It's been an amazing week

It's been an amazing week for me personally and also for some of my favorite celebrities.

I'll give a day-by-day rundown, starting with the weekend.

On Friday afternoon, just as I touched down in Florida, I checked my e-mail to find a dubious news article from The Sun, a British tabloid, claiming that the members of Led Zeppelin were determined to tour in 2009 whether or not Robert Plant was to be included, even to the point of having someone fill in on tour who had been sitting in on vocals while the others rehearsed. I didn't know what to make of the report, but I posted it right away to my site, www.LedZeppelinNews.com, which was the right thing to do . The story was out there, and it was a big one that could not be ignored, even if it was patently untrue. I made sure to note that the story wasn't necessarily true at all.

With that decision behind me, I looked forward to the rest of my weekend. I was in Florida to spend the next few days in the Miami area with my girlfriend, Layla. It had been a month since I was down there to see her last, so we hugged while her gas tank was filling up with $75 worth of the stuff. I suggested we eat at a Thai place for dinner. We joked that it was our first actual date with each other. I guess it was, but it was a successful one since we took our time and were the last customers to leave.

On Saturday, for breakfast, we started off the day with a trip to a Jewish diner. She said to expect their bagels to be better than any I'd ever had before. If they were, I didn't even notice. What struck me the most and stuck with me all through the meal was the first thing delivered to my table: the orange juice. It was freshly squeezed, and you could tell from the taste. It was better than any stuff from a container. I guess Florida is known for its orange juice, and maybe I'd never had a Florida orange freshly squeezed. Great stuff!

Also, the hostess at the front recognized the name of my fraternity on my T-shirt. She said her boyfriend is a SigEp too, attending Florida State but away from campus this semester doing an internship.

In the afternoon, I had an appointment at the Florida DMV. I got my driver's license transferred to that state and registered to vote as a Florida resident, which will come in handy very soon. In the shade that evening, Layla and I watched the sun set on lawn chairs right at the edge of Biscayne Bay. Once the sky was almost completely dark, we noticed that a cloud above Miami was illuminated by the lights that are constantly on in the city.

That night, we went to Delray Beach. On our way to the boardwalk for a stroll holding each other's hands, we stopped by a cute little gallery on the main drag where some large framed photographs of classic rock artists were on display. James Fortune shots of Led Zeppelin were the highlight for me, as Layla knew in taking me out there. After our walk, we people-watched from our seats at a cheap Italian restaurant. The food was delicious and plentiful -- enough to feed us lunch on Sunday afternoon!

Layla had never seen "An Inconvenient Truth," so she had asked me to bring my DVD with me to Florida. We watched it Sunday morning. It's funny that even while listening to the movie's dire message, we were still able to make out as though it were a romantic flick.

We drove around for a while that afternoon and wound up at a sports bar where the Packers and Cowboys were on TV. I'm not particularly fond of either team, but I love it when Tony Romo embarrasses himself. The game had a few great moments in that department, and the despicable Terrell Owens (I'm an Eagles fan) was pretty much worthless throughout the game, but the Cowgirls still somehow managed to pull through.

Layla helped me slam a full rack of ribs, but what was really fun was our second bout of people-watching for the weekend. We even watched a racewar break out right in front of our table, at the front entrance! Three cop cars were dispatched to the scene, but they were too late to apprehend either of the fighting parties.

I forgot my phone charger down in the Miami area, and by the time I realized it, it was too late to turn around and get it. So when I got back home Monday, I spent some time looking to purchase a new charger. Thanks to my friend Eddie, we got one, and I also picked up a copy of Rolling Stone at the same time. David Letterman was on the cover, and I had heard he gave a rare interview in the issue, so that copy was mine. His guest on his show that night was Bill Clinton, and that got things rolling for a good week of headline-grabbing appearances. The best moment on Letterman's show came Wednesday night due to a non-appearance by presidential candidate John McCain. I missed Thursday's episode, with Paris Hilton as a guest, but the first 45 minutes of Wednesday's were so riveting that it would be hard to top.

