I type that title as though my travel experience yesterday was so awful. While it was as long as it usually is on the way back, it was actually my smoothest day of travel all weekend, in a weekend that started with a bus accident and then preceded to an airport delay that had nothing to do with the storm into which we were flying, all followed by a near miss or a close call, whichever way you want to look at it, in which we barely made it to the airport in Raleigh before it closed! Aside from the 30 second sustained screaming of some demonic child on my flight and a seemingly unnecessary detour out over Long Island (halfway to the freaking Hamptons!) which I assume had to be some kind of holding pattern (we did arrive a little late), it was all pretty smooth. In fact, I had some of the best train luck ever getting home...mind you, I said train and not bus luck. The MTA is apparently working to restore their riders' faith.
Of course, what I saw in my room, though what I pretty much expected to see, was a bit of an adjustment. One of my shelves, which had until recently been screwed into the wall most likely to leak in my room during a rainstorm, fell, sending my tool box and other large objects to the floor. Why I've had the heaviest object in this room aside from my guitar amp on such a weak perch is beyond me, as is how it didn't break anything on my desk during its flight. I cleaned everything up in about a half hour and even unpacked before taking an epic nap which almost went uninterrupted due to my inability to set an alarm properly. Luckily, my internal alarm went off and I sprung out of bed a full forty minutes after I had expected to be up. Thank god for leftovers. I had plenty of time to nosh on something and put together a lunch for work, my nightly routine on Sundays and Mondays for over a year and a half now.
Since I missed my shift Sunday because of my altered travel plans though, I was essentially napping on a day when I don't normally have to. And now that I've had fewer days to get used to the sleep schedule, I'm somehow up slightly before noon and typing this blog. When I get up after having strange dreams about getting knocked off my bike (a dream that will likely deter me from biking to yoga tonight) and can't get back to sleep I tend to just want to give up on the whole affair. So, I'm up and, because this is the way my mind works, I'm already trying to think of ways to use this unexpected time. Eating is in order but then music is probably next. Gotta tweak the mix of the film score one last time. Then see what's happening with the edit for the trailer. I think I'm going to sit down at the piano at some point today too. But we'll see what actually happens. For now, I'm going to start my day.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Rain and wind...
I'm sure everyone in NYC is starting to freak out. Meanwhile, NC is clearing up. We spent the day watching relatively tame winds and rain from the porch and grazing on food around the house. The power went off around noon and we soon found out it was due to a tree which had fallen on some power lines that feed my parents' street. Surprisingly I wasn't half as stir crazy as I thought I would be in a house with 15 people and no power. No, we're pretty well adapted around here. Anticipating at least a dip in the power, my mother had most of the food for the day prepared before it cut out. Lunch was her famous corn and cheese chowder and dinner was mostly cold salads with steak that was to be grilled (my dad wheeled the grill over to the garage door to get out of the rain). The only thing that was a bust was the bean dish that we usually do in the crock pot. The whipped cream icing for my niece and my dad's birthday cake almost didn't happen but my brother-in-law the chef ended up whipping that up by hand because he's the man. We even broke out the Sterno for some coffee after dessert.
I needed to charge my phone at one point because, admittedly, checking Facebook ran my phone battery down. My dad has a 400 watt converter in his car hooked up to the cigarette lighter adapter so we went out there to escape the kids for a while and charge my phone up. This led my dad and I to take an excursion in his car to see the very tree responsible for our situation. Later on we took a walk back up that way to get closer than we could in a car. The police had blocked the road while the workers removed the tree and got the power lines back up and running. Even with them working all afternoon, the power didn't actually come back on until around 8pm. By then, even with the fading daylight we were already all in the pool because the rain had finally stopped. It's a mark of how well we fared without power that seeing the porch light click on while we were out there didn't even register with me.
