone will log in under the same username. This will allow all of us to post blogs. This isn't like a chatroom; not all of us can be logged in at the same time. Traditionally blogs are only used by one person and automatically signed. Ours will be signed "family member." Since more than one of us will be using this blog, we will have to remember to sign all of our own blogs. So it looks pretty easy once you sign in. Hit post blog or some such button and write whatever you would like. I would just like to add that I want everyone to feel comfortable writing whatever they would like on here. We are all family anyway. Just a reminder though, this blog can be viewed by anybody. It probably won't be viewed by many, but it can.

So here is the essential information that we all need to know to get on here.

USERNAME: familyetcetera
PASSWORD: "maya's middle name" (we can change this later if need be)
URL: www.familyetc.blogspot.com

So to get things started I am going to try to post and image. I am doing this by clicking on the little blue image button in the upper left-hand corner of the post box. Here goes.



This is what I look like right now. Wow! what a slice of life. I have on my jammies and my little office is messy.

Ok that was fun.

Now another.



Those guys are my roomates--marcus, hank, and robbie. I'm not sure if robbie had actually seen a computer before.

Thes pictures were taken with the little camera that's in my computer screen. One of these days I will get a digital camera and you will be able to see lots of other boring photos.

So, I hope everyone is happy about this. An important aspect of this blog is that it is not mine. I started it for all of us, so we all have creative control of it and can make it what we want. It is a collective and that is what makes it so super cool.
Good luck and if you have any questions, please let me know.

Love,
Maya