On Tuesday night, my duty was to go and welcome 11 new SigEps at American University. I was happy to take part given the quality of the men who have been recruited there before. And on a bittersweet note, it may have been my last such moment like that over there, at least for a little while, since I'll be down in Florida.

Wednesday was dominated by Letterman's skewering of the absent McCain (joined by Keith Olbermann, who was a great pick), and Thursday night was once again dominated by Led Zeppelin. The Sun was breaking another story again, this time positing that Robert Plant wanted back in if the other guys were so determined to go out with or without him next year. So far, there's no official response to this either to confirm or debunk the story. Theories abound as to what that really means. All I know is I want to report the truth. For the time being, I'm reporting this rumor and, as before, cautiously noting that it is just that.

That brings us to today. I'm currently at a yacht club where I'm wearing a long-sleeved black button-down shirt and black pants with a tasteful necktie. I'm here with the band Trademark as part of the evening's entertainment. Unfortunately, I'm doing this in lieu of the once-jeopardized first presidential debate between McCain and Barack Obama. I am doing the gig tonight under slight protest, but I was glad to receive a good-luck call from Layla on the way here.

This weekend, my rental car and I are going up to Pennsylvania to visit my family, unbeknownst to my dad, whose birthday is next week, but known to my mom, who's helping me keep the visit a surprise for the soon-to-be-76-year-old. The last I talked to him was when I broke the news that I'm moving to Florida. I could tell over the phone the guy will miss me.
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Moving to Florida

Early last month, I was on my annual summer trip to Massachusetts, with my future up in the air. I was considering relocating from D.C. to that area, where a longstanding job offer had been extended my way by some down-to-earth people who would make excellent bosses. I intended to have some conversations up there to explore that career, but those conversations never developed.

Simultaneously, I devised a crazy idea about being a traveling bandleader at conventions that had nothing to do with music but, statistically speaking, probably had some amateur musicians in their ranks who could form a band around me to entertain the convention's attendees. Not knowing how such an idea could get off the ground, I shelved it.

But something very fortuitous came to me while I was in Florida: I fell in love with a woman named Layla. Her name symbolizes a great song. In fact, it is for that song her hippie mom named her in 1973. And while I consider myself well-versed in classic rock, Layla actually knew the story behind that song in more depth than I could yammer on about. It was easy to fall in love with Layla, and she wasn't expecting it at all when I planted my first kiss on her lips one night in Massachusetts. The kiss certainly wasn't unwelcome by any means, and it was the following day when we explored our romance further.

It has been growing ever since those early days of August. She has become a big part of my life, and I hers. We now talk on the phone for long periods each day, usually starting and ending each day together as if we were in each other's arms, just as was true when we both were visiting Massachusetts and when I spent the following week at her house in Florida. My desire to be with Layla, and possibly to spend my life with her, helped me to decide where I will be moving once I leave D.C.

I have found it is surprisingly much cheaper to live in Layla's neck of the woods. She will be picking me up at the Fort Lauderdale airport tomorrow early in the evening, and we will be spending our first weekend together at a house her grandparents own in the Miami area. It will be a great opportunity for Layla and me to share some one-on-one time and for me to give the green light to my plan of relocating to be near her and sort of start over.

The plan is to find an apartment in or near Boca Raton with a fraternity brother of mine from college who wants to relocate down there from Pennsylvania and then making the move around my birthday, Nov. 12.

In the meantime, the expiration date on my D.C. driver's license has long been Nov. 12, 2008, and it doesn't make sense to shell out the money required to renew it only if I would be forfeiting it in a matter of days or weeks in favor of a Florida driver's license.

