Schedule full...

When it rains it pours doesn't even begin to describe it.  Well, it guess it does begin to describe it but it doesn't finish describing it.   I'm speaking about jobs.  Work.  Lots of it.  And most of it I'm excited about.

First, I'm working overnights and overtime and my full time job, and I'm getting more calls from Technicolor.  Second, I've been helping shoot a film with my friend George.  He's shooting a few scenes from his pilot to drum up interest in making the series and he's asked me to help with audio.  So for two nights out of my weekend I was operating boom mic on a sidewalk in Hell's Kitchen for a scene between two pimps and a prostitute.  Edgy subject matter.  But more on that later.  I'm also going to be writing some music, a theme, for this particular piece.  And on top of that, Mohammad has me working on a tune for his production reel, utilizing the accordion.  Bringing in my friend Crystal on this one potentially.

So, on top of writing the piano piece Tania and I will be performing together in Feburary, I'm suddenly writing two other pieces and working like a mad man.  I LOVE IT!

I'm crazy, I know.

Anyway, on the VO front, I just caught wind of an event in midtown in a few weeks that I desperately want to be at and for which I would hope to have at least one of my new demos done.  The 2011 New York Voiceover Mixer.  I've been waiting for something like this for a long time.  And now it comes at a time when it's going to push me to finally get my new demos done.  But I'm not sure it's going to be enough time.  So, a little nervous about that.  I guess I could go with my old demo but I would much prefer to get the new ones done.

Guess there's no rest for the weary!

On another note altogether, I still love my apartment and the new neighborhood…in fact, more and more everyday.  Under the blanket of my apartment is included my landlord, whom I also love.  Leaky radiator?  Fixed in a day.  Breaker blown?  Fixed in minutes.   The other day, I took a bike ride and was at Prospect Park in minutes, where I took these pics:

Fall Colors Prospect Park 2011

On Why I Moved to New York...

A lot of you have heard me say that part of the reason I moved here to New York City and to Brooklyn, specifically, is for a lifestyle change. And I've spent several entries so far elaborating on what I mean by this because it is a multifaceted lifestyle change. Many of the lifestyle changes, however, have centered on the importance of environmental stewardship and awareness of my environmental impact. In the spirit of all that, today I joined the Park Slope Food Co-Op, a Brooklyn tradition since 1973. I had my orientation this morning and met a bunch of cool folks, all who seem to have the same care about, and appreciation of, environmental issues. The importance of sustainable, organic agriculture, the dangers of pollution (in the form of excess waste from product packaging, harmful chemical cleaners and solvents, and other ills found in modern processed food and household items) and the more recent highlight on buying from local farms were all reasons my new co-op friends cited for wanting to join.

The closest such establishment to Raleigh, NC that I knew of was Weaver Street Market in Carrboro and such things were a novelty down where I'm from. Plus, I had to drive my polluting stinking car to get there and this one I can walk to in twenty minutes or so. The reason I put off joining for a year and a half is beyond me but what pushed me to join was walking through with my friend Stephanie and seeing how much of a difference their much lower markup makes. They said something like 21% versus a typical 50 to 100% in a regular grocery store. Passing the cheese section, I saw a 6 oz. hunk of good cheese (Morbier or something) was somewhere in the neighborhood of a dollar and change whereas buying it in a regular grocery store or gourmet deli could run you about five to seven dollars. Wow! They only have 65 regular paid employees and the rest of their work is done by members during their once monthly shifts. Therefore, they can do away with the bulk of their payroll and pass the savings on to the members. The produce and bulk teas are especially low priced.

So, I'm in and I can shop starting tomorrow, I just have to pay my $25 member fee and make an investment in the company ($100 that I can get back if I move) and I'm golden. My shift is going to be receiving and stocking on a Wednesday morning in the not too distant future and it'll be repeated every four weeks. Two hours and 45 minutes. Not a bad commitment at all.

Anyhow, I also had my demo prep session at Edge today and that went quite well. We cut down the ten odd scripts I chose to twenty seconds each and I suppose next week we'll record the five or six that we choose to put on the demo and then it's in the can! Getting closer.

Here are some pics from the past few weeks. Some were taken on a Sunday after church when I was picnicking in Brooklyn Bridge Park with some friends from the U.U., the rest were taken last night at Fulton Landing nearby. I was trying to make a yoga class last night at Abhaya in DUMBO because I was given a free week card but I made it there a little too late and opted to do my yoga in the park there and explore the area a bit. Enjoy!

