My productive evening, a lack of postage stamps, Bastille Day and Softball (?)

Whew. I think I've done quite enough for one night. Got off work, marched straight down to the West Village to pick up my paycheck from Technicolor (it came way late, and wouldn't have come at all if I hadn't put their feet to the fire!), then I took the train back to Sunset Park and jumped right into my music. I spent the greater part of the evening putting the finishing touches on a mix of a song called Daresay, that I wrote back in 2004 and have been tweaking ever since. The main thrust of the song is the same, all the notes, etc. I've just built a whole new drumline and synced the tempo to the old synth lines. Then I remixed and remastered the whole piece.

After I was finally satisfied with that, I uploaded it to my myspace page (from which it had been missing while I worked on the remix), a new site called Indaba that I'm trying out (basically a place where musician's can collaborate and work in online recording sessions), and finally on my newly unveiled Facebook fan page, about which I'm very excited. Mainly because of the huge exposure it could garner me. Plus it'll be nice to let everyone know what I'm up to more easily.

I'm about to dive into sketching out a little bit of a piano piece that will be part of a cycle that I will hopefully finish in time to submit to the SCI conference for next year (deadline is August 1st).

Slightly put off by the fact that I just tried to go and buy postage stamps to mail this paycheck of mine but the post office is completely closed. I can't even go in the front of the place to buy stamps at the machines. The grocery store closest to me doesn't sell them, and by the time I get back to 5th Avenue from the post office, the Key Foods is closed. So, I don't know when I'm going to get this check in the mail. I would have preferred it if they retained my direct deposit info and done it that way, instead of cutting me a check. Such an antiquated thing, mailing a deposit to your bank, it seems.

Blah, enough about my current frustration though. How about an explanation of why my arms are so sore? I asked myself that question yesterday out loud while hanging out with Karishma the other night and seriously could not remember that after the Bastille Day celebration on Smith Street, Mike, his girlfriend, her friend and I went to Prospect Park for Mike's softball practice. A bunch of people he knows from work play together on a team so he invited us to practice instead of ditching us at the festival. The festival was good and all that but there was only so much to see. It stretched three blocks from Bergen Street to Atlantic Avenue and two of those blocks were covered in sand and set up in a series of courts for the Petanque tournament. Apparently this festival is still known as the biggest Bastille Day celebration in the U.S. Read more about it here (select Special Events and scroll down). Here are my own pictures from the event sprinkled with a few pics of our softball antics in Prospect Park.

Bastille Day and other stuff

Anyway, it's been years since I've even attempted to hit a ball with a stick, so the one shot I got at hitting about twenty softballs is the reason my arms are so sore. Who'd've thunk?