Now, I sit blogging at the kitchen table, talking to my brother, drinking a gluten free beer and listening to Ra Ra Riot on Grooveshark, fully ensconced in my electrified life again. So, as I sit with my comforts and the thought of a full sunny day to swim in the pool tomorrow I say "Good luck NYC!" It's going to be a real shit storm for you guys. Have fun! And of course, be safe! Here's a video of the wind outside my parents' house:
I needed to charge my phone at one point because, admittedly, checking Facebook ran my phone battery down. My dad has a 400 watt converter in his car hooked up to the cigarette lighter adapter so we went out there to escape the kids for a while and charge my phone up. This led my dad and I to take an excursion in his car to see the very tree responsible for our situation. Later on we took a walk back up that way to get closer than we could in a car. The police had blocked the road while the workers removed the tree and got the power lines back up and running. Even with them working all afternoon, the power didn't actually come back on until around 8pm. By then, even with the fading daylight we were already all in the pool because the rain had finally stopped. It's a mark of how well we fared without power that seeing the porch light click on while we were out there didn't even register with me.
Now, I sit blogging at the kitchen table, talking to my brother, drinking a gluten free beer and listening to Ra Ra Riot on Grooveshark, fully ensconced in my electrified life again. So, as I sit with my comforts and the thought of a full sunny day to swim in the pool tomorrow I say "Good luck NYC!" It's going to be a real shit storm for you guys. Have fun! And of course, be safe! Here's a video of the wind outside my parents' house:
Friday, August 26, 2011
Airport blues already...
This was typed earlier today in the airport:
This does not bode well. I've been here since 10am and my plane keeps getting further delayed. First it was late getting here. Now, the plane needs maintenance, and apparently, two hours worth. This bird better be flightworthy by the time I get on it. And all this time I keep thinking about how Sunday is going to be so much worse. Or maybe not. At least Sunday, I'll know ahead of time about delays and cancellations. I can plan ahead and not even bother to come to the airport. Only thing is, if I have to miss another day of work because of this storm, I'll have to use a personal day I was intending to use for a camping trip I was going to take with a friend in late September. That might get blown out or moved to sometime in the middle of the week when I don't have to use personal days to get the time off.
Going on four hours in this god-forsaken airport but this is till nowhere near the longest I have spent in an airport. That title goes to a stint that I spent at this very same airport on the way back from Paris in 2002. The scene: I was returning from a month long study abroad trip in Angers, France with 5 of my classmates, anticipating a layover that we were all prepared for. It was probably the reason our flight was so cheap. We were to land at New York's JFK airport at 8pm and then take a cab to LaGuardia to await an 8am flight the next morning. On paper this didn't seem so bad as we thought, incorrectly, that we'd be able to leave the airport, get a hotel and spend some time partying in the city as a final highlight to our trip. The reality of the situation was that by the time we got to LaGuardia, it was 10pm and there was nothing open, no way of checking our luggage until the morning or checking in for that matter. If we'd tried we maybe could have gotten a hotel room for the night near the airport but for what? To wake up at 5am to make sure we made our flight on time? No, we decided collectively to spend the night in the terminal (this very same terminal in which I sit only out in the lobby). We slept in shifts and some of us started hallucinating. But back then, it was fun. Despite the jet lag (considering we had been awake since 7am Paris time) and all that goes along with that, we just powered through. Funny how a few hours in an airport when you don't know when you're getting out of there can seem so much worse than a situation where you know what you're in for.
In the middle of typing that story, I got talking to a woman who was also waiting to fly back to Raleigh, swapping stories and speculating as to when we would actually get out of there and what the best course of action would be. She became my airport friend pretty fast. It came out in conversation that she is actually the owner of the Guglhupf Bakery in Durham, a place that I've been to a handful of times and have always enjoyed. So that was kind of cool. It helps at a time like this to have a friend to go through it all with. Someone to bond with over the shared discomfort and aggravation of airport delays. It's also good to have someone to drink with. She was very outgoing and had already made friends with two French guys who were also flying to Raleigh. At one point, when trying to explain to them what was going on with our flights, she turned to me and jokingly asked how my French was. So I was on the hook and had to try my best to help out. I stuttered out a few phrases but ultimately the jist of what was going on ended up being communicated in simplified English phrases.
