All through my schooling I dealt with a condition. Constantly keeping me from concentrating, always ensuring I’d be the bane of my teachers’ lives. It never distracted me personally, but it distracted everyone else around me, and it certainly brought things to a halt when a teacher would have to stop class to address the issue.

“Tony. STOP DRUMMING.”

Unconscious drumming. Other drummers understand my plight. It mostly comes when I’m in deep concentration. It aids my thought process. Whether it be a muffled thud of my feet on the floor, or dull slap of my fingertips on the desk, it pretty much drove everyone nuts. Everyone but me. What drove me nuts, was trying to not do it. The amount of concentration it took for me to NOT drum, was twice the amount I would have when drumming.

Maybe this will be my new ex-post-facto excuse for my performance in school.

Today, I sit on the train, eyes closed, relaxing. Alien Ant Farm plays on my mp3 player. Moments pass, and I’m suddenly aware of a pressure on my finger. It’s my wedding ring vibrating against my finger. At the same time a sound comes to my attention. It is a high pitch tinking sound, coming from the direction of my hand. It plays in perfect rhythm with Alien Ant Farm‘s Rubber Mallet.

I open my eyes, and I’m greeted with the stares of four other people.

“Sorry.”

It never ends.

Filed under: rambling, social by tonybullard
2 Comments »

This is a picture of my son. In his hands he has a set of keys we made for him. A set of keys I thought were long lost. He fished them from some unknown crevice, perhaps a couch or a toy box thick with plush and plastic. Once retrieved, he traveled across the house, and began to attempt to unlock the door.

I’ve heard the phrase, “Where do they pick this stuff up?” before, but it never really clicks until you see it for yourself.

A few days later, I find him with the DVD player’s disc tray open,and he’s placed a disc in it. Sure, it was upside down, but who hasn’t done that before? I have to question is taste though as it was some baby DVD of Teresa’s. Not like Baby Einstein baby DVD, like “The Glories of Natural Childbirth” baby DVD. It’s a little early for him to be learning where he came from. I don’t need my son’s first word to be “ovaries.” I get enough of that kind of talk in a house with a nurse.

//

I just had a wonderful experience with a butterfly on the subway platform. Judging by his erratic flying manner, I imagine he’s not long for this world. But he was nice enough to climb up on my hand and sniff at it with his long proboscis with great fervor. He was very brown. So much so he may have just been a pretty moth. One of his eyes was black, while the other was nearly clear. Intriguing little creature. Only problem was his insistence to stay on my hand, and the subway’s insistence for being on time.

The rushing world does not pause for such frivolous study of butterflies.

P.S. I totally stole “//” from Lucas Huang. But I doubt he reads my blog, so he’ll never know. Sucker.

Filed under: family, photography, rambling by tonybullard
2 Comments »

I think Noah is smart. But I think Noah is smart the same way every parent thinks their kid is smart.

“My son looks at me when I call his name. He’s a genius.”
“He’s seven.”

But Noah does do some awesome stuff. Maybe it’s more cute than intelligent, but now, when you put pants on him, he’ll hold up his foot to help you get it in the pant leg. This goes for socks and shoes too. Not only adorable, but highly convenient. Which is nice, cause convenient actions and kids are a rare combination. Very rare.

But then, yesterday, he did something that struck me as a little less intelligent. As I was leaving for work, and Noah followed me out into the garage, he noticed the box for his drum set. He bangs away on his drum set all the time (seen climbing it in this video), so I was surprised to see him that excited about the box for it. Then he found a drumstick…

and proceeds to beat on it, like it’s the real thing.

So this means one of three things in my mind.
1) Noah thinks he now has two drum sets, and this one just sounds “boxier”.
2) Noah has little-to-no depth perception
3) Noah is actually intelligent and was doing a “Hey, heh, look! Heh, heh. I’m playing the drums!” joke.

Here’s hoping it’s the third one.

Note: Please forgive the quality of the cell phone picture.

Filed under: family, photography by tonybullard
8 Comments »

Yesterday it was made official. Every branch of the Anthony Ambrose Bullard Sr family tree has a blog.

I’ve had tonybullard.com for a long time, since it was given to me for free when I bought a domain for my old death metal band, Soul of the Savior.

My parents have had bullardsailing.net for a while now, in order to keep the extended family on top of their goings on as they travel the world via floating Chinese junker.

My oldest sister started to blog in late April, reasoning that she’s a journalist, and every other journalist seems to have one, so at the very least she’d get practice writing. She picked the title “Household 6″ which I never understood until I ran into another reference to it online. You can find out about it’s origins here.

Finally, giving in to peer pressure, my second oldest sister, Page, started her own blog, Brain Blur which I think sums up parenting fairly well, and really does give a good imagery as to how I would assume her mind works. Or how it manages to work I should say.

So now I guess I can say that my family is “with it.” Maybe we should all join a social network and share links and stuff. Oh wait, I’ve already friended my siblings on Facebook. If nothing else, maybe this post will educate my family on the ever-so-cool art of linking.

Filed under: blog, family by tonybullard
1 Comment »

Rummaging through my CD book, which rarely gets touched since I got an mp3 player, I found a disc with a song on it that I didn’t think I had a copy of anymore. I’ll spare you the story, and just let you listen to a cover of Men At Work’s “Overkill” from back in 2003.

Enjoy!

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

“Overkill” by Men At Work – Covered by Tony Bullard
»download«

Filed under: music, rambling, song by tonybullard
3 Comments »