March 29, 2003 - I was woken up to the voice of Brian Hauk on the phone. He wanted to know if I wanted anything from Burger King since he was on his way over to my house. This was my signal to get out of bed and get ready to go to the musical rehearsal in Ripley, Ohio. Cloppert and Hauk both arrived at my house reasonably on time and we departed for the long drive. The drive out there took about an hour and ten minutes. We listened to my CD of Kiss Me, Kate on the way there which was good because we were going to be playing the music very soon (i.e. when we get to the school) so we needd to become familiar with it. The drive was actually kind of nice because it was on Route 52 which follows the Ohio River the entire way. The musical looked like it was going to be horrible based on our first read through of the music but when it came time for the second pass after a great lunch the whole thing came together and I think it will actually be quite nice. I am getting paid $250 for the whole deal so that is a nice bonus. After practice we drove the long drive back to Cincinnati. The three of us stopped at Goodwill in Montgomery. Cloppert got the most ridiculous pair of pants in the store and I bought a few things (pink shirt, cowboy hat) that I'll use in the future for gigs or possibly wear the shirt to work. There wasn't much time to lay around at home before I had to be at the Southgate House at 8 PM. I quickly unloaded my instruments and the clamp lights from my basement, set everything up, and then drove back to my house to meet Janet for dinner. She ended up being a little late but it was alright. We drove up to McMillan Street to have dinner at Pomodoris. It was amazing how fast they served us dinner. The waitress said 'it'll be right out in 5 minutes' and it seriously was 5 minutes when we got our pizza! I dropped Janet back off at my house so she could go home and get some sleep and then I made it back to the Southgate House in time for seeing the opening band Remedy play. They were sort of a popish kind of band that definitely had a younger and less energetic sound than our band but they have a lot of good ideas and play well together. Fisher Effect took the stage at midnight. I was pretty tired going into the show but as soon as we got up on stage I was cooking. The show went well but we were only able to fill 1.5 hours of time. WAIF 88.3 was there to put us live on the radio from midnite until 2 AM so it was a bummer that we weren't able to fill up all the time but they like the sound of our band and didn't complain about the time we were short. I went home pretty soon after the gig and went to sleep.