So anyway, we were all collectively losing faith in the maintenance crew working on our plane (and I'm starting to wonder when they're going to just swap planes out instead of trying to fix a plane that obviously has a real problem with it). My new friend then proposed that we see about switching flights, a thought that had occurred to me as well. So we started to ask the woman at the desk if there was another flight to Raleigh we could switch to. There was. But not until 3:20. At this point, I think it was around 1pm. So 3:20 was not seeming so bad. At least it was a solid time we could somewhat count on. They were literally announcing every half hour that it would be another hour until our plane was fixed. So, I swapped my ticket out. But it was only a matter of time before the word came down that they were, in fact, swapping our plane out with one that had just landed. So then they were saying the original flight was going to leave before the 3:20 flight. We decided to switch back to that flight because there was one fundamental difference between the 3:20 flight and the flight we were originally on: The 3:20 flight hadn't even arrived yet. The new plane they swapped us to was at least on the ground at LaGuardia and pulling into our terminal.
Once we had all that settled, my new friend and I went and had a drink and I scarfed a burger while she periodically checked back at the gate to see what our status was. We later found out the 3:20 was delayed getting to LaGuardia and when I finally did arrive in Raleigh, on the original flight, my airport friend heard from her friend that our flight was the last one in to Raleigh-Durham airport before they shut down the airport. So the 3:20 flight wouldn't have even made it out of NYC! What luck!
Getting into Raleigh and hearing all this news about airports closing and seeing the dark clouds on the horizon was pretty crazy. But not even the fact that a light drizzle had started to fall kept me from jumping straight into the pool when I got here. Now, I'm sitting typing this blog watching HD TV and hanging out with the family. So glad to be here right now. While I was waiting at the airport I got an automated phone call from US Airways informing me that my flight back Sunday was cancelled. I called right away to get another fight but was already hearing that every flight into NYC on Sunday was cancelled. I managed to book a flight back on Monday afternoon so hopefully, that will be the least eventful travel day of this crazy ass weekend. Meanwhile, it means that I get a full sunny day of swimming in the pool after all. Sunday should be nice.
This does not bode well. I've been here since 10am and my plane keeps getting further delayed. First it was late getting here. Now, the plane needs maintenance, and apparently, two hours worth. This bird better be flightworthy by the time I get on it. And all this time I keep thinking about how Sunday is going to be so much worse. Or maybe not. At least Sunday, I'll know ahead of time about delays and cancellations. I can plan ahead and not even bother to come to the airport. Only thing is, if I have to miss another day of work because of this storm, I'll have to use a personal day I was intending to use for a camping trip I was going to take with a friend in late September. That might get blown out or moved to sometime in the middle of the week when I don't have to use personal days to get the time off.
Going on four hours in this god-forsaken airport but this is till nowhere near the longest I have spent in an airport. That title goes to a stint that I spent at this very same airport on the way back from Paris in 2002. The scene: I was returning from a month long study abroad trip in Angers, France with 5 of my classmates, anticipating a layover that we were all prepared for. It was probably the reason our flight was so cheap. We were to land at New York's JFK airport at 8pm and then take a cab to LaGuardia to await an 8am flight the next morning. On paper this didn't seem so bad as we thought, incorrectly, that we'd be able to leave the airport, get a hotel and spend some time partying in the city as a final highlight to our trip. The reality of the situation was that by the time we got to LaGuardia, it was 10pm and there was nothing open, no way of checking our luggage until the morning or checking in for that matter. If we'd tried we maybe could have gotten a hotel room for the night near the airport but for what? To wake up at 5am to make sure we made our flight on time? No, we decided collectively to spend the night in the terminal (this very same terminal in which I sit only out in the lobby). We slept in shifts and some of us started hallucinating. But back then, it was fun. Despite the jet lag (considering we had been awake since 7am Paris time) and all that goes along with that, we just powered through. Funny how a few hours in an airport when you don't know when you're getting out of there can seem so much worse than a situation where you know what you're in for.
In the middle of typing that story, I got talking to a woman who was also waiting to fly back to Raleigh, swapping stories and speculating as to when we would actually get out of there and what the best course of action would be. She became my airport friend pretty fast. It came out in conversation that she is actually the owner of the Guglhupf Bakery in Durham, a place that I've been to a handful of times and have always enjoyed. So that was kind of cool. It helps at a time like this to have a friend to go through it all with. Someone to bond with over the shared discomfort and aggravation of airport delays. It's also good to have someone to drink with. She was very outgoing and had already made friends with two French guys who were also flying to Raleigh. At one point, when trying to explain to them what was going on with our flights, she turned to me and jokingly asked how my French was. So I was on the hook and had to try my best to help out. I stuttered out a few phrases but ultimately the jist of what was going on ended up being communicated in simplified English phrases.