Also, I became cognizant of the Oct. 4 registration deadline for Florida voters to participate in the 2008 general election. Given my inclination to vote for one major party ticket over the other, and also given the contentious nature of Florida votes, I am going to obtain my Florida driver's license and voter registration this Saturday afternoon in Broward County, ensuring I can vote in the Florida election either in person on Nov. 4 or by absentee ballot, thereby lending my support to my candidate in a jurisdiction where the vote would be much more meaningful to him than in the overwhelmingly one-sided D.C.

And if life down in Florida doesn't work out for the long term, that's OK because I will have just spent the winter near the tropics and a short drive from the Atlantic Ocean! I don't see what could be wrong with that.

Note that my plan does not involve moving in with Layla straight away. This is for a number of reasons. I have learned from past experiences of hastily signing leases to share confined living quarters with the girl to whom I was engaged and, a few years before that, with my one and only college girlfriend -- although I kept that living arrangement over my senior year of college secret from much of my family at the time.

I have learned much about relationships over 10 years of dating, and I do not believe I am currently repeating any mistakes from my past, such as ignoring red flags. Sure, Layla is responsible for four children of her own and still has to deal with their two fathers. That's all the more reason for me to play it cool and not become heavily involved in their lives overnight. The kids are all at impressionable ages and must be approached cautiously. The three youngest still don't know Mommy has a boyfriend, and they won't know that until they first get to know me as a person. I have met only the oldest kid, who's somewhat of an emotionally withdrawn 16-year-old boy, but not the three youngest. It is a delicate situation, and imposing myself on them by suddenly showing up as a stranger moving in and sharing a bed with Mommy is certainly not an appropriately delicate response. So, when I get into town, Layla and I will drastically alter our long-distance relationship and then start "dating like normal people." She has a great head on her shoulders and, from what I can tell, is a reasonable mother. All of this was easily agreed on mutually, rationally and naturally.

So, I move to Florida. No, I don't have a career or even a local job lined up to begin as soon as I get there, but the part-time and freelance work I am doing now are things I could do from anywhere by telecommuting. I am scanning the job circuit in the region too, in case something absolutely perfect for me pops up as either a full-time career or additional freelance or part-time work. I do intend to make a living and have more income than expenses, which is something I have not been doing all summer long in D.C. The cheaper rent in Florida is sure to help me out in that regard.

So, there you have it: my long journey that took me to where I am today and is leading me to an exciting future that's sure to be different from everything I have known. I am moving first and foremost for myself. But I am also moving for Layla, for her four kids, and for our next president, Barack Obama. God bless America!

The career musician who wasn't

For six years, I have been living comfortably in the D.C. area -- first in Silver Spring, Md., and then on Capitol Hill. In my writing jobs, I had stability, which is what I had in mind back in the college days in Pennsylvania when I selected communication studies and journalism as my fields of study.

I've been adept at performing music my whole life, earning me several first-place plaques in piano and organ competitions before I could drive, and also landing me paying gigs at countless weddings, funerals and other religious services. I was still in high school when a family in my church community asked me to play their daughter's wedding; she was marrying the bass player from Radiohead. This milestone event brought the groom's brother, the group's keyboardist, up to the choir loft for his first-ever jam session on a pipe organ. He asked me to pull out the stops while he was playing so as to vary the sound.

For all my efforts, the biggest recognition I ever received for my music, aside from the weekly praise I would enjoy weekly from churchgoers who were impressed with my abilities, was a one-time write-up in my local Sunday newspaper back in Pennsylvania. It was an honor to be written up like that toward the end of my stint in high school, but it was not the pinnacle I was hoping for. I was a rock musician, but I was playing a church organ on weekends. It wasn't helping me earn real success, as defined by the rock musicians I admired. I was a fan of Eric Clapton and of Led Zeppelin. I valued the musical integrity of those musicians and their achievements in going on tours that pack stadiums and playing on records that sell. That's what I wanted.

Enter college. Majoring in music performance seemed to earn me little more than a piece of paper that essentially tells the reader little more than "this dude can play." I didn't see how a degree would earn me a record deal or a steady paying gig. Majoring in music education seemed beyond my grasp, so I didn't study music in college.