Best of Brooklyn Bridge Park and Fulton Landing

Prospect Park and Snug Harbor...

Fantastic weekend. A huge group of friends from the UU church were gathering in Prospect Park Saturday for a picnic to see off one of our friends who is leaving town to go grad school in Charlottesville, VA. I joined a little later because of not getting off work until 6, but after wandering for a bit, using a group of soccer players as my main landmark, I found the crowd near Nellie's Lawn, snacking on picnic food and passing around a book in which we were all writing recipes for our friend to take with her to VA. The idea of checking out the bandshell to see the music there had been considered but ultimately, as the crowd dwindled to about 8 of us, we all decided to go grab drinks in Prospect Heights at Soda. I had been here once before but had never seen the couch room and patio. Awesome vibe at this place and there were a couple of DJs that we got a laugh out of. Have you ever seen a DJ that doesn't move when he/she is spinning?

Anyway, I left around midnight because Sunday was Juneteenth and I had been roped into singing with the ensemble so I had to be up at 8am like usual. I had previously thought that the choir season was over but was okay with not sleeping in on Sunday...the guy who usually does music whenever our regular choir director isn't in is a really good guy who always picks good music to do. He's a composer as well and speaks French. It was a really fun service and we had some guests performing with us as well. One guy sang "What's Going on?" by Marvin Gaye and Bob Dylan song as well which escapes me at the moments, another guy sang A Woody Guthrie song, "Deportee." The service itself related Juneteenth not just to the ensuing civil rights struggle after the emancipation of all the slaves, but to all civil rights struggles from women's rights to LGBT rights as well.

Afterward, there was a pot luck picnic out in the street and some of the same friends I had hung out with Saturday all stuck around. The friend who had the going away party was planning on going to go to Snug Harbor on Staten Island and invited a ton of us to join. Snug Harbor is a cultural center and botanical Garden a short bus ride away from the ferry terminal in Staten Island. I had only vaguely heard of it before so I was excited to take an impromptu trip, especially one that involved a boat ride and a borough I never go to. My Sunday nap was looming but as I turned the idea over in my head a few times, I became much less interested in sleeping and much more interested in adventure.

So, I agreed and joined the group, Stephanie, Koren (who is moving soon), Markus, Lisa and myself and we all walked to Siggy's to get liquid refreshment and/or caffeine and water for the trip. It's starting to get hot up here these days and an afternoon in the sun would probably have been a little dicey without water. Then we walked down to Borough Hall, grabbed the 4 train to Bowling Green which is a short walk to the Staten Island Ferry Terminal and from there hitched the ferry to Staten Island. Waiting for the bus once there was a bit of a spectacle. There was a long line of people all trying to get on the bus when it pulled up and what started out as a perfectly peaceful bus riding adventure devolved into a shouting match between a much older gentleman and the bus driver probably about the fact that a lot of people who were further back in line boarded the bus first through the back door. We decided ultimately to take a few cabs to Snug Harbor instead of watching the debacle unfold and wondering when they were going to just let us all board the bus and get underway.

A much better idea, we arrived at Snug Harbor in a matter of minutes and, though the clouds that we had watched getting darker from the ferry threatened to burst, we set off into the park gravitating toward a particularly cozy looking garden and an ivy covered walkway. The park was quiet that day and felt far removed from the din of the city. The gardens themselves are well kept and diverse, and the grounds are scattered with old buildings, the current use of which I never made the effort to discover, wanting mainly to say outdoors despite the threat of rain. Strolling further on we wound up in a hedge enclosed grassy area with two benches, perfect for whiling away the time doing spontaneous yoga poses until the sun came out and started to scorch again. From that point we sat for a while at a cafe in the park and re-hydrated, munching on some leftover risotto that Markus happened to be carrying with him.

I had my eye on the time and kept calculating how long it would take to get home and if I'd have time to squeeze in a nap. But, of course, I wanted to enjoy my day so I made my best effort not to preoccupy myself with such worries. The park closed at 5pm allegedly so we found the bus stop and waited, debating whether or not to just walk to the ferry terminal. The bus was yet again overcrowded but we made it back to the ferry terminal just in time to miss the 6pm ferry. They run every half hour so we cooled off in the waiting area's air conditioning and subsequently piled onto the next ferry, where I almost fell asleep, pulling into Battery Park city about fifteen minutes later.