So anyway, we were all collectively losing faith in the maintenance crew working on our plane (and I'm starting to wonder when they're going to just swap planes out instead of trying to fix a plane that obviously has a real problem with it). My new friend then proposed that we see about switching flights, a thought that had occurred to me as well. So we started to ask the woman at the desk if there was another flight to Raleigh we could switch to. There was. But not until 3:20. At this point, I think it was around 1pm. So 3:20 was not seeming so bad. At least it was a solid time we could somewhat count on. They were literally announcing every half hour that it would be another hour until our plane was fixed. So, I swapped my ticket out. But it was only a matter of time before the word came down that they were, in fact, swapping our plane out with one that had just landed. So then they were saying the original flight was going to leave before the 3:20 flight. We decided to switch back to that flight because there was one fundamental difference between the 3:20 flight and the flight we were originally on: The 3:20 flight hadn't even arrived yet. The new plane they swapped us to was at least on the ground at LaGuardia and pulling into our terminal.
Once we had all that settled, my new friend and I went and had a drink and I scarfed a burger while she periodically checked back at the gate to see what our status was. We later found out the 3:20 was delayed getting to LaGuardia and when I finally did arrive in Raleigh, on the original flight, my airport friend heard from her friend that our flight was the last one in to Raleigh-Durham airport before they shut down the airport. So the 3:20 flight wouldn't have even made it out of NYC! What luck!
Getting into Raleigh and hearing all this news about airports closing and seeing the dark clouds on the horizon was pretty crazy. But not even the fact that a light drizzle had started to fall kept me from jumping straight into the pool when I got here. Now, I'm sitting typing this blog watching HD TV and hanging out with the family. So glad to be here right now. While I was waiting at the airport I got an automated phone call from US Airways informing me that my flight back Sunday was cancelled. I called right away to get another fight but was already hearing that every flight into NYC on Sunday was cancelled. I managed to book a flight back on Monday afternoon so hopefully, that will be the least eventful travel day of this crazy ass weekend. Meanwhile, it means that I get a full sunny day of swimming in the pool after all. Sunday should be nice.
Flying into the Storm...
So, I got to see a cut of the film last night. It totally holds up. And of course, I'm hearing more that I want to do to the mix. Especially the solo oud parts. It seems like they're over compressed or there's some EQing that needs to be done.
Anyway, I'm typing this in LaGuardia airport into a text file which I will upload later. When are airports going to start having free wifi? You have to sign up and pay for Boingo to be able to get online in here. I guess they can't afford to give away wifi like other places can. So, why am I at the airport and flying into the path of a storm when everyone else in NYC is freaking out and buying bottled water, deciding whether to hunker down or evacuate? Because I miss my family and I made these plans weeks ago when this Hurricane was just a gust of wind in Africa. It's kind of exciting but I do face the possibility of not getting back in time for my shift on Sunday night. They're making all kinds of plans at work to have people stay in the city at the Maritime Hotel across 9th Avenue from the Chelsea Market because mass transit may get shut down as early as Saturday afternoon. Ironically, they're even talking about having to evacuate the Chelsea Market, at which point, our affiliate in Albany will take over our programming. In a way, I'm sad I'll miss the excitement but I'm sure there'll be enough excitement in NC.
At any rate, I need to find out what's happening with my flight. It was on time when I left home but I just overheard something about another flight being delayed arriving here so anything could be happening. And I have earbuds in, music blasting like usual so I might have missed even more info than that. More later.
Anyway, I'm typing this in LaGuardia airport into a text file which I will upload later. When are airports going to start having free wifi? You have to sign up and pay for Boingo to be able to get online in here. I guess they can't afford to give away wifi like other places can. So, why am I at the airport and flying into the path of a storm when everyone else in NYC is freaking out and buying bottled water, deciding whether to hunker down or evacuate? Because I miss my family and I made these plans weeks ago when this Hurricane was just a gust of wind in Africa. It's kind of exciting but I do face the possibility of not getting back in time for my shift on Sunday night. They're making all kinds of plans at work to have people stay in the city at the Maritime Hotel across 9th Avenue from the Chelsea Market because mass transit may get shut down as early as Saturday afternoon. Ironically, they're even talking about having to evacuate the Chelsea Market, at which point, our affiliate in Albany will take over our programming. In a way, I'm sad I'll miss the excitement but I'm sure there'll be enough excitement in NC.
