Daisy hates, let me repeat.....HATES the frickin' vets.

Spent the weekend laying low at home. Lots happening again soon so I'm trying to get caught up on a few projects that I have going. One of them being video editing which I'm totally new to. The one I've been working on I'll be able to post next month to tie in with a big magazine feature I did but I think it should make a few of you laugh.

Had a visit to the dentist earlier in the week, everything went well and I came back with an interesting yet slightly disturbing image. You can't see my brain which should confirm what many including my mates have been saying for years... Thought it interesting enough to post even if you have a chuckle at my expense.

 

If I only had a brain

Not exactly rock & roll news but poor Daisy Buttons has been through it the last few weeks. Mainly her own fault as she'll run around at 300mph and bump into things. This time she knocked a chunk of fur out of her shoulder and cut herself so I had to put her in the lampshade head cone to stop her making it worse. She spent two weeks in the cone and is now in a sweater until the fur grows back and she won't lick and irritate the wound. We keep calling her Rocky.

Enjoy....just don't let her hear you laugh.

 

So after the Def Lep tour I took a flight up to Yorkshire for a few days to see my Mom and catch up with a couple of my best mates.. Hadn't been back to my birth place in over two years since Spencer lost his fight with leukemia... Anyway, understandably I was here under much better circumstances than previously, the weather was nice, it was relatively warm by English summer standards and all the trees had foliage.... Smashing! Mom picks me up at the airport and after a short drive to chez Mom we're off for a pub lunch and a pint. Nice return and a traditionally frosty greeting from the bloke behind the bar... Dunno where customer service has gone these days but it obviously took off with the barman's humor bypass surgery...

Spent the next few days catching up with some old friends and hanging out with my Mom... It was strange being back. After so long in the United States I feel completely like a foreigner in the UK. Time stands still for no man I guess and people and places change. Everything has a strange sense of familiarity of course but the day to day things are different. Saw my mates Staffy and Kev and had a great night out at the pubs with them. Dazzling Daz who also went to school with Spen and I turned up at the pub rather toasty for the early time of night which was funny. Had a blast catching up with the guys and telling tales of yore, even ran into some old faces from as far back as middle school 25 years ago! Some of them I hardly recognized but it sure was nice to catch up after so long.


Took a morning to myself the day before I left and went to the other side of town to the graveyard to visit Spencer's grave. It's hard to describe the way one feels standing over your best friends grave looking at a headstone bearing his name and the years of his lifetime.... Surreal. On one hand I remember clearly the day of his funeral and on the other I can't believe that my best mate has been gone for over two years now. Even today I still feel like a big part of me is missing because we were robbed of Spencer. Swapping stories about him with his other mates is a great healer though and for that I am grateful.

The four days passed quickly. Was a great working trip with the Def Lep guys and seeing my Mom and best friends was a complete bonus.

Long long plane ride home, delayed two hours getting away from Manchester, delayed at Newark so my flight instead of landing home at 6pm ended up being half past midnight.... Absolutely exhausted but Daisy Buttons was sure glad to see her Daddy!

Sunday...the usual day of blog updates. Sorry for the lack of input the last week. It's been a bit of a bugger as they say what with the rigors of various and sundry tripe getting in the way. That plus magazine assignment dates being shuffled around and re organized. I was meant to be in sunny Los Angeles this weekend but instead I'm sat on my arse at home working instead although yours truly should be on the move to get a few new snaps again very shortly...

In the meantime my illustrious webmaster John or "Fifi" as he's known in certain circles (okay I made that up!) has posted a new gallery of my work for you to ogle. Don't ogle too long though as you might turn to stone and then we're all buggered! SO! New pics from the recent trip to the Ministry camp located in the dusty depths and outer rim of Old El Paso town, Texas ya'll!! Behold the frightening sights of the very last Ministry line up. You'll find them in the "Studio" section of the galleries.

On a different note I'd like to thank those of you that emailed with your kind remarks regarding my previous two blogs. Warmed my cockles a fair bit I have to admit! I'm always a tad glum at this time of year but your words hit the spot ;O) Aye!

Still working on those t-shirts and a selection of photographic prints for the Sales dept here. I'm hoping to have more of a chance to exercise my Landscape Photography muscles this year as well if I can ever take a break from music.

Well, back to the proverbial grindstone as they say.

Luv and muffin top!



ASH

For several years I've suffered on and off with lower back problems and the pain literally has been a pain in the arse. March 2007 at my doctor's recommendation I started to exercise again, eat right and take off some weight to alleviate the strain and pain on my weak discs. 35lbs lighter and an abdomen tighter (hey that rhymes!) I'm doing much better but am still having painful flare ups. I'm too young to have fusion surgery which they don't want to do and the painkillers just make you drool and want to hug everyone!

So the last three weeks I've been having acupuncture treatment for my lower back pain. Three times a week at 7am I've been baring my arse so that the very nice Dr Thomas can stick needles in my lower back for 20 minutes at a time. Some sessions involve just the needles and then others the needles are hooked up to wires and electrical pulses are run through them to stimulate the affected areas and promote blood flow to help heal.
   

The short and thick of it is that I'm actually starting to feel a difference and improvement and the day to day pain is much less than previously. Now I'll be the first one to admit that I thought acupuncture was a load of tripe but the Chinese have done it for a thousand years and it's still going so...... At least they did something useful that didn't contain lead paint eh? Ha! Seriously though, if you're having lower back pain and haven't explored the option of acupuncture then at least research and consider it. Here's a couple of links that have interesting information.

Acupuncture Today

American Academy of Medical Acupuncture

Yours with a prickly bottom, just hanging at the house with Daisy...

ASH

The March 2008 edition of Modern Drummer has a really interesting feature that Seether fans and drummers will enjoy. My mate, Seether drummer John Humphrey is featured this month in a six page spread that I helped make happen. The story tells of John's years of back problems, the onset of degenerative disc disease (of which I suffer also) and his traumatic 2006 spinal fusion surgery and recovery. A well written piece that features photos by yours truly taken back in September last year when I caught up with the Seether boys in Kansas City.

This was just two concerts into John's return to the drums with Seether. Anyone who's heard the new Seether album "Finding Beauty in Negative Spaces" will agree that John Humphrey hasn't missed a single beat and seems to have come back an even stronger drummer. Check out the pics from the article below...
   

On another note, had a couple of friends of mine came in from New York to see me a wee bit back. Mark and Billy from Roadrunner Records were nice enough to take me out to dinner at the Republic Of Texas where we imbibed the local burned meats and finest Single Malts. Hadn't seen Mark in quite some time so as you can see from the pics he gets kinda excited when he's had a beverage or two...
 

Billy is an awesome bloke as well. He kinda helped get me started with all this Rock Photography stuff and he set up my very first photo shoot with a musician back in 2003 with Corey Taylor who was touring with Stone Sour at the time. Check out the shot of Corey from back then...
 

I just recently purchased a little Canon camera for snapshots and farting around photos etc... Check out this cool little Canon Elph SD1000...fits right in your pocket! Smart little camera, not bad for a couple of hundred bucks! Check out the snapshots of my wee beasties...
    

My friend Pam in Florida who is a badass vector artist recently made this vector image for me from a photo of Daisy and I. Pretty darn cool looking. She's done some other vectors from my images as well. See if you can spot them at her most excellent website www.pamzylove.com


Cheers Me Dears - ASH