April...

Well into April now, my birth month...and my cousin's. So this is looking to be an exciting month because we'll be celebrating not only our respective birthdays but also throwing a housewarming party late in April. And here I'm still trying to get my room set up like I'd like it to be. The dresser should sell tomorrow and then I'll try and get a smaller desk and dresser at Ikea or on the internet...preferrably Ikea because it's so close and they could probably deliver whatever's too big to carry.

Meanwhile, in current news, the piano has been tuned. It was a long ordeal and my friend who came by to do it was kind enough to fix the F key below middle C. There was a spring dangling loose and he had to remove the entire action to get at it but it was rather a quick fix in the end, in fact reassembling the action took longer than the actual fix. Ultimately, it all took 5 hours, mainly because he had to do a double tuning...by the time he reached the upper register the middle register was out of tune again. But thankfully, with the exception of a few keys that have slipped out of tune since (he told me to expect this since it was so far out of tune), it is fairly well in tune and far more playable...he even cleaned off all the keys for me of all the gunk and dust that were clinging to them.

While he sat doing that I milled around the apartment between cleaning and reinstalling software on my computer because, yes, finally, I got the sound card working. So it's not a useless piece of shit like I had thought and with any luck it'll hold out on me long enough to take care of the first paying gig that I have gotten since moving to NYC last year! Yes, the dancer is going to pay me. I'm excited to work with her too because this is a different kind of project for me all together. I'll be doing something ambient that will not necessarily be mimicking the dancers movements but will only serve to set a tone. But I have tons of ideas. One involved sampled guitar and the other involves me taking apart and manipulating some of the samples that I recorded of the piano being tuned the other day. They were recorded on my handheld digital recorder so it all kind of hangs on how good the quality is...I've used it before but not for production level stuff. So we'll see. I've yet to listen to the raw stuff.

More news still, I'm close to finishing the new web page. Using a different host and a different template but I kept my domain name. The new site will have clips from the most recent film, Peeper, some testimonials, some added clips from Kisses and Caroms and Zero Sum Game, and more music! Quite exciting too, is that I will have the new head shots up soon as well. Chad Heird, my co worker who took the photos, should be bringing them by the next time we work together...probably Thursday. Can't wait to show those off. Chad is really talented.

Now, I'm sitting pondering my latest endeavour: voice over work. Currently pouring over the Voice Over Industry Guide Book and anticipating a 4 hour evaluation seminar that I'm signed up for the 28th of April. I've known for a while that people thought my voice would be good for it but only last year did I start to really think about it and now, after one of my co workers (incidentally, one who is on the air all the time) told me I had a million dollar voice and that I was throwing money away not following a career in voice over work, I realized it was time to do something about it.

The first session is where they tell me whether or not my voice is marketable and then I can go ahead and record a demo. And the money I spent on the session can be credited toward making the demo if I sign up for it in one week. Rock! Right?

That's what I thought. Anyhow, this is slightly longer than a blurb but probably not going to be much longer. Regrettably, I don't have any other reflections or deep thoughts for the evening. Mentally exhausted but excited about life.

Food for thought, though: I realized recently that the cause of a lot of my underlying stress is that I'm chasing after a lot of things right now and that the solution is most likely going to be an acceptance of my being incomplete.