At any rate, I need to find out what's happening with my flight. It was on time when I left home but I just overheard something about another flight being delayed arriving here so anything could be happening. And I have earbuds in, music blasting like usual so I might have missed even more info than that. More later.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Bolt to Philly Part Deux, Amtrakin' it back!
So, that was effing crazy. a half hour after I closed my laptop we were slowing to get off the turnpike and someone hit us from behind. Before it happened I was only marginally aware that there might have been something happening. We were slowing pretty fast and our driver hit the rumble strips a little but we weren't in any danger of hitting anyone. Then, a huge thud and my neck swung forward. We were stopped again just as soon as it happened so the truck that hit us couldn't have been going all that fast though my neck did snap back a little. We all looked around and checked ourselves and made sure the person next to us was okay and then the bus driver began shouting toward the back of the bus to make sure everyone was okay as well. At this point, I had to hand the lady in front of me her shoes as they had slid back. Turning my head to look out the window behind us, I saw another car half spun around and crumpled like a tin can. A second later I heard the bus driver shouting back to the passengers to get off the bus. I went for my bag and then realized it had slid to the seat behind me. Once I had all my effects, thanking my lucky stars I hadn't opted to bring my electric guitar with me to the studio (it would have surely been stuff under the bus in the luggage compartment), I followed the other passengers off the bus. We all then gathered on the shoulder of the highway and as I turned back to look at the bus I saw it:
Our bus was the front end of a vehicle sandwich. The other slice of bread being an 18 wheeler and the meat was a smaller semi. The juice running down the shoulder I assumed was gasoline. About this time I started to notice the other cars. There was one ahead of us which had been rear-ended and I'm assuming was the accident that we were slowing down for. The other cars were off behind the two trucks and I'm not sure how many more there were besides the one I had already seen. I recall, shortly after the initial hit, seeing another car careening off into the ditch just off the shoulder. This one disappeared so I'm assuming the driver, having had such a close call and come out relatively unscathed, decided to keep on driving.
Not so lucky, my fellow passengers and I were being held on the side of the road, subjected to legal red tape. We were told to all stay together and write down our information and then someone with the paramedics, who had arrived almost instantaneously, came around and starting asking who wanted to go to the hospital to get checked out. A few people, probably litigiously motivated, took tags from this guy of varying colors depending on, I guess, the severity of their supposed injuries. I felt nothing but a little soreness in my neck and was hoping, between phone calls to Lacy and my parents, to be able to leave at some point, already hatching a plan to have Lacy meet me at the exit once I filled out the form they were handing out.
While I was waiting for someone to hand me a form, I looked down and saw about ten ants crawling on and under my shirt. Apparently, there are ant hills all over the highway shoulder and I was standing right on top of one. Those bastards bit me too!
At this point, once I had handed in my form to the bus driver and scratched all the ants off of my body, the woman to whom I had handed her shoes approached me and asked me if I was headed anywhere, complaining about the fact that they didn't want us to go anywhere. I could see we were of the same mind and I offered her a ride if we could get out of there without too much trouble. I was simultaneously coordinating said ride with Lacy on the phone. The first time we try to abscond, we were stopped by one of the guys with the tags. Yammering about there being a process and blah blah blah whatever. We feigned compliance and then waited for the next opportune moment and bolted, no pun intended. In fact, it was more of a sneaking than a bolting. All the emergency workers between us and Exit 4 on the New Jersey Turnpike couldn't be bothered with our apparent escape.
It was a short quarter mile hike to the exit and during this time, I found out that Margot was from NYC but had a biomedical business in Philly and therefore took this trip all the time. She was relatively unfazed and like me had business to attend to. We made it to the gas station on the corner of highway 73 and Fellowship Rd. and Lacy met us shortly after but not before I made a few phone calls and accidentally broke the soap dispenser in the men's room sending a cascade of that disgusting neon pink soap down to the floor. I didn't tell the management.