I did, however, keep on playing at that time. And maybe that's when I was the most creative of my whole life. I was able to contribute to the composition of an album's worth of original material with a band of some longtime friends who had picked up their instruments in their teen years. Heavily influenced by Pink Floyd and Radiohead, we dubbed ourselves The Interface and recorded a 40-minute self-titled debut that I believe would hold up to critical scrutiny if it were ever heard outside our immediate circle of friends. But what stunted our growth was the lack of urgency with which we transformed our recordings into CDs that could be used to promote us or purchased directly by fans. By the time our CD manufacturing occurred, the bandmates were splitting. An error on the CD, namely a gap between tracks that should have been seamless, made me furious. The band was a waste, I said, with a taste of sour grapes.

In school, I went for the degree that seemed to hold more promise of professional stability. I graduated cum laude and relocated, on a whim, and found work. I was busy, and I was no longer playing music. My then-roommate, a non-musician who had been my best friend since high school, recently told me it was killing him to see me going so long without doing anything musically at all. I eventually involved myself in a classic rock cover band, which it took three years for me to realize was a dead end. All the while, I was supporting myself on my comfortable existence in which a full-time writing job ranked first in my life.

This June 10, when I suddenly found myself without a job, all that talk of stability disappeared. With few ties holding me in the D.C. area, I realized this could be a unique opportunity for me to skip town and try something completely different that I have been longing to do. I spent a few months devising a plan, using a savings account I had earned over time to fund some trips to Nashville and elsewhere so I could find myself and discover my next move. I was rather determined Nashville was it. I wanted to pursue the career of a professional Nashville musician. I visited twice to watch and communicate with some of the musicians whom I would be emulating and, ultimately, against whom I would be competing for work. After doing so, I realized some of my shortcomings that I must work to alleviate. If I spend a year improving in the areas of owning and operating better musical equipment, memorizing and performing the words to songs, and marketing myself and my abilities, then perhaps I will be in a better position to succeed in the highly competitive Nashville scene in late 2009 or early 2010. Hence, I decided against immediately pursuing that dream in Nashville.

But I have to do something, and I cannot continue to linger aimlessly in D.C., while I deplete my savings account. Earlier this month, I began working some freelance writing jobs and a part-time administrative job. And all throughout this year, I have been playing some paying rock music gigs, mostly on the weekends. But my expenses are exceeding my income, and that savings account will soon go dry. The rent here is too much for me to afford, so I have to move somewhere more affordable, and the sooner I do, the more likely I'll be able to escape going into debt.

This is why Florida is coming into play. That, and my new love down there.

How did the hotel not kick us out?

These four video clips my friend Eric made are representative of the noise a wedding party was helping me make in the front lobby of a hotel this Saturday night for several hours. How we did not get kicked out or told to hush is beyond me.

Nonetheless, here's me taking requests -- quite literally. You know when someone says "Free Bird!" It's not a serious request. But I just thought it would be good to confound the people when I actually started playing the thing -- in nearly its entirety.

As you can see, I went straight from "Free Bird" into another request, which was Bon Jovi's "Livin' on a Prayer." And yeah, that's my version of the chorus: "It doesn't make a difference if it's boogies or snot."

Somewhere along the line, somebody requested "Light My Fire" by the Doors. This picks up toward the end of the song. I was having a conversation with someone while I was performing separate-style solos to replicate the sounds of Robbie Krieger (guitar) and Ray Manzarek (organ).

I really thought the hotel was going to put the lockdown on us and have us go on our way -- with or without force. So I played "Bohemian Rhapsody" thinking it might be the last song before that happened. It's here in two clips:

Part 1:

Part 2:

The hotel, surprisingly, never did show us the door. We kept on rocking out for hours. I'm not sure exactly when it all ended. As you can see, I was having several drinks throughout it all. Don't you worry: My body reminded me of my substantial intake the next day.