Now, it didn't take much convincing for me to step into the adjacent beer garden with my friends to cap off the night, especially since it was only 7pm and I only needed an hour to get ready and 45 minutes to commute to work. The ride home from Whitehall St. alone would have taken only 20 minutes on the R train. This particular beer garden had burgers on the grill so Markus and I both had one along with two pitchers of beer between the five of us. While there, we witnessed yet more animosity in the vain of our earlier encounter with the angry bus riders. Some guy threw a patio chair and upon watching the drama the unfolded before us we surmised that the bartender who served us our pitcher had found out her boyfriend or husband (the chair thrower) had been cheating on her. I think it was the screaming of the phrase, "Get out of my life!" that tipped us off.

Post scuffle, I finished my glass and the conversation we were having and parted from my friends to go get ready for work. Bummed that I had to because I read later via facebook posts that there was double the adventure after I left, the details of which are still vague to me. Something about trespassing in construction sites and narrowly avoiding arrest. Oh when will I get a normal job schedule?

6 months...

6 months in New York City today. Well, yesterday. It all kind of hit me when I bought my metro card for the month on Thursday and realized it was my seventh one since I moved here. But I've been so busy I couldn't blog on the day of. It's funny when you look up after all you've been through and realize for the first time how far you've come. I kind of got into this in my last entry, feeling accomplished and finally satisfied with the pace of things even though I still can't see how this will all fall together. Anyway, the 6 month mark seemed like as good a place as any to pay homage to the fact that I have indeed come this far and might just go a little farther yet.

It's just been 6 days in a row of work (at both jobs combined, so no overtime, unfortunately). The weather has been amazing. Dry, mild, and windy. I wish I could send you this weather in a text message or something. Think of the warmest, sunniest day in September and raise the temperature two degrees. That's here, right now. The kind of weather you wish you could drink out of a tall glass with a few ice cubes.

At NY 1, there are plenty of parks in the vicinity to hang out in on my breaks. The Highline is one, Hudson River Park is another and I can even walk down to the riverfront and eat my lunch if I should so choose. Yesterday though, I had eaten lunch prior to my break so I just walked down to 7th avenue to a pizzeria near the corner of 15th and 7th, grabbed a slice of cheese pizza for $2.50, folded it in half and walked down the block back to the Hudson River Park on 10th Avenue, a favorite spot for business people, sunbathers and that bum that's always sitting at the corner of the park near 15th and 10th.

One thing that happens in six months in any new place is you start to get these little routines going. They're the backbone of your own stability and they sort of ground you and make you start to feel like you belong, like you get what this place is about and you're cool with it. I'm finding out little secrets as well. Things I'm sure other New Yorkers have noticed but don't tell anybody.

I was riding the D train in to work the other day and, somewhere between the Broadway Lafayette stop and West 4th Street, I looked up out the window of the train and where you usually see blackness or tunnel lights flashing by, I could see, on a track somewhere above us, another train running along side us. I knew it had to be the A, C, or E train since we were about to pull into West 4th street where both the blue lines and the orange lines connect, which meant the train I needed to connect to would be at West 4th street at the same time as the train I was riding. To connect from one train to the other I have to go up two flights of stairs and I'm never sure if I need to bother rushing up the stairs because I can never tell if the train will be there or not. That was before. Now, I have my little secret that I can look up between Broadway Lafayette and West 4th and see if the A, C, E train will be there at the same time as the D train...which could save me a good ten minutes depending on how long I have to wait for the next train.

At any rate, these little things like where to get a good cheap slice of pizza on my break and how to make sure I don't miss my train connection are starting to make me feel fully integrated into life on this little island. Who knows how I'll feel in a year. Beyond having steady employment that I can count on, I'm hoping to make my next move to a better neighborhood and apartment in a year so I think I'll focus on learning everything I can about the real estate in my ideal neighborhoods so I don't have to find some squatters hell hole in East Williamsburg or something. I have a good six more months to think about what I want out of my new living situation and to figure out how to go about getting it. And if those first six months went by so quick, it'll be no time at all before I'm looking again. Wish me luck.