The ride to Philly was short thankfully. Lacy informed me that when I called her it was only about 30 minutes before I was supposed to arrive. And the session at Turtle Studios went well. We only really needed to lay down a few takes of a few different ideas on the guitar and get started with mixing it all in. The guys handed me a blue Les Paul and hooked me up to their Vox amplifier, miked me up, tweaked my sound and handed me a headset. The room was huge and filled with all manner of musical instruments, the most notable an organ and a beautiful Steinway grand. At around 12:30 I had to go back into Philly with Lacy in order to catch the 1pm Amtrak back to NYC and here I sit typing this here blog entry. Hoping to god that nothing jumps in front of the train before we get back to Penn Station…and then I go to work.
So, in short, I'm unscathed but very lucky. Just goes to show that even a semi and an 18 wheeler can't stop this train from gliding down the tracks. Notice I didn't use a bus metaphor.
Our bus was the front end of a vehicle sandwich. The other slice of bread being an 18 wheeler and the meat was a smaller semi. The juice running down the shoulder I assumed was gasoline. About this time I started to notice the other cars. There was one ahead of us which had been rear-ended and I'm assuming was the accident that we were slowing down for. The other cars were off behind the two trucks and I'm not sure how many more there were besides the one I had already seen. I recall, shortly after the initial hit, seeing another car careening off into the ditch just off the shoulder. This one disappeared so I'm assuming the driver, having had such a close call and come out relatively unscathed, decided to keep on driving.
Not so lucky, my fellow passengers and I were being held on the side of the road, subjected to legal red tape. We were told to all stay together and write down our information and then someone with the paramedics, who had arrived almost instantaneously, came around and starting asking who wanted to go to the hospital to get checked out. A few people, probably litigiously motivated, took tags from this guy of varying colors depending on, I guess, the severity of their supposed injuries. I felt nothing but a little soreness in my neck and was hoping, between phone calls to Lacy and my parents, to be able to leave at some point, already hatching a plan to have Lacy meet me at the exit once I filled out the form they were handing out.
While I was waiting for someone to hand me a form, I looked down and saw about ten ants crawling on and under my shirt. Apparently, there are ant hills all over the highway shoulder and I was standing right on top of one. Those bastards bit me too!
At this point, once I had handed in my form to the bus driver and scratched all the ants off of my body, the woman to whom I had handed her shoes approached me and asked me if I was headed anywhere, complaining about the fact that they didn't want us to go anywhere. I could see we were of the same mind and I offered her a ride if we could get out of there without too much trouble. I was simultaneously coordinating said ride with Lacy on the phone. The first time we try to abscond, we were stopped by one of the guys with the tags. Yammering about there being a process and blah blah blah whatever. We feigned compliance and then waited for the next opportune moment and bolted, no pun intended. In fact, it was more of a sneaking than a bolting. All the emergency workers between us and Exit 4 on the New Jersey Turnpike couldn't be bothered with our apparent escape.
It was a short quarter mile hike to the exit and during this time, I found out that Margot was from NYC but had a biomedical business in Philly and therefore took this trip all the time. She was relatively unfazed and like me had business to attend to. We made it to the gas station on the corner of highway 73 and Fellowship Rd. and Lacy met us shortly after but not before I made a few phone calls and accidentally broke the soap dispenser in the men's room sending a cascade of that disgusting neon pink soap down to the floor. I didn't tell the management.
The ride to Philly was short thankfully. Lacy informed me that when I called her it was only about 30 minutes before I was supposed to arrive. And the session at Turtle Studios went well. We only really needed to lay down a few takes of a few different ideas on the guitar and get started with mixing it all in. The guys handed me a blue Les Paul and hooked me up to their Vox amplifier, miked me up, tweaked my sound and handed me a headset. The room was huge and filled with all manner of musical instruments, the most notable an organ and a beautiful Steinway grand. At around 12:30 I had to go back into Philly with Lacy in order to catch the 1pm Amtrak back to NYC and here I sit typing this here blog entry. Hoping to god that nothing jumps in front of the train before we get back to Penn Station…and then I go to work.
So, in short, I'm unscathed but very lucky. Just goes to show that even a semi and an 18 wheeler can't stop this train from gliding down the tracks. Notice I didn't use a bus metaphor.
Bolt to Philly...
Now, free wi-fi on a bus. That's something I can get excited about. Heading to Philadelphia right now on the Bolt Bus to record a few guitar tracks on a new song Lacy is recording for her new album. First time going to Philly ever and unfortunately, I have to turn right around and come back to NYC for work tonight right after the session is over. But it's still going to be a fun little adventure. Mostly the making it back to work on time part. In all honesty though, I feel like I've gotten the hardest part of the day out of the way: waking up at 6am and making it to 34th and 8th in time for the bus. At which I succeeded, in fact, even had time to grab a tea at Starbucks. Don't know how I would be doing right now sans caffeine.
Tonight, I may blog again to let you know how the session goes. It promises to be a lot of fun and a lot of hard work. Though Lacy and I did spend some time on ideas yesterday when she came to Brooklyn. The song, name of which I shall keep private, is in need of something to make it sound more urgent and have more momentum. That's where I come in. And here comes another challenge in blending my music with another musician's. The studio musicians have already laid down guitar tracks of their own. But you know me. I love a challenge.
Now, what to do with the rest of the bus ride? I actually have some editing on the site I want to do. I was showing another composer my site yesterday when I met with him at his studio in Korea-town (East 30s), and it immediately occurred to him that the players on my site have no volume control. The reason is that the divshare site's embedded player has so much crap on it that you don't need (a shuffle button for starters) that I trimmed them down in the code. Luckily, I just needed to adjust the number for width a tiny bit to allow room for the volume control. Now, I just have to fix that on every player on my site! Shouldn't take too long though. And as long as this driver continues to drive relatively smoothly, I should be motion sickness free.
And now, to work!
Tonight, I may blog again to let you know how the session goes. It promises to be a lot of fun and a lot of hard work. Though Lacy and I did spend some time on ideas yesterday when she came to Brooklyn. The song, name of which I shall keep private, is in need of something to make it sound more urgent and have more momentum. That's where I come in. And here comes another challenge in blending my music with another musician's. The studio musicians have already laid down guitar tracks of their own. But you know me. I love a challenge.
Now, what to do with the rest of the bus ride? I actually have some editing on the site I want to do. I was showing another composer my site yesterday when I met with him at his studio in Korea-town (East 30s), and it immediately occurred to him that the players on my site have no volume control. The reason is that the divshare site's embedded player has so much crap on it that you don't need (a shuffle button for starters) that I trimmed them down in the code. Luckily, I just needed to adjust the number for width a tiny bit to allow room for the volume control. Now, I just have to fix that on every player on my site! Shouldn't take too long though. And as long as this driver continues to drive relatively smoothly, I should be motion sickness free.
And now, to work!
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Earthquake!
So, the earthquake that I didn't feel here in Brooklyn but was hearing about all day actually forced me to be productive. You know how I can't sit around idly when there's work to be done but you may not know about a fear I have (actually a pretty common one) of being buried alive. After hearing on NY1 that there had been an earthquake and knowing how aftershocks can happen, I opted not to go into the city for my regular volunteer session at Learning Ally, so as not to have to ride underground on a train for 30 minutes. Instead, I stayed home and redid my reads for the voice over demo I'm working on.
I'm actually quite pleased with it and if it all goes over well and I get good reviews from some of my peers I may put a shine on it and upload it in place of the old one. More on that later. In a second here, I'm gonna ride the bike up to the yoga studio in DUMBO. The weather here right now makes it impossible for me to refuse the temptation of getting out on the bike.
I may try to blog later in the week more about the recording session with Lacy and about my upcoming trip to NC...hoping to swim in my parents' new pool all weekend but there's a high probability that Hurricane Irene will make landfall Saturday. Nature is pissed off this week apparently. So long for now.
I'm actually quite pleased with it and if it all goes over well and I get good reviews from some of my peers I may put a shine on it and upload it in place of the old one. More on that later. In a second here, I'm gonna ride the bike up to the yoga studio in DUMBO. The weather here right now makes it impossible for me to refuse the temptation of getting out on the bike.
I may try to blog later in the week more about the recording session with Lacy and about my upcoming trip to NC...hoping to swim in my parents' new pool all weekend but there's a high probability that Hurricane Irene will make landfall Saturday. Nature is pissed off this week apparently. So long for now.
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